The New Jersey Department of Education has issued a corrective action plan for a north Jersey school district. The order is in response to a complaint investigation initiated by a non-attorney advocate last fall.
According to the report, students placed in a district-operated special class program were not offered the same length of school day as their non-disabled peers. The school day for the intensive, ABA-oriented autism class ended one hour and 5 minutes sooner than the school day for all other students. The IEPs for the roughly two dozen students in that program did not provide any indication of, or rationale for, a shorter day.
The district provided a variety of explanations for the practice, from it being a “blanket decision for all students in the program,” to transportation issues. They further claimed that this time was devoted to parent training, but no such training had ever been offered.
State code and statute require that the length of the school day for students with disabilities be at least as long as that established for non-disabled students.
The NJDOE issued a three-pronged corrective action plan requiring the district to reconfigure the autism program such that the students receive a full-day program; reconvene an IEP meeting for each student affected to indicate the length of school day needed; and, provide compensatory education to students, as needed.
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