It is illegal for public schools to refuse admission to students with disabilities.
A charter school in Philadelphia admitted a six-year-old, then rejected her when the parent told the school the child had special needs.
An education advocacy group sued a Philadelphia charter school on Thursday, alleging it barred a 6-year-old from enrolling after learning she required services for attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder.
The Mathematics, Civics and Sciences Charter School in July accepted the girl for first grade this fall, according to the lawsuit brought by the Education Law Center. But when she and her mother, Georgette Hand, went to the school later that month with her documents, Veronica Joyner, the school’s founder and chief administrative officer, said she could not enroll the child because of her special needs.
Joyner told Hand the school “did not have the class or teacher to provide the services required” by the girl’s Individualized Education Plan, which specifies how schools must meet her needs, according to the lawsuit filed in Common Pleas Court Thursday. The suit seeks to have the girl immediately enrolled at the charter and awarded “compensatory education services” for the time she was excluded from the school. It also asks the court to order the school to include students with disabilities, and to contract with a provider to train staff on inclusion and diversity.
Margie Wakelin, a staff attorney for the Education Law Center, called the case “explicit” discrimination.
Charter schools say they are “public schools,” but they act like private schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
An Education Law Center attorney testified about this to the Board of Election last week. Didn’t stop the Board from voting for a 5-year renewal for Mathematics, Civics, Science Charter. Nor did the fact that the school failed to meet standards in all major categories.
Exclusion, attrition, expulsion and “counseling out” students that do not fit the preconceived mold for the compliant are the only secret sauce that charters have to offer. Anyone can get better results by only educating stronger students, but all students have a legal right to an education. When private charters cherry pick the perceived better students, it changes the demographics of the public schools making them schools of “last resort” with all the students that are expensive to educate. This is not equitable education. It is the winners and losers game applied to children. It is unfair to prejudge young people particularly in elementary school. There should be a place for most in a comprehensive school. I have seen many students that were late bloomers. They started out seemingly “slow” in elementary school. Once they got their foundation, they soared in middle school, high school and college.
Just a point to ponder. Why would the parents of this child want their child to attend this school after the denial for a learning disability? The attorney for this family should be “slaying the beast” and suing this “public school”. It would be a win/win for all. The school would likely have to fold, more press coverage of the Charter school scam, a settlement would be deemed, and this child would finally get the services needed.
There is no doubt that public schools are much better prepared to teacher ADHD students and students with other disabilities. They generally have professional teachers certified in special education. They need money to provide the compensatory service. Charter drain interferes with the public school’s ability to serve these students.
The Secretary at the US Department of Education spent yet another work day promoting private schools and bashing public schools yesterday.
Could someone add up her total work hours and see how much work time she has devoted to the 90% of US students who attend the public schools she opposes?
Is it really too much to ask to have public employees who will agree to put forth some effort on behalf of the vast, vast majority of students? That’s too high a bar?
We had a teacher from a charter school show up at our public school and drop off a student who had been expelled from their charter school, with the demand that we enroll that student. We have had several students wrong reclassified in their special education services by charter schools and then had the students lose years of education because they were misclassified and we had to classify them all over again. This happens in charters CONSTANTLY.
It’s tragic, but hardly news.