RSS
Home
Downs child left out of high school year book
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Every year children love to get their yearbooks and look eagerly for their picture. They show their family and friends. They hope to find themselves in a candid photo. This year it won't happen for high school junior, Garrett Naughton in Madera, California. He has downs syndrome and his whole class of 10 special education students were left out of the Madera High School yearbook.
The Sacramento Bee reported this story on June 8, 2009. http://www.fresnobee.com/564/story/1458544.html
What really bothered me about this whole story, beside the fact that these children were totally forgotten by their school, was the callous remark by administrator Jake Bragonier who stated," "They're on our campus, but they're not technically our students," Bragonier said. "Nevertheless," he added, "the students should have been included."
The remark, "they are not technically our students" belies a culture of "separate but equal" when, in fact, we know there is no such thing. Unfortunately many schools, especially in middle and high schools, special education children are seen as a population imposing on "regular" students. An inconvenient afterthought. A burden to be tolerated with pretenses of inclusion.
Madra's offer of compensation was equally insulting. They printed up a new page of the special education students to be inserted in the yearbook. But only eleven copies were printed and sent to the special education students.
The Madera Unified School District is hiding behind "privacy issues". Cecilia Massetti, the associate superintendent for student programs and services at the county office of education, said "school officials would first have to get permission from parents of the special-education students. If they didn't, it would raise privacy concerns because they would be identified as special-education students".
What if the page had been included in the original yearbook? How would this infringe on privacy issues?
Related Articles:
Comments
- Special Education Parent bulletin board
- Special Education Law and Advocacy
- Information on Learning Disabilities
- Councel of Parent Advocates and Attorneys COPAA
- Support for Aspergers, NLD and high funtioning autism
- Guide to Raising Resilient Children
- Understanding Reading and Learning
- Guide to Bay Area Special Education Schools
- Misunderstood Minds: Learning Differences
