WASHINGTON (Map, News) - A few months after 7-year-old Daron Brown tried to throw himself out a window, his teacher asked for a meeting with Evelyn Sykes.

Sykes, a retired postal worker living in Northeast Washington, figured that Daron would have problems.

She was Daron’s godmother, so she had stopped in often to check on him. His mother, Sykes said, was a mentally ill drug addict.

The boy often sported large bruises, and Sykes said she had seen Daron and his six siblings eating uncooked noodles straight out of the box, calling it dinner. Daron’s mother once sent him to live with a man with whom she had been briefly involved, Sykes said.

When Daron’s mother lost legal custody of her seven children, Sykes got custody of Daron.

One night in early 2001, Sykes forbade Daron to go outside after dark. He lost control and tried to jump out of her second-story window.

He spent more than a week in a psychiatric ward at Children’s National Medical Center. Doctors told Sykes that the boy had bipolar and attention deficit disorders.

So Sykes wasn’t surprised when, a few weeks after Daron got out of the hospital, the teacher asked to meet. But she was surprised by the teacher’s question.

Why, Sykes said the teacher asked, was she giving Daron medication?

Sykes said she tried to explain Daron’s conditions, but the teacher, an African-American woman, would have none of it.

“Black boys,” Sykes said the teacher told her, “don’t need to be medicated. They just need a whipping, that’s all.”

Taking on D.C. schools

There are about 10,000 special education students in D.C. schools. School officials spent nearly $237 million on special education last year — more than $11 million over their budget.

“You could take that money and build a first-class program. But the stultifying culture of the bureaucracy is such that you can’t turn it around,” said Ron Drake, a former Carter administration lawyer who has spent the past three decades litigating against D.C. public schools on behalf of parents and guardians like Sykes.

“You have to blow it up and start all over again,” Drake said.

School officials — including Marla Oakes, the head of the special education department — declined to comment for this story.

Federal law allows parents to challenge the special education programs of public schools. If parents can prove that their child can’t be accommodated in local public schools, the public schools must pay to send the child elsewhere.

Sykes tried to follow that path. After her meeting with Daron’s teacher, she asked the administration at Benning Elementary to draw up a special education program for Daron. They refused.

“They told me, ‘Why do you keep setting up meetings? Is something wrong with you?’ ” Sykes said.

‘A glued-together program’

Even if a child can get out of the D.C. schools, there’s no guarantee that he or she will get help, Lacrisha Butler said.

Her nephew, Travis, moved to D.C. at age 9. He had been living with his mother in Memphis, Tenn., Butler said, but she was addicted to drugs and lost custody of her son. He went to live with his grandmother, but she was diagnosed with lung cancer. Butler took custody of Travis in early 2000.

When he moved to D.C., Travis was illiterate. In his first days at a public school, he ran away. He threw a wooden block at a teacher’s head; the schools didn’t know what to do with him.

Desperate, Butler hired a lawyer and got Travis placed in the Episcopal Center, a private treatment facility.

“It saved his life,” Butler said. “He got therapy and medication and everything he needed.”

By 2004, Travis was ready to enter junior high. He had stabilized emotionally, and it was time to focus on his education. When Butler sat down with special education officials, they recommended the D.C. Alternative Learning Academy.

Then Butler saw the place.

“I remember just a horrified feeling,” Butler said. “These people had no business getting any money.”

There was hardly a book anywhere, she said. The computers weren’t plugged in. The school was required to provide lunch — and teachers sent out for pizza and Subway sandwiches.

“No one seemed to know what the hell was going on,” Butler said. “It was a joke. It was just a glued-together program.”

After months of expensive hearings, Butler had Travis placed in another private school.

Travis has done so well in private school that he is now ready to go to a “regular” public high school, Butler said.

Struggling to learn

Sykes fought for three years before special education officials reluctantly transferred Daron to the Thurgood Marshall charter school.

But Daron’s teachers there told Sykes they weren’t certified in special education, she said. He has trouble focusing in class and doesn’t understand basic concepts. Nonetheless, teachers make a point of calling on him — especially when Sykes visits — humiliating the boy in front of his friends, Sykes said.

“He’s been back and forth to the hospital because he’s stressed out and doesn’t want to go to school,” Sykes said.

Now 14, Daron is beginning to attract the attention of the “drug boys” who prowl their Northeast neighborhood, Sykes said. She is now 68 and said she’s worried about Daron’s future.

“It’s very dangerous out there, and Daron is not cognizant enough,” Sykes said. “He’s not street smart. Not yet.”

She is scheduled to meet with D.C. special education officials Tuesday to discuss Daron. She said she fears it is the boy’s last chance to get the education he needs.

bmyers@dcexaminer.com