Two Reporters Covering Education in the Midwest Followed the Money … to a School in New York

by Jennifer Smith Richards and Jodi S. Cohen

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ProPublica’s journalists live and work all over the country. We’re both based in Chicago, and, along with several of our colleagues, we are focused on telling stories about the Midwest. In recent years, the two of us have teamed up to cover ticketing and the use of seclusion and restraint in Illinois school districts.

But if you’ve seen our work lately, you know we’ve been reporting on troubling conditions at an unregulated, for-profit boarding school for autistic students in New York — not exactly in our backyard. We’d been getting tips for a while from local sources who were worried about the effect of a 2022 Illinois law that made it easier for school districts to use public money to send students with disabilities to far-away schools.

And then we heard concerns that students were being mistreated at one of those schools: Shrub Oak International School in Mohegan Lake, New York. Black eyes and bruises. Insufficient staffing. Medical neglect. No kitchen.

At least 15 Illinois students were enrolled there this past school year using state and local taxpayer dollars at $573,200 each. No state outside of New York sends more students to Shrub Oak than Illinois.

Students from 13 states and Puerto Rico — including Michigan and Indiana in the Midwest — went to Shrub Oak this past school year. Families’ decisions to cross state borders for an education often come after they have struggled to find a place for their children. For journalists, this trend and its impact are not easy to follow. It means education reporters sometimes also have to go beyond their borders both to follow the flow of public money and to see how students are treated when they leave their communities.

So this was a Midwest story, after all.

The more we dug into the situation at Shrub Oak, the more implications we found for local families. We learned that Illinois’ new law required the Illinois State Board of Education to pay for schools like Shrub Oak, but it did not allow the agency to monitor them. That left Illinois students at Shrub Oak vulnerable, because Shrub Oak is not monitored by any government agency in New York, either. Families and workers who tried to report their concerns to several New York agencies were turned away because the private, for-profit school had chosen not to seek approval from the New York State Education Department and therefore did not fall under the state’s jurisdiction.

We also learned that a Chicago student was harmed by a Shrub Oak worker while she was there. (The now-former worker pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a disabled person last month in Westchester County court. Shrub Oak previously told us that it acts quickly to involve law enforcement when it thinks an investigation is warranted. The school has said it works with students who have autism and who struggle with “significant self-injurious behaviors,” aggression and property destruction.)

News publications have republished or cited our stories to amplify the reporting in their own communities, from The Daily Herald in Illinois to the Hartford Courant and CT Mirror in Connecticut.

Illinois has no plans to stop sending students to Shrub Oak — and Chicago Public Schools this month approved sending a new student there — but some other states have begun to investigate or even bring students back home. One state agency in Connecticut, for example, described the facility as looking “more akin to a penal institution than an educational campus” and has decided to stop sending students there.

Several families have also told us that they’re happy with Shrub Oak and that the school has helped their children. In some cases, it was the only school that accepted their children, and they don’t want states to stop paying tuition there.

Since we published our first story in May, we’ve learned more about what the lack of oversight by the state of New York means. We recently obtained records that we had requested in January in an effort to learn more about what the state Education Department knew about Shrub Oak and students’ welfare there. (A ProPublica lawyer helped us get the documents after Shrub Oak intervened legally to urge the department not to release the records.)

We found that in 2023, Shrub Oak provided a list of staff members to the New York’s Education Department that included the names of 30 individuals who the school said were all “certified special education teachers.” But there was one problem: New York teacher certification records indicated that only 11 of the people listed are certified by the state as special-education teachers.

The staff list was submitted as the school was amending its filing with the state to operate a school business. An Education Department spokesperson told us that even though the state requires the information, it does not verify whether the teachers are certified because private schools don’t need to have certified teachers. The spokesperson did not respond to a question asking why the state requests information that it doesn’t verify.

As we’ve learned more, we’ve continued to send questions to Shrub Oak. Shrub Oak told ProPublica in an email that although the list was submitted to the state, it was still in draft form and the school intended to update it. The Education Department told us Thursday that it had rejected the school’s amended filing; Shrub Oak told us it decided the filing was not needed and it abandoned the process.

Recent email responses from the school have been unsigned and sent from its “press office.” The school would not identify who sent the emails. The emails criticized our reporting and said individuals were hesitant to be named because the reporting included “misrepresenting and twisting statements.”

The school said we relied on “isolated incidents and the perspectives of a few individuals” and asked us to highlight some parents’ positive experiences at Shrub Oak. The email also noted that “each member of our staff is carefully selected based on their qualifications, experience, and commitment to the field of special education.” Shrub Oak previously told us that while operating a round-the-clock school is challenging, its staff is adequate. A kitchen will open as soon as electrical work is complete, Shrub Oak has said.

It’s not clear if New York’s Education Department plans to intervene at Shrub Oak. But if it does, we’ll report on it — even though it’s hundreds of miles away from the Midwest.

If you have anything to share about education or other tips in the Midwest, please reach out to us: jennifer.smithrichards@propublica.org and jodi.cohen@propublica.org. You can find more information about how to contact ProPublica reporters securely on our tips page.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Jennifer Smith Richards and Jodi S. Cohen.