June 06, 2005
‘Mom, make them stop’
County case shows impact of others’ attitudes on special ed
kids, advocates say
By The Associated Press
State and federal laws require schools to educate all students, including special education students whose behavior could be deemed a threat to themselves or others. An Associated Press review shows educators use juvenile petitions against special education students. Also, a high number of special education students are in alternative education programs and in juvenile detention centers. This story, the last in a five-part series, looks at how a school system dealt with one student.
By Jennifer Bundy
The Associated Press
Anne Gentry can pinpoint when her autistic son’s life changed: It was the day other students goaded him into licking bird droppings off a car window.
When a 10th-grade teacher told Gentry about the incident, she asked how he had responded. He told her he didn’t do anything and added, “That’s what happens when you put kids like Logan in a regular classroom.”
Logan Gentry, then 16, had largely done well in public schools until that day. His school life soon turned into a nightmare of violence, accusations, suspensions and a temporary “classroom” in a windowless football field locker room.
It ended with a $460,000 settlement with the Kanawha County school board in April 2004, by far the largest out-of-court monetary settlement between a West Virginia school system and a special education child in at least the last five years, according to an Associated Press survey of county school superintendents.
Logan’s high school experience is an example of how the attitudes of school administrators, teachers and other students toward special education children influences — and can exacerbate — behavior problems, advocates and educators familiar with the case say. Those problems can end up forcing children out of school and into alternative placements, and they can lead to lengthy, expensive court proceedings.
Gentry blames the teacher, who was new to Sissonville High School in 1999, for her son’s problems. With that teacher’s acquiescence, students who had once been Logan’s friends began to treat him badly.
“At one point he said, ‘Mom, make them stop saying things to me,”’ she said.
article continues at link:
http://www.wvgazette.com/section/News/Other%20News/200506054_