Governor’s Ill-Considered Veto Harms Seriously Emotionally Disturbed Students in California

By Patricia Ryan
Executive Director
California Mental Health Directors Association

On September 30, the Governor inexplicably vetoed AB 1805 (Committee on Budget). This bill would have made state law consistent with federal law for 24-hour out-of-home care provided to seriously emotionally disturbed (SED) students placed in out-of-state, for-profit residential treatment facilities pursuant to the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). It would have also held counties – who are mandated by state law to provide IDEA-related mental health services to SED students – harmless for past state mandate payments for such placements.

This urgency legislation had overwhelming, bi-partisan support in both Houses of the Legislature (40-0 Senate and 67-7 Assembly).

AB 1805 was critical for SED students, their parents and counties, because recent audits by the State Controller contested past county mandate reimbursement for costs associated with certain out-of-state placements determined retroactively to have not met the definition of “non-profit” (as required by state law), notwithstanding the fact that they have been made and approved for over ten years.

Because the audits were not reversed by enactment of this bill, many current out-of-state SED placements will be terminated and future out-of-state placements in the facilities in question will cease, even though they have been determined through an exhaustive process to be the most appropriate placement for the student. This will significantly reduce quality treatment options for some of California’s most profoundly SED children, many of whom are placed in such out-of-state facilities after they have failed placements in California facilities. Some will end up in the correctional system if/when their less appropriate placements fail.

Inevitably, this veto will trigger numerous appeals and lawsuits which could easily have been avoided, because federal law entitles public students to a “free and appropriate public education” in the most appropriate setting, regardless of tax status. If you were the parent of an SED child who desperately needed the type of educational services that only certain residential facilities like those in question could provide, wouldn’t you do everything you could possibly do, including file suit, to ensure they were available? Of course you would, and that’s what has already started to happen, as a result of the Governor’s veto.

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