Settlement agreement brings needed
changes to Palm Beach County schools

Regarded as a problem student rather than a student in need of behavioral intervention, B.J. was arrested several times in fifth grade. Meanwhile, his reading was stuck at a first-grade level. It was only when his legal aid attorney got involved that school officials provided B.J. the educational and behavioral intervention services that enabled him to turn his school career around — and to which he was entitled by law. Thanks to the intervention of his Foundation-funded Children's Legal Services attorney, B.J. and many other students like him are benefiting from the terms of a settlement agreement that ensures they will receive positive behavioral interventions and supports. He is just one of nearly 3,000 children helped each year through the Foundation's Children's Legal Services Grants. One hundred percent of your gifts to the Lawyers Challenge for Children go directly to these grants.

How to Make a Gift on Your Florida Bar Fee Statement:

1) Fill in the amount of your tax-deductible contribution to The Florida Bar Foundation on the front of the 2011-12 Florida Bar Fee Statement in the box next to the suggested contribution level of $100. (Larger contributions are most welcome!)

2) Add the amount of the gift to the TOTAL PAID box and include it in the payment total.

Or to Give Directly to the Foundation:

Donate online or send your tax-deductible check payable to: The Florida Bar Foundation, P.O. Box 1553, Orlando, Florida 32802-1553. Please earmark your gift for the Lawyers' Challenge for Children.

View the list of last year's Lawyers Challenge for Children supporters.

For more information:

Annual Giving Manager
Alicia Hodge
(407) 843-0045
Or toll free in Florida: (800) 541-2195

B.J.'s Story

An eighth-grader at a West Palm Beach, Fla., middle school, B.J. is a popular student known for his dancing at pep rallies.

“He’s doing great,” said his mother,

Staci Pearson. “He likes school. He reads better. He likes to stay after school.”

But it wasn’t always that way.

As a fifth-grader, B.J. was arrested three times at his elementary school, where his reading had not progressed beyond a first-grade level.

According to a complaint filed with the Florida Department of Education against the School Board of Palm Beach County by the Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County, Southern Legal Counsel and the Southern Poverty Law Center, all three incidents involved situations in which B.J. allegedly responded to situations physically – by slapping, kicking or kneeing people.

But there is more to the story.

For example, the complaint says, a school police officer charged B.J. with battery for slapping a student who had been using racial slurs against him all morning and had thrown tape at him.

A violence prevention expert who later reviewed the case compared the school’s response to “prosecuting the victim of a hate crime.” Also, B.J. was not receiving the special education and related services to which he was legally entitled.

When he later received those services, which provided him with emotional and behavioral support, he demonstrated significantly improved behavior.

B.J.’s mother credits Barbara Briggs, supervising attorney for the Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County’s Educational Advocacy Project, with turning B.J.’s situation around.

“If it wasn’t for Ms. Barbara I would have gotten nowhere at all,” Pearson said. “And he would have never gotten help.”

Some people say B.J. has changed, but Briggs doesn’t think so.

“I think people started reacting to him differently and allowed the B.J. who was always there to come forward,” Briggs said. “And instead of looking at him as a difficult kid with problem behavior, they look at him as a kid with challenges they can help improve. And that’s what positive behavioral intervention does.”

For Briggs, one of 23 attorneys in Florida whose work is funded by The Florida Bar Foundation’s Children’s Legal Services Grant Program, B.J.’s story was nothing new.

In fact, when his case came to her attention, she was already working on the complaint as a systemic means to counter a trend in schools – a trend toward dealing with children with emotional, behavioral and learning disabilities by referring them to the juvenile justice system. Instead, schools are supposed to be providing these kids with counseling, social work and psychological services and applying positive behavioral interventions in accordance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

The complaint cites telling statistics from Palm Beach County:

• Data discovered through a 1997 case against the school board showed that students with disabilities received school-related referrals to the juvenile justice system at more than five times the rate of students without disabilities.

• Between the school years beginning in 1999 and 2004, the number of out-of-school suspensions in Palm Beach County had risen by 14 percent, while the student population had increased by only 8.3 percent.

• In 2006-07, 10 percent of all juvenile court referrals in Palm Beach County were school-based.

In many cases, such as that of 12-year-old Pascal, schools were simply ignoring students’ individualized education plan (IEP) as required by the IDEA.

Eligible for the gifted program as well as social/emotional services, Pascal got neither when he enrolled in middle school because the school for which he was zoned didn’t offer them. Instead of sending Pascal to a school that did, school officials simply removed those services from his IEP.

Pascal’s mother Ellen Hollingworth says her son was the victim of repeated bullying at the school, but whenever things escalated, he was always the one punished. By the end of the school year, he had been suspended for 33 days. Although she had tried to express her concerns to school officials, nothing changed until Briggs took the case.

“After she got involved, things started getting done,” Hollingworth said. “Things got better, way better. He got put in his proper classes.”

Once he was enrolled in the gifted program at a new middle school, where he also received social/emotional support, Pascal was soon recognized as a model student. At his teachers’ recommendation, he was inducted into the National Achievers Society, an academic honor society for minority students.

“This is the kind of kid we should be investing in,” Briggs said. “He’s our future. I mean, he’s very bright. He can be an engineer, a scientist, a physicist.”

In Palm Beach County, the outcome of Legal Aid’s advocacy was a settlement agreement that will fundamentally change the way children like B.J. and Pascal are served in the school system. In keeping with the agreement, the school board has contracted with a consultant who is providing technical assistance and training in positive behavioral interventions and supports. Federal stimulus money is being used to train about 200 school staff members, including principals, assistant principals, teachers, support staff, and even bus drivers and cafeteria workers.

“The school district came to the table willing, ready and interested in settling,” Briggs said. “They really are looking to improve the educational outcomes of the kids and to reduce out-of-school suspensions and punitive consequences, especially for kids with disabilities.”

She expects statistics to reflect these improvements. And she believes therewill be a drop in the costs to the juvenile justice system of children being referred to court and delinquency programs.

“I think the positive outcomes of something like this can be seen in more kids staying in school, more kids graduating, and reducing the stress on families, because it’s incredibly stressful when your child is suspended or arrested,” Briggs said.