After a hearing, the CHRO may award minimal damages to the student. The family may also file a complaint with the State of Connecticut’s Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities. If OCR decides to investigate, it has the power to order the school to take remedial action. If the school does not respond, the family then may file a complaint with the United States Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. First they must give the school district a chance to end the discrimination and make sure it does not happen again. When people ignore 504 plans in ways like this, parents can take action. For example, students whose plan allows them to come to school late may find the school threatening to withhold credit because the teacher in their first-period class, forgetting the plan, continually marks them tardy or absent. They complain that teachers either don’t follow the plan or persist in making the same mistakes over and over. Parents complain that nobody at their child’s school keeps them informed of what teachers are doing to follow the plan. Correct 504 plans help the student overcome their inability to concentrate.Įven after they find that a student qualifies for accommodations, officials often fail to pay attention to details in the plan. Quiet and cooperative students have even more difficulty convincing schools they have a limiting inability to concentrate. To pass their classes they may have to spend many more hours studying than other students do. A student with ADHD, learning disabilities or dyslexia may have substantial limits on their ability to concentrate. But it takes concentration to get good grades, and concentration itself can count as a ‘major life activity’. People assume that if a student is passing all their courses, their disability is not limiting the ‘major life activity’ of learning. Education lawyer Gregory Smith knows that the law states that to qualify for accommodations a student must have a disability that substantially limits a ‘major life activity’. Some school officials mistakenly think good grades prove a student has no disability and needs no plan. For a student whose medical condition keeps them from getting to school on time some mornings the plan could provide that on those days the school will not mark them absent or tardy. For a student with anxiety about crowds the plan could allow them to leave class early. For a student with ADHD the plan might call for the teacher to check with the student often to make sure they are following along, or help them keep track of homework assignments, or give them extra time on tests. It does not define the meaning of ‘adequate’.īut because to get 504 plans students must have a physical or mental impairment, the plan will offer services besides instruction to overcome the impairment. It states simply that the disabled must receive an education as ‘adequate’ as everyone else’s. The law leaves open the details of instruction. And even though the plan itself does not say as much, the school must keep the student free from being bullied or harassed for their disability. It must offer the student the same chance as everyone else to take part in sports and extracurricular activities. It must put in place the aids and services - wheelchair ramps, for example - the student needs to get to that instruction. Each plan must offer the student the mix of regular and special education instruction that he or she needs. It tells schools to write plans tailored to each student. Section 504 is intended to stop schools from offering disabled students less. When they don’t follow the plan and don’t provide the accommodations written into the plan, Connecticut education attorney Gregory Smith will advise their clients that the law gives them ways to correct past mistakes and prevent future ones. Schools must write plans so that every teacher and every official in the school knows what they must do to make that happen. 504 plans must give students with disabilities the same education their classmates get.
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