Months after releasing a report regarding an investigation into an “alarming lack of oversight” of one of the largest special education program providers in Connecticut, the Office of the Child Advocate and Disability Rights Connecticut have filed a related complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice alleging disability discrimination.
The complaint alleges several federal special education laws were violated by four school districts — Hartford, Bridgeport, Waterbury and Stratford.
These districts are among those in the state that send their special needs students to High Road Schools, which is described by the groups as a “private equity owned, state-approved, and publicly funded private special education program” that serves students with disabilities who may need more individualized attention or require more high-need services than a traditional public school setting can offer.
The complaint follows a two-year investigation and report about High Road Schools that claimed that hundreds of Connecticut special education students who have attended these schools, which are located in Hartford, New London, Wallingford and other towns, have been “grossly underserved in both educational planning and service delivery.”
The investigation found that students with disabilities, particularly low-income children from Black and Latino communities, were “routinely placed by the districts at the segregated High Road Schools where they receive substandard and unequal education from often unqualified staff, are regularly subject to seclusion and restraint, and often have no pathway to returning to their home schools and districts,” a news release from the state’s Office of the Child Advocate said.
Sarah Eagan, the state’s child advocate, said the issues “gave rise to concerns of civil rights violations” and that her office didn’t hear back from most districts about how they were planning to “remedy the situation.”
“There are still hundreds of students in a program that just a few months ago we found was not complying with state laws and where children are being, in general, poorly served,” Eagan said. “It’s certainly concerning. … One of the major concerns we reported on was a lack of oversight for what was happening to kids, both by the school districts and, frankly, by the state Department of Education.”
A release from the Office of the Child Advocate claimed the local districts did “not exercise the requisite monitoring and oversight in regards to the education provided to their students at the High Road Schools,” and the state Department of Education failed to oversee the state-approved programs and failed to ensure that students with disabilities were receiving a safe and appropriate education.
In response to the Department of Justice complaint, a spokesperson from High Road Schools of Connecticut referred to a statement issued in March when findings from the OCA and DRCT investigation were first released.
“The final report simply does not accurately reflect the academic and behavioral supports at our schools, which follow state and federal regulations and guidelines. Our programs are based on serving the academic and behavioral needs of our students, making the absence of clinical services referenced throughout the report misleading,” the statement said. “We remain committed to collaborating with all stakeholders in the state, including the OCA, DCRT, and CSDE to ensure the highest standards of education and care for our students.”
The state Department of Education said it has not yet received details related to the complaint as of Tuesday afternoon, but in March, it raised “serious concerns about both its methodology and legal assertions.”
“Despite the CSDE’s concerns regarding the DRCT/OCA report, we engaged in follow-up supervisory and monitoring activities. We conducted a targeted, onsite off-cycle standards review of High Road Schools. These reviews called into question the reliability and accuracy of DRCT/OCA’s claims regarding, among other things, staffing credentials and hiring practices within the High Road Schools,” said Matthew Cerrone, a spokesperson for the department, adding that the OCA did not provide “necessary information, which would have allowed us to conduct an expansive investigation of the claims contained in DRCT/OCA’s report.”
“This refusal to work in a collaborative manner is also at odds with DRCT/OCA’s stated concerns for High Road students,” Cerrone said.
Eagan says the education department and Office of the Child Advocate remain in an ongoing dispute about whether the Department of Education met its obligations under federal special education law.
“We have not resolved that dispute, so that remains something that has to get resolved, either on the policy level or legally,” Eagan said. “We look forward to pursuing all remedies available to us, including legal ones, to enforce the civil rights of these children and in making sure that there’s appropriate policies for students with disabilities.”
The complaint filed Tuesday “urges” the Department of Justice to “investigate and remediate the deficiencies identified … by DOJ through its investigation.”
OCA, a state agency, and DRCT, a disability rights nonprofit, investigated the following campuses: High Road School of Hartford Primary/Middle; High Road School of Hartford High School; High Road B.E.S.T. Academy of Wallingford; High Road School of Fairfield County in Norwalk; High Road School of New London; and High Road School of Windham County in Killingly. The schools were examined from March 2022 through March 2024 through a series of reviews of educational files, classroom observations and interviews.
About 316 students were enrolled at six of eight High Road schools in Connecticut during the 2021-22 academic year, with the student body being made up of about 80% boys and 70% students of color from across 38 Connecticut school districts.
The investigation found that in the 2021-22 academic year, there were more than 1,200 reports of students being restrained or secluded in High Road schools, the report released in March said.
The report said several students were “subjected to alleged discriminatory practices,” including five students from Waterbury Public Schools who were placed at High Road and “subjected to 83 total incidents of restraint and 44 total incidents of seclusion.”
A similar number of restraint and seclusion occurred across campuses in Hartford and Bridgeport, according to the OCA and DRCT, which said one Bridgeport student was “subjected to 60 incidents of restraint,” and more than a third of Bridgeport students were restrained or secluded in 2021-22.
Eighty High Road students, or about 25%, were outsourced from Hartford Public Schools, making the capital city’s public school district the “largest district consumer of High Road services,” according to the report released in March.
Almost 30% of those students were “subjected to restraint and/or seclusion during the 2021-22 school year with eight students subjected to more than 10 instances and two of them subjected to 27 instances of restraint or seclusion,” the complaint said.
Beyond disproportionate instances of restraint or seclusion, the investigation also found that almost half of the teachers employed at High Road did not have adequate teacher certification from the state of Connecticut or did not undergo proper background checks.
The report also highlighted that High Road schools did not offer any documentation of physical education, art or music teachers and nurses were not employed at all buildings.
Concerns were also raised regarding a “persistent and widespread problem of student disengagement and absenteeism, … lack of adequate assessments and evaluations to determine students’ needs … [and a] lack of an individualized approach to student education.”
The complaint asked the Department of Justice to ensure that sending school districts take action toward providing proper and sufficient special education services in the “most integrated setting” and that children attending these schools are entitled to physical education, art programs, health and safety.
“Actions or inactions by the districts during and in response to the OCA/DRCT investigative findings have been insufficient to address the chronic and systemic violations of state and federal special education and disability anti-discrimination laws,” the complaint said.