Readers need more essential information to understand the state Department of Education’s role in providing schooling for special needs students.

Federal law requires the DOE to pay for tuition at private schools when it fails to provide special needs children with a "free appropriate public education" as defined by federal law.

While it is true that "the Department of Education says it will not pay several months of back tuition" owed to these schools, as stated in a recent article, what was left out is that the DOE is under court order to pay up ("Better scrutiny sought for state funds used at private schools," Star-Advertiser, Aug. 13).

The DOE is running a tab in the Loveland Academy case that could reach $1 million to $1.5 million in legal fees and court expenses. In the end, federal law will likely prevail.

The DOE takes no risk by prolonging the legal action since, ultimately, the Legislature will apportion the funds and we taxpayers will be made to foot the bill for their antics.

In the meantime, private schools cannot survive without the DOE payments and may be forced out of business, which is likely the intention of the DOE strategy in this and similar cases.

The DOE has been ordered to pay Loveland Academy, yet still they refuse. Federal Judge Susan Oki Mollway will hold a hearing on Aug. 21 that could find the DOE in contempt of court and direct that a garnishee summons and sanctions be issued against it.

This particular case — Marcus I., et al. vs. State of Hawaii Department of Education — has run for several years. It’s already been to the 9th Circuit Court and back.

The DOE will likely appeal Mollway’s garnishment order to the 9th Circuit. But since the Supreme Court ruled in 1993 that schools must pay for private tuition when they choose not to educate special needs students themselves, it is hard to see how a federal judge will let them off the hook.

The public at large should be concerned with the DOE’s continued violation of federal law and court orders because the settlements and legal expenses are largely avoidable and come out of taxpayer funds. If court costs and attorneys’ fees were deducted from the DOE budget, perhaps they would pay more attention to the law.

The DOE struggle against federal law has been a long one. The Felix Consent Decree didn’t end until more than a decade had passed and both the DOE and Department of Health had been found in contempt of court.

Hawaii parents still must take the DOE to hearings or to court at a frequency high enough that taxpayers should be very concerned about how our money is being spent.

The DOE could have provided the federally required services in the first place.

The loser when DOE fails to provide a "free appropriate public education" to a special needs student and chooses instead to fight the feds is, of course, the student.

We taxpayers are funding DOE wrongdoing, and it’s time it is stopped.