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01-3720 School District of Wisconsin Dells v. Z.S.

By: dmc-admin//July 1, 2002//

01-3720 School District of Wisconsin Dells v. Z.S.

By: dmc-admin//July 1, 2002//

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“In light of Z.S.’s disastrous history of attending regular, or indeed any, classes in any school environment less structured than that of the mental institution in which he had been confined for seven months (Mendota), and in light of the failure of his spell at Mendota to provide the transition back to public school that the school administrators had thought it would, there was no basis for believing that, after he had to be removed from SCAN, he could function successfully in a regular school environment. What could even a full-time teacher’s aide have done to restrain this wild child when he started kicking and biting people, tearing his clothes, breaking furniture, and otherwise acting out as he had been doing for years, with no sign of improvement, and as he could be expected to continue doing if placed in any environment less restrictive than that of Mendota? The school administrators could not reasonably be thought unreasonable to reject this solution in favor of a spell of instruction at home. The desire of Z.S.’s guardian not to have this difficult child at home all day was entirely understandable but could not be allowed to sway the balance. The administrative law judge, playing amateur physician, devoted much of his analysis to insisting that Z.S. is indeed autistic, rather than merely severely disturbed, as the school administrators believed. These are just labels, in the absence of any evidence that a formal diagnosis of autism would show that it was unreasonable not to return Z.S. to public school in 1999 with a full-time attendant, a kind of living straitjacket, at his side.”

Affirmed.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, Crabb, J., Posner, J.

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