I would surmise that someone like Tom Reston does not believe that the rules pertain to him. Only the unwashed should be required to go to a public school program. More to the point, the way the ADA legislation was written lends itself to such abuses. All you need to do is get a diagnosis that your child has a learning disability. Unlike an illness such as diabetes a diagnosis of learning disabled can be totally subjective. From what I have read it appears that many affluent parents have figured out how to game the system. One of the most egregious abuses is when they force the school system to give their learning disabled” child extra time on exams so that the child can get better grades than the rest of the students.

He has used the roughly $50,000 in reimbursements he has received to finance tutoring for lagging first graders at Public School 84 on the Upper West Side.

I have no way of knowing which claim is more accurate, but the NYT article was published several days after the Amity Shales article. If the Times is right, he did not steal from the poor to give to the rich.

As for this being misuse of the courts to set social policy that should be the provenance of the legislature, that is not so clear. You’re assuming that the position taken by the school district is a clear reflection of a policy set by the legislature, but it seems that on the facts as we have them it is equally possible that what he is opposing is an administrative decision by bureaucrats that does not clearly flow from the governing statutes. An important function of litigation is making bureaucrats adhere to their statutory mandate and behave reasonably.

Incidentally, I’m not carrying a torch for the guy. The fact that he didn’t even try the public school program weighs against him, unless, and there is no mention of this, he had good reason to believe that the sort of program they offered would not work.

Freston originally did receive a cash settlement from the city that he donated to the private school his child attended, the Stephen Gaynor School, on the city’s Upper West Side. Some of that cash even went to fund tutoring for public-school kids.

Thus he effectively stole from the poor (the city) to give to the rich (private school). So I wouldn’t quite yet put him down for sainthood. Also as insomniac commented, he is misusing the courts to set social policy that should be the provenance of the legislature.

Whatever one thinks of his position, he is suing for the benefit of other parents who don’t have his wealth.

So essentially he’s deliberately misusing the court system to effect social policy and run roughshod over separation of powers? Doesn’t exactly make him the good guy in my book.

But in a statement, he said his lawsuit was about principle, not money.