Previous: Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV. I have tried to serialize this misbegotten behavior by SAU86, which I will bring mostly to a close soon. However, the “steamroll” part of the title.
DCYF (NH Department of Children, Youth and Family) is supposed to protect children mostly from really bad and abusive parents; that’s fine. However, my experience is that not all parents ensnared in dealing with “The Division” are either bad or abusive – but the anonymous callers dime-ing parents are, and the Division has to follow its process. Personal experience showed me that DCYF workers (the vast majority of workers are great to work with!) can also be the abusers of the system that parents must navigate – often not knowing at all what “the rules of the road” are for the process by which to get their children back. There is a lot of truth in the phrase “The process IS the punishment”.
So, too, with some School Districts, and in my humble opinion, Barnstead is one of them. After all, in Part IV, I showed you that the personnel are so sloppy and careless that they can’t even copy the NH Education rules correctly (stating that NH Ed Rule 1109.01 covers transportation issues when it really talks about what sections must be in a child’s Individual Education Plan (“IEP). It is NH Ed Rule 1109.02 that speaks about student transport:
(a) All vehicles used to transport children with disabilities provided by, or on behalf of a school district, shall be maintained in safe working order and be inspected and licensed according to the New Hampshire department of safety rules as provided in Saf-C 1307 and RSA 266:7.
(b) All drivers of such vehicles shall be licensed according to Saf-C 1304.
(c) Parents of a child with a disability shall not be required to meet the standards of Ed. 1109.02 (a) – (b) when providing transportation to their own child.
(d) Any contracted providers of transportation for children with disabilities, including parents transporting children other than their own, shall comply with the standards of Ed.1109.02 (a) – (b).
(e) Each person who transports children other than their own in a private passenger vehicle to or from school or a school related activity shall not be required to obtain a school bus driver’s certificate pursuant to RSA 263:29 and these rules, as long as he or she is not under contract or reimbursement agreement with a municipality.
Go ahead and read that carefully, and then the quote I pulled from the Prior Notification:
Barnstead lied again in that they claimed that “transportation is required only if…the student requires a vehicle specially adapted to serve the needs of the disabled student“.
Our Foster boy had no physical disabilities that required a specialized ride; again, his IEP stated his disability was a severe speech impediment, so there’s False Statement #1. NO SUCH meaning for Barnstead’s claim appears in 1109.02. Not even close.
False Claim #2 states that 1109.02, which Barnstead claimed was NH Ed Rule 1109.01, discusses the availability of transport AND a medical need. Again, an absolute travesty of warping the wording and meaning of the Rule. What the Rule DOES talk about is the transporting vehicle be in “safe working order”, licensed drivers, and any “transportation providers” meeting clauses a.-b. above. NOTHING about a geographical location and the availability of transport.
But I bring your attention to the third line in that Prior Notification image:
…Transportation is not included in <name redacted>’s IEP.
WELL WHY WASN’T IT??? Oh yeah, BARNSTEAD deliberately failed to put Transport into the draft IEP, hoping that Dad wouldn’t catch it (he obviously didn’t know) but signed anyways. Barnstead should have put it into the Related Services section of the IEP but deliberately didn’t and tried to blame the parent for not catching it. Why?
My thought: being a small District, if they could find a way to NOT spend the $$$$, they’d try it – and did. I caught them steamrolling the parent.
So I got steamed that this underhandedness and despicable trick was going to deny my Foster Child the services he both needed and was entitled to receive from this District of Liability (e.g., liable for all expenses which, as a former Budget Committee member reviewing years of Special Education budgets and expenditures, the DoL was legally commanded to spend whatever amount was needed even if it blew their budget out).
I had never run into a District that thought they could do this to a 4-year-old boy and get away with it.
However, the trick up my sleeve is that I knew what I needed to look for and how to find the answers I needed quickly -> AI to the rescue! And the Judge, too!
Continued in Part VI…
