6 March 9-15, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents The committee determined that PJ’s scratches didn’t happen at school, which was frustrating to Schutter, but she was sat- isfied that more people would be trained to accommodate her son. She also understood that it was still early in the school year, and she attributed some of the issues to that. By mid-September, the school had also set up a check-in and check-out procedure for PJ to make sure he wasn’t injured when he ar- rived and left school. Still, a few days later, he allegedly broke two fingers at school. On Sept. 23, 2020, the family’s nanny cam shows PJ’s nanny waking him up for school. It also shows PJ’s hand wasn’t injured that morning, the parents say. When Hernandez took him to the bus stop, his hand was still fine. The day before, the school reported a scratch on PJ’s face when he checked in. But when he was checked in to school on Sept. 23, 2020, no one at the school reported any- thing was wrong with his hand. Around 11:30 a.m., however, the school would reach out to PJ’s parents saying that his hand was injured and ask if they noticed anything at home that morning. They took him to the hospital after school and called the Southlake Police De- partment to file a report. In an October 2020 report on the inci- dent, the school denied that any Carroll ISD staff saw PJ fall on the day his hand was in- jured. The report also said that, according to school staff, PJ didn’t appear to experience discomfort or pain based on facial expres- sions and body language. But a police report the family would get in November 2020 told a slightly different story. That month, Schutter filed a grievance with the school, asking for a complete and unredacted copy of the investigative report. She also asked that the school admit that the injury occurred on campus and not at home and that PJ did not have one-on-one super- vision at the time of the injury as well. The school agreed to hand over an unre- dacted version of the investigative report, but it declined to admit the injury happened at school. The school also said that PJ’s indi- vidual education plan still didn’t call for one-on-one supervision at all times. Instead, a teacher or a paraprofessional was in the classroom to supervise him and other stu- dents. However, he didn’t have a dedicated paraprofessional to monitor him exclusively, something the family said is required to make sure he doesn’t injure himself. The family requested another ARD meet- ing to develop a plan for PJ while an investi- gation into his injury was pending. They also scheduled another meeting that month to determine if PJ had lost skills or learning while attending class online. The parents received the police report in November 2020. It explains that around 8:45 a.m. two staff members were helping PJ through a doorway to get to the playground. “PJ proceeded to the doorway, he drifted slightly to his left and with the left side of the mobility device he struck the left side of the metal door frame structure,” the report said. “There is not a camera angle, which would show whether his hand struck the metal doorframe as well, but he clearly struck the left side, and his left arm was po- sitioned on the extended left arm support.” The report said that PJ didn’t fall to the ground or make any gestures to indicate he was injured. The school staff repositioned PJ and helped him onto the playground. “He seemed calm and enjoyed the outside recess time at the start of his recess but, as he began to walk back toward the school and across the bridge, I noticed PJ putting his fingers in his mouth,” the report said. “If he had struck the metal doorframe as he transitioned to the playground the pain may not have af- fected him. Almost nine minutes had passed, and his discomfort could have increased.” The report said there was no evidence that anyone hit PJ, that he was struck by an object or that he had fallen from any struc- ture that may have caused the injury. Schutter said there was some turnover at the school around this time. The district also got new leadership in the special education program. “Unfortunately that’s really what it takes to get any of the issues addressed,” she said. This also resulted in the district putting cameras in the special education classrooms. “That has been helpful for a lot of issues with abuse and neglect, but we still have a long way to go,” she said. But, as parents would find out, getting that video footage isn’t always easy. Parents who want to watch a video of one of these classrooms must fill out a form, es- sentially accusing the school district of abuse or neglect. “If abuse and neglect ex- ists then you get granted to watch the video. If it doesn’t exist then you don’t get to watch the video,” Her- nandez said. He said parents should have access to videos of their kids with- out having to accuse the district of neglect or abuse. “I feel that puts the parents in a very uncomfortable position and a very antagonistic approach,” he said. “Right away you have to make an accusation instead of trying to collaborate, instead of trying to communicate what went wrong and how can we fix it. I think that right away it puts the par- ent in a corner.” PJ also attends school over the summer. It’s intended to help him retain what he learned during the previous school year, Hernandez said. A nurse is supposed to evaluate him when he gets to school and be- fore he leaves. This is a routine that was put together as a result of their son’s previous injury at school. Their son went to school on the morning of June 16, 2022. His individual education plan called for him to be checked in and out every day by a nurse. But the nurse was con- tracted to stay only until 11:30 a.m. that day. Before leaving, the nurse called Hernandez to report that everything seemed to be fine with his son’s contacts. But when he went to pick up his son, Hernandez saw that his eye was irritated, his face was being washed and his shirt was covered in blood. “He cannot tell me what happened. He cannot tell me if he is OK,” he said. “It is infuriating.” The pattern was repeating, he said. “When these incidents happen, hide it, deny it, blame the kid, blame the family,” he said. “Unfortunately, or fortunately for us, we ex- perienced that already multiple times. So I knew what was going to happen.” He requested the classroom video, which is when he found out that he had to accuse the school of abuse or neglect to get it. Aaron Heil, the district’s coordinator for special education, said that while the re- cording didn’t document abuse or neglect as defined in the Texas Family Code, it did doc- ument a significant act involving a student. Because of this, the district allowed Hernan- dez to view the video. It showed that sometime between 11:45 a.m. and noon, the paraprofessional as- signed to their son took a break from the one-on-one supervision. “The teacher was in the classroom but the teacher was on his laptop doing something else,” Hernandez said. “PJ was not supervised.” During this time, Hernandez said his son could be seen in the video scratching his eye some 30 times. His eye was bleeding and his face was covered in blood. This is the incident that led the family to file a second OCR complaint with the U.S. Department of Education on July 29, 2022, alleging neglect of PJ. “If the individual education plan is not fol- lowed, and an injury occurs or an accident happens, it’s considered neglect,” Hernandez said. “There’s no doubt that neglect happened that day because PJ didn’t have a one-on- one, which was already stipulated in his IEP, and PJ didn’t have the check out procedure per- formed by the nurse be- cause when the incident happened no nurse was on campus. For me, that’s neglect.” Hernandez said he was unsure about talking to the press about the second complaint. In 2021, in the midst of filing grievances and trying to make sure his son was safe in school, Hernandez ran for a position on the Carroll ISD school board and lost. In 2022, he was ousted from the Carroll Education Foundation after fil- ing the first OCR complaint. He doesn’t want anyone to think that this is the reason behind all of his grievances and complaints. “Me talking to you, I’m not sure if I’m be- ing brave or if I’m being stupid,” Hernandez said. “But at the same time, I want people to see the other side of the coin, the other side of the story.” Such problems aren’t exactly unusual in Texas. “There are significant issues around children who are being restrained and se- cluded and hurt in schools,” Kym Rogers, an attorney with Disability Rights Texas, said. The district and school a student attends can determine the quality of special education services. “Obviously it shouldn’t vary,” Rogers said. “Every student is entitled to a fair and ap- propriate education. It should be consistent.” However, that’s not always the case. “There are differences in districts and there are differences in schools,” she said. “It can very much be a personnel issue. I do think leadership at the top of the district matters greatly, but I think the teachers and princi- pals and the campuses matter a lot as well.” She said it takes parents, advocates and lawyers to bring about significant changes. “It takes a strong, educational agency of the state that is monitoring the districts and making sure corrective action is taken when they’re missing the mark,” she added. Rogers said there are students who re- quire one-on-one support to receive a free and appropriate education under federal law. “This is considered to be a more restric- tive setting for a student, so the school should be working to address the behaviors underlying the need for this level of support, with the goal of more independence for the student,” Rogers said. Some students will al- ways need this level of support, she said. Such support requires money, however, and federal funding for special education has fallen behind. In the middle of all of this, Carroll ISD has struggled to hire and retain special education teachers and paraprofes- sionals. Congress passed the Education of Handi- capped Children Act in 1975 to ensure stu- dents with special needs receive a free and appropriate education. This later evolved into the Individuals with Disabilities Educa- tion Act of 2004. The laws put rules in place for districts to follow and authorized grants to states to help pay for the added costs of special education. This federal funding is supposed to pay for up to 40% of average pupil spending na- tionwide to help offset the costs of special education. But, in a too-typical case of “un- funded federal mandates,” a 2020 report by the Congressional Research Service found that this federal funding paid for less than 15% of the average spending per pupil, ac- cording to edweek.org. In 2021, Carroll ISD increased its budget for special education because it was having trouble hiring and retaining staff, according to Community Impact. “Since the beginning of the school year, it’s been very difficult finding special edu- cation paraprofessionals for many districts in the DFW area,” Lauren Wurman, execu- tive director of human resources, told Car- roll ISD’s board of trustees in September 2021. “There is not a district around us that is fully staffed with special education para- professionals.” Things haven’t been all bad at Carroll ISD. While the family does have two pend- ing civil rights investigations against the school, they say there have been improve- ments in recent months. Schutter said the district recently got a new director of special education services. The new director, Schutter said, is great. “But she’s like one person and trying to fight against a lot of entrenched people, and she’s trying to fix a program that has no foundation. She’s trying to educate and keep these kids safe and trying to build a foundation at the same time when she doesn’t have staffing.” She said the district’s special education programs face several challenges but safety should be the first priority. “Our children don’t have access to grade- level education. They don’t have access to the programs necessary to make meaningful improvement,” Schutter said. “But before we can address that we have to address safety.” >> p8 “THERE IS NOT A DISTRICT AROUND US THAT IS FULLY STAFFED WITH SPECIAL EDUCATION PARAPROFESSIONALS.” — LAUREN WURMAN Unfair Park from p4
