A Maple Grove family’s nine-year fight for a later school day and other educational services for their daughter will head to the U.S Supreme Court next month in a case that could clear the way for more children with disabilities to prove discrimination.
At issue is whether families alleging discrimination against children with disabilities must prove that public school officials acted with “bad faith or gross misjudgment.” It’s a high standard that only courts in the federal Eighth Circuit — and four other of the nation’s 12 court circuits require.
The battle, Aaron Tharpe said, has become about much more than doing right by his daughter Ava, who has seizures more often in the morning and had requested a later school day schedule.
“We don’t want anyone else in Minnesota to have to go through what we’ve been through,” Tharpe said in the family’s first media interview. “And I don’t want any other families across the country to have to go through this.”
Kay Villella, a spokeswoman for Osseo Area Schools, said in an email she could not provide private data about a student without parents’ permission.
Generally, she said, “in the rare situation where a court or hearing officer has ordered the school district to do something, it has complied in good faith,” she wrote. “The district educates almost 2,900 students with special needs. ... The school district is in good standing with \[the Minnesota Department of Education\] and it takes its obligations to students with special needs very seriously.”
Discrimination against disabilities
-----------------------------------
In 2015, Tharpe, his wife, Gina, and their 10-year-old daughter, Ava, moved to Minnesota from Kentucky for Aaron’s work. After exploring several suburban school districts, Aaron Tharpe said the family decided to enroll Ava in Osseo Area Schools after officials there said they would meet Ava’s educational needs.
Ava has a rare form of epilepsy called Lennox-Gastaut syndrome and has seizures throughout the day, although they’re much more frequent in the morning. In Kentucky, school officials agreed to give her a noon-6 p.m. school day.