Barry
Grushkin
June Loeffler
112 Perkins Street
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
June 27, 2005
Carol Lennon
Assistant Program Director Cl. 8
Boston Public Schools (BPS)
Campbell Resource Center
1216 Dorchester Avenue – 2nd Floor
Dorchester, MA 02125
Re: IEP and Placement for Anaya Grushkin
Dear Ms. Lennon:
This letter includes:
• Top
Nonnegotiable Demand
• Context
• Summary
• Rejection of
Placement
•
Rejection of the Summer Program Offered by BPS
• Request for New and
Appropriate Placement
• A
copy of a previous letter sent BPS on this topic
•
Excerpts from Massachusetts regulations regarding restraining
students
Attached find:
Acceptance letter for extended evaluation for home based
services, IEP accept/reject form with a partial rejection,
placement rejection form.
Top Nonnegotiable Demand
We reject the placement at The Mary Lyon School. We want the
option to transfer our choice of either the Baldwin Early
Learning Center or the Mason School.
The reason: The Mary Lyon School has a policy of and staff
training in using restraint and punitive approaches on SPED
children. Such methods are totally inimical and dangerous to
the personal and psychological well being of a child with NLD,
PDD, Asperger’s and Autism Spectrum disorders such as our
daughter, Anaya Grushkin. The inappropriate and illegal
application of these methods has severely traumatized a
defenseless, sweet five-year-old girl, causing more than just
drastic regression. It has cause psychological harm. Anaya’s
six months at the Mary Lyon turned a happy child into a one
with ongoing intrusive thoughts, fears, nightmares, fear of
going to sleep, which her therapist has diagnosed as
Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, also called Shell Shock. The
staff working with our daughter had no idea of the appropriate
interventions.
BPS is in violation of disability laws, as typically
developing children know by this time what school they will be
in next year. A child with a disability such as our daughter
has the same right. Further BPS’s delay and neglect has caused
irreparable harm and pain and suffering for a child and her
family.
BPS’s response to what we consider to be an imminently
reasonable request: Take it to court. Which is just one of
many of their delay tactics.
Go Top
Context
The following summary of Boston Public Schools (BPS) behavior,
strategy, and approach to Special Needs children represents a
culling of findings reported at a Boston Special Education
forum organized by City Councilor at-Large Felix Arroyo.
Present and of particular value were recently retired Special
Needs Staff and administrators from BPS. Also present and of
value were people from legal organizations that have dealt
with BPS, as well as advocates and parents. The following
represents some of the statements made at the meeting. If BPS
does not respond to the contrary these will be considered the
facts.
• Boston Public Schools (BPS), from the very top, meaning
Thomas W. Payzant the superintendent of schools, considers
many students with disabilities and special needs to be
undeserving, and simply “faking” and exaggerating their needs.
The superintendent of school system gets angry at the
suggestion that these students’ needs and disabilities are
real. There is little or no interest in the extensive body of
science or law having to do with children with special need
and disabilities other than to use this knowledge to subvert
its intent, and to minimize responsibilities. The policy set
by the current superintendent and promulgated throughout the
entire Special Needs department of BPS, via directives and
serious staff intimidation is to do whatever is necessary to
delay and minimize services. At the same time, BPS is aware of
the law and seeks in form only to look compliant, and yet get
away with doing as little as possible.
• The result is hundreds if not thousands of families shocked
and exhausted that their child is not able to obtain their
necessary, and by-law, rightful, services. They are either
frightened away, maneuvered away, manipulated away, worn down
or intimated; this all in a situation of having a child with
special needs which is exhausting and costly enough as is.
This is BPS policy. It is system wide.
• There is very clear scientific evidence as to the kinds of
interventions and support required for children on the autism
spectrum. Early, appropriate and sensitive interventions are
essential for the long-term quality of life of these students.
There are in fact federal guidelines, and states such and New
York and New Jersey have statewide standards. The Federal and
Massachusetts State Laws and Regulations are clearly written
with the intent of giving strong support to students with
special needs. A number of parents felt and it was generally
agreed that BPS sees parents who seek services for their child
as their enemy and they are treated as such. Some participants
felt that BPS should be working to gain more State and Federal
funding if this is the issue. Others felt that BPS has good
services potentially available, but that their implementation
is subverted by inexplicable directives from superiors.
• City Councilor at-Large Felix Arroyo personally handed a
letter to BPS superintendent Thomas W. Payzant requesting
being allowed to contact all parents of children with special
needs. BPS response was to delay. To date he still has not
been given access.
• BPS’s legal department runs the plays, as we have seen in
our and other cases. They have the instructions to do all
possible to avoid giving services. They play the game smartly
and repeatedly for each family with SPED children. Parents
come to this new as naive individuals who do not have a chance
given BPS’s level of experience and coordination, not to
mention the least of which this is all funded by the very same
parents’ tax dollars. The parents pay three times over – for
BPS lawyers, for their attempts to get services form BPS with
their own time, experts and legal team, for the services they
have to pay our of pocket when BPS does not follow the law.
There is no control on the cost expended by the BPS legal team
to fight parents. BPS’s attitude is that you will have to
expend substantial sums to fight us if you want these legally
required services. BPS gives deep pockets to their legal team
and their whole “fight the parent” infrastructure rather than
to the services they should. The average family does not stand
a chance. BPS owes the public a statement of their legal cost.
However, this would not indicate the person/years of effort
and costs expended by other BPS staff attempting to subvert
the law whether the do so on their own free will or out of
fear for their jobs.
Go Top
Summary
A five-year-old girl has been physically and emotionally
abused by your system.
• We put our daughter, Anaya, who was diagnosed with PDD-NOS,
in the Boston Public Schools having faith and belief that they
would have her best interests in mind, and that they would
work with us to keep her safe, happy and developing in the
right direction. On the contrary, she was abused and,
frightened, and a happy child was turned into one with
Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome.
• Rather than gaining the essential inputs to her development
over the last two years, her disability was initially
minimized, so that insufficient services were provided, and in
terms of speech and language support, did not receive any
services for more than six months after she was initially
identified as requiring services.
• In addition, when we initially set up Anaya’s Core
Evaluation, even though we indicated to the ETF we spoke with
that one of Anaya’s primary areas of deficit was in her social
skills, no one bothered to tell us that access to the services
she required would involve an evaluation by a speech-language
therapist, and thus this essential evaluation did not occur
until four months after the other evaluations.
• We have lost two of the most important years for
intervention as a consequence of delays by BPS.
• Further, Anaya’s diagnosis, PDD-NOS, is on the autism
spectrum. She is not a behavior problem, and interventions
designed for children with emotional and behavior problems are
totally inappropriate and even dangerous for Anaya. The
Assistant Superintendent of BPS (who had been the principal of
the school our child was in before this year told us) that
they knew all about how to work with children such as ours.
However, one of the interventions used was physical restraint,
totally contrary to Anaya’s needs, her best interest, state
regulations and laws. (See the last section below for excerpts
from these regulations.)
• The regulations are clear. That restraint is only to be used
if a child endangers someone. Action that frightens another
human being in a way they are fearful of their safety is
legally an assault. What BPS did deeply frightened our
daughter and the result was weeks of sleep disruptions and
nightmares, caused by Anaya’s anxieties and fears around
disciplinary actions the school staff had taken.
• Throughout the year we were denied access to the classroom.
Our attempts to work with the staff to ensure that similar
incidents were not repeated resulted in staff insisting that
it must have been something we did; in fact, denial that their
actions could have resulted in Anaya’s difficulties. Our
request for staff training was ignored. We wrote the school
time and again but were ignored. We told the school that there
were many experts who could help them in their understanding,
but they refused to make use of them.
• We removed Anaya from the school two months ago at the
advice of her therapist. We explained by letter that Anaya’s
anxieties were too great, and we feared for her emotional
health if she continued attending the Mary Lyon School. It
took nearly a month for Anaya’s anxiety attacks to subside
from the level they were at when she left school (at least
once a day, usually at night as she was falling asleep, and
sometimes two or three times a day). She still has anxiety
attacks.
• We wrote a month ago rejecting the placement, stating we
will not return our child to the Mary Lyon School. When we
phoned the ETF (BPS’ administrative liaison to our education
team) working with our case last week, he challenged us to go
ahead and take this to court. He had received our placement
rejection letter but took no action other than to forward the
letter to BPS legal department. A copy of this letter is
included bellow.
• The ETF said the Boston Schools decision is to keep our
child in the same school. Therefore our daughter’s status is
in limbo. We are educating her privately at great personal
expense and effort until this matter can be resolved. We will
not allow our daughter to be in the control of the staff at
the Mary Lyon School.
• We have identified schools in the BPS system we would like
Anaya transferred to with appropriate supports (and this
includes a trained one-on-one aide under the supervision of
someone knowledgeable about her disability), but we have so
far been refused. Allowing our child to be in limbo in the
fall will cause her substantial regression.
• Anaya has regressed substantially over this last year, and
even more so if she is measured against age-appropriate
progress. She will continue to regress until there are
appropriate interventions in place. We started with a happy
free spirited girl. We now have a frightened, traumatized
girl, who has stated several times that she does not wish to
return to the Mary Lyon School, even though she remains close
to and continues to see on a regular basis several of her
classmates.
• Highly regarded experts confirmed Anaya’s social and
emotional regression. These experts, when we finally got them
in the classroom for observation, said the program was
inappropriate.
• We also want to state for the record that we sent numerous
letters and expert reports to the Mary Lyon School and our ETF
about the problems we were having and our daughter’s needs.
These were referred to at later meetings, including some we
tape recorded. However, none of these letters and reports
appeared in our daughter’s SPED folder, whose contents we
requested before the last IEP meeting. We know that BPS
received these as they have been talked about. This calls into
question whether or not these letters and reports have been
included in her official file, as they should be. Considering
there are continual verbal references to these letters and
reports, we must assume they exist in an unofficial file for
our daughter. However, this still constitutes a SPED file on
our daughter and it is our right to see copies of what is in
it. If not, this totally calls into question either the
competence of BPS to keep track of material handed to them, or
whether there is a purposeful intent to subvert important
information. We have copies of these records, as well as of
the materials handed out at team meetings, and would be happy
to send them. We would like the SPED file to be complete and
up to date including all reports and letters.
Go Top
Rejection of IEP
For the record, we reject the IEP (Indevidual Education Plan)
for Anaya Grushkin in part, in particular because of the
inappropriate placement; because it does not contain issues
agreed upon at previous IEP meetings; the goals and objectives
are not measurable and many not appropriate; and this does not
represent an IEP appropriate for the disabilities of our
child. An expanded list of issues is stated below. However, we
will complete our list after reviewing the tapes of the last
IEP meetings.
1. The parents vision statement is not in the appropriate
place.
2. Many of the goals and objectives are not only inappropriate
they do not reflect agreements made. They are not
independently measurable or verifiable. The language created
by BPS is vague and without implementation or verification
value.
3. The IEP does not reflect previous team meeting agreements
and fallback rights to agreements in previous IEPs.
4. It does not reflect the requirements and recommendations
made by the independent neuro-psychologist, the independent
psychologists, neurologist and other experts.
5. It does not reflect, respond to and even contain the
accommodations handed to the team at the last meeting.
6. It does not reflect, respond to or even contain references
to the programmatic and behavior programs and needs discussed
at the IEP meeting and in the papers handed to the team.
7. The titles of the participants at the IEP meeting are
incorrectly stated in ways to obscure their true credentials
8. There is no response or even acknowledgement of curriculum
issues handed out at IEP meeting.
9. There is no mention of our agreement to have a psychologist
in the service grid.
10. One of the goals states that our daughter will be taught
consequences, which is a very dangerous precedent as our
daughter has a neurological disorder that makes this only
possible with very specific and skilled interventions. It
offers license to the kinds of inappropriate treatment by
staff that severely traumatized Anaya in the first place.
11. There is no mention of the important sensory
accommodations that are needed for her to function in an
inclusion classroom, such as frequent breaks, special seating,
or the use of a raised table surface.
12. There is no mention of how hard it is for her to operate
when more than ten people are in a room.
13. Though it states that Anaya needs to learn under a small
group situation, there are no indications of where or how or
under what circumstance or context these small groups will be
constructed, nor what size constitutes a “small group”.
14. It does not contain recommendations made by BPS staff at
this and previous team meetings.
15. It does not respond to the letters sent in response to
previous rejection of IEP, including a letter give to the ETF
more than a year ago stating the parents’ ten most important
issues.
16. It in no way guarantees that physical restraint will not
be illegally used against our child again.
17. It in no way guarantees that our daughter will not be
abused again.
18. It does not contain a one-on-one aide for Anaya, which has
been recommended by several experts who have worked with her,
including the neuro-psychologist, psychologist and her current
therapist.
19. It does not offer 10 hours of Floortime, DIR and RDI for
our daughter as recommended by a range of independent
psychologists, in reports handed to BPS more than a year ago.
20. It does not contain RDI for our child
21. It does not contain training for staff working with her,
something agreed at the last IEP meeting.
22. The document is purposeful vague and poorly written so as
to minimize any clarity and accountability for her program and
to give BPS the maximum latitude not to individualize her
program.
In addition, we had an agreement a year ago to have a BPS
psychologist on Anaya’s case as part of her services, to meet
with her one-on-one once a week, and assist the
speech-language therapist in one session a week. This
agreement in part appeared on her IEP a year ago. However,
BPS, changed the IEP without our knowledge or consent, fitting
the services to the placement, and not the other way around.
The new IEP proposed to us still promulgates this arrogant
disregard for the law and parents’ rights.
Go Top
Rejection of the
Placement
We reject the placement at the Mary Lyon School. We will never
allow our child to be in the control of persons at that school
at any future date. This was dealt with at length in our
letter to Bill Henderson. A copy is attached.
An email was sent to Bill Henderson on June 6, 2005, stating
our rejection of the placement and the reasons. I spoke with
Bill by phone on June 22, 2005 and he acknowledged receiving
this letter. His only response was to send this letter to the
BPS legal department.
As we have stated before many times, the reasons we were
forced to remove her include:
• She has been illegally restrained. She is a sweet
five-year-old girl with an autism spectrum disorder, not
behavior problems. There can be no justifications for
restraining her.
• We were informed by the principal that her IEP was written
in a way the makes her look like a behavior problem in order
get her into this school which specialized in behavior
management problem children. We were subsequently told by
experts we consulted that it is highly inappropriate for
children on the spectrum to be mixed with students with
behavioral problems.
• She has been severely traumatized and psychologically
damaged, changing from a happy girl to one with Post-Traumatic
Stress Syndrome.
• No one working with Anaya had significant experience with
dealing with children with high-functioning autism and the
school refused any training, even at our expense, until April;
even at that point, they delayed further by insisting they had
to see if they could identify a BPS resource, instead of using
one of the consultants who had been working, through us, with
Anaya since October 2004.
• Our daughter was abused as a result of being handled by
methodologies inappropriate to her condition, namely restraint
and punitive approaches to teaching behavior. A knowledgeable
psychologist illegally deleted from her IEP service page might
have been able to prevent this.
• The school refused us legal access to the classroom, and
access to the classroom for our experts as well, until we
threatened legal action, and even then the access for our
educational consultants was extremely limited. Also, we
observed the school rearranging the program and taking out the
other SPED children during these visits. Nonetheless, they
were able to see that the program was inappropriate, Anaya had
regressed, and that the staff had little or no knowledge of
appropriate interventions.
The school has shown time and again that it uninterested in
the well being of our child. They have refused training. They
have refused to be honest communicators of what goes on with
our child in the classroom. They have refused to take the
actions necessary for the well being of our child. We have
several instances documented where the teacher described
Anaya’s day as terrific in her take-home journal, which was
not borne out by the observations of our outside expert
observers of the same day. They reported much the opposite.
We will never send our daughter to be under the control of a
school that illegally restrained her and has caused deep
psychological harm to her. We will never allow her to be in
the hands of staff that have no knowledge of how to
appropriately deal with her disability. The nature of the
school staff dealing with our child, their lack of training,
and ignorance of what was appropriate, has been stated, and
documented, time and again, and no one from BPS to date has
disagreed.
The many nights of sleep disruptions our daughter endured has
been a major and costly disruption to our family. The monetary
damages and suffering we have endured can never be fully
compensated for. What was done at school was read by our
daughter as abuse. Therefore, it was legally an assault.
Anyone who knew what appropriate interventions should look
like would have not followed this course.
The law and Massachusetts State regulations regarding use of
restraint are clear – they are only to be used in extenuating
circumstances when there is the potential of harm to the child
or other children, which was clearly never, ever the case
here. I saw restraint applied when all that my daughter wanted
to do was to go home with me and was fussing. The problem is
that the use of restraint for SPED children is a policy at the
Mary Lyon School. This is widely known among staff at BPS, but
parents are never told this.
Our experts have stated and will state again, and experience
has shown out, that restraint is in fact contrary to the needs
of children with diagnoses such as Anaya and is actually
detrimental. There are well-understood methods that have
nothing to do with restraint.
We are including, as an addendum, a few relevant excerpts of
these regulations.
I would like to add that at the Mary Lyon School we were also
refused access to the after school program which violated our
daughter’s rights under the disability act. We were told there
was not enough staff. Though we were told that she does not
need a one-on-one aid in the class the fact that she did not
have one was used as a reason to not give her the service of
the after school program. The policy applied to other SPED
children, also violating their legal rights. She missed out on
key time with her peers, and a key time were intervention
could have occurred.
Further, the principal at the school directly told us we not
allowed to exchange contact information with other parents,
even when they offered it on their own free will. This strikes
one as a constitutional issue regarding the right of free
association. The school system is a public system, supported
by the taxpayers.
Go Top
Rejection of BPS
Summer Program
This was also referred to in our letter to Bill Henderson.
We can only reject the summer placement, as we know nothing
about it. The letter from Ms. Jill Sweeney offers us no
information on which to make any other decision. There was no
indication of which program Anaya would be sent to, what the
daily schedule of the camp was, what kind of children would be
her peers, and what the background and experience of the staff
was – all information we had requested be sent to us in April
to help us make an informed decision.
At an IEP meeting a more than a year ago Bill Henderson stated
BPS did not have an appropriate summer program for our
daughter. At the last IEP meeting Richard Azstalos stated that
it cannot be determined till the last minute, if there will
even be the right cohorts for a program for our child. We have
not been allowed to view any program so we cannot give
consent, particularly given our experience over the last year.
Given that physical restraint was used against our child,
illegally and without our permission, at the last placement
and that the staff working with Anaya was not trained and
caused her to have Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, we cannot
blindly place our daughter in a program that is not described,
indeterminate, where we have not be allowed to meet any staff
and under and IEP we do not agree with.
As we stated in our letter to Bill Henderson, since Boston did
not offer a placement for Anaya in a timely way, we have been
required to make payment and arrangements for a private summer
placement. This includes the one-on-one aide that our daughter
requires.
Our daughter was very successful in this summer placement last
year. Any change would be traumatic and cause regression.
Continuity is essential. We have asked for financial
compensation, but again we never got a response.
Go Top
New Placement
Although we have rejected the placement a month ago we have
not received any indication or discussion of a new placement.
Most non-disabled students by this time know what placement
they have. A change of placement mid-term next year would
cause server regression for our child, so an appropriate
placement needs to be identified immediately. As we have
stated before, in the letter to Bill Henderson, we will hold
BPS responsible for all expenses incurred with respect to our
private funding of interventions and our daughter’s education,
until they can produce an appropriate placement. We require a
payment on this immediately.
We have identified two schools, the Samuel Mason Elementary
School and the Baldwin Early Learning Center, which we have
visited and believe would work for Anaya. These become the
only acceptable choices, as we will never again allow our
child to be placed in a program without a full and complete
observation and review by ourselves. It is Boston’s
responsibility to produce a placement.
Attached find a copy of the letter sent to Bill Henderson June
9, 2005 and to which he acknowledged he received in our last
phone conversation. We have also included the addendum on the
regulations on use of restraint.
Thank you kindly,
Barry Grushkin
Father of Anaya Grushkin
Go Top
Previous Letter Sent on This
Topics
112 Perkins Street
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
617-524-3051
June 2, 2005
William Henderson
ETF
Boston Public Schools (BPS)
Dear Bill:
We are writing to reject
placement at the Mary Lyon
School. We wish to reject
the placement retroactively
to the date we first agreed
to the placement. This is
based on the following
grounds.
• We were given fragmented,
inaccurate, misleading,
late, and incomplete
information about the school
before we agreed, and were
not shown any other
potential placements before
the school year ended in
June 2004. We were also not
allowed to see classes at
the Mary Lyon School on a
typical day, as we were not
shown the school until the
day before school closed and
then only the last hour. We
were also not allowed to see
the classrooms of any other
schools in action.
• The decision was made
under duress as we were not
given any choice as to other
school options and we needed
some placement for our child
for the upcoming year.
• At all meetings with Mary
Lyon School staff in June
2004, a member of the SPED
central office was present,
which prevented full and
candid discussion. They said
this was policy, but this
policy was not applied to
all SPED children, nor to
non-SPED children, and is
thus contrary to law.
• Subsequent to our
acceptance of the Mary Lyon,
we learned that it is
commonly accepted knowledge
children with Asperger’s,
like Anaya, should not be
placed in classrooms with
children with emotional and
behavioral problems, as it
can have a negative impact
on their development. The
Mary Lyon was founded
specifically to deal with
children with these issues,
and while their mandate has
broadened over the years,
they still have a
significant number of
students with these
problems. This alone makes
the Mary Lyon an
inappropriate placement –
then and now – as BPS should
have known.
• During much of the
following school year, we
were vigorously discouraged
from observing the classroom
when our child was in class.
When we hired outside
consultants to observe the
classroom, on the few
instances they were allowed
in the class, the day’s
program was altered, and
other SPED children were
taken out of the class, so
they did not see the typical
class. Our daughter’s
psychologist was refused
access for most of the year
(until April 2005) and was
only allowed in for
observation after we
threatened legal action (and
after substantial emotional
harm to Anaya had occurred)
-purposefully denying us key
information, and preventing
home-school coordination on
many essential issues.
• Though the team did agree
at the April IEP meeting
that the school staff needs
training in handling
children on the Autism
Spectrum and in particular
how to work with children
like Anaya, the school was
unwilling to set a date or
to set the quantity of
training.
• We were not informed that
it was the school’s method,
staff training and policy to
use physical force and
restraint on special
education students, which is
totally at odds with our
child’s needs.
• We were not informed and
never gave permission for
the school to use physical
force and/or restraint on
our child at the school. We
have observed such restraint
applied both to our daughter
and to other students; our
daughter observed the
restraint of other students
as well.
• We have since learned that
no one working with Anaya
had substantive training or
experience in working with
high-functioning children on
the Autism spectrum like
Anaya, or in how to
appropriately intervene and
work with her.
• We learned from our
consultants, as they
reported at the last IEP
meeting, that the program is
inappropriate for our
daughter, and that she has
not made effective progress.
She has even regressed in
key areas of her education,
most especially in the area
of social skills, a key
component of her IEP goals
and overall needs.
• As the result of Anaya’s
treatment in the classroom
in early February, she began
suffering from nightly sleep
disruptions, ranging from
nightmares to trouble
falling to sleep to waking
in the middle of the night
and being unable to fall
back to sleep. This occurred
every night for close to a
month and has continued
intermittently ever since.
• Anaya also began
experiencing anxiety attacks
several times a day, most
especially just as she was
dropping off to sleep, where
she would beg whichever
parent was with her to help
her get rid of her “bad
thoughts”. Anaya’s
psychologist has indicated
that this is symptomatic of
someone suffering from
Post-Traumatic Shock
Syndrome. We have had to
increase Anaya’s time with
her home therapist to two
hours a week, at a
significant financial cost
to our family. There has
been substantial emotional
cost to every member of our
family as well.
Interventions diametrically
opposite to what was needed
have and will continue to
cause long-term harm to our
daughter’s well-being and
long-term quality of life.
Though earlier in the year
we told the school Anaya was
having nightmares, rather
than taking this matter
seriously, the school staff
sought to reject the idea
that this had anything to do
with their methodology.
Given what Anaya has shared
with us in terms of the
content of her thoughts and
dreams, we believe, as does
her therapist, that her
anxiety, fears, intrusive
thoughts, and nightmares are
a direct consequence of the
methods applied at the Mary
Lyon School, including the
use of physical force and
restraint.
Our daughter also has
repeatedly expressed to us
her unwillingness to return
to the Mary Lyon School (as
well as telling us daily
during February, March and
April that she didn’t want
to go to school). Lori
Hodgins, our educational
consultant, had asked us to
track this with Anaya, as
this is often a sign that
the current school situation
is not meeting a child’s
needs.
We also believe that we were
given false and inaccurate
representations of her
school day in the
communication journal that
was exchanged. For example,
although Richard Azstalos
mentioned at our April IEP
meeting that Anaya’s yelling
in the classroom was
significant enough to be
included in an “informal”
behavioral plan (to which we
were never given access) it
was never mentioned in the
journal.
In January, when two
classmates of Anaya
independently and without
solicitation told us that
she was screaming “a lot” in
the classroom, we related
this information to the
principal. Her response was
to tell us that we had no
right to solicit information
from other students.
In a related example of the
lack of professionalism
shown by the school staff,
when a heated discussion
ensured in the hallway
between Barry and the
principal about the
treatment of our daughter,
the school staff brought
Anaya out into the hall and
allowed her to witness this
interaction. As our daughter
increasingly showed her
nervousness and discomfort,
the principal insisted that
she was not showing signs of
anxiety and continued making
her points to us.
In addition, our IEP was
altered, without our
permission, to fit the
school’s staffing. While the
June 2004 IEP called for a
weekly one-on-one session
with a psychologist (a
service we accepted), the
IEP we saw in October had
changed that wording to
“counselor”, which is what
is available at the Mary
Lyon School. This occurred
without either permission or
even our notification. This
change has been promulgated
by BPS in its current
proposed draft of the IEP as
well, in spite of our
objection at the last IEP
meeting, as if to thumb its
nose at the law and our
fallback rights.
This kind of behavior by the
school has eradicated any
potential for trust or good
will between the parents and
the school. We have been
told time and again by the
experts that quality
home-school communication
and coordination is a key
ingredient for successful
interventions for children
like Anaya. Without adequate
trust, this goal is
impossible to achieve.
Anaya’s Current Status
At the advice of her
therapist, Naomi Chedd, and
of Karen Levine of North
Shore Arc, whom we had
consulted with previously
about Anaya, we removed
Anaya from the Mary Lyon
School as of April 25, 2005
because of our concerns for
her mental health. Under no
circumstances will we allow
Anaya to return to the Mary
Lyon School.
We ask that the OT and other
services Anaya is entitled
to under the June 2004 IEP
be delivered to her in
another BPS setting,
preferably a school in
Jamaica Plain that is
convenient to us, such as
the Agassiz, where Anaya
received OT in the spring of
2004.
We ask that BPS pay for the
following, which we are
currently paying out of our
own pocket, until BPS can
provide an appropriate
educational environment for
Anaya and services by
providers who have
experience and training in
the required skills:
-
Private
teacher
-
OT
-
Speech and
language
-
Psychological
-
Floortime
intervention
-
RDI
intervention
We ask for
compensatory services for this full year.
Our daughter not only did not receive an appropriate
classroom, she did not get appropriate services. This includes
OT, speech and language, psychotherapy and a full year of
support for social emotional development which she did not
get. It has been established that no one working with Anaya
had any substantive experience or training in her disability
and thus could not be reasonably expected to be able to
deliver the appropriate services. To the contrary she was
placed in an environment inimical to her well being. Anaya
also did not receive speech and language therapy during the
2003 – 2004 school year even though it was in her IEP.
Under the current June 2004 IEP, Anaya is also entitled to a
year-round program.
We request that BPS cover the cost of Anaya’s attendance (and
the cost of a full-time aide, which the camp requires for her)
at the Running Brook Day Camp, which she attended last summer.
Anaya had an extremely successful experience at the camp last
summer, making substantial social progress, and she has been
talking about returning to camp since January. Given the
stress and anxiety Anaya has been under at the Mary Lyon,
continuity in her summer program is especially important, in
order to give her an opportunity to recover from the traumas
of the last nine months.
Although Boston said they would produce a program for Anaya
for this summer, and said so at the last IEP meeting, since
they have not done so at this late date, we have been required
to already make arrangements and payment for this summer camp.
Further at the IEP meeting in the spring of 2004 you stated
that the Boston system does not have an appropriate summer
program for our daughter. Further, it has been agreed that our
daughter needs a 12-month program. Boston can at most offer a
20-day summer program.
Conclusion
In rejecting this placement retroactively, we are also
rejecting the involvement of the current team. They have not
shown sufficient understanding of our daughter’s disability or
her educational and emotional needs and have instead operated
in ways that have caused significant emotional harm to Anaya.
We ask that we move to work with the pervious team in our home
area, the Currly School, as we are unwilling to attend IEP
meetings at the Mary Lyon School.
We will find unacceptable any response from BPS that claims
that they feel the Mary Lyon School is appropriate for Anaya.
This is clearly not the case. Since this rejection is
retroactive we consider that we never made such a placement
agreement.
We look forward to hearing from you soon.
Sincerely,
June Loeffler and Barry Grushkin
Go Top
REGULATIONS ON USE OF RESTRAINT IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Purpose. The purpose of 603 CMR 46.00 is to ensure that every
student participating in a Massachusetts public education
program is free from the unreasonable use of physical
restraint. Physical restraint shall be used only in emergency
situations, after other less intrusive alternatives have
failed or been deemed inappropriate, and with extreme caution.
School personnel shall use physical restraint with two goals
in mind:
(a) To administer a physical restraint only when needed to
protect a student and/or a member of the school community from
imminent, serious, physical harm; and
(b) To prevent or minimize any harm to the student as a result
of the use of physical restraint.
…
46.02: Definitions
As used in 603 CMR 46.00, the following terms shall have the
following meanings:
(3) Physical restraint: The use of bodily force to limit a
student's freedom of movement.
…
46.04: Determining When Physical Restraint May Be Used
(1) Use of restraint. Physical restraint may be used only in
the following circumstances:
(a) Non-physical interventions would not be effective; and
(b) The student's behavior poses a threat of imminent,
serious, physical harm to self and/or others.
(2) Limitations on use of restraint. Physical restraint in a
public education program shall be limited to the use of such
reasonable force as is necessary to protect a student or
another member of the school community from assault or
imminent, serious, physical harm.
(3) Prohibitions. Physical restraint is prohibited in the
following circumstances:
(a) As a means of punishment; or
(b) As a response to property destruction, disruption of
school order, a student's refusal to comply with a school rule
or staff directive, or verbal threats that do not constitute a
threat of imminent, serious, physical harm.
(d) Following the release of a student from a restraint, the
program shall implement follow-up procedures. These procedures
shall include reviewing the incident with the student to
address the behavior that precipitated the restraint,
reviewing the incident with the staff person(s) who
administered the restraint to discuss whether proper restraint
procedures were followed, and consideration of whether any
follow-up is appropriate for students who witnessed the
incident.
©
Barry
Grushkin 2005 All Rights
Reserved. Reprinted with
Permission.
5
Year Old with AS Restrained
