FCPS costs related to DOJ settlement likely to exceed $4M
Jan. 27—Costs related to the U.S. Department of Justice's settlement with Frederick County Public Schools over the use of seclusion and restraint against students with disabilities will likely total more than $4 million.
Under the terms of the settlement, which former Superintendent Terry Alban signed Dec. 1, FCPS must provide trauma therapy to more than 200 affected students, hire 17 behavioral analysts and a supervisor to oversee them, overhaul its training practices and more.
At a budget meeting earlier this month, Frederick County Board of Education member Liz Barrett asked for a cost breakdown of the settlement as a whole, which was included in documents reviewed at Wednesday's work session.
Hiring the 17 full-time behavioral analysts — who will oversee data collection on restraint and provide direction on the implementation of individualized behavior plans— will cost the system $1.67 million. Paying for 236 students who were secluded or restrained during the timeframe covered by the investigation will cost $155,670, and paying for compensatory educational services for those same students will cost about $600,000.
The district will pay a $117,528 salary to the behavioral analysts' supervisor.
In the draft budget, FCPS staff identified about $1.8 million in additional costs as "indirectly related" to the DOJ's investigation. That money will go toward adding more special education instructional assistants to reduce class sizes in specialized programs and hiring two supervisors to oversee those programs — one at the elementary level and another at the secondary level.
The district's specialized programs include Pyramid, which serves students with significant emotional and behavioral challenges, and Rock Creek School, which serves students with the most severe disabilities.
The DOJ informed FCPS it would be investigating the district's use of seclusion and restraint about a year before the settlement was signed. Investigators found FCPS performed 7,253 seclusions and restraints on 125 students. Thirty-four individual students were secluded or restrained more than 50 times each.
Parents of affected students later told The Frederick News-Post the experience had left their children traumatized.
Eighty-nine percent of the incidents the DOJ analyzed were reported at Lewistown or Spring Ridge elementaries or Rock Creek School. At the time, Lewistown and Spring Ridge were the only two elementary schools in the county to host the Pyramid program.
During the 2017-18 and 2018-19 schools years and the first half of 2019-20, every student the district secluded was a student with disabilities, as were 99 percent — all but one — of the students the district restrained.
In addition to the new staffing and training requirements, the DOJ settlement required FCPS to immediately end the use of seclusion.
Follow Jillian Atelsek on Twitter: @jillian_atelsek
