SENATORS HOLD EDUCATION FORUM

School district administrators say a federal law that governs special education programs has handcuffed their ability to discipline students.

About 40 Southeast Missouri educators from 18 school districts met with U.S. Sens. John Ashcroft and Christopher "Kit" Bond Friday afternoon at the Cape Girardeau Area Vocational-Technical School.

The educators said the federal Individuals with Disabilities Act also has saddled the nation's school districts with burdensome and expensive disciplinary procedures.

Ashcroft and Bond pledged to work toward improving the law.

Ashcroft and Bond have been holding forums with educators around the state to discuss the need for changes in the special-education law and in overall federal funding for schools.

Bond promoted his "Direct Check for Education" proposal. It would consolidate several federal education programs and send the money directly to local school districts, bypassing federal and state bureaucrats.

Bond and Ashcroft said they hope to address these issues when Congress considers reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act later this year.

Most of the discussion Friday centered on regulatory concerns about the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or IDEA.

Ashcroft said the definition of "disabled" under the law extends beyond physical and mental disability. It includes students with a variety of emotional disorders and disruptive and violent behaviors, the senator said.

In Missouri, one in seven students is classified as disabled.

The law, he said, has undermined school safety and forced schools to go through a maze of procedures to discipline students.

In one district, a disabled student threatened to shoot school employees. Under federal law, the school was forced to return the student to class.

But a non-disabled student found with a knife was expelled for a year as federally mandated, Ashcroft said.

Dr. Sharon Gunn directs special education services for the Sikeston School District. She said the federal law hurts students.

"We are teaching children that there is a double standard," said Gunn.

Kelly Jenkins, special education director for the Clearwater School District in Piedmont, said the law has led school districts to avoid disciplinary actions in many cases.

Schools can't discipline disabled students so they avoid disciplining any students, she said.

Ashcroft said federal law allowed one child in a mid-Missouri school to continue to make racial slurs in a classroom taught by a black teacher because the child was diagnosed with a disability.

School administrators said Friday their special-education teachers are buried by regulations and paperwork that make it difficult for them to teach the very children that need help.

Clearwater's Jenkins said all the paperwork takes time away from teaching.

Frustrated special-education teachers, she said, want to go back to the regular classrooms where they can teach without being burdened by government paperwork.

Congress extended the IDEA law in 1997. At that time, Ashcroft pushed through some changes in the law in an effort to deal with violent students.

The Ashcroft provisions require student disciplinary records to be included in other school records when a student is transferred to a new school.

It also authorizes schools to report crimes by disabled students to police and juvenile authorities without first having to go through extensive procedural requirements.

The reform in records disclosure followed the 1995 killing of a 15-year-old girl in a restroom at McCluer North High School in St. Louis County.

A special-education student was convicted of the crime. The boy had a juvenile record and had been caught in the women's restroom at a previous school.

But teachers and administrators at McCluer North weren't informed of the student's record when he transferred to the school. Federal law didn't allow it.

But even with the improvements made in 1997, Ashcroft said the law continues to pose problems for the nation's schools.

Federal policies require schools to go through a maze of costly procedures regarding disabled students, Ashcroft said.

The federal government gives Missouri school districts about $470 a student with a disability.

But in one Missouri school district, the IDEA law forced the school system to set up a $60,000 a year program for one disabled student, said Ashcroft.