U.S. Presses State to Provide Special Ed for Prisoners

The federal government wants California to provide special education services to some imprisoned felons, including those serving life terms or on death row. And, to pressure the state to do so, the U.S. Department of Education is threatening to withhold $332 million that now goes to pay for the same services for public schoolchildren.

The issue arises from an Education Department interpretation of the 1975 law that requires schools to ensure that students with physical, emotional and learning disabilities receive a “free, appropriate public education” in return for federal aid.

The law does not specifically require that prisoners receive such services. Indeed, many other states do not provide them. Neither does the federal prison system.

Yet, because California extends services such as tutoring and vocational and speech therapy to juveniles until they turn 22, the federal government says prisoners up to that age cannot be discriminated against--even if they are behind bars for crimes including murder and rape or awaiting execution.

Privately, federal education officials acknowledge that withholding money from programs for schoolchildren to pressure the state would be highly unpopular and that they would be reluctant to go through with it.

Nonetheless, federal officials have continued to press the state to comply.

The Wilson administration has resisted the order, saying that screening inmates and creating an individualized plan for serving each of them would pose daunting logistic, financial, security and legal problems. State officials have been lobbying Congress to change the law.

In testimony before a congressional committee looking into the issue, Gregory W. Harding, the Department of Corrections chief deputy director, questioned the “appropriateness and wisdom of expending precious resources” on individuals who have “committed felonious and, in many instances, heinous crimes.”

Harding also warned that inmates or their parents “would merely use this process to make unreasonable demands or to bring frivolous lawsuits against staff.”

The state prisons house roughly 10,000 inmates between the ages of 16 and 21. No one knows for sure how many of those prisoners might have disabilities qualifying them for special education. Estimates have ranged between 10% and 25%. Cost estimates also range widely, from $5 million to $20 million annually.

Those numbers pale next to the $3.4 billion spent annually in California to provide special education for 590,000 students.

But the possibility of shifting any money to prisoners rankles educators because the federal government requires the states to provide special education to disabled children, but has never come close to providing its full share of the programs’ cost. The law originally said the federal government could cover up to 40% of the cost of special education, but Washington has never put up more than 12% of the money and has now dropped its share to roughly 8%--draining money from local school district budgets.

“Our position is that we don’t want to see any public education dollars--state or federal--be siphoned off to provide special education services . . . to youth in prison,” said Lou Barela, a special education administrator in Solano County who has testified on the issue on behalf of a statewide administrators group.

Barela said it would be more expensive to provide services in prisons than in schools because of security risks. She said the state already has a huge shortage of trained special education teachers, and it will be even more difficult to find ones willing to work in prisons.

It is not uncommon for federal officials to threaten to withhold special education funding in order to get a state or a local school district to comply with a ruling. In 1994, the Los Angeles Unified School District was threatened with the loss of its special education funding if it did not revamp its procedures for assessing students’ needs in a timely fashion. In the end, no money was withheld.

Federal education officials have scheduled a public hearing for next month in Sacramento to discuss when the state will begin to provide the services. That hearing will also consider a compliance agreement under which the state would have as long as three years to change its program.

The issue of providing special education services to inmates is one of many that has complicated action to extend the life of the landmark 1975 law, now known as the Individuals With Disabilities Act.

Last fall, after working on the reauthorization bill for two years, Congress adjourned without taking action. Among the other issues stalling the bill were questions about how federal money for the program is distributed and how students served by the program can be disciplined.

Representatives of both parties in the Senate and House and from the Clinton administration are in the middle of negotiations on the reauthorization bill and are expected to come up with a compromise in the next few weeks. In an effort to keep those negotiations on track, the parties, including those from the Department of Education, have agreed not to talk about whether they are making progress.

Republican Rep. Frank Riggs of Windsor heads one of the subcommittees dealing with the reauthorization and has vowed in the past to change the law to exempt California from the order to serve prisoners.

“It is utterly unfair to take precious special education dollars away from students in the public schools to give those dollars to muggers, murderers and rapists,” said Beau Phillips, Riggs’ spokesman.

“For the U.S. Department of Education to threaten the special ed grant for the entire state of California because the state won’t provide special education to 19- and 22-year-old killers is insane.”