YAKIMA — Christina Madison said her 13-year-old son has missed 52 days of school in the past two years because he was suspended or sent home for behavior problems associated with his disabilities.
She said he was suspended for five days for refusing to change out of his gym clothes and suspended for 15 days for insubordination for being in a hallway without permission.
“I don’t have these problems with my son at home,” said Madison, adding that many of the issues begin with miscommunication resulting from his autism.
Her son is one of five plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington against the state, alleging that special education students are being suspended or expelled at a higher rate than other students.
The suit, filed earlier this month in Thurston County, names the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction and Superintendent Chris Reykdal as defendants.
Of the five plaintiffs, three are students in the Yakima School District. The other two are from the Pasco School District.
Neither district is named in the suit. Instead, the ACLU argues that the state office is liable for failing to ensure that school districts are not discriminating against special education students or disciplining them for disability-related behavior.
“Defendants have long been aware of the widespread disproportionate discipline of special education students in these districts, but have failed to take adequate steps to safeguard the rights of these students,” the lawsuit states. The ACLU wants the suit declared a class-action on behalf of all special education students in the state.
Yakima district spokeswoman Kirsten Fitterer referred questions about the matter to OSPI.
State spokesman Nathan Olson said the office was still reviewing the suit and had no comment.
ACLU attorneys using state disciplinary reports found that 7.9 percent of the state’s special education students were either suspended or expelled from school in the 2014-15 school year. In the same time period, only 3.2 percent of non-special education students were similarly removed from school, the lawsuit stated.
The lawyers found that 8.4 percent of Yakima district’s special education students were removed from school in the same time period, compared to 6.3 percent of their other classmates.
Madison said her son started getting into trouble at Lewis and Clark Middle School because of his autism and communication problems. She said the school failed to conduct “manifestation meetings,” in which the family, teachers and special education specialists meet to determine if a behavior problem was related to the disability before meting out discipline. Instead, she said those meetings would occur after her son was removed from school for a couple days.
She said the district has only offered 16 hours of make-up instruction for the time her son was suspended, and that her son was regularly sent home without make-up work to do during his suspensions.
Madison said her goal is to ensure that her son and other students will get the help they need rather than be treated as disciplinary problems.
