Supreme Court -- School Must Pay For Care Of Disabled Teen

WASHINGTON - Federal law requires public school districts to pay for one-on-one nursing services for some disabled students throughout the school day, the Supreme Court said today in a ruling that may strain educational budgets across the nation.

The court, by a 7-2 vote in the case of an Iowa teenager, said such continuous care is not medical treatment and therefore must be publicly funded under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

The case, closely watched by school administrators and special-education advocates nationwide, means the Cedar Rapids Community School District must pay thousands of dollars a year to provide nursing care for Garret Frey, a high-school sophomore who is a quadriplegic dependent on a ventilator.

In Washington state, the case is not expected to have much of an impact. The state's school districts historically have provided the kind of services necessary to "allow students to benefit from special education," said Doug Gill, director of special education for the office of the superintendent of public instruction.

One reason is that the state has a "safety net" funding mechanism that uses state and federal money to help districts pay for special education in certain circumstances - if one special-education student needs particularly expensive services, for example, or if a district has a particularly high number of special-education students.

In many cases, Seattle has provided medical assistance to

special-education students through its own nurses.

Mark Green, attorney for the Seattle School District, said the decision could prove expensive for school districts that don't have their own nurses or that have to hire private nurses to provide the level of care the student needs.

The Supreme Court had been told by the National School Boards Association that "school-district budgets cannot shoulder the additional financial strain."

Charlene Frey, Garret's mother, praised the ruling. "It's going to mean more for other kids than it means for Garret," she said. "I'm glad it will mean everything to other kids."

The federal law provides that all children with disabilities receive a "free appropriate public education." Under it, public schools are required to provide various "special education and related services," but an exception is made for medical treatment.

Garret, was paralyzed from the neck down in a motorcycle accident when he was 4 years old.

His daily health care includes urinary catheterization, suctioning of his tracheotomy, providing food and drink, repositioning him in his wheelchair, monitoring his blood pressure and responding to the various alarms on his ventilator.

School officials in Cedar Rapids said the help Garret requires so that he can attend his local high school is so involved and so expensive it should be considered medical treatment. A federal appeals court disagreed, and the Supreme Court said the appeals court was right.

Writing for the court, Justice John Paul Stevens acknowledged that the school district "may have legitimate financial concerns" in providing continuous, one-on-one nursing care, but said the court's only role was to interpret what the federal law requires.

Joining Stevens were Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy dissented. In an opinion by Thomas, they said the decision "blindsides unwary states with fiscal obligations that they could not have anticipated."

Today's decision could subject the school district to more than $285,000 in legal fees and nursing costs.

Seattle Times staff reporter Jolayne Houtz contributed to this report.