The lawsuit that Rick Sobey of the Boston Herald reported on April 17th has a peculiar quality that isn’t related to the legal wording. It’s the individuals who are responsible. Sitting in Massachusetts houses of correction, three young men, ages eighteen to twenty-two, decided they had had enough of waiting for the education the state was supposed to provide.
So they filed a lawsuit. The class-action lawsuit against the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education makes the almost obvious claim that incarcerated students with disabilities aren’t receiving the special education services and instruction to which they are legally entitled. As you read it, you get the impression that the lawsuit isn’t really about learning something new. It’s about making the state acknowledge what it already knows.
Long regarded as one of the better states for public education, Massachusetts is a place where parents relocate neighborhoods based on MCAS scores and school district report cards make the front page. This lawsuit sits awkwardly next to that reputation, which has been polished over decades. Because a county jail does not automatically become an exception if the law states that students with disabilities up to the age of 22 are eligible for special education services. In a direct statement, Phil Kassel of the Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee stated that “every student, regardless of their circumstances, deserves access to a quality education that meets their individual needs” and called DESE’s failure to fulfill its legal obligation “unacceptable.” It’s the type of statement that, until you remember who it’s really about, reads like boilerplate.
The plaintiffs are represented by the Committee for Public Counsel Services’ EdLaw Project and Mental Health Legal Advisors, a combination that implies the case was thoughtfully constructed rather than hastily. For years, advocates have voiced concerns about education in Massachusetts prisons, with largely unresponsive responses.
People who follow this line of work believe that young people who are incarcerated are at the bottom of the state’s priority list, both visible enough to be counted and invisible enough to be disregarded. Depending on how the courts interpret DESE’s responsibilities and whether the organization chooses to fight or make changes, that may now change.
It’s difficult to ignore the story in the paper. One of the nation’s oldest daily newspapers, the Boston Herald was established in 1846 and has won eight Pulitzer Prizes during its lengthy and complex history. Hearst, Rupert Murdoch, independent publisher Patrick Purcell, and another seller following a bankruptcy filing in December 2017 have all owned The Herald. After Digital First Media acquired it in March 2018 for roughly $11.9 million, the newsroom’s staff dropped from about 225 to about 110 in a matter of months. It feels, in a subtle way, like the Herald is doing what local papers used to do consistently but don’t always do anymore when you watch a newspaper that used to fill broadsheets with Boston’s biggest political battles now cover a lawsuit about teenagers in jail.
The field of special education law is not glamorous. IEPs, evaluations, transition plans, and compliance reports are all slow procedural steps. However, there is a young person behind each acronym who, for whatever reason, did not receive what schools were meant to. These mistakes add up in a correctional setting. Students who were already behind when they entered the system typically continue to lag behind. Even tough-on-crime politicians occasionally hesitate due to the depressing statistics about what happens when young people who have been incarcerated return to society uneducated.
Whether DESE will quietly reform, fight, or settle is still up in the air. Agencies typically start by defending themselves before changing their minds. However, despite its modesty in the face of Beacon Hill politics, this lawsuit raises an issue that Massachusetts has been avoiding for far too long. When the response is provided, it will reveal who the state genuinely views as a student.
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