State must provide extra education at Eldora

The state of Iowa must provide additional education for boys living at a state-run juvenile home in Eldora, but it won't be forced to offer remedial services to the hundreds of youth who left the program in recent years.

That agreement follows two recent investigations, each of which concluded the Iowa Department of Human Services violated federal law by failing to provide the minimum level of educational services to special-education students living at the Boys' State Training School in Eldora.

Last year, after similar federal violations were uncovered at the DHS-run Iowa Juvenile Home in Toledo, the state agreed to set aside $1 million to pay for "compensatory education" for dozens of youth — mostly girls — who'd left the facility in recent years and had yet to graduate from high school. In response to those and other concerns reported by The Des Moines Register, Gov. Terry Branstad ordered the Iowa Juvenile Home closed in January.

By some measures, the Eldora facility scored worse than the Iowa Juvenile Home in meetings youths' educational needs. But the corrective action at Eldora only calls for intensive educational services for current students and those who graduated in the past two months — not to students who left the facility in recent years.

The facility provides housing, education and treatment to roughly 125 boys, age 13 to 18. All have been in trouble with the law and judged delinquent, and about half of them require special-education instruction.

"We are committed to meeting our students' special-education needs," said Charles Palmer, director of the Department of Human Services. "Along with supervision and rehabilitation, education is a critical component of the services provided to the seriously delinquent youth served by the state training school."

The federally funded Disability Rights Iowa uncovered many of the violations at the Eldora home. Some of those violations were verified by the Iowa Department of Education, which then required DHS to develop a corrective-action plan to address the problem.

Jane Hudson, executive director of Disability Rights Iowa, said her organization has spent months negotiating with the governor's office and the Department of Education on the corrective-action plan. Recently, all of the parties agreed that DHS would provide "intensive interventions to close the achievement gap in transition and behavioral services created by the legal violations," Hudson said.

As part of the agreement, DHS promised to work with a national expert on improving services to students and said it would immediately hire an expert to help youths who are scheduled to graduate or leave the facility in the next 90 days.

As it did last year with the Iowa Juvenile Home, Disability Rights Iowa had sought compensatory education for former Eldora students. In a written report to the state, the organization said in April that it did not understand why the same violations at two DHS-run facilities for juveniles "do not warrant the same remedy."

The organization also pointed out that the Department of Education's investigation didn't examine whether students placed in long-term "control rooms" due to disciplinary problems received an adequate education. Disability Rights Iowa has asked the department to look into that issue, noting that some of the control-room students reported receiving only two hours of instruction each day.

Hudson said her agency will continue pushing for more changes at Eldora and is now planning to monitor the use of restraints and seclusion at the home. A 2012 accreditation report on the facility found that between 2009 and 2011, the home's use of four-point and five-point physical restraints — which typically involve strapping a person to a bed or chair — increased 471 percent, from 14 incidents to 80. During that time, the number of youths at the home declined 22 percent.

Disability Rights Iowa and the Iowa Department of Education recently found that Eldora students' educational plans were boilerplate in nature and weren't tailored to individuals' needs. They also found that transition services — intended to help students succeed in the community once they're discharged from the home at age 18 — were seriously lacking.

Disability Rights Iowa noted that students hadn't been given the option of visiting community colleges, and most of those who expressed an interest in college were not given the standard college-assessment test.

Investigators also discovered students had no access to the Internet as part of their career-planning efforts and could use only paper and pencil. And the Eldora facility hasn't had a driver's training program since September 2013 because the instructor retired — limiting students' ability to pursue employment once they leave.

"The Department of Education doesn't require driver's education be provided in schools, and doesn't track which districts provide it," said DHS spokeswoman Amy Lorentzen McCoy.

ABOUT THE HOME

The State Training School for Boys in Eldora serves about 330 delinquent boys each year, although the average daily census is 124. The home provides housing, education and treatment services. All of the youths are there through a court order, which often stems from serious criminal activity. Most have at least seven prior out-of-home placements, such as foster-family care or institutional care.

The home employs 165 people who work on a 36-building campus spread over 45 acres.

Typically, 50 percent to 60 percent of the youths are eligible for special education. According to the Iowa Department of Human Services, which runs the home, 73 percent of the youths there show improvement in reading during their stay and 60 percent show improvement in their math scores.