MAINSTREAM STRUGGLE
Mother fights schools for autistic daughter
By HALLIE PICKHARDT
Journal staff writer
Layla Head, a 15-year-old eighth-grader, loves the freedom of middle school.
She rides the bus to Herndon Middle School each day and walks the halls with
mainstream students.
For Layla, who is autistic and retarded, the social opportunities at Herndon
Middle School are crucial to her development, said Leila Head, Layla's mother.
But if Fairfax County school officials have their way, Head said, her
daughter will be attending school an hour-and-a-half from home at Kilmer
Center, a special school for students with moderate retardation, autism and
severe disabilities.
Instead of keeping Layla in special education classes at her neighborhood
school, Head said, Fairfax wants to ``segregate'' her daughter at an
isolated center.
Please see LAYLA, A7
``They're clinging to an old kind of paradigm that says you just keep kids
with disabilities hidden away,'' Head said of Fairfax County schools. ``We
would like to see more inclusion, and the county's gone the opposite way to
Kilmer Center.''
Head said she was told by school officials in a December meeting that Layla
could be better served at Kilmer Center. The recommendation came as a shock,
said Head, who thought the meeting was to discuss her daughter's progress at
Herndon Middle School.
The meeting was continued to Jan. 27, and Head has spent the interim
organizing a protest of disabled community members and parents of disabled
children that she said will occur in tandem with the meeting.
This is not the first time Head has challenged school policy regarding her
daughter. Last summer, after her mother protested, Layla traveled to summer
school in a special air-conditioned van instead of a traditional school bus
because her summer school program was more than an hour from her home.
Head said she is also hoping for a decision from the U.S. Department of
Education's civil rights office requiring that her daughter be permitted to
take elective classes with mainstream students. She currently is not
included in such classes.
School officials said recommendations by the Individualized Education
Program (IEP) which evaluates each special education student's needs and
discusses them with the child's parents, are meant to best serve each child.
Although the IEP committee and the student's parents may not always agree
initially, the vast majority of conflicts are resolved, said Kitty
Porterfield, Fairfax County schools spokeswoman.
A recommendation by the IEP is not necessarily the final outcome for the
student, Porterfield added. Parents can also appeal the IEP's recommendation
to an administrative board if they can't reach an agreement, Porterfield said.
School officials said they could not comment specifically on Layla Head's
case, but Mary Kealy, director of special education for Area III schools,
which includes Herndon Middle School, said the school district has made
great strides in working with schools to meet the needs of both special
education and mainstream students.
Both School Superintendent Daniel A. Domenech and Assistant Superintendent
Alice Farling are committed to creating ``inclusive'' classroom environments
and their efforts have been acknowledged by some parents in the special
education community, Porterfield said.
Still, in some situations, Kealy said, students' needs can be more
appropriately met in a different setting, and Fairfax is fortunate to have
centers designed to help those students. As a former principal of Kilmer
Center, Kealy said disabled students have many opportunities to interact
with mainstream students who attend Kilmer Middle School, which is attached
to the center.
Volunteer programs, which recruit mainstream students to work and socialize
with students at the Kilmer Center, have been very successful, Kealy said.
Social opportunities can be tailored to meet each student's needs, she said.
``I've been involved firsthand and know that it does occur,'' Kealy said, in
support of the school system's centers.
The goal of special education centers is to help all students with their
specialized needs, with the goal of returning them to their neighborhood
school, Kealy said.
But Marcie Roth, an advocate for the disabled, who will attend next week's
IEP meeting with Head, said Fairfax has a reputation and history of
excluding special needs students from mainstream schools. Repeatedly,
families have had to protest and ``go public'' to keep their disabled
children in neighborhood schools, she said.
``Fairfax has wonderful resources, and they don't use those resources to
educate kids in neighborhood schools,'' said Roth, who is director of
governmental affairs and public policy for a Baltimore-based international
disability advocacy organization. ``When they've been pushed to do that,
they've had wonderful results.''
Jill Jacobs, the mother of a 6-year-old with cerebral palsy, brought in
several lawyers and staged a public protest when Fairfax County school
officials decided to send her son to a special needs center instead of his
neighborhood school. If she hadn't decided to fight, Roth said, the school
system would have won by default.
Since her son has been at Fort Belvoir Elementary School, Jacobs said, his
development has been wonderful.
``He's thriving,'' she said. ``His [kindergarten] teacher just told me last
week, he's reading. He's showing what he knows. In other environments, he
was never willing to do that.''
Following Jacobs' lead, Head said, if necessary, she will fight to keep her
daughter at Herndon Middle School.
Head said she fears isolating her daughter in a center will stunt her
academic and social achievement. Learning from other mainstream students is
just as important as Layla's academic development, Head said. At Herndon
Middle School, Head said, Layla is benefiting in both areas.
``If she can get along with people,'' Head said of Layla, ``she can make it
in the world.''
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"To sin by silence when the should protest makes cowards of men." ~Abraham
Lincoln
|
