As we’ve been noting for a long time (Mar. 24, 2006, etc.), it’s increasingly common for parents of kids with disability diagnoses, after deciding that the public schools are not doing a good job of educating their kids, to enroll the kids in private school programs and stick public school taxpayers with the resulting high bill, citing federal disabled-ed law. (Parents of non-disabled offspring, needless to say, do not enjoy legal options of this sort if they believe the public schools are failing their kids.) Now the Supreme Court has accepted for review a case in which, according to the New York Times’s account, a former chief executive of Viacom did not even give a public school program a try before enrolling his son in a private school and demanding that New York City pick up much of the resulting bill. The New York Times’s account is distinctly unsympathetic toward the parent, and quotes Julie Wright Halbert, legislative counsel for the Council of the Great City Schools, as saying: “Many wealthy, well-educated people are gaming the system in New York City and around the country.” (Joseph Berger, “Fighting Over When Public Should Pay Private Tuition for Disabled”, Mar. 21; Amity Shlaes, “After Viacom, Freston Makes Case for Special Ed”, Bloomberg, Mar. 16; Mary Ellen Egan, “A Costly Education”, Forbes, Apr. 9 (sub)).
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You forgot to include the INATM (It’s not about the money) tag to the story.
But in a statement, he said his lawsuit was about principle, not money.
This system is well overdue for court review. Let’s hope for a sane and sensible result.
Uh, to be fair, the article says that Mr. Freston has used the $50,000 he was reimbursed by the city in the two years it did pay for his son’s private school to pay for tutoring for other children, so it is actually true in his case that “it isn’t about the money”. Whatever one thinks of his position, he is suing for the benefit of other parents who don’t have his wealth.
So essentially he’s deliberately misusing the court system to effect social policy and run roughshod over separation of powers? Doesn’t exactly make him the good guy in my book.
No Bill, I did not miss the fact that he had given the money away. I just thought it was amusing that he stated that it was not about the money. It is unlikely that anyone who is worth more than $100 million dollars is doing it for the money. However, according to the Amity Shlaes article, he was not as altruistic as you make him out to be.
Freston originally did receive a cash settlement from the city that he donated to the private school his child attended, the Stephen Gaynor School, on the city’s Upper West Side. Some of that cash even went to fund tutoring for public-school kids.
Thus he effectively stole from the poor (the city) to give to the rich (private school). So I wouldn’t quite yet put him down for sainthood. Also as insomniac commented, he is misusing the courts to set social policy that should be the provenance of the legislature.
According to the New York Times article:
I have no way of knowing which claim is more accurate, but the NYT article was published several days after the Amity Shales article. If the Times is right, he did not steal from the poor to give to the rich.
As for this being misuse of the courts to set social policy that should be the provenance of the legislature, that is not so clear. You’re assuming that the position taken by the school district is a clear reflection of a policy set by the legislature, but it seems that on the facts as we have them it is equally possible that what he is opposing is an administrative decision by bureaucrats that does not clearly flow from the governing statutes. An important function of litigation is making bureaucrats adhere to their statutory mandate and behave reasonably.
Incidentally, I’m not carrying a torch for the guy. The fact that he didn’t even try the public school program weighs against him, unless, and there is no mention of this, he had good reason to believe that the sort of program they offered would not work.
As you indicate Bill, from the newspaper articles it is hard to ascertain what Tom Freston actually did with the money he got from the city. Also I agree with your comment that “The fact that he didn’t even try the public school program weighs against him”.
I would surmise that someone like Tom Reston does not believe that the rules pertain to him. Only the unwashed should be required to go to a public school program. More to the point, the way the ADA legislation was written lends itself to such abuses. All you need to do is get a diagnosis that your child has a learning disability. Unlike an illness such as diabetes a diagnosis of learning disabled can be totally subjective. From what I have read it appears that many affluent parents have figured out how to game the system. One of the most egregious abuses is when they force the school system to give their learning disabled” child extra time on exams so that the child can get better grades than the rest of the students.