Lawsuit alleges students are being denied services in aftermath of water crisis due to lack of funding from state and demands reforms, not money

After Jeree Brown’s five-year-old son, Jabaro, was diagnosed with autism in 2014, the Flint public school refused to acknowledge the condition, let alone address it, she said, even as the city was mired in a lead contamination crisis that could have had a dramatic impact on kids with special needs.



“I requested for him to have speech therapy – he was denied for that,” she said.

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Brown is one of 15 named plaintiffs in an expansive federal lawsuit filed Tuesday that alleges the school district has denied special education services to students in the aftermath of Flint’s lead crisis.

The proposed class-action lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan and the Education Law Center, alleges that students enrolled in special education services in Flint’s school district – about 16% of the total enrollment – are systematically being denied “a right to a free and appropriate education” as a result of the state failing to allocate sufficient resources. Nearly 30,000 children under 19 years old lived in Flint during the recent school year, according to the complaint, a quarter of whom were younger than five years old.

“We’re asking for systemic change, so not monetary damages or anything like that,” said Kristin Totten, education attorney with the ACLU of Michigan. “We want structural reforms in the education system to address the needs of the children of Flint.”

Lead, a powerful neurotoxin, has known developmental and biological impacts on children exposed to levels even below 5 microliters per deciliter of blood. Low levels have also been found to adversely impact educational achievement. Earlier this year, a local study conducted by a pediatrician found the incidence of elevated blood lead levels for children in the city approximately doubled after its water source was switched.

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The ACLU also said on Tuesday that the suspension/expulsion rate for special education students in Flint was over five times higher than the state average. Special education students in Flint’s school district had a dropout rate 1.6 times higher than the state average, according to the ACLU.

Nakiya Wakes is the mother of two children named as plaintiffs in the suit. In March, she told the Guardian her son was suspended more than 50 times in the last school year, a spike that occurred after the city’s water source switched. Her son has been diagnosed with ADHD but the school doesn’t provide adequate support, she said.

“There is no plan and no program to educate my child,” she said. “All they do is send him home, with no service and no support.”

Compounding the situation in Flint, where more than 40% of the predominantly black population lives in poverty, is that long-term neurological problems could also be attributed to a multitude of circumstances – including poverty, poor nutrition and low-quality schools. Lead-contaminated drinking water disproportionately affects developmentally vulnerable children, according to the lawsuit, as “children can absorb 40-50% of an oral dose of water-soluble lead compared with 3-10% for adults”.

Public school buildings in the district measured lead levels that ranged from 61 parts per billion to more than 2,800 parts per billion, the ACLU said. Federal law requires remedial action if lead levels exceed 15 parts per billion.

“The rights of schoolchildren and their families are being violated every day in Flint,” said Kary Moss, executive director of the ACLU of Michigan, in a statement. “This lawsuit exposes what has gone wrong – including a dysfunctional funding structure – and demands clear and urgent remedies to make it right.”

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The lawsuit names the Michigan department of education, Genesee intermediate school district and the Flint community schools district as defendants. The ACLU said the four-count complaint seeks injunctive relief and several remedies to address developmental disabilities and suspensions.

The lawsuit comes just over a year after Michigan’s governor, Rick Snyder, first conceded that Flint’s water supply had been contaminated with lead. Water quality issues in the city emerged shortly after an April 2014 decision by a state-appointed emergency manager to switch Flint’s water source to a highly corrosive river. State environmental officials failed to require Flint to use corrosion controls to treat the water supply, thereby allowing lead to leach off pipes and flow into households across the city.

The state and local education departments didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The Genesee intermediate school district declined to comment on pending litigation. The lawsuit follows a litany of complaints filed in response to the water crisis, which could carry a financial liability for the state of more than $1bn.

Multiple investigations into what caused the crisis continue. As part of a probe by Michigan’s attorney general, Bill Schuette, nine state and local officials have been criminally charged for their role in the water crisis. The investigators have said additional individuals are expected to face charges.

“The government’s own actions in exposing the community to elevated lead levels has put every child at risk,” Jessica Levin, staff attorney at the Education Law Center and co-counsel in the case, said in a statement. “Now more than ever, families have the right to expect that the public education system will address their children’s special education needs.”