Posted: Wednesday, June 24, 2009 12:00 am
In a case from Forest Grove, the Supreme Court has just made hash of the law on school districts paying for private schooling of children whose parents keep them out of public school.
Federal law requires school districts to give every child a "free and appropriate public education." (Don't even ask whether the Constitution really allows Congress to boss local school districts and taxpayers around in this way.)
The court ruled 6-3 that parents can bypass the public schools and their special education programs - they don't even have to give them a chance - and then can still demand that the public pay the exorbitant fees of specialized private schools.
It would be one thing for the federal government to impose this burden on local schools if it was willing to pay the bill. But it's not paying the entire bill, only a small portion of it.
In the Forest Grove case, a family wants to be reimbursed for the $5,200 a month - more than $65,000 total - it paid a private school to teach their hyperactive teenager. In Albany, the school district has been paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for a child being schooled out of state, even though the district believes the girl could be accommodated locally at much less cost.
When Congress enacted the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, members probably did not foresee that "free and appropriate public education" could cost that much in an individual case. As usual, Congress did not envision the collateral damage that its legislation would one day cause.
Is there any limit to the amount of money the public must spend to school a single individual? Apparently the law doesn't mention any.
The Supreme Court had a chance here to apply some common sense to an open-ended law. But it did the opposite and, by doing so, imposed untold additional costs on the school systems of the United States.
Congress could fix the problem. But don't hold your breath.
Congress rarely deals with the unintended consequences of the legislation it enacts, and it's unlikely it will do so in this case. (hh)