Kay Bailey Hutchison: “The issue is that more students are actually being served and there is no charge by anyone that there is a denial of due…”

“The issue is that more students are actually being served and there is no charge by anyone that there is a denial of due process. In fact, before the caps went into place there were 8,120 special need students in the DC schools. Now there are 11,191. There are only fewer than 50 cases even left pending. I think the District is now getting a handle on the situation. They are putting more students in the classrooms. That is because they have the money not going to lawyers but going into education. That is why the elected representatives of the school district have asked that the caps be left in place. We are raising the caps to keep in step with the times. One hundred and fifty dollars an hour certainly will get a quality lawyer. I think that has been proven. The fact is, before the caps, these were the kinds of abuses that the attorneys made of the system. One attorney, before the caps, earned $1.4 million in fees alone on suing the District schools. One law firm billed over $5 million in fees in a single year, suing the District schools.”