The Connecticut State Department of Education announced Wednesday it has hired Kathleen Reiser to fill a newly-created role of dedicated special education attorney.
The department created the position to address longstanding dissatisfaction with the state complaint system, a key tool for parents who feel schools are not meeting their children’s special education needs. Parent attorneys said the state’s findings in those complaints were often legally suspect. In January, the consulting firm WestEd recommended CSDE hire a special education attorney to address the issue.
In a written statement, Education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker said hiring Reiser was part of a broader effort to strengthen the state’s special education systems.
“Kathleen brings extensive experience with special education law, administrative leadership, and dispute resolution that will be invaluable as we continue this important work,” Russell-Tucker said.
The stakes for parents and children in special education can be high. Under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, all children are entitled to what is known as a free appropriate public education, or FAPE. That standard is meant to ensure schools are meeting every student’s learning needs. If parents in Connecticut feel a school is misbehaving or coming up short, a state complaint is often the most accessible way to force changes.
After parents file a complaint, investigators from CSDE gather information and render a decision on whether school leaders and staff did anything wrong and what, if anything, they needs to change. Critics say that without a lawyer involved, those decisions have often lacked a strong legal foundation, putting the integrity and usefulness of the process at risk.
Andrew Feinstein, a special education attorney and member of Special Education Equity for Kids in Connecticut, pointed to one decision the department issued about seven years ago that has continued to cause “a lot of heartburn.”
The decision “basically says that the email correspondence is not an educational record which has to be disclosed to parents unless it’s independently printed out,” Feinstein said. “It seems to me completely inconsistent with the statute.”
Feinstein said he’s glad CSDE hired Reiser and he hopes she has a positive impact. However, he said he’d like to start seeing major decisions — like the one about email records — elevated to CSDE leadership.
“Those should be done in a conscientious way where the top of the agency knows exactly what’s being said … not just relegated to, you know, fourth, fifth level staff people,” Feinstein said.
According to CSDE’s press release announcing her hiring, Reiser previously practiced at the Law Office of Courtney P. Spencer, LLC, where she represented clients in special education matters. Most recently, she served as director of the Office of Adjudications at the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
Feinstein said despite Reiser’s hiring, he remains concerned about complaint enforcement, which he said the WestEd report failed to address.
“The issue we continue to have with written state complaints is that … a violation will be found, and then the same violation occurs in the same district repeatedly,” Feinstein said. “There’s no real follow-up on enforcement of those decisions, and that’s pretty troubling.”
