400 MISDIAGNOSED SPECIAL NEEDS STUDENTS GO UNDER THE RADAR IN WAKE OF SETTLED LAWSUITS

By Juan Montoya
Even as the majority of the board on the Brownsville Independent School District goes about clearing the logjam of lawsuits left to them by the previous board, some glaring issues that emerged from that litigation should be causing local residents grave concerns.
We had excessive litigation payments, conspiracies to pervert the grievance process, potential barratry, Medicaid fraud, and even collusion by some trustees to use the grievance process to terminate employees.
But even as bad as all that is, one glaring example of the sheer callousness that was practiced on special needs students was the cover up of a system that misdiagnosed them and placed them in programs where they should have never been.
Worse, these misdiagnoses may have denied services to kids who did.
The case recently settled by Special Services director Art Rendon indicate that there are about 400 cases of students that were diagnosed with inadequate testing instruments by people who were not certified to perform those evaluations.
His federal complaint indicates that upon taking office Rendon "immediately questioned" the department's practices and became aware – through BISD's own legal counsel – that the district's evaluations were not in compliance. Further, he stated that he "emailed interim superintendent Brett Sprinsgton and advised him of the situation."
He also reported in writing to his supervisors that the Special Services department was excessively staffed" and "specifically informed BISD and its legal counsel of the severe detrimental harm being caused to BISD students with special needs resulting from the deficiencies, the systematic fraud, the abuse of government funds, and the abuses by BISD employees and trustees."
In one Kodak moment, Rendon recalled that he sat with the former superintendent and BISD counsel Mike Saldaña in an office and told them about the letter from the law firm asserting that the district's evaluations were not "legally defensible" only to be told by the pair to try to "dilute" the contents of the letter.
In other words, those 400 students with deficient evaluations would just have to live with it. Either way, whether you were misdiagnosed with some deficiency, or the reverse, without one, by these faulty instruments and unqualified evaluators, the harm to the students' whole life is immeasurable.
For example, if a student got incorrectly diagnosed with an incapacity that he or she did not have, it is possible that they were subjected to participate in programs and clasess they did not need. The stigma to a student's life cannot be ignored. And if someone was wrongly disagnosed and was not found to have any incapacity when they did have one, can the consequences of not providing services that a Speical Needs student needed be less tragic?
What did local "educational consultants," lawyers, doctors and those riding the Special Needs gravy train do?

They milked the system to the maximum totally perverting the due process hearings, bypassing the negotiations, and running to the finish line of a cash settlement.
It got to the point where Rendon went to the U.S. Attorney, the Texas Rangers, Medicaid fraud investigators, and even our own Cameron County District Attorney Mando Villalobos who assembled a grand jury to look into the claims.
The county grand jury went so far as to issue a subpoena for the records of Gloria M. Kury and correspondence between her, the district, and attorney Chris Jonas, including all due process hearing records form 2006 to 2008.
But while these folks apparently have managed to evaded the consequences of their actions as Rendon's lawsuit got settled, can they say the same about the 400 students who were misdiagnosed?

Who's going to speak for them?