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Doug Shulby (right) kneels next to his brother Joey. The Manhattan Beach Unified School District sends Doug to a private school in Sherman Oaks at an annual cost of $42,000. Photo by Dan Bialek |
Disabled Learning
Doug Shulby’s story illustrates Manhattan Beach’s struggle to educate its special education students with limited resources and soaring legal costs.
"The Manhattan Beach Unified School District receives approximately $2 million annually in federal funding for its special education program. However, last year it cost the district almost $5 million to run the program."
by Dan Bialek
Manhattan Beach Police officers carried Doug Shulby, a mentally disabled student suffering from Asperger's Syndrome, off the Mira Costa High School campus in December 1998 in handcuffs. The senior was placed in an ambulance and taken to Little Company of Mary Hospital, where he was placed in leather restraints for several hours before being released.
As a result of this incident, the Shulbys have filed a lawsuit against the school district, the hospital and one of its doctors for an undisclosed amount, alleging negligence, infliction of emotional distress, and violation of federal law regarding the use of leather restraints.
The district refused to discuss Shulby’s suit or educational program, citing student privacy laws and the fact that the case was still in litigation.
The lawsuit illustrates the challenges that the Manhattan Beach Unified School District, and districts around the country, face in their efforts to comply with a federal mandate requiring districts to provide all students with "free and appropriate education." That mandate, district officials are quick to point out, is not adequately funded by the federal government.
The Manhattan Beach Unified School District receives approximately $2 million annually in federal funding for its special education program. However, last year it cost the district almost $5 million to run the program.
Cost versus reimbursement
Since shortly after Shulby’s removal from the Mira Costa campus, the district has paid $42,000 annually to send him to a private special education school in Sherman Oaks.
The Manhattan district also picks up the tab for the taxi that takes Doug on his daily 80-mile round trip to the school.
Conflict on campus
According to the Shulbys’ lawsuit, the 17-year-old senior was standing outside a Mira Costa classroom waiting for class to get out so he could use one of the computers. Ray Lee, a school security officer, approached Shulby and asked why he wasn't in class. Shulby told Lee he didn't have class that period. The lawsuit states that Lee said he doubted Shulby was out of class legitimately, and asked the student to accompany him to the administration office.
"A verbal confrontation arose between [Shulby] and Ray Lee. Ray Lee became angry and combative. Several times during the course of the verbal confrontation, [Shulby], consistent with his disability attempted to end the conversation by walking away. However, Ray Lee followed [Shulby] and continued to insist that [Shulby] accompany him," the complaint states.
According to the complaint, Lee made several attempts to grab Shulby’s arm and direct him to the office.
A special education plan formed by Shulbys’ parents and educators identified places for the student to go to when he became agitated. The plan was distributed Shulby’s teachers, but not campus security, according to Shulby’s mother.
"If Doug acts out inappropriately in class and is beginning to escalate, do not allow yourself to get emotionally involved. He may not know another way to deal with his feelings of hurt, frustration, disappointment or anger," the plan stated.
"Once he has escalated there will not be a positive resolution. Letting go for the time being and addressing the issue at another time is a better choice," the plan said.
Shulby, who studied martial arts for 10 years, repeatedly attempted to escape the officer’s grasp.
"He told me, ‘You’re going to feel my wrath," Shulby said during a recent interview. "I told him, ‘No, you’re going to feel mine.'"
Lee radioed for assistance. Vice Principal Herb Hinsche and Manhattan campus police officer Chris Vargas arrived and attempted to subdue Shulby.
"They weren’t having much luck," Shulby said during the interview. He was eventually handcuffed and carried by the three men to the school nurse’s office.
Vargas’ police report stated that Shulby was taken to the nurse's office in order to save him embarrassment in front of his peers. Shulby said that he was kicking, screaming, and struggling the entire way to the office.
"I was making a low growling noise and telling them to take the cuffs off me and to let me go," he said. "After some difficulty, they got me to the nurse’s office."
Hinsche telephoned Doug’s mother, Sharon Shulby, from the nurse’s office, and told her that her son was in custody and would be taken to Harbor General Hospital’s psychiatric ward.
According to Shulby, officers from the Manhattan Beach Police Department arrived and assisted getting him into an ambulance. Shulby said his legs were strapped down to the paramedics’ gurney.
"Doug has an incredibly high tolerance for pain," said his mother, who is a nurse at a Long Beach correctional center. "He's had two broken arms in his lifetime and he didn’t know they were broken until he came home and I looked at them."
Instead of Harbor General, Shulby was taken to Little Company of Mary Hospital in Torrance. He said he had become tired and had calmed down by the time he arrived.
"I was coming off the 'superman cycle,'" he said referring to the huge amount of energy he gets when he becomes angry or excited. "I was becoming really tired and lethargic. I was barely awake when I got to the hospital. Then they transferred me to another gurney and put me in the four-point restraints."
Four-point leather restraints are three-inch-wide leather straps that bind a patient down at the arms and legs. The federal Lanterman Petris Short Act dictates how restraints may be used.
Shulby’s suit claims that Doug was held in the restraints for more than three hours without the opportunity for motion or exercise. Federal guidelines state that for every two hours a minor is in restraints, at least 10 minutes must be provided for motion and exercise.
David Brown, the lawyer representing Little Company of Mary in this case, said that the hospital followed the LPS Act guidelines, and that the hospital’s provision regarding the use of restraints was stricter than the federal ones.
"The hospital feels that it behaved appropriately, and it feels that the doctor behaved appropriately as well," Brown said.
Officer Vargas wrote in his report that Shulby was a danger to himself and others. He wrote that he wanted to have Doug held for a 72-hour observation period, as provided for by California law.
"I told Dr. Mueller [the emergency room physician treating Doug] that my intention was to commit Doug for a [psychiatric] evaluation and because of this incident and previous incidents with Doug, that I was concerned that Doug might return to the school and harm someone or himself," Vargas' report stated.
But the psychiatric team recommended releasing the student to his parents’ care. However, the hospital staff had lost the keys to the leather restraints, infuriating Sharon Shulby, she said.
"I told them that they had five minutes to find the keys or I was going to get a knife out of my husband’s car and cut their $800 restraints off my son, myself," the mother said.
The keys were found and Shulby was released to his parents.
Wants ‘son back’
Shulby’s mother said that her son didn’t say anything on the ride home. She feels that the incident changed her son forever.
"Once we got Doug home, he vacillated between homicide and suicide for weeks. He would curl up in my lap and hide," she said.
"To this day, if he gets caught up in his covers while sleeping, he wakes up screaming. Nobody’s kid should have to go through this. He didn’t have all this long hair hiding his face before all this happened," she said while brushing Doug's overgrown bangs, which he refuses to cut or brush, out of his face.
His mother said that before the incident Doug loved to sing and play the saxophone.
"I still don’t have my son back. He hasn’t played a note or sang since Dec. 8, 1998," she said.
Her son said that he still felt a lot of anger and resentment about the incident.
"I felt the hostile atmosphere of what happened that day everywhere I went. I don’t want to be overly dramatic, but I feel kind of like a war veteran," he said.
The enigma of Asperger's
Shulby said one of the difficulties with Asperger’s Syndrome is that he doesn’t appear to be handicapped.
"I was sort of cursed, and then given the insult to the curse. I don’t look handicapped, I don’t sound handicapped, I don’t act handicapped. People assume that I must not be handicapped, but I still am," he said.
Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger first described the condition in 1944. Asperger's Syndrome is a neurological developmental disorder marked by extreme sensory sensitivity and the inability to react to or read social signals, such as facial expressions or voice inflections. It appears to be related to autism and often afflicts young people with average or above-average IQs. Its victims have difficulties with social interaction, and often have restricted and unusual patterns of interest and behavior.
Doug’s teachers and parents first noticed his difficulty with social interaction in the third grade.
He was diagnosed with Asperger's when he was 15. He said that he diagnosed himself after years of being labeled a behavioral problem. He learned of Asperger's syndrome while attending a support group for his younger brother, Joey, who is autistic.
The district's view
The Manhattan school district has approximately 600 students in its special education program. Assistant Superintendent Darlene Gorey said that there are strict federal laws requiring that every student receive an education in the least restrictive environment possible. But the federal government does not provide funds for this mandate.
"As federal requirements go up, the money we receive from the federal government goes down," Gorey said.
"We'd love for the governor to come up with the money, but the problem is we don't have enough to run this program," she said.
Despite these the financial shortfalls, Gorey said that the district has taken steps to provide more services for its special needs students.
"We recently hired an occupational therapist, but we can't afford to hire more assistants," she said.
"The money comes out of the district's coffers. These kids have needs beyond the needs of regular kids. We want to support them, but we need to provide for our regular kids as well," she said.
Gorey said that the district has paid an outside expert to assess its special education program. The results of this study will become available February 7.
Expensive for both sides
Doug Shulby’s mother declined to disclose the cost of her family's lawsuit. The case has yet to go to court, and the Shulbys’ attorney is appealing a judge’s ruling to dismiss the district and Mueller, the physician, from the case.
The school district paid $180,000 of its $4.9 million 1999/2000 special education budget in legal fees to attorneys Filarsky & Watt. This was more than twice the $69,000 spent the year before.
The district also spent $200,000 in 1999/2000 to send special education students to private full-time schools outside the district.
And the district reimbursed other parents $160,000 in 1999/2000 to cover their children’s legal and educational costs.
In total, the district spent 10 percent of its $4.9 million special education budget on legal fees, private school costs, and reimbursements to parents. The balance went to on-campus programs for the district’s approximately 600 special education students.
The district's preliminary estimate for special education legal fees for the current fiscal year 2000/2001, was $100,000. However, the district had already spent $120,000 on special education legal fees by the end of December, the halfway point of the fiscal year.
This year’s budget also sets aside roughly $130,000 for reimbursement to parents for their legal fees and the cost of sending their children to special schools, and another $270,000 in direct payments to the schools themselves.
The total non-campus, special education costs are expected to consume $520,000 of the district’s $5.3 million budget for the current school year, according to district figures. ER