Arizona pols play politics with the state’s disabled students

Doctors told her parents to put her in an institution and move on.

They didn't. And Rebecca learned to walk and talk. At a special school for students with disabilities, she even learned to read.

Then the Fays moved to Tucson from Massachusetts, and Rebecca was placed in a mainstream classroom. Rebecca's new school didn't have the therapists mandated by law; her teacher was overwhelmed; her aide was untrained. When Rebecca's mother, Susan, attended class to investigate what was going on, she found to her horror that nothing was going on.

Rebecca was too far behind her classmates to comprehend much of anything.

Not surprisingly, by the time Rebecca finished fifth grade, she was reading at just first-grade level.

Last year, thanks to a special scholarship from the state of Arizona, the Fays were able to enroll Rebecca in private school — and, there, the slender 14-year-old flourished.

"After one year, she's at fifth-grade reading level and fifth-grade math level," boasts her father, Brendan.

There's only one problem.

Politics.

The scholarship program that aided Rebecca Fay was created during flush economic times, as part of a budget compromise. Republicans wanted private-school vouchers for disabled kids and students who'd been in foster care; Governor Janet Napolitano wanted all-day kindergarten and health insurance for poor families. That year, everybody got what they wanted.

Not this year. And not just because Arizona's economy is going to hell.

Teachers unions, People for the American Way, and other left-leaning groups filed suit to stop the scholarship program. And though the lefties initially lost in district court, the appeals court granted them victory earlier this year.

Normally, that wouldn't be the end. Despite some initial confusion, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that the Legislature may continue to fund the program while it reviews the case.

But Democrats didn't care. Instead, they saw the appellate decision as the perfect political cover.

As her spokeswoman admitted to me, Governor Napolitano has a distinct "lack of enthusiasm" for voucher programs. Most Democrats in the Legislature feel the same way.

So they gutted the program — literally.

This year's budget, recently approved by both houses, provides zero funding for the scholarships.

Never mind that that the state Supreme Court could yet uphold the scholarship program. And never mind that we should have the court's final answer within the school year.

Rather than wait for the verdict, our politicians decided to uproot hundreds of special-needs kids.

And though program advocates in the House of Representatives say they have a fix, it's an unusual scheme requiring the state attorney general's acquiescence, which is hardly a given.

So while the politicians wrangle and the lawyers bicker, kids like Rebecca Fay and their parents wait for an answer — petrified that they'll end up back in the same public schools that failed them.

Arizona has spent public money to educate disabled kids in private schools for decades. If a school district decides that it can't "appropriately educate" a disabled student, private schools get to take over on the taxpayer's dime.

It wasn't until the Legislature approved this particular scholarship program in 2006 that anybody filed a lawsuit.

Why?

This program puts the decision about "appropriate education" in the hands of parents, not school districts. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that school districts, and teachers unions, hate this.

They think they know what's best for kids. They are suspicious of meddling parents. And they see each and every parental-choice program as the straw that could break the back of the entire public school system.

Every kid who gets tax dollars for private school, after all, means less funding for public schools. And public school advocates also live in constant fear of the ol' slippery slope: If they start letting parents choose to send their disabled kids to private school, tuition-free, who's to say that vouchers for non-disabled kids won't come next?

Don Peters is the parent of a disabled child. An attorney with Miller, LaSota, and Peters, he's also lead lawyer for the coalition trying to strike down the scholarship program.

"Parents are not the best judges of what is appropriate and necessary for their children," he tells me. "Parents of disabled children tend to be very emotional and get very frustrated because they want what's best for the child . . . These are children who the public schools felt would be handled most appropriately by public schools."

As Peters notes, parents who are frustrated by the public schools do have remedies. For one thing, they can file a lawsuit to get their kid a private-school placement. But that's hardly a quick fix — or one guaranteed to work.

I listened to half a dozen parents in the scholarship program talk about how private schools helped their kids. I also read affidavits from nearly a dozen more.

They are heartbreaking.

Here are parents who fought, for years, even as public schools let them down, time and again: One Yavapai County parent reports that when an aide wasn't available for her daughter, her public school would simply strap her into a chair to keep her under control. Other parents recount moving, more than once, in search of a district willing to teach their children, not just babysit them or leave them to rot all day in the "quiet room."