by Guest Author | Jan 15, 2021 | Deaf Services
In 2020, many meetings and conferences shifted from in-person to remote communication. For many of us, that meant using captions for equal access to these events. But what is captioning and what options are available?
Captioning makes communication more accessible for individuals who are hard of hearing and deaf. Using either speech-to-text software or a live captioner, spoken word is translated into English text. Captions may, at different times, also be called ‘speech-to-text’, closed captions or subtitles. Let’s explore some different captioning resources available.
CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation) is a paid captioning service available for events and meetings. A live captioner listens and types word-for-word what is being said. CART services are the most accurate and reliable option. Individuals can view the captions on a large display screen or electronic device. When planning to attend an event, individuals can contact the organizers to request CART. Read more about CART and companies that provide CART services in Maine: https://www.maine.gov/rehab/dod/resource_guide/captioning.shtml
Remote CART can be used for virtual meetings; provided by a trained operator at a remote location. A voice connection such as a telephone, cellphone, or computer microphone is used to send the voice to the operator, and the real-time text is transmitted back over a modem, Internet, or other data connection.
Captions in Zoom meetings Zoom recently introduced computer-generated live transcripts (currently for paid Zoom accounts only). It requires the paid account user to enable captions in the ACCOUNT SETTINGS ahead of scheduled meeting time. Participants can click SHOW TRANSCRIPT or HIDE TRANSCRIPT. Users can view embedded captions or to the side of the Zoom meeting screen.
Captions on Microsoft Teams is another computer-generated option. This resource requires no set-up ahead of time. The participant can start captions by clicking on the three dots (…) at the top right-hand side of the Teams Video screen. Additionally, Teams captioning displays the name of the individual who is speaking.
Live Transcribe and Live Caption on smartphones In a pinch, phone users can use a free app such as Live Transcribe (for Android) and Roger voice (for iPhone), which provide computer-generated captions. Apps can be used in-person or virtually. This works best for smaller groups and when all speaking participants use headsets, rather than computer speakers.
Relay Conference Captioning (RCC) is a free service available for Maine residents who are deaf or hard of hearing to actively participate in multi-party teleconference calls or web conferences by reading live captions through a web browser on a computer or mobile device. There are options to print, email or save transcripts. Individuals can schedule an RCC event by going to: mainercc.com. Check out how RCC works: https://www.sprintrelay.com/services/stc. Scroll down and click on the window titled DEMO.
Disability Rights Maine offers free virtual presentations and training about RCC and other Maine Relay Services. For more information, contact Debra Bare-Rogers, TRS Advocate at drogers@drme.org.
by Guest Author | Jul 26, 2020 | Community Mental Health, Employment
The Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) is one of the great civil rights success stories of the last half-century. Its recognition of, and reaction to systemic and individualized barriers at every level of American society serves as an example of how legislatures can remedy centuries of discrimination against a population by public and private actors. The ADA’s stated purpose is to “assure equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency” for individuals with disabilities. Despite this laudable goal, the ADA explicitly excludes a huge swath of individuals with disabilities from protection. Specifically, individuals with substance use disorders.
Why is this important? First, if you or a loved one has a substance use disorder diagnosis, you should know that you may fall under the protections of the ADA and other civil rights legislation, like the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and our state’s equivalent to the ADA, the Maine Human Rights Act. This means that you may be protected from, for example, being fired, denied access to a government program, or evicted, on the basis of your substance use disorder. However, like the ADA, your protected status as a person with a disability hinges on whether your substance use was current. If you are in active use, recently experienced a relapse, or in the first few months of recovery, courts are not likely to find that you qualify for protections. Second, the current use exception in our civil rights legislation singles substance use disorders out as disabilities which are somehow less deserving of protections. Not only does this do nothing to fight the stigma that substance use disorders are moral failings rather than diseases, it actually amplifies it. How do you fight for your rights when the legislation purporting to protect you singles you out as uniquely undeserving of help? Finally, as long as the vague exception remains in our laws, federal judges will continue to broadly define current to exclude huge swaths of people at their most vulnerable and in need of legal protections.
The ADA and its implementing regulations recognize substance use disorders as disabilities. However, an individual who is “currently engaging in the illegal use of drugs,” is explicitly excluded from the ADA’s protections. This means that if you are diagnosed with, for example, opioid use disorder and you illegally use an opiate, such as heroin or prescription opiates, you are no longer a person with a disability under the ADA. Paradoxically, under the ADA, one can go from having a disability to not, simply by experiencing a symptom of that disability. A practical example shows just how damaging this legal fiction can be. A person with opioid use disorder has maintained sable recovery for one year. As of this moment, she is an individual with a disability for the purposes of the ADA. In that time, she found a job. However, she experiences a relapse, a clinically-recognized symptom of substance use disorders. Even one use, no matter the length of sobriety that preceded it, strips her of her protected status. If her employer were to find out about this relapse, she could potentially lose her job without hope of legal redress. There are no other disabilities under the ADA with a similar loophole.
What does the “currently” in “currently engaging in the illegal use of drugs” mean? Most would consider the word current to denote a relatively short period of time. Unfortunately, the ADA and its regulations do not actually articulate a specific amount of required abstinence, leaving it to federal judges to define the term on a case-by-case basis. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has issued guidance which defines the term “currently engaging” as recent enough to “justify the employer’s reasonable belief that the applicant’s or employee’s involvement with drugs is an ongoing problem.” Courts apply this standard to the unique facts of each case. Thus, courts have boundless discretion to determine just how many months a person must be in recovery before earning his or her rights. Despite the common sense understanding that current use would be limited to a short period of time, courts have almost universally defined it broadly. In fact, some courts have found that a person with over six months of sustained abstinence from illegal drug use still meets the definition of a current user. Not every court has taken such an expansive view of the word current. However, the vast majority of cases brought by plaintiffs with less than six months of abstinence at the time of their firing were shut down by judges who simply felt that the employee was too newly sober for ADA protection.
The dangers of the current use exception are difficult to quantify. The lapse in protections for anyone with a substance use disorder who does not have at least seven months of sustained abstinence means that millions of vulnerable individuals can be discriminated against purely on the basis of their disabilities. The exception is stigmatizing and antithetical to the ADA’s purpose of ensuring equality of opportunity and freedom from invidious discrimination. However, the current use exception does not exclude everyone.
If you or a loved one has faced discrimination on the basis of a substance use disorder know that you may be protected. The cases finding that a person with six months of sobriety was still a current user represent the limit of the exception so far. As society progresses in its understanding of the nature of substance use disorders, so too will the law. Things may move slowly, but thanks to the advocacy of people in the recovery community and allies across the country, we are undeniably moving forward. It is on all of us to continue this march toward equity.
by Guest Author | Dec 22, 2019 | Employment
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Maine Human Rights Act (MHRA) are comprehensive anti-discrimination statutes that prohibit discrimination against individuals with disabilities in private employment, state and local government employment, public accommodations, public transportation, state and local government services, and telecommunications. Title I of the ADA prohibits discrimination against any qualified individual with a disability in employment, and only employers with 15 or more employees are subject to the ADA.[1] But, unlike the ADA, the MHRA covers all employers operating in the State of Maine, regardless of size.[2] This is an important distinction in a state like Maine, which has many small businesses.
One of the most important rights mandated by the ADA and the MHRA is the right to reasonable accommodation. A “reasonable accommodation” is a modification or adjustment to the work environment, or to the manner or circumstances under which the position held or desired is customarily performed, that enables a qualified individual with a disability to perform the essential functions of that position.[3] Employers are required to make all of these types of reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities, unless the employer “can demonstrate that the accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the operation of the business.”[4]
Arguably the most-requested reasonable accommodation under the ADA and the MHRA is for unpaid leave. An individual with kidney disease may need reasonable leave for dialysis; an employee with major depression may need reasonable time off for medical treatment; an individual with cancer may need leave for radiation therapy; an individual with substance use disorder may need time off for treatment. Most courts have held that unpaid leave is an appropriate reasonable accommodation for an individual who expects to return to work after recovering from an illness or getting treatment for a disability. The EEOC also takes the position that unpaid leave can be a reasonable accommodation.[5] The First Circuit has agreed with this position and found that temporary leave for the doctor of an employee to “design an effective treatment program” was a possible accommodation.[6]
But a 2017 decision of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court (the “Law Court”) in Carnicella v. Mercy Hospital put the right to a temporary leave as a reasonable accommodation in jeopardy.[7] Beth Carnicella, a nurse at Mercy Hospital, developed complications following surgery on her left arm. Ms. Carnicella took longer than expected to heal, and following the expiration of ten weeks leave under Maine’s Family Medical Leave statute, she requested extended leave as a reasonable accommodation. After several requested extensions of leave, Ms. Carnicella’s doctor estimated that she could return to work by June 1, 2014. But Mercy Hospital terminated her on March 15, 2014 after she failed to return to work by that date. Ms. Carnicella brought suit under the Maine Human Rights Act, alleging that Mercy Hospital discriminated against her when they failed to accommodate her request for extended leave.
In deciding for Mercy Hospital, the Law Court broadly interpreted an affirmative defense in the MHRA, 5 M.R.S.A. § 4573-A(1-B), and held in part that additional leave is unreasonable as a matter of law.[8] This decision was contrary to long-held precedent in Maine, the First Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court, that reasonable leave and extended leave may be a reasonable accommodation, as long as it does not create an undue burden for the employer.[9] This decision made Maine an outlier, and the breath of its holding threatened to have a sweeping, detrimental effect on qualified individuals with disabilities who require a temporary absence from work due to a medical condition.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, in 2018, the proportion of the population that is employed was 19.1 percent among those with a disability, compared with 65.9 percent for those without a disability.[10] Rather than addressing and increasing the rate of employment for people with disabilities, Carnicella explicitly removed the right of leave as a reasonable accommodation. This unprecedented decision was not only unsupported by precedent, but it was bad public policy. Under the reasoning in Carnicella, a qualified individual who needs radiation therapy or kidney dialysis could lawfully be fired for being away from work. This would only further impact the already dismal statistics on the employment of people with disabilities who want to work.
The Law Court’s alarming decision in Carnicella prompted us at Disability Rights Maine to lead an effort, joined by the Maine Human Rights Commission (“MHRC”), the Maine Employment Lawyers Association (“MELA”), Alpha One and Developmental Disabilities Council to file Motions for Reconsideration as Amici Curiae to urge the Court to reconsider the breath of its holding. As the Commission stated in its brief, “[r]ead broadly, the Court’s language allows this affirmative defense to eliminate leave as a reasonable accommodation in all circumstances, contrary to the Commission’s long-standing interpretation of the MHRA and to interpretations of the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”).”
Unfortunately, the Law Court did not accept our collective invitation to reconsider its ruling, and this unprecedented decision stood.
But DRM did not give up. Undaunted, and subscribing to the old adage, “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” DRM again teamed up with other civil rights organizations and helped lead an effort to draft legislation to correct the Carnicella decision. LD 1701, “An Act to Clarify Various Provisions of the Maine Human Rights Act,” corrected Carnicella by explicitly including leave as a reasonable accommodation in the non-exhaustive list of examples of reasonable accommodations found at § 4553(9-A) and repealing the defense that the Law Court relied on in §4573-A(1-B), the affirmative defense written into the law, because it is unnecessary and does not even exist in the ADA. The MHRA and the ADA already provide that an employer is not required to provide any accommodation that is an undue burden, therefore, there is no need for this affirmative defense in the MHRA.
LD 1701 was signed into law by Governor Janet Mills on June 23, 2019, and went into effect on September 19, 2019. This important bill restored the right to leave as a reasonable accommodation under the MHRA by clarifying that a leave of absence may be a reasonable accommodation, by both adding leave to the list of examples in the definition of reasonable accommodations in Section 4553 (9-A) and repealing Section 4573-A (1-B).
—————————————————————————————
[1] 42 U.S.C. § 12111(5) (covering most employers with 15 or more employees).
[2] 5 M.R.S.A. § 4553(4) (covering most employers regardless of size).
[3] 29 C.F.R. 1630.2(o)(1); 94-348 C.M.R., ch. 3, § 2(17)(A).
[4] 42 U.S.C. § 12112(b)(5)(A); 5 M.R.S.A. § 4553(2)(E).
[5] EEOC Reasonable Accommodation Guidance at fn. 48, https://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/accommodation.html.
[6] Criado v. IBM Corp., 145 F.3d 437 (1st Cir. 1998).
[7] Carnicella v. Mercy Hospital, 168 A.3d 768 (2017).
[8] Carnicella, 168 A.3d. at 774 (“The only accommodation that Carnicella arguably requested was additional leave. However, this accommodation was unreasonable as a matter of law[,]” citing 5 M.R.S.A. 4573-A(1-B).
[9] US Airways, Inc. v. Barnett, 535 U.S. 391, 397–398 (2002), and every circuit to consider the issue recognizes that leave can be a reasonable accommodation. See, e.g., Criado v. IBM Corp., 145 F.3d 437, 443 (1st Cir.1998); Walton v. Mental Health Ass’n. of Southeastern Pennsylvania, 168 F.3d 661, 671 (3rd Cir. 1999) (“unpaid leave supplementing regular sick and personal days might, under other facts, represent a reasonable accommodation”); Rodgers v. Lehman, 869 F.2d 253, 259 (4th Cir.1989) (decided under § 501 of the Rehabilitation Act); Cehrs v. Northeast Ohio Alzheimer’s Research Ctr., 155 F.3d 775, 782–783 (6th Cir. 1998); Haschmann v. Time Warner Entm’t Co., 151 F.3d 591, 601 (7th Cir.1998); Brannon v. Luco Mop Co., 521 F.3d 843, 849 (8th Cir. 2008); Nunes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 164 F.3d 1243, 1247 (9th Cir. 1999); Smith v. Diffee Ford-Lincoln-Mercury, Inc., 298 F.3d 955, 967 (10th Cir. 2002); Taylor v. Rice, 451 F.3d 898, 910 (D.C. Cir. 2006). See also Graves v. Finch Pruyn & Co., Inc., 457 F.3d 181, 185 n.5 (2nd Cir. 2006) (“Most other circuits and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have concluded that, in some circumstances, an unpaid leave of absence can be a reasonable accommodation under the ADA.”).
[10] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/disabl.pdf .
by Guest Author | Dec 4, 2019 | Children's & Education Rights
In July, Katrina Ringrose and I traveled to Fordyce, Arkansas, to visit a residential mental health treatment program where three Maine youth were living. In my three years at DRM, I have visited youth with disabilities in out-of-home placements across the state of Maine, from Fort Fairfield to Saco, and many places in between. I have also visited Maine children in residential facilities in New Hampshire and Vermont. We conduct these visits using our federal access authority to connect with children placed away from their families and communities. We work to ensure that their rights are protected, that they have access to advocacy services, and that they are not subjected to abuse or neglect.
In the years before I started in this job, Maine DHHS had worked to decrease out-of-state placements for youth with disabilities. Unfortunately, those numbers have steadily risen over time. In 2016, 46 Maine youth received residential and hospital treatment out of state; in 2018, 87 Maine youth received residential and hospital treatment out of state.[1] DRM does not have comparable data for 2019, but as of October, 70 Maine children were in out-of-state residential placements. For context, there are approximately 300 residential treatment beds licensed in Maine, although providers report that they do not have enough staff to utilize that entire capacity. As the number of youth out of state has grown, so has the geographic scope of the problem. No longer are Maine children (whose families do not receive financial or logistical support from the state to visit them) kept within New England; we now send our youth to states including Missouri, Utah, Indiana, Illinois, Oklahoma, and Michigan.
This brings me back to our visit to Arkansas, the home of two programs that have served Maine youth in recent months (Millcreek, which we visited, and Piney Ridge, which has been the subject of recent shocking news reports [2]). One of the lessons DRM is learning as we try to stay abreast of where Maine youth are receiving treatment, and what issues they are facing in these unfamiliar places, is that rules and rights vary widely across the country. Although MaineCare requires out-of-state providers to follow Maine rules about our children’s rights, Maine rules are more protective than many other states’. This is important because our rules reflect our values and the best interests of our children, so that they can be safe and treated well when they are living away from home. These distant providers are not familiar with Maine’s rules, and our youth report many violations of their rights.
When we visited the Millcreek program in July, we saw that most of the 15 units were on “unit restriction,” so children were confined to their unit’s cinderblock corridor, in most cases milling about the dayroom and participating in no structured programming. Youth shared with us that this was a common state of affairs. Although the need for treatment is the sole justification for these children’s placements in an out-of-home setting, youth reported receiving only one hour per week of individualized therapy with their clinicians. Conditions on the residential units, in the recreational spaces, and at the school were poor; we saw exposed electrical outlets, crowded bedrooms, broken swings, and bleak classrooms. We came home shaken and sad.
Research shows that large institutions, out-of-home placements, lack of opportunity for meaningful family involvement in treatment, and congregate care generally are not the best practices for treating children with disabilities. And we know that emergency interventions such as restraint and seclusion – which can be re-traumatizing and have no therapeutic value – are all too common in out-of-home placements.[3]
Within our Maine-based residential treatment programs, we are more successful on some of those metrics. Maine programs are much smaller than Millcreek, which had over 200 children on its campus when we visited, ranging in age from 6-18, and hailing from 39 states. Our in-state facilities serve anywhere from 6 to 16 children, though some programs are on campuses with multiple units (like Millcreek), meaning that up to 40 or so children may be served at the same address. In recent years, Maine’s residential providers have consolidated their operations, so that programs that used to be smaller (up to 4 beds), more “home-like,” and scattered around the state are now congregated in the campus-based style. Providers report that these changes have been made for financial reasons, not to optimize treatment. This is also related to the widely acknowledged workforce crisis within children’s behavioral health in Maine – a campus-based approach allows for sharing scarce staff between programs in a way that would not be possible with smaller, scattered sites. Even these larger operations still struggle to recruit and retain adequate staff, with many providers unable to maintain the required ratios that would allow them to fill all their beds. So although Maine programs are smaller than the out-of-state programs we are utilizing for our children, they are not as small as research suggests they should be.
Although DHHS states that residential treatment is intended to be short-term – the MaineCare name for it is “intensive temporary residential treatment,” and DHHS indicates that the target time frame is 1-4 months – the average length of stay in 2018 (among youth who were discharged from the service in that year) was 11.3 months.[4] Presumably, this duration is “medically necessary,” the standard that must be met for MaineCare to continue paying for residential treatment. Why can’t residential treatment be accomplished more quickly, allowing children to return to their families and communities?
- One reason might be that families often find it difficult to have meaningful involvement in treatment. Explanations for this range from lack of capacity on behalf of families, to the geographic barriers that often exist (even within the state, children are frequently placed hours away from their homes), to the poor quality or complete lack of family therapy.
- Another factor could be that residential providers often struggle to provide safe and appropriate treatment to our children. DRM has read countless incident reports of children subjected to physical restraints by several adults after seemingly unnecessary power struggles with staff over food, toys, or leisure activities. Children are also regularly restrained after becoming escalated when their peers are struggling, a common and inherent drawback of congregate care settings for children with disabilities. Further, as we reported in 2017, providers at times call law enforcement when youth are dysregulated, a trend that unfortunately continues.
- Also, DRM has seen many instances, across providers, of treatment plans that remain the same month after month, despite lack of progress. And many, perhaps most, of the children in residential programs are receiving treatment that at best loosely conforms to evidence-based practices and rigorous standards.
- Some children are ready to discharge to a lower level of care, but due to long wait lists and scarcity of home and community-based services, the state has no discharge plan to offer them.[5]
We need better standards for quality of care and duration of treatment in our residential programs, and more availability of home-based services. Fortunately, Maine is in the process of undertaking those goals, in order to qualify for federal funds through the Family First Prevention Services Act. As summarized in the OCFS PowerPoint presentation available at the embedded link:
To meet the Qualified Residential Treatment Programs (QRTP) standard required for Family First funds, residential treatment programs (per the PowerPoint):
- “Must have a trauma-informed treatment model and capacity to meet clinical needs of children;
- Must have licensed clinical and nursing staff on site during business hours and available 24/7.
- Must facilitate family participation in treatment and document how they are integrated into treatment process;
- Must facilitate outreach to family members, including siblings and maintain family contact information;
- Must provide discharge planning and family-based aftercare for at least 6 months; and
- Must be accredited”
Few, if any, existing residential programs in Maine currently meet all of these standards. DRM plans to participate in the process of moving our state to one in which our youth can receive the supports they need in their homes and communities. Individuals who want to become involved can follow OCFS’s recommendations:
OCFS invites anyone who is interested in helping formally shape the process to volunteer for a committee by providing their contact information here.
[1] Children’s Behavioral Health Services Assessment Final Report, Public Consulting Group, December 15, 2018 (“PCG report”), page 36, available at https://www.maine.gov/dhhs/ocfs/cbhs/documents/ME-OCFS-CBHS-Assessment-Final-Report.pdf. Some information about the financial burden of sending Maine youth out of state is available on page 37 of the PCG report.
[2] This article also describes other information of great concern with regard to Acadia Healthcare, the parent company of Millcreek, Piney Ridge, and other programs across the nation that serve Maine youth.
[3] For just one example of a large body of research, see Promoting Alternatives to the Use of Seclusion and Restraint: A National Strategy to Prevent Seclusion and Restraint in Behavioral Health Services, Issue Brief, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, March 2010, available at https://www.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/topics/trauma_and_violence/seclusion-restraints-1.pdf.
[4] PCG report, page 31.
[5] This reason was cited in the PCG report on page 31.
by Guest Author | Aug 28, 2017 | Children's & Education Rights
When you think of bullying, you may picture a bigger student demanding lunch money from a smaller student at the back of a bus. Or, perhaps a demeaning comment made by one student about another’s clothing in a high school hallway. In reality, bullying is often subtle, persistent, and online.
Maine law recognizes the many forms that bullying can take: a written, spoken, electronic, or physical action which harms, or causes a student to fear harm to their body or property. It also includes an action that interferes with the rights of a student by creating an intimidating or hostile environment or interferes with a student’s academic performance or ability to participate in or benefit from the services, activities or privileges provided by a school. Importantly, the definition includes an action that is based on a student’s (or their association with another student’s) actual or perceived characteristics including race, color, religion, sex, ancestry, national origin, physical or mental disability, or sexual orientation – that results in the above negative effects.[1]
Sometimes mislabeled as rough-housing, name-calling, and teasing, bullying is a serious issue that negatively affects not only the student being bullied, but the person bullying and the school climate. Regardless of the label, bullying can cause a targeted student to have lower academic achievement, higher truancy rates, feelings of alienation from school, poor relationships with peers, loneliness, or depression.[2] When one of the students involved has a disability, unchecked bullying could deny the student’s right to a free and appropriate public education (FAPE) and access to the general education curriculum.
When bullying takes place, the onus should be on the school, not the students. Schools are expected to not only investigate individual complaints, but foster a culture of safety and inclusion. Research has shown that when schools directly address aggression toward others, bullying goes sharply down.[3] A study of Dr. Dan Olweus’s bullying prevention program found a 50% decrease in bullying incidents after two years of implementation.[4] Dr. Olweus’s program includes schoolwide and individual interventions comprised of surveys, conferences with the community, increased supervision, staff training, clear class rules, immediate consequences, ongoing follow-up meetings, and modelling kindness and compassion.[5]
With regard to students with disabilities, the US Office for Civil Rights (OCR) provided helpful guidance for families and schools in an October 2014 Dear Colleague letter.[6] OCR reminds us that students with disabilities are bullied disproportionately and warns that the bullying of a student with a disability on any basis can result in a denial of FAPE under Section 504 that must be remedied. Multiple studies have shown that students with disabilities are twice as likely (or more) to be bullied than their nondisabled peers.[7] OCR outlines the school’s obligations to address conduct that may constitute disability-based harassment and remedy a denial of FAPE.
OCR recommends the school “promptly convene the IEP team or the Section 504 team to determine whether, and to what extent: (1) the student’s educational needs have changed; (2) the bullying impacted the student’s receipt of IDEA FAPE services or Section 504 FAPE services; and (3) additional or different services, if any, are needed, and to ensure any needed changes are made promptly.” [8] By following these recommendations, schools are in a good starting position to address the needs of the individual student with a disability. If the student does not yet have an IEP or Section 504 Team, a bullying event may trigger the school’s ‘child find’ obligation – to identify all students who may need special education services.
At a recent conference in Portland, ‘The Maine Event: Creating Positive Climates for Youth’[9] , I had the opportunity to join representatives of Maine Department of Education (MDOE) and Collaborative for Perpetual Innovation (CPI ) in a panel discussion on bullying and the rights of students. The panel members fielded questions from over 100 audience members. The audience was interested to discuss the intersection of a student’s right to be educated in the least restrictive environment and maintaining classroom safety – some school staff had questions on how best to support the student with a disability if there are cross-accusations of bullying. The panel provided many of the suggestions above including quick response, investigation, looking at the schoolwide climate, and convening an IEP or Section 504 Team.
If a child in your life is experiencing bullying or harassment at school, a report to the school should prompt them to begin the process of investigating and intervening. If you are unsatisfied with the school’s response, every school must have an anti-bullying policy that includes a procedure to appeal the school’s response. And, if the child has an IEP or Section 504 Team, you can call a meeting to discuss the impact. In any case, you can advocate for improvements to the schoolwide climate. If you are not pleased with the outcome of your efforts, you may want to reach out to the school board, MDOE, or an attorney.
[1] M.R.S.A. 20-A, § 6554.
[2] Melody Musgrove, USDOE Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) Dear Colleague Letter (2013), http://www.ed.gov/policy/speced/guid/idea/memosdcltrs/bullyingdcl-8-20-13.doc
[3] American Academy of Child Psychiatry and Adolescents, Bullying Fact Sheet 2010 (2011), http://www.aacap.org/App_Themes/AACAP/docs/resource_centers/resources/fact_sheets/Bullying_Fact_Sheet_2010.pdf
[4] Bullying Intervention Strategies That Work, University of Maine Cooperative Extension Publications (2002), https://extension.umaine.edu/publications/4424e/bullying-intervention/
[5] Id.
[6] Catherine Lhamon, USDOE Office For Civil Rights (OCR) Dear Colleague Letter (2014), https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-bullying-201410.pdf
[7] PACER, Bullying Statistics – National Bullying Prevention Center (2016), http://www.pacer.org/bullying/resources/stats.asp
[8] Catherine Lhamon, USDOE Office For Civil Rights (OCR) Dear Colleague Letter (2014), https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-bullying-201410.pdf
[9] The Maine Event – CPI Maine, The Collaborative for Perpetual Innovation, CPI Maine, https://cpimaine.org/the-maine-event/
