Justice Department threatens to sue Georgia over psychoeducation program

ATLANTA — According to a news report, the U.S. Department of Justice plans to file a lawsuit contending the state is violating the civil rights of students assigned to 28 Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support centers.

Vanita Gupta, who heads the department’s civil rights division, wrote Monday to Gov. Nathan Deal and other state officials, saying that the department would pursue a case in federal court, according to an online report Thursday by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The Justice Department, in a July 2015 letter to Georgia officials, cited what it said was “systemic unnecessary reliance on the segregated GNETS Program” in Georgia that it contends violates the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“The Department has determined that the State, in its operation and administration of the GNETS Program, violates Title II of the ADA by unnecessarily segregating students with disabilities from their peers,” the 2015 letter stated. “In addition, the GNETS Program provides opportunities to its students that are unequal to those provided to students throughout the State who are not in the GNETS Program.”

That 2015 letter was notice of the Justice Department’s findings and included what the department said were “the minimum steps that the State and its agencies must take to bring policies, practices and procedures into compliance with the ADA, and to remedy past violations under the law.

The planned suit would be the first of its kind in the country.

“We are not a party to the lawsuit, and it is a complicated lawsuit,” Dougherty County School System Attorney Tommy Coleman said Thursday. “Their lawsuit revolves around something completely different than what the State Board of Education demanded of us. What the DOJ’s position is that there should not be a GNETS program at all. They want these kids mainstreamed into regular classrooms — except for some who are fundamentally disabled that need to be sent to residential programs.”

This past June, while addressing a National Disability Rights Network’s annual conference in Baltimore, Gupta referenced the Georgia program.

“Our letter of findings about the Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support makes clear that the ADA prohibits states from unnecessarily placing students with behavior-related disabilities in separate and unequal schools when they can learn in regular educational settings,” she said.

Just before the 2016-17 school year opened, the DCSS was told by the state that its Oak Tree Center GNETS program at the Sylvandale Complex, which also houses the county’s pre-K program, had to be moved because of unsafe conditions at the building.

DCSS officials brought in an independent architect and structural engineer, who inspected the building and deemed the facility structurally sound and not a danger to the lives, health or well-being of students, faculty or staff.

The Oak Tree Center is one of nine programs in the state that Georgia education officials ordered to be moved to different locations.

More than 5,000 students are enrolled in Georgia’s GNETS centers, including 51 at the Oak Tree Center.