[hanamizu]

“...placed in residential treatment to finish is FAPE (free, appropriate public education). But they never want to spend the money. He was 17, wouldn’t have taken much.”

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“they never want to spend the money” is your answer right there. Although assuming he had an IEP (and I’ll bet he did) they have to educate him until the day before his 22nd birthday.

To quote Dickens, “The law is an ass”.

[Red Badger]

While the quote is used in Dickens’ novel, “Oliver Twist”, it is much older than that by a couple of centuries, and even then it’s origin is in dispute..............

https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/the-law-is-an-ass.html