Call to Arms!

My name is Matthew Oskowis, and I have a fifteen-year-old autistic child with severe non-verbal autism. For nearly ten years I have been embattled with my son’s school district, Sedona Oak Creek Unified School District #9 (SOCUSD), in Sedona, Arizona.

For those ten years, the SOCUSD has been found, by just the Arizona Department of Education (“ADE”) alone, in noncompliance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (“IDEA”) ten (10) times, on four (4) separate occasions, resulting in twenty (20) separate corrective actions required of the District (Exhibit A); thus denying E.O. a “free and appropriate education” again and again.

Unfortunately, in a federal court case in Arizona District Court (Oskowis v. Sedona Oak-Creek Unified School District #9, No. 3:2017cv08070), the District was granted summary judgment and subsequently pursued, by the urging of the court, attorney’s fees against myself.

Due to the extensive cost of litigation and lack of special education expertise in the private sector here in Arizona, I had been pursuing my cases in federal court representing myself and my son (i.e. pro se).

The District sought and received tens of thousands of dollars in attorneys’ fees under the IDEA’s fee-shifting provision for defending against a lawsuit that the District Court found lacked factual support.

The granting by the District Court of attorney’s fees to SOCUSD against a pro se parent sets a dangerous legal precedent for parents and their lawyers everywhere attempting to exert their rights as parents of a child with a disability under IDEA. Another group affected would be non-attorney advocates whose ability to recruit legal help would be impaired by such a ruling.

I have promptly appealed the matter to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (#19-17265), but I’m now asking for help as I believe that this case will have obvious ramifications for all involved in special education; especially those parents exercising their rights through the procedural safeguards’ statutes of IDEA.