Grafton appeals decision forcing it to pay $78,000-a-year private school tuition for student with learning disabilities

Annysa Johnson:

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Milwaukee this week, argues that Judge Sally Pederson erred in July in finding that Grafton failed to provide a now 17-year-old student with the free and appropriate public education required by state and federal law.

Grafton Superintendent Jeff Nelson and the district’s attorney, Andrew Phillips, declined to discuss the case. But the attorney for the student and his mother called the appeal “foolish.”

“The judge wrote a sound decision,” said Jeffrey Spitzer-Resnick, a longtime civil and disability rights attorney. “The law is very clear that courts must defer to special education administrative law judges. And this particular judge, to my knowledge, has never been overturned on appeal.”

The Federal Complaint.

-via Chan Stroman.