Guest View: Retired teacher clarifies perspective on legal matter

Picture this. Your child is autistic and non-verbal. School has been a real challenge through the years but your child just finished the seventh grade, and had a very good year. This seventh grade class was tailored to the student’s needs. They used technology every day to improve their learning and to help them communicate. They had a school-wide recycling program to help raise money and teach the students life skills. They were in the kitchen learning about cooking and more life skills almost every day. In fact, the district remodeled the kitchen basically for this class. The class had frequent field trips. The teacher was consulting with the high school, where many of these life skills would continue, to prepare for a smooth transition after their eighth grade. Possibly the most important part is the class had an exceptional teacher that understood these students’ needs and the classroom instructional aides were some of the district’s most experienced and compassionate people. You were truly looking forward to having a great final year of middle school for your child. There was no reason to think otherwise. No one knew what was about to happen. This class was going to be dismantled. However, the district found no wrongdoing!
On the last day of school a meeting was called to divide up a group of 20 students. Five of those students were from the class I just described. These are some of our most severely disabled and neediest students in the district and the person who knew them best, their teacher, wasn’t even told about the meeting. We divided up those five students very randomly. I got two of those students by choosing student A or B, then C or D. When those students started their last year of middle school, they and their parents were thrown into turmoil. Nothing was the same. Why would this district want to treat these kids and their parents with such disregard? These parents and family members have enough challenges in life. I guess there was no wrongdoing!
One of those five students was assigned to a class and a teacher, but spent from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. in a room with three adult aides assigned to him, for more than two months. I tried and tried to get people to look at this injustice being played out by these administrators. No one would listen. Board members were prevented from talking to me. The district investigated and found no wrongdoing!
So how would you feel if this happened to your child or to a family member’s child or just a friend’s child? I think outrage might sum it up for most people. Sounds to me like we need some administrators that know the difference between right and wrong! Please contact your Hollister school board trustees and insist they hold people accountable for this injustice to our special needs community. Stop the lying, denying, clean house, apologize and move on.
Roger Brown is a retired teacher from Rancho San Justo School.