Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act  (IDEA), school districts across the United States have obligation to provide services and accommodations for students with disabilities. The services and accommodations make it possible for disabled students to receive Free Appropriate Public Education just like their typical peers. Violation of IDEA will result in a penalty.

However, school districts face funding issues and special education could consume a large part of school districts' budgets.

To save the school budgets and avoid penalties at the same time, the Garnet Valley school district in Pennsylvania went to extra lengths in its efforts to turn eligible students ineligible.  Garnet Valley school district reaches out to students' independent family doctors and mental health professionals to slander students and their parents to block the professionals from providing diagnoses and correct mental health care. Those mental health professionals have nothing to do with the school and the student's parents pay out of pocket with their own insurance. The slanders by the school district have made it impossible for the family to get treatment and care for the children's disabilities and mental health issues independently, and create severe emotional distresses.

If the school district does not want to provide services, they should back off and leave the family alone so they can get help outside the school. 

The school district even reached out to places whose job is to prevent suicide such as the county's crisis connection team and told them that the parent fabricate her children's disabilities to sue the school and the parent was just being angry because she did not get services from the school. The school district slandered the parent even after mental health professionals found the students were suicidal. This action of blocking help from people who are actually suicidal should be investigated as an attempted murder. People kill themselves when they could not get the correct mental health care. This school district's actions are not only harmful, hurtful, and endanger children, but it also violates students' human rights and Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

IDEA without proper budgeting could end up in a sad tragedy.  In this kind of situation, children with disabilities are victims of special education law.

Please sign this petition to save disabled students. Most of them could not defend or advocate for themselves. The US Department of Education needs to take action as soon as possible and balance IDEA and budgeting to stop school districts from cruelly, selfishly, and recklessly harassing, abusing, and endangering children and their families.

Thank you.

Note:

The Federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) (42 U.S.C.A. § 5106g), as amended by the CAPTA Reauthorization Act of 2010, defines child abuse and neglect as, at minimum:

"Any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker, which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or exploitation"; or
"An act or failure to act which presents an imminent risk of serious harm."

In Pennsylvania, the definition of child abuse was amended to require that acts or failures to act be committed by intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly causing or substantially contributing to serious mental injury to a child through any act, or failure to act or a series of such acts or failures to act;
 

'Mental injury' means a serious injury to the child as evidenced by an observable and substantial impairment in the child's ability to function in a developmentally appropriate manner, and the existence of that impairment is supported by the opinion of a qualified expert witness.

Preventing a child from getting the correct diagnosis and mental health treatment is child abuse and child endangerment.