Finding Our Place, Successes and Setbacks in the School System. Chapter 10, "Legal Fights with the School."

I'm Miriam. I'm a special-education teacher in Texas. I have two kids. My youngest child is 13 and has Asperger's. We found Asperger Experts five years ago, when he was first diagnosed.

Parenting him has been a joy. He's like an old soul with so much insight about history and life, especially compared to people his own age. When he was in third grade, his diagnosis was switched from ADHD to Asperger's. Starting with his therapist and then going through a psychiatrist and neurologist, he maintained that diagnosis.

Despite the multiple validations of his diagnosis, his school district refused to acknowledge it. In Texas, you can have the medical diagnosis and not have to be accommodated under the educational diagnosis. He ran circles around the other kids in terms of content and curriculum. So while they accommodated him under ADHD, they refused the autism diagnosis several times.

Some of the ways that he exhibited his sensory issues was diving under the desk and covering his eyes and ears or lying on the floor, which is something he still does. He's 6 feet 1 inch tall, which for a 13-year-old in gen ed can cause problems. I actually worked at the school that he was attending as a paraprofessional before I became a teacher.

During that time, they switched his placement from general ed to a special-ed self-contained classroom. He didn't really get a curriculum there. He had caring teachers that tried for a couple of years. And it was OK. It wasn't ideal. And he wasn't getting the rigor that he needed. But we dealt with it.

In fifth grade, things changed drastically. He shut down and wouldn't talk about school. There was no, what are you learning? What's going on? Nothing. He said, Mom, I don't want to talk about it. School was stressful enough, so I respected that and didn't want to stress him out more.

I went to pick him up one day for his regular medical check. And when I picked him up, the teacher wanted to have a word with me. He was loping around the school. And we found him behind the stage. We were going to be late for his appointment. So I rushed him into the car.

We got to the car, and he pulled his sleeves back. And I saw he was covered with bruises on his upper arm. He told me that they had dragged him into their calm-down spot, which was actually a closet. They literally dragged my child into a closet because he refused to go in.

At that point, I brought him straight back into the school. The teacher wouldn't come out of her room. But the principal and assistant principal met me in the nurse's office. We showed them the injury and asked why I wasn't informed and why he wasn't given ice. The principal and assistant principal knew nothing about it. And his teacher still wouldn't come out. They said they would look into it, and we left.

Seeking justice. Luckily for us, at the beginning of the year, we requested video surveillance in the classroom. In Texas, there's a law now that if you request it and you're self-contained, they have to provide video surveillance and audio surveillance. Law aside, the school said that we couldn't see the video of the incident. Thankfully, my husband is an attorney. And I have a background as a paralegal.

So we sent a letter to their legal department, telling them to hold on to the video and not erase it. After they received it, they called me back, and I came and reviewed the video. The teacher said that he was endangering himself and other people and that's why he had to go in the closet.

The video proved that she was lying. He was lying down in a little corner of the room because that's how he grounds. The teacher was out of the room at the time. But the paraprofessional told him that he needed to get up and do his work. But he was in his cool-down spot, acting appropriately, and didn't comply.

Meanwhile, the other children were eating snacks. And he wanted a snack too. But because he wasn't doing his work, he didn't earn a snack. So what he did was he was walking around the room on his knees, just avoiding going into the closet.

Then the other teacher came in, and they grabbed him under the arms and dragged him into the closet. He was there all day except for lunch, although after lunch, he was sent right back in there. It didn't have a floor. It didn't have any sensory items. It didn't have anything. There was no way for a child to be able to manage their emotions and calm down. It was a jail cell.

We were later able to get the log records for the closet. And they weren't singling out my son. This was a brand-new teacher with a new paraprofessional with no training or support. This was their style of classroom management. Kids in his class were forced to spend their entire days in that closet for even the smallest behavioral infractions.

It's been a whole journey and a half. It's been lie after lie, despite the tape of the incident. There's even been retaliation. He got suspended for three days on false allegations that he hit a teacher, was starting classroom riots, et cetera.

My son's therapist called Child Protective Services on the teacher because he was clearly injured. CPS actually stood on the side of the teacher and the staff. Even after viewing the tapes, they refused to alter their report and said that there was no finding of abuse. That was incredibly discouraging.

After that, I aligned with a parent group in our district called Parents for Special Education Reform. I took pictures, addressed the school board about the incident, and picketed out front. It was validating to participate in those types of activities. But it was also outright horrifying and appalling.

Through the group, I learned that it wasn't limited to just our school. It was going on throughout the entire district, mostly with lower functioning special-ed kids that couldn't speak out. We were able to get the district to agree to an investigation into special education in our district, although what they gave us was an audit.

One of the major positives of this was that they removed all of the doors off the closets in the classrooms that were self-contained and retrained staff on crisis prevention and de-escalation techniques. That was a really big win for my son. He wanted to protect other kids from having to go through what he did.

At the same time, we wanted to take it a step further because what was going on was just so horrifying. However, in Texas, you have to exhaust what's called due process before you can go to a federal complaint for seclusion. So we filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights, which is kind of like the ACLU, as it investigates allegations of discrimination based on disability.

OCR did open up an investigation, as we had all the videos pictures and records of log. They reached a resolution with the district to provide my son with compensatory services and to not seclude him anymore. Unfortunately, their resolution meant that I couldn't pursue mediation nor were there any remaining records of the incident.

If you were to look today, you couldn't find any incidence of seclusion in my school district. Any record of my complaint disappeared. And my son doesn't populate in their system. There is no federal, state, or local record that this is happening to the children. It's all swept under the rug. I think the most difficult part for us was that my son suffered damages. He suffered physical and psychological damages.

For my husband and I, it was important to have accountability from the district, for them to acknowledge that they did this and that they lied about the tape. We initially tried to file with the district attorney to press charges. But there was again another hoop. They don't let you just go and do that. And we went through what was called a liaison officer with the sheriff's department.

Ultimately, despite the liaison officer's efforts, the DA's office declined charges, saying that there was nothing they could do. The way the laws are written, you cannot bring a tort case for injury against a school district, even in the instance of severe physical injury or death, unless it's on transportation. However, you can sue in federal court for violating rights. But again, you have to exhaust due process. And the price tag on due process is roughly $30,000.

That's a lot of money. And most families just don't have that type of money sitting around. The families that I met who had similar situations withdrew their children from the school system and moved to homeschooling.

Fortunately for us, my husband was able to figure out the process and file the things we needed. So we were lucky. We paid nowhere near $30,000. We just had filing fees and the time taken away from my husband's caseload.

This is one of the things that I would love to see changed in this world. If you are injured or secluded at a school, you should be able to go ahead and proceed to federal court on claims without having to spend $30,000 so you can have a hearing with the Texas Education authority.

Through that process, we tried to petition to see videos of the other days, not just the days that he was in the closet. The district fought us and fought us and fought us. And finally, someone with the TEA said that we have the right to see the tape. It turns out that all the other days outside of the two that we had already seen were accidentally deleted.

The district came back and offered my son just shy of $50,000 to drop the due process complaint and the federal complaint. We asked our son about it. And the first thing that came out of his mouth was, Daddy's a lawyer, and I trust him. But what about all the other kids? That was a real heart-wrenching moment.

We also consulted with people who do education law on a daily basis and were informed that these cases can take five years to get to a federal court in a costly process. We weren't in a position to go further with that. So we settled and put the money in an account for him.

The sticking point for me is that there's still no record. There's no record of abuse. There's no record of seclusion. The teacher and paraprofessional did get fired at the end of the year. But like I said, it wasn't just my child. It wasn't just my school. It wasn't and isn't just Texas. That's the part that just hurts so much.

We live just five minutes down the road from NASA. We are a very educated community. Our property taxes, our education taxes are extortionate. We have a great school district that is funded by those taxes. It's excellent for general education and gifted, talented programs. Kids in those gifted programs are building airplanes. But they're not appropriately funding special-ed programs that so many people need.

What's happening now? The whole process has been so incredibly hard and draining on my son. He had PTSD for a good long time. The most horrible thing he's ever said to me was, I wish my disability was more profound because then I wouldn't know how bad it was at school.

Once the teachers got fired, one of the other students from the program actually punched my son in the face because he was so upset that his favorite teacher got fired. I was out of town for a funeral. And I came back. And my sons had a bruise on his cheek. The next day, my son kept passing out.

We took him to the pediatrician, and they couldn't find anything out either. The following day, he was throwing up and continuing to pass out. It was shortly after that when we learned that he had actually hit a cabinet and had a concussion.

He is in middle-school now. They have a self-contained structured learning lab, which is designed for kids who are on the spectrum. He's still missing some of the academic rigor that he wants. But they do understand the accommodations, and they give him what he needs. If he needs to go rest on the floor, by golly, he can go rest on the floor. There are no worries about being secluded or restrained.

Unfortunately, that program ends in eighth grade, and they send him straight to high school in general ed. They will send a para around. And if a teacher has raised a red flag, the para will go in and see what she can do to help. So it's something. But in my opinion, it's not sufficient or adequate.

I did have a conference call with the special-education director of the district. And he said that when he gets to high school, they could create a program for him. Given our experience, I don't actually believe they will. But we'll see what happens.