Schools that fail to stop bullying may soon give taxpayers a financial beating.
A New York judge has ruled that a 12-year-old girl who was tormented at highly rated PS 6 on the Upper East Side may have been deprived of her educational rights — and the city could be on the hook for her $40,000 annual tuition at a private school.
The landmark ruling, if upheld, could be “fiscally disastrous” for the city, one expert said, noting it opens the door to millions in claims from special-ed and even nondisabled students who want to go to private school because they are bullied.
The precedent-setting case centers on a learning-disabled girl who suffered constant abuse from classmates. They laughed when she raised her hand and refused to touch pens or paper she had handled. They also handed her a crude drawing of her that they marked with words like “ugly” and “smely.”
They pushed and tripped her “for fun.” One kid chased the girl with ketchup, telling her it was blood.
But PS 6 Principal Lauren Fontana, told of such incidents by classroom aides, allegedly did nothing — and refused to discuss the bullying with the girl’s parents. They finally put their distraught daughter in the Summit School in Queens, a state-approved private school.
The parents have demanded that the city Department of Education pay them $40,000 for the girl’s year at Summit before the family moved to another school district in the state.
The DOE reimburses about $235 million a year in private-school tuition to parents who prove public schools did not adequately serve their kids with disabilities — but never before because of bullying.
The ruling by Brooklyn federal Judge Jack Weinstein paves the way for payment in such cases.
“When a school fails to take reasonable steps to prevent such objectionable harassment of a student, it has denied her an educational benefit protected by statute,” he wrote.
Weinstein has sent the case back to a DOE hearing officer to find whether bullying occurred and what, if anything, was done about it before he decides on the payment.
The precedent could cost the city millions. About 200,000 of the city’s 1.1 million public-school kids get special-ed services.
“Most special-ed students are bullied in school. They make up the biggest percentage of bullying victims in the US,” said Parry Aftab, a lawyer and national bullying expert.
Weinstein’s ruling could also open the floodgates beyond special ed, Aftab said. “Schools can be liable for not addressing bullying or cyberbullying for all students, and parents can sue for money damages,” she said.
In the Weinstein case, the girl, identified as “L.K.,” was originally diagnosed with autism. During the 2007-08 school year at PS 6 — where affluent Upper East Side parents raise hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for extras — she was put in a team-teaching classroom that mixed learning-disabled students with those who were not.
She was given a one-on-one teacher’s aide, along with speech, occupational and physical therapy.
But aides described the classroom as a "hostile environment" in which the girl endured "a great deal of teasing."
Fontana repeatedly rebuffed requests by the girl's parents to discuss the bullying -- and once called security when they refused to leave after bringing their daughter to the office to talk about it.
The city insists the girl received a “free and appropriate public education,” the legal standard and vows to fight the parents’ push for payment.
“The DOE takes claims of bullying extremely seriously and works hard to make each school a safe and positive learning environment,” assistant city attorney John Buhta said in a statement to The Post.
susan.edelman@nypost.com
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