4 March 9-15, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Shadow of Neglect A family battles Carroll ISD for equal education for their special needs student. BY JACOB VAUGHN W hen Jennifer Schutter and Ed Hernandez’s child PJ came home from school one day in fall 2020, his hand was swollen. PJ, an elementary student at Carroll Independent School District, is autistic, legally blind and has motor and speech delays. Schut- ter said PJ is basically nonverbal, so he couldn’t articulate what happened to his hand. His parents took PJ to the hospital, where an X-ray revealed he had two broken fingers. A report of the incident from the school signed by the principal said there was no evidence the injury happened at school, but the Southlake Police Department came to a different conclusion. One of the school’s resource officers, who works for the Southlake police, reviewed footage from a hallway camera and wrote up what they saw. According to the officer, PJ might have smashed his hand between his walker and a metal door at school. The family filed several grievances against the district over PJ’s broken hand. The case was settled in April 2021 through the district’s grievance process, in which parents can ask for corrective measures to be taken. But PJ sustained more injuries at school four months after the grievances over his broken hand were settled with the dis- trict. After the family filed a grievance about these injuries, Hernandez and Schutter say someone with the district reported them to Child Protective Services, alleging PJ was being neglected and abused by his parents. CPS cleared the family of any wrongdo- ing, and to Schutter and Hernandez, the complaint against them seemed like retalia- tion. When Carroll ISD wouldn’t respond to their latest grievance, the family turned to the U.S. Department of Education. This was just one of the struggles they’d experienced with the district’s special education pro- grams over the years, and things didn’t get much better from there. That year, Schutter filed an Office for Civil Rights (OCR) complaint with the Edu- cation Department claiming the district had retaliated against her. In 2022, the family filed another civil rights complaint against the district alleging neglect of their son. The school district is now under eight civil rights investigations by the Education Depart- ment. The complaints that led to these in- vestigations were filed by several people, including Schutter and Hernandez. The Department of Education won’t dis- cuss specifics of any of these cases. A spokes- person would only say what kind of complaints were made that led to the investi- gations. “The U.S. Department of Education’s Of- fice of Civil Rights can confirm that there are eight open investigations into Carroll ISD,” a spokesperson for the department said in an emailed statement. “Three investigations are open under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities of 1990; two are open under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and three are open under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” The school district has been at the center of controversy over alleged discrimination since at least 2018, as NBC News detailed in multiple reports and a multipart podcast se- ries. That’s the year a viral video came out of the district showing white high-school stu- dents chanting a racial slur. As a result, par- ents, students and graduates started coming forward with their experiences of racism and anti-LGBTQ harassment. In the middle of it all, Schutter, Hernan- dez and other parents of special education students have been advocating for better conditions for their children. The district’s communications and en- gagement department didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. Schutter said the district has refused to hear their grievances or has taken months to do so. She said this has gotten worse with the current school board, and parents feel their only means of recourse is to turn to the federal government. “That’s why I think people have gone to the OCR,” she said. “I think the reason that there’s been an explosion here in OCR and federal complaints is because there is no other route to having your issues ad- dressed.” PJ had a stroke when he was 18 months old that required life- saving brain surgery. The stroke left him unable to blink with his right eye. He also has trouble balancing, so he uses a walker and needs constant supervision to prevent him from falling. Because he can’t blink, he has to lubricate his eye in other ways, Her- nandez said. This can be done with eye drops throughout the day or with a special contact lens. Without these interventions, PJ could lose his eye, Hernandez said. In November 2019, before the broken hand, Schutter emailed the school saying that PJ had come home without his contact lens again. She said they’d spent thousands of dollars on replacements and wouldn’t be able to get any more for a while, so PJ would need eye drops in his right eye every hour. Within a month, PJ was in the hospital with an infection in his right eye. He was on anti- biotics for a month to get rid of the infection. Schutter started advocating for better special education services a few months later after schools shifted to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic, PJ would spend half the day in various therapy sessions. But when everyone had to switch to remote learning to slow the spread of COVID-19, Schutter said none of the learning materials were adequate or specific to PJ. He got a link to several websites, including a YouTube video about proper handwashing. Schutter asked for something better and got about 40 worksheets. They included assignments that would have PJ practice writing letters. Schutter said about two months went by be- fore the family got assignments that were at PJ’s academic level. The family estimates that PJ lost out on hundreds of hours of therapy as a result. Things didn’t get much better when he returned to in-person instruction in August 2020, a month before PJ came home with a broken hand. That August, PJ’s parents said, he came home with the right side of his face and eye scratched and oozing blood. Schutter emailed the special education teacher ask- ing how this could happen if PJ had one-on- one supervision. Schutter also said they didn’t have any problems with this while he was learning from home. The special education teacher said one- on-one supervision was not included in PJ’s individual education plan. PJ’s eye did seem irritated, and he was rubbing it that day, the teacher responded by email. They said they made sure to apply his eye drops when they noticed and continued to do so throughout the day. The teacher also said that back-to- school photos recently taken of PJ showed the same scratches Schutter was emailing about. Schutter requested a meeting the next day with the admission, review and dismissal (ARD) committee, which helps determine students’ individual education plans. Schutter asked the committee if PJ had someone with him at all times during the school day. A committee member said PJ did have someone in close proximity to him at all times, but it wasn’t on a one-to-one basis. Sometimes that person would be the teacher. Sometimes it would be a paraprofessional. During the ARD meeting, the committee said PJ would be supervised at all times, but they’d first have to train more paraprofes- sionals. | UNFAIR PARK | Mike Brooks Ed Hernandez and Jennifer Schutter have been constantly advocating for their disabled son in the Carroll ISD. >> p6
