Hair Raising: Moukawsher Decision Declares War on Special Needs Students.
The state’s most vulnerable children, their families and their advocates are about to learn what a nasty piece of work is Thomas G. Moukawsher. The state court judge’s rambling “Cicero brief” ruling on state education funding garnered extensive press attention on Wednesday. The haughty and erratic decision takes direct aim at the state’s special education funding. The decision includes a cruel call for the abandonment from public schools of some students coping with the most serious disabilities. Expect a ferocious reaction from the compassionate when spin fades and the public and policymakers absorb the details of the decision and the chilling philosophy that informs . This is far more than a tussle over a cabana at Groton’s Shennecosset Beach Club, where the disputatious former Democratic state party committee factotum is a member. Those at risk cannot concede this critical struggle in the shadow of other education funding issues.
Teachers had reached a state of alarm late Wednesday night by the decision’s call for mandatory testing and performance evaluations. The plaintiffs will begin to tear themselves apart when members realize if the decision is ever implemented plenty of towns that consider themselves chronically shortchanged will be losing funding to the cities that already receive a large portion of state education money. Leave it to a leftwing elitist like Moukawsher, who sends his child to private school, to make a mess of the state’s public schools in an anti-democratic screed. State legislators are astounded that a Superior Court judge would order them to rework the state’s public education system within 180 days. Some of them are wondering if the grasping judge will threaten to hold all 187 of them in contempt next winter.
Court watchers are still remarking at Moukawsher’s raw display of narcissism by reading his long decision from the bench for more than three hours on Wednesday. Insiders know the amateur stagecraft served as a launch for the diva Moukawsher’s latest bid for a seat on the Federal bench. A vacancy is about to open with the August announcement of Judge Robert Chatigny’s retirement from the United States District Court, District of Connecticut after 22 years on the bench.
The china-and-glassware totin’ Moukawsher (he brings them to court for his lunch, to the bemusement of colleagues), may be hoping attention from the school funding case will mute the fury of a group of judges aware of an incident at the Norwich courthouse while the jurist with a startling case of entitlementitis was assigned there. The Norwich saga has been the subject of much discussion by a group of judges who dine at regular intervals and ruminate over doings in the Judicial Branch. What Moukawsher served Wednesday will give them and plenty of others indigestion until the case reaches on appeal a court more sober and competent.