The #ReOpenClass Action Lawsuit For Special Education Students Has More Than 500 Parents Signed Up

Patrick Donohue

This post is an update of the previous post,

Parent Activist Patrick Donohue Sues the NYC Department of Education For Neglecting Special Needs Kids During COVID-19

From: Patrick Donohue <patrick@braininjuryrights.org>

Sent: Thursday, July 30, 2020, 4:03 PM

Subject: NBC News interview about national ReOpenClass action lawsuit

NBC News just interviewed me about our national #ReOpenClass action lawsuit demanding school districts to either reopen the schools for special education students OR provide a Pendency Voucher and allow parents to self-cure (https://www.nbcnewyork.com/on-air/as-seen-on/father-of-developmentally-challenged-student-files-lawsuit-to-reopen-schools/2541072/).  All of the details, including a copy of the federal complaint filed in the Southern District of New York, is located on the website www.ReOpenClass.com and the media advisory is below.

There are now over 500 families from more than 25 states who have joined this effort (and growing every hour)!  Here was my interview on NY1 speaking about the #ReOpenClass action lawsuit: https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/ny1-interviews/2020/07/28/lawsuit-alleges-schools-abandoned-special-needs-students.  And in case you didn’t see the previous article in the New York Post: https://nypost.com/2020/07/16/lawsuit-rips-schools-for-abandoning-special-needs-kids-amid-covid-19/.

There will be some MAJOR developments happening next week … so be sure to check out www.ReOpenClass.com or follow the efforts on Facebook (Re-open Class) or Twitter (@ReOpenClass).

All the best,

Patrick

Patrick B. Donohue, JD, MBA

Founder & Chairman, Brain Injury Rights Group

300 East 95^th Street, #130, New York, NY 10128

MEDIA ADVISORY                                   Contact: William Frazier              

(888) 927-4332 (927-IDEA)
July 30, 2020                                                                Email: William@pabilaw.org

National Class Action To Re-Open Schools Has Website: www.ReOpenClass.com
Families Across America With Special Needs Demand Schools Re-Open

NEW YORK, NY – Civil Rights attorney, Patrick Donohue, and Brain Injury Rights Group announced a National Class Action Lawsuit on behalf of millions of special education students across the country. The lawsuit seeks to reopen their schools to provide in-person services OR provide a Pendency Voucher for parents to self-cure. It also seeks compensation for the students and parents for the failure of their school districts to provide a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) since mid-March when schools were shut down during the coronavirus crisis.

There is now a website set up with all of the details, including a copy of the federal complaint which was filed in the Southern District of New York: www.ReOpenClass.com.

There are more than 7 million students in the United States between 3 and 21 years of age receiving special education services (over 200,000 in New York City alone). These students have Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) with their local school districts that outline the educational program the student is supposed to receive. When the local school districts unilaterally, substantially and materially changed their educational programs by sending these 6.7 million students home in mid-March to receive “remote learning”, or no services at all, they violated the federal civil rights of these students under the Individuals with Disability Education Act (IDEA). In many cases, the local school districts failed to even provide live synchronous service to these students while they were home. Instead, the responsibility for “remote learning” landed squarely on the shoulders of parents across America. Many parents had to quit or lost their jobs and some had to pay money out of their own pocket to do what the local school districts were getting paid to do: provide educational benefits to their disabled child!

More than 500 families from over 25 states have already signed up to be part of the national class action. Families are going directly to the website: www.ReOpenClass.com or are calling the toll-free hotline: 888-927-4332 / 888-927-IDEA.

Patrick Donohue is a civil rights attorney who became an advocate after his daughter, Sarah Jane, who was violently shaken by her baby nurse when she was only five days old, breaking four ribs, both collarbones and causing a severe brain injury. The Brain Injury Rights Group is a national civil rights legal advocacy non-profit organization located in New York City. Besides Brain Injury Rights Group, Mr. Donohue has founded one of the largest brain injury programs in the country located in New York City, the International Institute for the Brain (iBRAIN).

Rafe Esquith and Attorney Mark Geragos Make History in LA as They Prepare A Class Action Against Teacher Jails

Hooray for Rafe!

Rafe Esquith

Los Angeles is about to be The Place, as the Gotcha Squad out there goes on trial.

This is an historic moment.

Here in New York the teachers all seem to be fighting each other, and keeping the Panel For Educational Policy (PEP) in their platform for power. This is, in our opinion at ADVOCATZ, an error so huge that we cannot support any group or individual who believes in an appointed school board and thus denies the general public a vote.

People - read the Mein Kampf of total control (i.e. "Mayoral control") of the public school system that has been held in high esteem by the UFT, Diane Ravitch, Bloomberg, de Blasio, Carmen Farnia, and all the other reformers out there. I have been personally vilified by such well-known persons as Norm Scott and Leonie Haimson for opposing the PEP. I'm so glad that their attacks have not disturbed my life and work. 

To us advocates for change at ADVOCATZ, anyone who tries to silence another person for saying something that they disagree with, is despicable.

 We at ADVOCATZ do not support the appointment of leaders who, by not being elected by the voting public, do not represent us. We need an elected school board, and gatekeepers who stop false claims before they squash a person and put them into a vortex of emotional instability.

We hope that Attorney Geragos and teacher Esquith will win this battle against the dark side.

Betsy Combier
President, ADVOCATZ
President, Theater Kids, Inc.
President, The E-Accountability Foundation
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter, New York Court Corruption, National Public Voice, and
            Parentadvocates.org

Mark Geragos

JUST IN: Geragos plans class action against LAUSD over teacher jails

Posted on July 13, 2015 3:21 pm by Mike Szymanski

High-profile attorney Mark Geragos has notified LAUSD that he intends to file a class action lawsuit about the so-called“teacher jails” that could involve hundreds–and potentially thousands–of past and present teachers.

Rafe Esquith

The required notice for the class action lawsuit was stamped and received by the school board on June 22, and 45 days from that date the suit will be filed, according to Ben Meiselas, an associate of Geragos & Geragos who is representing noted educator Rafe Esquith, who was taken from his classroom earlier this year and placed in teacher jail, pending an investigation on a variety of issues.

The letter, obtained by the LA School Report, deals mostly with the Esquith case, but it also gives notice of a class action complaint “on behalf of all teachers, during the applicable statue of limitations period, who have been denied procedural and substantive due process by LAUSD.”

The notice says: “It is anticipated the composition of the relevant class will be comprised of at least several thousand current and former LAUSD teachers who have similarly been deprived of due process, and have endured arbitrary process, undefined investigations, indefinite stays in teacher jail, and capricious classroom removals.”

The issue is an especially volatile one with LA Unified, which has been severely criticized over the years by the teachers union, UTLA, for what union officials say is a capricious and unfair discipline system. Tensions were especially acute during John Deasy‘s years as superintendent, making the elimination of teacher jail a prime rallying cry of Alex Caputo-Pearl‘s run for the union presidency last year and the union’s subsequent campaign for a new labor agreement with the district.

Under Ramon Cortines, who took over when Deasy resigned last year, both sides say progress has been made in expediting cases involving teachers in jail, reducing the number of teachers still kept out of their classrooms. It remains unclear what impact, if any, a class action lawsuit might have on the improving approach to resolving cases.

Since representing Esquith, Meiselas said the firm has collected 300 to 400 names of teachers reporting trouble with the LAUSD disciplinary procedure. In fact, at the same time he was discussing the case today with LA School Report, Meiselas said he received emails from teachers, asking for help.

“This one says, ‘I am a former teacher who was held for nine months in the teacher jail,’” he said, reading one.

Another email detailed the teacher’s detainment and said, “I’m one of the teachers who can address the adversarial and spiteful culture of the administration.”

Another that he read said: “I’ve been in teacher’s jail for 10 months. Please help me!”

Meiselas said he is amazed at how many teachers have contacted him about the unfairness of the teacher jail, which requires that teachers be taken out of a classroom immediately and forced to sit idly in a downtown office as an investigation proceeds.

“Sometimes the teachers don’t even know what they are charged with, and the process could take months or even years,” Meiselas said.

His defense of the popular and highly-respected fifth grade teacher Esquith led to many stories of other teachers in similar situations.

“It’s tragic, these are intelligent vibrant teachers with masters and doctorates who are under a McCarthy-like system,” Meiselas said. “They have not been provided notice of allegations and it has taken an unfair McCarthy-like tilt to any American jurisprudence.”

Meiselas said his office has noticed a pattern of allegations against teachers who are older than 50 and are usually in higher-end pay scales.

“We want to compel a systematic change at the school board and not have a system that is anti-teacher,” Meiselas said.

Geragos, who is normally a criminal defense attorney, will be taking up the lead in the class action case against LAUSD, Meiselas said.

The school district has another two weeks or so to respond, after which Meiselas said his office will file the class action lawsuit.

Esquith, a best selling author who has also received national awards and media attention for his work at Hobart Avenue Elementary School, was removed from the classroom in April in response to a complaint that he made a joke about nudity while referencing Mark Twain. The district’s investigation of his background revealed he has been accused of physically and sexually abusing a child four decades ago when he was a teenager working at a summer camp.

Inside the world of LA Unified’s ‘Teacher Jail’

Posted on December 13, 2013 10:00 am by LA School Report

Via KCRW | By Saul Gonzalez

Earlier this week, Los Angeles Unified School District teachers rallied to protest what they call “teacher jail.” These are the places LAUSD instructors and other school staff are sent when they’re accused of some sort of classroom misconduct and are under investigation by school authorities and law enforcement. That inappropriate conduct can range from yelling at a student to sexual abuse.
Currently there are 260 people in LAUSD teacher jails, which are located at the district’s regional administrative offices. The jails don’t have bars, guards or alarms. They’re usually very ordinary office spaces, where teachers are sent to check in daily and sit in cubicles for hours at a time.
While in teacher jail, instructors are supposed to spend their time studying ways to be better teachers, such as reading educational journals and reviewing class coursework. However, the day-to-day reality can be very different. Often the instructors, who receive their full salaries while in teacher jail, read magazines and newspapers, play with their cell phones, gossip and knit. Little of it has to do with education.
Read — and listen to – the full story here.

Chicago Teacher's Union Wins Class Action Status in Their Lawsuit Against Racism By the Chicago Board of Education

#BlackTeachersMatter. The suit against CPS and the larger national context.

MAY 25, 2015

LINK

Yesterday I posted on U.S. Judge Milton Shadur’s ruling that African American teachers who were laid off by the Chicago Public School constituted a class.

In other words, African American teachers were targeted.

The law suit will now proceed to trial and possible damages.

Today’s NY Times reports that public sector jobs have vanished.

And who have been the victims?

Because blacks hold a disproportionate share of the jobs, relative to their share of the population, the cutbacks naturally hit them harder.

But black workers overall, women in particular, also lost their jobs at a higher rate than whites, Ms. Laird found. There was a “double disadvantage for black public sector workers,” she said. “They are concentrated in a shrinking sector of the economy, and they are substantially more likely than other public sector workers to be without work.”

From National Public Voice and Fred Klonsky:

Judge Milton Shadur Gives The Chicago Teachers Union and Three Teachers Certification as a Class Action Against Racism by The Chicago Board of Education

LINK to National Public Voice

Judge Milton Shadur

#BlackTeachersMatter. U.S. Judge Milton Shadur calls CPS response to teachers discrimination lawsuit, “totally irresponsible.”

In 2011 the Chicago school board carried out large-scale layoffs of teachers and paraprofessionals.

African American board employees bore the brunt of the layoffs just as the board’s closing of neighborhood public schools two years ago mainly impacted African American communities.

As a result of the layoffs in 2011 the Chicago Teachers Union and three impacted teachers filed suit.

CTU President Karen Lewis speaking at Daley Plaza during the protest of 
Chicago school closings, 2013

As I understand it, a law suit like this has three components.  First, the plaintiffs must show that they represent a class of people by a preponderance of the evidence. They were not just individual victims. It was not a coincidence that they were mostly African American. The judge is asked to certify that it is a class action before the case can move on to trial and a ruling of damages.

On Friday, Senior U.S. Judge Milton Shadur ruled in favor of the CTU and the three teachers.

However Judge Shadur didn’t just rule in the plaintiff’s favor.

The Judge was scathing in his rebuke of the CPS board.

“What does Board say on the critical issue of disparate impact in this critical case? Here are Amended Complaint 7 and 8 and Board’s “responses”:

7. In June, 2011, the Board terminated theemployment of 931 classroom teachers through a round of layoffs. 480 of these teachers were tenured. African Americans made up 42% of the tenure teachers terminated, although constituting less than 29% of all CPS tenured teachers.

ANSWER: The Board denies the allegations of paragraph 7.

8. Defendant’s pattern and practice of targeting schools with high African American teaching populations for layoffs has a disparate impact on African American tenured teachers and staff.

ANSWER: The Board denies the allegations of paragraph 8 and further states that the Board does not “target” schools, or any demographic of teachers or staff, for layoffs under any circumstance.

And that’s it — the sum total of Board’s purported input on the subject of disparate impact, which is of course the essential linchpin for class certificationpurposes. Board has said not a word, then or since then, about the claimed basis for its unsupported ipse dixit “denial.”

In candor, that is totally irresponsible. This action has been pending for just short of 2-1/2 years: Plaintiffs filed their initial Complaint on December 26, 2012, and Board has known from day one about plaintiffs’ disparate impact contention and about the asserted numbers upon which those contentions rely.”

Judge Shadur’s ruling and order then proceeded through each requirement for certification as a class and sided with the teachers on each one.

He concluded:

Board’s only challenge to certification under Rule 23(b)(3) is its broken-record-type reassertion that individual principals fired plaintiffs, so that common questions do not predominate on that skewed premise. And that means Board has simply failed to raise any substantial challenge at all to plaintiffs’ arguments.

The case now will proceed to trial and damages.

2015.5.22 Memo Order Granting Class Cert