My Petitions:
http://www.change.org/petitions/teachers-punished-for-taking-stand-against-abuse
http://www.change.org/petitions/train-educators-to-recognizeprevent-abuse-of-disabled-students
MY STORY:
I am a speech therapist with the Los Angeles school district. For almost 4 years I have tried to stop the abuse of my disabled students at Widney "Special Education Center" where I worked. I have gone to every government, support and advocacy agency I can think of. I have contacted attorneys and the
ACLU. I have contacted the media and been told the story isn't "newsworthy" enough.
The school is in a poor area and attended by students of color with severe physical disabilities. THAT's why it isn't newsworthy. I started working at the school in August, 2007 and shortly after began expressing concern about the treatment of the students. That's also when administrators and some co-workers began retaliating against and/or harrassing me. However, the retaliation really intensified
when, at his request, a parent and I emailed our superintendent reports describing the
situation. He emailed copies of those reports to every administrator we'd identified as
having perpetrated, covered-up, ignored or condoned the abuse.
To keep me quiet, my supervisors reassigned me to another school for this last school year (2010-11) However, between me and some very determined parents, we were able to get the Dept of Education/Office of Civil Rights (OCR) to investigate the school. In February 2011, an attorney from OCR told me the district had acknowledged that without my "efforts" they
never would have done anything. As it is, they only made surface changes.
At about the same time the investigation was wrapping up, the superintendent gave a
newspaper report claiming that 7 months earlier (which was about 5 months after we'd
written the report) after a visit to the school, he'd put together a task force to "study"
the situation and give recommendations. He stated that he'd made another visit to the
school and found that it was no better. Following the recommendations made by the "task
force" (which in fact, were the same reccomendations the parent and I had made in our
report 5 m onths earlier), he "removed" the principal and assistant principal to the
district office where they occupied empty office at full pay for the rest of the year. He
made himself sound like a hero while he was still letting me be retaliated against and
telling people that mine was a "personnel" problem.
My supervisors replaced me last year with two therapists, neither of whom knew anything about
augmentative communication or would stand up for the kids' rights. It won't be any better
this next year.
I loved working with those students and I did not give a damn what color they are or what
they looked like. I did not and never will see them as some stupid label. They are
wonderful young people - as deserving as any other person their ages. They do NOT deserve
to be confined to a life under someone else's thumb simply because of a real or perceived
difference. They do NOT deserve to be used as an income source for some institution.
In this country, we speak of rights for all people but specifically minorities who have
been oppressed. Yet, even minorities oftenforget about those of their groups who are disabled when advocating for civil rights. Disabled people are the most oppressed minority in the world.
I can't change the world, but I can make a start. I can give my students the respect they
deserve and the tools they need to stand up for themselves. One of my students has already
died. Please help me prevent more deaths. Please help me give these students alternative
choices to living in institutions or under someone else's thumb for the rest of their
lives.
I created two online petitions and am reaching out to anyone I can to sign the petitions.
One is a petition to get me returned to the school and the other is to mandate that
teachers be trained in recognizing and responding to the abuse of disabled students.
Training would include recognizing and confronting negative attitudes, recognizing policies
and practices driven by such attitudes and understanding how negative attitudes and the
resulting policies and practices are abusive and/or increase a student's risk of abuse.
Please help give my students the means to raise their own voices against abusive treatment.
Here are the links again:
http://www.change.org/petitions/teachers-punished-for-taking-stand-against-abuse
http://www.change.org/petitions/train-educators-to-recognizeprevent-abuse-of-disabled-students
