The New York Times reports:
Paying for private school is no hardship for Tom Freston, the former chief executive of Viacom, the company that runs MTV and Comedy Central. He left with a golden parachute worth $85 million. But he says New York City should reimburse him for educating his son in a private school for children with learning disabilities, where the tuition is $37,900 a year.
In 1997, his son, then 8, was found to be lagging in reading, though not in math. The city offered
the child a coveted spot in the Lower Laboratory School for Gifted Education, a competitive school on the Upper East Side that also has classes for students with moderate disabilities. He would have been placed in a classroom with 15 students, and given speech and language therapy.
Mr. Freston, though, wanted a class of only eight students for his son, in a smaller setting. Without trying Lab, he put his child in the Stephen Gaynor School on the Upper West Side, where students, in Gaynor’s language, display “learning differences.” While the city is required by federal law to pay for private programs for disabled children when it cannot provide appropriate programs, city officials said the Lab program was suitable for Mr. Freston’s son and wanted him to try it. After two years of reimbursing the Frestons for a large part of the private school tuition, the city stopped.
The result has been a seesawing lawsuit that the United States Supreme Court recently took for review. The question: Do school districts have to pay for private school for disabled children if the families refuse to try out public programs?
School systems around the country are closely watching the case. Almost seven million students nationwide receive special-education services, with 71,000 educated in private schools at public
expense, according to the United States Department of Education. Usually school districts agree to pay for these services after conceding they cannot provide suitable ones.
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