By August, despite the joint efforts of the county officials and myself—casting our net in a thirty-some-mile radius—a viable, or even marginally acceptable, school had not been found. I was left only one alternative—a new school located about twenty miles north of Annapolis with a curriculum designed to serve students with learning differences. But despite the professional credentials of the staff, the small class size, and the remedial program, the school did not have MSDE approval. This meant that the steep tuition, as well as transportation and all other costs, fell to the parent. I was relieved to have found a school, and even hopeful about its being a good place for Paul, but I was worried about sustaining the financial commitment into the future.
In a repeat performance of just one year earlier, I told Paul in August that he’d be starting a new school, The Meadow School. On the morning of the first day of school, I put Paul’s clothes out on his bed as I usually did to help him get himself ready.
He promptly came into my room, with the clothing in his hand, and said to me, “These are the clothes I am NOT wearing to the school I am NOT going to.”
I don’t remember my reply but do know that Paul’s resistance must have been fleeting, as we arrived on time to his new school, where Paul was immediately welcomed with open arms.
The director of Meadow School suggested I hire an attorney to pursue funding in accordance with my rights as a parent of a handicapped child. She said the tuition at Meadow was comparable to what the county would have paid for any of the non-public alternatives they had sought for Paul. She also said if his case was approved for funding, it could pave the way for other students in her school who may have, or may obtain, Level V eligibility. She gave me the name of a specific attorney—the principal of a special education law firm in Washington, D.C., who she said was widely recognized for his legal prowess and his successes in securing appropriate placements for students with disabilities.
I met with the attorney, Michael Eig, and retained his services. While his legal fees would be at my expense, Mr. Eig had confidence in the merits of our case and explained the possibility of his fees being covered, along with the tuition, if we prevailed. Come what may, I decided to take the risk.
After failing to come to a resolution working within the county school system, Mr. Eig submitted a formal request for a due process hearing at the state level. The hearing—to take place in Lutherville, Maryland, in front of a judge and three impartial hearing officers—was scheduled, and more than a dozen individuals were summoned to provide testimony.
I had a lot riding on the outcome of this case, and when the day of the hearing arrived, I was anxious. Paul had no knowledge of any facet of this legal process and went off to school that morning as he did any other day, except for the excitement of taking cupcakes for all his classmates. It was his ninth birthday.
The hearing itself, for me, was brutal. I don’t know if the fact that it was Paul’s birthday heightened my sensitivity. But I do know that it was hard to sit there and listen to the multiple “experts”—none of whom had ever met Paul, much less worked with him—deliver what I remember as hours of testimony riddled with inaccuracies and designed to make the case to deny funding for his current school. I wanted to set the record straight when incorrect or misleading information was presented, but I wasn’t given the opportunity. I looked to my attorney, whom I had come to admire and whose reputation I knew was well deserved, but I don’t remember feeling satisfied that critical facts were clarified. My only saving grace was that my sister Erin had accompanied me and corroborated my sense of it all.
During my year of working with Mr. Eig, his teenage son was killed in a freak accident. Sometime after this tragedy, I was on the elevator going up to his law office and somehow knew that the woman next to me was his wife. I remember how she looked—grief stricken—but I couldn’t relate to how she must have felt. Yet standing next to her that day is engraved in my memory. At the time, I knew my problems paled in comparison to hers and my heart broke for her and her husband. I have no idea whether this tragedy had an impact on his performance on Paul’s and my behalf during that pivotal hearing. But if it did, I can more than understand.
It would be days before we received the hearing review board’s twelve-page decision. It was not in our favor. This was a blow to me, intensified by reading the findings—chock-full of information that just wasn’t true. For example, it stated that I had two other school offers before enrolling Paul at Meadow School. I did not. I had no other offers.
Mr. Eig offered to continue to represent us on a contingency basis and I decided to go forward. In December, he filed a formal complaint, appealing the decision to federal court. Already daunting, this prospect grew more formidable when I received the official paperwork declaring: PAUL, a minor by his parent and next friend, JESSIE DUNLEAVY, Plaintiffs, v. WILLIAM DONALD SCHAEFER, et al, Defendants. Geez, I thought to myself, Paul and Jessie, toe-to-toe with the governor.
Fortunately, this drama never played out because some months down the road the county made a settlement offer—a funded placement at the current school in exchange for dismissal of our pending federal suit. I accepted and the case was closed.
Paul had a pretty good run throughout his third- and fourth-grade years. I knew the school wasn’t the perfect match for him, as did the director when he was admitted, but I knew too—as Dr. Denckla had said—that perfection in a school for Paul was not to be found. Nevertheless, I was grateful that his teachers loved him, and he them; that he made some academic gains; and that he was popular among his peers. In addition to reading and mathematics, Paul had classes in social studies, science, art, and music and also received much-needed speech therapy and occupational therapy. Paul’s medication—imipramine and Dexedrine—had stayed the same since concluding the trial phase of his first-grade year. However, his attention deficit continued to be a significant challenge and I knew his academic potential was far from realized.
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BY THE END of fourth grade, I noticed Paul becoming increasingly fragile, more readily prone to tears. I knew the discrepancy between his ability and his performance must have been a source of frustration, and I figured he might have been more aware of his differences as he matured. These concerns prompted me to take him to Jonathan Watkins, a child psychologist in Annapolis with whom Paul began weekly therapy sessions.
With no signs of improvement in Paul’s spells of unresponsiveness, I also had him tested for seizures. A sleep-deprived EEG was performed with results that came back normal, without any evidence of seizure activity. This would be the first of several such tests, but the results were always the same.
Dr. Watkins and I agreed that it was time to re-evaluate Paul’s medication, and he suggested local psychiatrist, Norman Roberts, to help manage it. Dr. Roberts referred us to a neurologist—Thomas Hyde, in Chevy Chase, Maryland—for an assessment. After Dr. Hyde worked with Paul and provided a written report, Dr. Roberts decided that we would discontinue the Dexedrine, which we did right away, and increase the dosage of the imipramine, which would have to be incremental since it required monitoring with blood and EKG tests. Medication changes were always difficult for Paul, and for me, and this one was no exception. I can’t overstate the challenge of managing Paul that summer, a situation I knew called more for patience than for discipline.
Before we had reached the better side of this tough transition, the school year began, and it didn’t surprise me that Paul’s behavior was adversely affected, with the first two weeks of school being the worst. For the first time, he talked back to his teachers, questioned certain routines, and one time even threw his books to the floor. He never took his frustrations out on another student. The fact is, Paul remained popular with his peers but nonetheless was a challenge for some of his teachers.
Several weeks into the school year, as Paul had begun to settle in and benefit from the medication change, Dr. Watkins visited the school to observe classes. He reported back, telling me he felt