The New Jersey Herald is reporting on a bizarre situation in the Sussex County school district of Montague where parents are complaining that the district is breaking the law in serving their special education children. Montague is a K-6th grade, 285-student district that only sends its special needs kids to either Port Jervis High School or Orange-Ulster BOCES in Goshen, both in New York State, in spite of the fact that placement of children with disabilities is supposed to be dictated by necessary services outlined in Individualized Education Plans. On the other hand, all their non-disabled kids go to Port Jervis too. The article lists several allegations of violations of I.D.E.A. such as Montague refusing to allow independent evaluations, ruling out other placements even when Port Jervis or BOCES didn’t provide I.E.P.-mandated services, and making placements without parental consent. Now parents are contemplating a class action suit while a website called Montague Buzz has been started to rally the troops.

The Montague situation has a complex history. In a series of letters in 2003 and 2004 between then-Education Commissioner William Librera and the Director Office of Special Education Programs Stephanie Lee Smith there’s a fair amount of back-and-forth over whether special ed Montague students placed in New York State retain their rights to due process in New Jersey. At one point, Smith gripes in a letter dated May 26th, 2004,

Your response appears, on the one hand, to assume that the NJDOE can relinquish its responsibility for general supervision of education programs for children with disabilities living in New Jersey, but attending a school in New York, to New York, while at the same time arguing that NJDOE treats Port Jervis “as it would any receiving school in New Jersey,” noting the application of New Jersey regulations to “receiving schools” and the responsibilities of “district boards of education” (defined as the school district of residence by 6A:14-1.3) for the education of children placed in ‘receiving schools.’ Frankly, we are unable to see how these two concepts can be reconciled.

Who’s running the shop there?