School district settles class action suit

The Rochester City School District has settled a federal class action lawsuit alleging the district failed to provide adequate services to students with disabilities.

The original complaint was filed in July 2019 by the parents of five students. U.S. District Court Judge David G, Larimer on Tuesday approved the settlement and consent decree.

The settlement and consent decree establish numerous specific goals that must be achieved by the district within a specific timeframe. For example, the plan calls for improved test scores, graduation rates, staffing, a reduction in long-term student suspensions, improvements to parental participation, and a decrease in the number of students transferred from their home school because of inadequate resources.

A failure to achieve the goals required by the settlement and consent decree could force the school district back into court and possibly lead to a special master who would oversee the implementation of the plan.

The plaintiffs were represented by Jonathan Feldman and Maggie R. Robb, attorneys with the Empire Justice Center, and Carolyn G. Nussbaum, a partner at Nixon Peabody LLP, who handled the case pro bono.

“For far too long students with disabilities have been left behind in the Rochester City School District,” the plaintiffs’ attorney wrote in the complaint.

“These children are entitled to receive a free appropriate public education that will lead them to become independent, contributing members of their community and to lead full and productive lives,” the plaintiffs’ attorney wrote in the complaint.

“Because of widespread, decades-long, systemic violations, thousands of children have not received what they are entitled to by law,” they wrote.

The lawsuit “challenges the systemic failure of the Rochester City School District … to provide a free appropriate public education to students with disabilities and to provide their parents a meaningful opportunity to participate in the education of their children,” they wrote.

In the 2018-19 school year, district officials identified about 6,500 students with disabilities entitled to educational programs and services under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

The class action covers all students who were not properly evaluated and provided with proper educational services, along with all parents who were denied meaningful participation in their child’s education process because the district failed to translate important documents into the parents’ native languages.

Larimer’s order approved the class action settlement directing the school to fully comply with the laws and state and federal regulations concerning students with disabilities.

The students include children who should have been identified as eligible for special education and related services but did not receive the services; students who were illegally suspended or removed from school for disciplinary reasons without required due process protections; and students who had individualized education programs but did not receive the services called for in the plan.

“This is, in my experience, perhaps the most collaborative process I have been engaged in,” said Nussbaum.

“I really think that the reason that this settlement is somewhat groundbreaking, and has the potential for the greatest change, is because everybody’s got an ownership interest,” Nussbaum said.

Larimer considered the settlement so significant that he was willing to comment publicly, something rare for a federal judge.

“From a judge’s perspective, some of these kids that don’t get the kind of help they need, they fall through the cracks, they don’t graduate, and a few years later they could end up in front of a criminal court somewhere,” he said.

He praised the collaborative efforts of the school district, Empire Justice and Nixon Peabody LLP, especially Nussbaum, who provided specialized legal expertise for several years at no charge.

“Here is a firm that spent literally years working on this without any expectation of fee. That’s sort of the finest tradition of the legal profession,” Larimer said.

Larimer said the settlement agreement and the plan for the district moving forward “is so detailed and it covers so many different areas that it could well be a model for other districts that are deficient in this respect.”

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