Lead Exposure Has Plagued Special Education in Flint. Can $10 Million Fix It?

Millions of dollars will go to improving the special education system in Flint, Mich.’s schools—part of a legal settlement meant to benefit students who were affected by dangerous levels of lead in the city’s water supply discovered nearly a decade ago.

The settlement of the class action lawsuit will dedicate $9.69 million to bolstering Flint schools’ special education system, where many of the affected students remained in the years since the water crisis. Funds and support will expand in coming years to the broader Genesee County to address the needs of families who moved outside the city after the contamination.

“This investment will have both immediate and long-term impacts to structurally improve the quality of special education services that all children in Flint and Genesee County receive,” Bonsitu Kitaba-Gaviglio, the deputy legal director for ACLU Michigan, said during a press conference Thursday on the settlement and plan. ACLU Michigan sued on behalf of families impacted by the lead crisis.

“But today’s not the end of the story,” she continued. “We will continue to monitor and enforce the implementation of this settlement and advocate for the rights of all people in Flint.”

The agreement was signed in April and fund distribution followed. The obligations in the agreement begin from the distribution date, attorneys said.

The state’s education department said in a statement that it was pleased the money is available to provide these services.

“We remain committed to continuing to work with Flint community schools, the Genesee Intermediate school district, and our other state and local partners to assist these children,” a spokesperson for the department said.

Between April 2014 and October 2015, Flint families drank, bathed, and cooked in their homes with lead-contaminated water after the cash-strapped city, under the direction of a state-appointed manager, switched its water supply from Lake Huron to cut costs.

There have long been concerns of what effects the long-term exposure to lead would have on children entering the Flint school system, which was already overburdened and under-resourced. Flint schools’ challenges, particularly for special education, were only exacerbated by the water crisis, experts and advocates say, and rates of students with disabilities in the 2,840-student district have been on the rise in the years since the crisis began.

Research has linked lead toxicity to learning disabilities, poor classroom performance, and increased aggression.

There were about 13 percent of students enrolled in special education in Flint’s public schools in the 2012-13 school year. A decade later, those figures rose to 23 percent. The national average is 15 percent.

The special education system nationwide has only gotten more beleaguered in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, facing staffing shortages and trouble with retention of qualified special education staff.

“I knew when we filed this lawsuit that many kids would no longer be in the school system and would not reap the direct benefits of this case,” Jeree Brown, one of the plaintiffs whose child receives special education services in the Genesee intermediate school district, said in a prepared statement. “But this fight was always about doing what’s right and ensuring future generations get the help they deserve to thrive.”

What’s inside the settlement agreement

The state of Michigan announced this fund in 2020 as part of the settlement agreement. Lawyers say that the distribution plan, announced in detail Thursday, represents the “final step” of litigation started in 2016 after an estimated 30,000 children were exposed to lead.

Thousands of children and young adults were deemed eligible to be screened in 2018 to determine whether they required special education or health services due to the water crisis.

The distribution plan will develop a $1.6 million partnership to create a pipeline of special education teachers and social workers for Flint schools through a program with University of Michigan Flint. They’ll receive incentives—tuition reimbursement, child care costs, and transportation—when they agree to work in Flint or the Genesee district schools for at least three years.

The plan also calls for hiring literacy and behavioral specialists and creating a review board to assess how schools are creating and carrying out accommodation plans while also conducting training for teachers.

As part of the settlement, a third party independent review will examine how Flint schools design and deliver special education programs—such as Section 504 plans, individualized education programs, or IEPs, and behavioral interventions and supports—and make recommendations for improvements. Funds will also go to improving preschool programs.

The plan, which spans five years, focuses its attention on bolstering Flint schools, before expanding offerings to the surrounding county and other schools within the Genesee Intermediate school district, which helps oversee special education services in Flint and other districts.

“There’s ways we have tried to scaffold the program to really get to those students that were most directly affected by the crisis, but because we know that they’re across the district and across Genesee County, we’re trying to accommodate and make sure all students are touched by the settlement in one way or another,” Kitaba-Gaviglio said.

A fund administrator will conduct biannual audits on how the funding is being spent; the costs associated with that position will be paid for by GISD.

Stories from a ‘traumatized’ community

William Therrien and Gail Lovette, professors and researchers at the University of Virginia school of education and human development, recalled traveling to Flint in the aftermath of the crisis and hearing the “heartbreaking” stories from community members and educators: A teacher lining kindergarteners up for water after recess at a water fountain later found to have some of the highest levels of lead. Another teacher, pregnant, regularly drinking coffee made from the contaminated water.

“When we were investigating, we found that Flint community schools were just overwhelmed with individuals that needed services—they were dealing with a lot of behavioral issues and academic concerns,” Therrien said. “The community was just traumatized, really. The teachers were as well. It was really heartbreaking to hear the teachers’ experiences of working in the schools while the lead was flowing through the pipes.”

In the recovery, though, it was important to make sustainable changes for the community, Lovette said.

“I think we found, even through COVID, just dropping buckets of money doesn’t solve the problems,” Lovette said. “Funding is certainly a huge barrier that we found in Flint community schools, but we wanted to ensure that there were going to be positions funded and created for longer than a year that could address the ongoing effects of the lead crisis.”

The lengthy legal process began with a federal class action lawsuit in 2016, with attorneys from the ACLU Fund of Michigan, the Education Law Center, and the White & Case law firm alleging that the Michigan Department of Education, the Genesee Intermediate school district, and the Flint school system failed to provide adequate financial and staffing resources and support to help Flint schoolchildren meet the challenges they were facing in getting special education services.

“Improving Flint’s special education system requires dedication and motivation, but it also requires infrastructure and investment,” said Jessica Levin, the litigation director for Education Law Center, during the press conference. “The kinds of deficits revealed before and during our litigation cried out for the type of systemic investment offered by the special education fund distribution plan.”