By Michelle Tuccitto Sullo
Investigations Editor
Black and Hispanic students are identified as having a disability at a slightly higher rate than their white peers in Connecticut’s public schools.
“It has long been a fact that black males in particular are placed in special education categories,” said Benjamin Foster, education committee chairman for the Connecticut State Conference of NAACP branches. “This is an ongoing challenge for the (NAACP) and the educational system.”
John Lugo, an organizer for Unidad Latina en Accion, said many Hispanic youths end up in special education because their native language is Spanish, and it takes time to adapt to classes taught in English.
“I heard about this issue 20 years ago, and it is still the same,” Lugo said. “I don’t think it is getting better.”

Read the full story here.

By Michelle Tuccitto Sullo
Investigations Editor
HARTFORD >> State lawmakers in the coming months will be meeting with educators and parents to develop a list of legislative proposals on special education.
Lawmakers are forming a new working group on special education under the Municipal Opportunities & Regional Efficiencies Commission, or M.O.R.E., which focuses on making improvements and finding cost savings.
Deputy Majority Leader Michelle Cook, D-Torrington, will be a co-chairperson of the new working group.
“The speaker of the house put together the M.O.R.E. Commission to make the state more efficient and lessen the burden on taxpayers,” Cook said. “As we have sat with municipal and education leaders, we hear how special education is costly. We have never looked at special education as a whole, and it is a huge component of our education budget.”

Read the full story here.

By Michelle Tuccitto Sullo
Investigations Editor
HARTFORD >> The state Appellate Court heard arguments Wednesday on whether two family members of missing man William "Billy" Smolinski Jr. should have to pay a $52,666 judgment to Smolinski’s former girlfriend.
Superior Court Judge Thomas Corradino in 2012 awarded $52,666 in damages to Madeleine Gleason of Woodbridge, who had dated Smolinski until they broke up just before his 2004 disappearance.
Gleason sued his mother, Janice Smolinski of Cheshire, and sister, Paula Bell, in 2006, claiming they harassed, defamed and falsely accused her of involvement in his disappearance. Corradino’s award included $32,000 for intentional infliction of emotional distress, $7,500 for defamation and $13,166 in punitive damages.
The Smolinski family appealed Corradino’s ruling to the state Appellate Court, and attorneys for both sides presented their arguments Wednesday. A decision is expected to take several months.

Read the full story here. 

By Mary E. O'Leary
Register Staff
NEW HAVEN >> The FBI has requested a list of liens the Livable City Initiative placed on properties over an 18-month period as it investigates “alleged inappropriate behavior” by a field inspector working for the agency, according to Mayor John DeStefano Jr.
A subpoena was sent to Erik Johnson, executive director of LCI, in early August with a request that he appear with the material before a grand jury on Aug. 22.
Johnson Sunday said he did not have to appear in U.S. District Court in New Haven, only make the materials available for the time frame January 2012 through July 31, 2013.
He said he was never told the reason for the request from the U.S. Attorney’s Office and he hasn’t heard from federal authorities since August.

Read more here.

By Michelle Tuccitto Sullo
Investigations Editor
If students with disabilities are going to succeed in regular classrooms, their instructors need to have the training and preparation to teach them.
Attorney David Shaw of Bloomfield, who represents the plaintiffs in the ongoing P.J. litigation, asserts many teachers aren’t trained enough, and disabled students still aren’t getting enough access to the curriculum.
“We are trying to teach them to be functioning adults and they need to learn to get along with their peers and future employers,” Shaw said. “These kids can do amazing things. If you have low expectations, like you think they won’t learn to read, then that is what happens.”
While Shaw’s primary focus is on intellectually disabled students, his concern has been echoed by experts in other disability areas.
“Parents fought to get their kids included in regular education, then the problem was that the teachers didn’t know how to teach them,” Shaw said.

Read more here.

Eighth grade students are photographed at a U.S. History course at Dodd Middle School in Cheshire on 6/18/2013.  Arnold Gold / Register      

By Michelle Tuccitto Sullo
Investigations Editor

Students with disabilities are more frequently the targets of bullies, according to education experts.
Children identified as having special needs are three to five times more at risk for being the targets of bullies than other children, according to the state Department of Education’s web site.
“Often, it takes shape in a way that presents the least resistance to being held accountable, and often occurs when adults are not paying attention,” department spokeswoman Kelly Donnelly said. “Bullying often occurs when an aggressor is presented with the opportunity to tease, taunt, threaten, exclude, or even cause physical harm and there is a low likelihood of being caught in the act.”

Read more here.

By Catherine Boudreau
Special to the New Haven Register

Although the number of students in special education continues to decline, the cost is on the rise statewide.

In Connecticut, overall education expenditures rose by nearly 17 percent from the 2005-06 to the 2009-10 school years, while special education spending increased 66 percent during this period and continues to take up roughly 20 percent of the overall state budget each year.

In addition, Kevin Chambers of the state Department of Education’s budget office predicts education expenditures will continue to rise by roughly 5 percent each year.

The increase can be attributed to many factors, including more personnel and training, a rise in special in-district programs and the out-placement of students. But in a state trying to address its budget deficit, rising special education costs place financial strain on all involved.

Read the full story here.

(Mara Lavitt — New Haven Register) Nicholas Glomb of Vernon, with his father Walter, works, has friends, and has plans for his own business. His success in part is due to general education classes both in public school and at Manchester Community College.        

By Michelle Tuccitto Sullo
Investigations Editor
For some families, their disabled children have excelled when they have spent as much time as possible with their non-disabled classmates.
But others say an outside placement — at a separate school specifically for disabled students, is what ultimately worked for their child.  
Lisa Weisinger-Roland moved to Connecticut and specifically to West Hartford because she wanted her son, Jamie Roland, who has Down syndrome, to be educated with his non-disabled peers as much as possible.
The family moved here from Florida about four years ago, and Jamie Roland is now a senior in high school.
According to his mother, while the family lived in Florida, they decided to home-school Jamie because school officials wanted to put him in a self-contained classroom where he would have little exposure to his peers.

Read more here.

By Catherine Boudreau
Special to the New Haven Register
It was not until Alicia Gerbert’s son, Domenick, attended middle school in Stamford that she discovered he was reading at a second-grade level. Even though he had been identified with a severe learning disability years earlier, Domenick made little progress in public school.
Gerbert and her husband sought help from a special education advocate. After discussing his records and test scores, they all agreed Domenick wasn’t improving, and would not unless something changed immediately.
The Gerberts then went to a psychologist to perform further evaluations. The results were heartbreaking, Gerbert recalled, because she thought the school had been doing the right thing all along. And when Domenick’s fifth-grade special education teacher told Gerbert he would not do any better, she knew it was time to seek other options.

Read more here.

By Pamela McLoughlin
Register Staff
I have a 16-year-old son with an intellectual disability who has been in the special education system for 13 years, and I cursed Connecticut’s handling of the P.J. settlement daily throughout his time in elementary school.
Yes, the settlement has done wonders for countless children who, through inclusion in a typical classroom, have had the priceless benefit of interacting and learning alongside children who provide what no book or teacher’s lesson ever could — modeling of appropriate behavior, social interaction and a higher bar for academic achievement.
But the state Department of Education has gone too far in eliminating self-contained classrooms following the P.J. settlement agreement. Just as children were wrongly warehoused into contained classrooms before the P.J. settlement, children such as my son, Will, who can’t survive in a classroom with typical peers, are being warehoused to substandard special education schools.

Read more here.

The New Haven Register has launched a new blog devoted to special education issues. Check it out here.

We also have a new Facebook page on the topic, which readers can find here.

Patrick Jordan of West Hartford was part of a landmark Connecticut case that established a state mandate to mainstream special needs children in schools. One of his jobs is to shelve books at the West Hartford Public Library two days a week, a job recommended to him while he was at Manchester Community College. Mara Lavitt — New Haven Register

By Michelle Tuccitto Sullo
Investigations Editor
Nicholas Glomb of Vernon, who has Down syndrome, was able to spend his school years in regular classrooms with his non-disabled classmates.
Today, at age 25, he has friends, works at a supermarket and aspires to have his own food service business.
“None of this would have been possible without him being included in general education classes,” said his father, Walter Glomb.
Proponents of the movement in recent years to include disabled children in regular education classes as much as possible point to success stories like Nicholas.
But others say special education students sometimes end up isolated and unable to keep pace.

Read more here.

By Michelle Tuccitto Sullo
Investigations Editor
While a judge concluded the state has substantially complied with a landmark agreement that called for students with intellectual disabilities to spend more time with their non-disabled peers, those who originally filed the lawsuit are appealing to a higher court, claiming the state is backsliding and more needs to be done.
Decades ago, intellectually disabled students were typically taught in separate classrooms, with little interaction with non-disabled students.
That changed with the class-action lawsuit known as the “P.J. case.”
Attorney David Shaw of Bloomfield, who represented “P.J.” — Patrick Jordan of West Hartford — and the other plaintiffs, said many of these students are doing well today, learning to read and thriving.
According to Shaw, the P.J. case made positive changes — by changing attitudes and resulting in better education for intellectually disabled students.
“But some schools still have the same idea that they should be in a separate class,” Shaw said. “Children are frequently unnecessarily segregated.”
“I think it is an embarrassment to the state to make so much progress and then go backwards. Did they really mean to change?”

Read the full story here.

By Regina Galluzzo
Special to the New Haven Register

On the sidewalk-lined streets of West Hartford, 6-year-old Patrick Jordan waited alongside his brother, sister and other neighborhood children at the bus stop.
These same kids who were in his classes also participated in Boy Scouts and religion classes with Patrick. They were his friends.
But without the determination of his parents, he would have been picked up separately, by a different-looking bus and taken to a school much farther away.
The year was 1991.

Read more here.