http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21827-2003Aug5?language=printer
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washingtonpost.com
Schools Suspend 4 Officials
Blind D.C. Student Lacked Equipment

By Justin Blum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 6, 2003; Page B05


District School Superintendent Paul L. Vance placed four employees in the
special education department on leave with pay yesterday pending an
investigation into why the school system failed to provide a legally blind
student with electronics equipment despite two federal court orders to do
so.

Vance took the personnel action against Anne C. Gay, assistant
superintendent for special education; Judith Smith, director of the office
of mediation and compliance; Ronald Jenkins, an information technology
specialist; and Alan Patterson, a supervisory computer specialist.

The four were supposed to ensure that the school system complied with
orders to provide student Jonathan Herring, 18, with the equipment, said
schools spokeswoman Linda Wharton-Boyd. A year and a half ago, an
administrative hearing officer ordered the school system to provide the
equipment to Herring so he could study at home. After it did not, a federal
judge twice ordered that the items be provided.

"They're in charge of complying with court orders," Wharton-Boyd said of
the suspended workers. "That's their job."

Herring is legally blind because of a brain tumor, and his attorney
successfully argued that under federal law, the school system needed to
supply equipment that enlarges text so Herring could read it and that
translates written words into spoken words.

Herring had the first of his two brain surgeries in 1998, and his mother
said the school system failed to provide needed services until last fall,
when officials agreed to send him to the private Maryland School for the
Blind.

Gay did not return messages left yesterday on her work voice mail and cell
phone. Smith did not return a message on her work voice mail. Jenkins and
Patterson could not be located for comment.

Marcia Herring, Jonathan's mother, said yesterday that the school system
should not allow the employees to continue to receive salaries while the
investigation proceeds.

"They are at home with pay?" she said. "They should be without pay. Let
them feel the pain that me and my son have felt."

Wharton-Boyd said personnel regulations require that the employees receive
pay until the conclusion of the investigation. She said Vance would appoint
an outside consultant to investigate why Herring did not receive the
equipment, which the administrative hearing officer mandated in February
2002.

School officials recently provided Herring with some of the required
equipment. And instead of a new computer, they gave him a laptop that had
been used by the school system and that included files listing the names
and disabilities of all 12,000 special education students in the District.
School officials said later that they had neglected to remove the
confidential files.

Officials said they ordered the rest of the required equipment last week
after a reporter's inquiries.

Last week, Vance expressed outrage that his employees had failed to provide
the items. He said Friday that he was "sick and tired of incompetent
people, insensitive people working for this school system."

In another personnel matter, Cedric Barry, who until recently oversaw
school employees' use of credit cards to make purchases, is no longer
employed in the school system as of Monday, officials said. Natwar M.
Gandhi, the city's chief financial officer, to whom Barry reported, refused
to describe the reasons for Barry's departure. News reports have uncovered
a number of cases in which school employees misused the credit cards.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

Joy Gatewood Fulton
Altarum Institute

703-575-1870
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