Who Will Pay For the Maranon Twins?

Location, location, location: Where we live (in New Jersey; around the country) has always had a direct impact on Charlie's education. I've recounted, probably too many times, how we moved in with my in-laws in June of 2006 so Charlie would attend the autism program in the public schools in the town we now call home. It always amazes me that, just by living really a couple of feet away, in the next township over, your child can receive drastically different services. The town we used to live in is only about twelve miles distant, yet the education Charlie received there was of a completely different, and very much lesser, caliber.

Then I read about this case about 20-year-old autistic twins here in New Jersey, via the April 3rd Bergen Record. The twins live in a full-time care facility, Bancroft NeuroHealth, in Cherry Hill, in the southern part of New Jersey (aka "South Jersey"). Their parents are divorced; as young children, they lived in Howell, in Freehold Township, Monmouth County, with their mother, Mindy Maranon. She still shares ownership of her house in Howell with the twins' father, Daniel Maranon. In 2004, he moved to Bergenfield, in Bergen County, in the northern part of New Jersey.

And therein lies the placement dispute. The Bergenfiled School District (where the twins have never lived) wants to split the cost of paying for the twins' placement----which totals $500,000 per year---with the Howell School District. Neither brother has lived with their parents for more than a decade:

The case highlights the murkiness of defining a student's home in an age of split families, and how those definitions should factor into state laws aimed at deciding who should pay for skyrocketing special educations. Where is the "home" district if parents split up and share joint custody? Is it possible for a student to have more than one "home"? What if a student does not live with either parent?

"It is really a question of fairness," said John Croot, the lawyer representing the Freehold Regional High School District, which educates students in the twins' "home town" of Howell. "The fair thing is for the two districts to share the considerable expense involved, rather than for one or the other district to bear the full burden."

Such reasoning opens up a "Pandora's box," said Bergenfield school board President Joseph Amara. Bergenfield educates more than 100 students who have a parent living outside the district.

"If the judge rules we have to pay half, that has repercussions for every district in the state," Amara said. "That means Bergenfield can go out and seek reimbursement based on every parent that has split up and lives in another district."
.....
Evaluating a child's needs is complicated enough when just one district is involved, said Ira Fingles, attorney for Maranon. "It would beget an absolute nightmare if there was another school district at the table participating in decisions," Fingles said. "If the districts are disagreeing, District B won't be willing to accept the positions of District A. That raises the possibility of having conflicting evaluations in the file and doubles the burden on the child."

An administrative law judge will decide the case for the twins who, truly, are caught between policies and legalities beyond their, and perhaps anyone's control. And at a time when school districts everywhere (my own town included) are keeping a very sharp eye on their budgets, it can be assumed that everyone will try to get the other guy to foot the bill.

How to pay, and who will pay, for the twins' services has become more important than the twins themselves.

This is precisely the reason that we need to revise and even outright change how services like education and housing for individuals with developmental and other disabilities are paid for. Leaving these up for individual municipalities to decide on subjects those who rely on these to (here in New Jersey at least) the random whims of local politics, township business managers, and budgetary constraints. We need a model--statewide; nationwide---for providing appropriate supports and services, care and an education, for those who need these. If Bergenfield and Howell reach a stalemate about providing for the twins' care, what will happen?

And the Bergen Record article ends by noting how uncertain the twins' future is:

The Maranon twins will age out of the educational system when they turn 22 next year. Mindy Maranon said it was a struggle finding help when they were growing up in the '90s. Services for youths with autism have come a long way since then, Maranon said, though she's finding fewer resources for disabled adults.

"They're really wonderful young men, and they've never gotten a break," she said. "The cosmic timing has just been wrong."

And in today's New York Times, an account of 25-year-old Jonah Lehmann by his mother, Annie Lubliner Lehmann.