Families were frequently asked to pick up their children with complex needs during the school day because of staffing shortages, staff wrote. They also noted that key special education jobs sat vacant, classrooms were regularly cleared when a student’s behavior became too disruptive and specialized education plans for individual students went too long without meaningful updates.
Students who cannot self-regulate do not belong in public schools, or, minimally, not in mainstream classrooms.
That interrupts the education of the rest of the student body, educators wrote, a dynamic that several parents at the school said had added to tensions and divisions. The school’s principal, Claire Skelly, went on leave after the grievance was filed in December; in early February, parents learned that she would not be returning.
That’s because there is no solution possible at the principal level. The federal IDEA act of 1992 overrides local control, making this unsolvable locally.