WOODSTOCK — The Mountain Views Supervisory Union has filed a lawsuit against the Agency of Education and the Agency of Human Services over the state’s refusal to reimburse Mountain Views for the cost of providing special education services for a student with a high level of support needs.

The complaint, filed in May, names interim Education Secretary Zoie Saunders and Human Services Secretary Jenney Samuelson as defendants. It alleges that both agencies violated the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act by denying MVSU’s request for reimbursement. Mountain Views is seeking to recover the out-of-pocket costs and attorney’s fees incurred as a result of the denial.

Mountain Views also alleges that the state failed to provide a mechanism for resolving interagency disputes over student placements and reimbursements.

“We want the state to reconsider the decision,” Marilyn Mahusky of Burlington law firm Stitzel, Page, and Fletcher said by telephone. “It is not about the money, it is about a process that is not working. This is not the only child who is experiencing this.”

In addition to representing the Mountain Views Supervisory Union in its complaint, Mahusky also represents the Springfield, Vt., and Bristol, Vt., school districts, which have also filed complaints against the AOE and AHS under similar circumstances.

The school districts “have experienced this same scenario time and time again,” she said.

The Mountain Views complaint alleges that in May of 2022, a coordinated services team met to create a plan for a Woodstock Union High School student with “significant developmental and behavioral needs.”

That team, which included representatives from the school district, Health Care and Rehabilitation Services and the student’s parents, agreed that the student should be placed in residential treatment.

“This is a child who has a developmental disability and medical fragility,” Mahusky said. “It is a child who is medically, behaviorally, and developmentally complex.”

The next step in the process was for HCRS to take the recommendation to a state-level case review committee.

But “that didn’t happen, and nobody seems to know why it didn’t happen,” Mahusky said.

HCRS staff did not return a request for comment by deadline. Mountain Views Superintendent Sherry Sousa declined to comment for this story, as did the Agency of Education and the Agency of Human Services, citing the pending lawsuit.

By August, Mountain Views hadn’t heard anything from the state and went ahead with the placement of the child in out-of-state residential treatment, notifying the Agency of Human Services of its intent to request reimbursement.

In January of 2023, the AHS informed Mountain Views that the request for reimbursement had been denied because “the decision for placement was made outside of the interagency process,” and that a review of the case determined that “medical necessity was not met,” according to a letter sent to Mountain Views Superintendent Sherry Sousa in January, 2023.

The Agency of Human Services told the Woodstock student’s parents they would need to begin the application process anew, according to Mahusky.

“We can’t ask the parents to do that,” she said. “This is a family in crisis,” and the process is time-consuming and complex.

The parents have done what they needed to do in this process, and the supervisory union feels that “it is an unfair burden” to ask them to re-engage with the process, she added. 

The cost of one year of residential education and medical services for the Woodstock student is approximately $300,000, Mahusky said. Because the state has not approved the student’s placement, the cost to Mountain Views — whose voters approved a $30 million operating budget in March — is about $66,000 per year, with the Agency of Education responsible for the rest.

However, “if the child is state-placed, the supervisory union is not responsible,” Mahusky said.

The Mountain Views lawsuit comes at a time when school districts nationwide are facing an increase in the number of students with disabilities and a shortage of people entering the special education profession.

“In the past 45 years, the number of students in special education has doubled,” and increases in autism diagnoses have been “quite significant,” said Kendra LaRoche, executive director of the White River Junction-based Special Needs Support Center.

Large caseloads of students combined with a burdensome level of paperwork required for special educators are deterrents to solving staffing shortages in the profession, LaRoche added in a Friday interview.

Residential placement of students with significant support needs can include hospitals, in-home care and correctional facilities. The percentage of students with special needs who require residential placement is “very small, about 1%,” LaRoche said. “But it ends up being very expensive for the distri ct.”

Mahusky said that the Mountain Views lawsuit is in the discovery process.

In the meantime, the Mountain Views Supervisory Union is continuing to pay for the child’s residential treatment.

The money, though, is a secondary concern to the supervisory union, which wants the two state agencies to make decisions with reasonable promptness, Mahusky said. “What that district is really concerned with is fixing the problem.”

Christina Dolan can be reached at cdolan@vnews.com or 603-727-3208.