The Richmond School Board paid a white law firm $31,000 in legal fees to avoid paying a Black professional’s $27,000 bill for doing consulting work in the case of a disabled student, half of which was to be paid by the state.

The board won an outright but expensive victory when state courts, in little noticed decisions, threw out Dr. Marla F. Crawford’s suit to collect for the assessment and observation work she was hired to perform, ruling that the school division did not have to pay.

In a final decision in early June, the state Supreme Court upheld retired Richmond Circuit Court Judge Melvin R. Hughes Jr.’s 2019 ruling that the board was protected from suit by the doctrine of sovereign immunity that bars legal action against governmental entities in their own courts if they have not consented to be sued.

The bottom line: School divisions and the state government can reject bills they do not want to pay in cases involving the federally mandated education of physically or mentally challenged students.

In Dr. Crawford’s view, the decision overturns state regulations requiring the state and schools to equally share the cost when a third-party hearing officer hires a consultant such as her to conduct an independent evaluation of a student challenging the provision of educational services as inadequate.

“That shouldn’t be right,” said Dr. Crawford, 54, a Virginia Union University graduate who has three master’s degrees and a doctorate in special education leadership. “I was called in to do the work at public expense, and now I am not going to get paid.” To add insult to injury, she said she has been ordered to pay $1,250 of the School Board’s legal fees to the Henrico County-based firm, Harmon Claytor Corrigan & Wellman P.C.

The law firm has not commented on the case. Richmond Public Schools’ spokesperson Sarah Abubaker stated that “this case has been settled by multiple courts, which found RPS the prevailing party. We do not have any further comment.”

The case grew out of a dispute over the education being provided to a Richmond high school student who suffered from multiple physical ailments that made it difficult for her to come to school on time and focus on her work.

When the school system and the student’s guardian could not reach agreement on accommodations and services to ensure the student received an appropriate education as federal law requires, the case, as provided under federal law and federal and state regulations, was heard before a due process hearing officer to make a determination on the course forward.

In December 2017, the hearing officer engaged Dr. Crawford, a veteran teacher who also owns and operates Elite Educational Consulting, to observe the student in the classroom and perform a functional behavioral analysis, according to court documents.

Dr. Crawford, who has taught math and science for 32 years in Virginia and Maryland high schools, said she has done one or two similar reports a year since launching her consulting firm in 2011 as a side business to her full-time work as a classroom teacher.

Dr. Crawford stated in court filings that between December and March, she spent 116 hours on the case, including spending 27 hours in classroom observation, reviewing the student’s records on attendance and performing multiple interviews.

The result, she stated, was a 104-page report with recommendations that went to the hearing officer and Richmond Public Schools and was incorporated into the proceedings involving the student along with three other evaluations assessing her vocational ability, her medical condition and her psychological state.

“No one raised any objections to my report,” Dr. Crawford said, “until I presented my bill.”

Despite repeated efforts, RPS continued to ignore her requests for payment. At one point, a school official offered to settle for $11,500, but that offer was dropped after the board hired the law firm to handle the matter.

After Dr. Crawford, who represented herself, sued to collect, she was met with stout resistance. Among other claims, Melissa Y. York, the attorney from the firm who handled the case for the school board, alleged the report contained grammatical and spelling errors and did not meet what it said were the standards for such reports.

Dr. Crawford noted that she had provided similar assessment reports to Richmond and other school divisions before and after this case and had not received such criticism or faced a struggle to get paid. “This was a first,” she said. “It was all about the money.”

While the case against Richmond is over, Dr. Crawford is not giving up. She said plans to pursue an effort to receive a portion of her fee from the State Department of Education, which was to pay half of the bill from that case, according to state regulations.

Meanwhile, she continues to work on behalf of other disabled students through her consulting firm.

“Right now, I’m working with the family of a special education student in Chesterfield County who was punched in the stomach by a teacher,” she said. “There are still plenty of children who need my help to ensure they get the education they deserve.”