Arizona mom says daughter with autism came home with bruises, fears school

From The Arizona Republic:

Jessica Anderson wonders whether she should send her daughter to Gilbert's Sonoma Ranch Elementary for the rest of the school year.

She fears that school and Gilbert Public Schools district officials will retaliate now that she has publicly shared her experiences.

On Tuesday, Anderson told the five-member governing board that her 5-year-old daughter, who has an autism spectrum disorder, has been coming home with bruises and is afraid to go to school. At one point in September, her daughter came home from school with a bruise on her arm that was shaped like a handprint.

Bruises have continued to appear since.

The girl is non-verbal, unable to explain to anyone how she got the bruises. The Andersons suspect school staff members are responsible and have been trying to cover up the incidents.

On Jan. 28, two days after the Andersons and the school agreed to both keep a journal to document the bruising and try to identify why it was occurring, school staff called the Andersons asking for consent to "search" both of their children.

Anderson's husband weighed whether to say no, Anderson said, adding her husband feared "I'm going to look guilty to" state Child Protective Services investigators if he said no.

The Andersons were called around 9:30 a.m., according to a voice message left on Jessica Anderson's cell phone. A staff log of the incident shows the search actually took place around 8:40 a.m. - an hour before she and her husband were called, Anderson said.

"Without parental consent or knowledge, the school not only took my disabled child to the nurse's office but also her sibling and had the girls remove their pants," Anderson told the board.

"Sonoma Ranch Elementary admitted in writing that there was no visible marking or indications of abuse," she told the board. "This school violated both my daughters' civil rights, and as a parent I feel extremely violated."

The board generally does not respond to residents after they make a public comment on issues that aren't on the agenda. Board President Thad Stump asked Superintendent Dave Allison to look into the matter and report back to the board.

Anderson said she and her family fear retaliation. The school dismissed her youngest daughter from preschool on April 28, alleging there were no available tuition spots.

The next day, Anderson filed a retaliation complaint with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights.

Her case is the fifth federal civil rights complaint filed against the district since August. Federal officials so far have refused to release to the The Arizona Republic information about the ongoing investigations.

Anderson is the second parent in a year to come forward with concerns about treatment of autistic children at Sonoma Ranch Elementary.

Last year, Kim and Robert Eacott told the board their then 7-year-old son had been held down and sat on by school staff members twice in two years. The couple learned this after Kim Eacott viewed her son's school file and weeks of e-mail exchanges in which staff at first denied the incidents and then began, through inconsistencies, to reveal them.

Kim Eacott spoke to the board Tuesday after Anderson finished.

She said the district this year ended up moving her son to a different campus to address her concerns about mistreatment and thanked officials for transferring him.

"The difference in our son is remarkable," she said.

But Eacott said that the Andersons' experience is proof that the district, despite promises last year to consider implementing a practice of parental notification, is still failing to be forthcoming with families.

"These are our children, just like you have yours," she said. "Please help."

While other states have laws that restrict the types of responses - either through physical holds or the use of seclusion rooms - that school staff can resort to with unruly children, Arizona has no such protections.

Last year, new state legislation prompted a state task force of educators to form and recommend a series of best practices that school districts were asked to adopt by the end of this year. The task force emphasized that restraint and seclusion - often called time-out - are the methods of last resort.

The task force called for intensive crisis prevention training for teachers that trains them to identify signs that a child is about to misbehave or have a "meltdown" and take steps to minimize the incident through scientifically-proven practices that can prevent the situation from escalating.

The goal of such training is to reduce the number of incidents of child restraint and seclusion, and insure child safety.

The task force also called for requiring schools to notify parents when incidents of physical restraint or seclusion occur.

School districts have until June 30 to adopt the series of best practices.

However, they face no sanctions if they ignore them because state Sen. John Huppenthal, R-Chandler, the chairman of the Senate Education Committee and Chandler Republican who led the legislation did not include penalties.

Huppenthal said he left out any consequences for non-compliance because he supports local control and opposes mandates.

Gilbert Public Schools so far has taken no action, despite advocates' pleas last fall that it take swift action.

District officials have promised to look at the recommendations at a later board meeting, before the deadline.