There may be an outrageous situation in Clover, South Carolina; a suburb of Charlotte. Three families with special-needs kids say that the local schools have abused and mistreated them.
On Thursday night, WJZY in Charlotte dropped a bombshell. Two families say they were forced to pull their autistic sons out of Larne Elementary School in Clover because of concerns that they were being abused. After 10-year-old Will Brittain came home from school displaying anxious behavior, his parents, Bill and Kim, were concerned enough to request permission to come in and observe his special-ed class. Will is autistic, and has extremely limited verbal skills. At one observation, when Kim was about to leave, Will started to follow her—and broke down crying when told he couldn’t go home yet. At that point, Kim said, she believed Will was “trying to tell me something.”
When further discussions with Will’s teacher went nowhere, Bill sent his son to school with a wire on October 2. It caught Will’s teacher making a graphic death threat against Kim. When Bill heard that, he immediately pulled Will out of school and began homeschooling him. The teacher was not formally disciplined.
Another parent, Kim Garhart, pulled her son out of Larne when he started acting out at home. He was afraid of the dark, and was heard yelling “I’m okay, I’m okay, it’s okay” in the bathroom. He also started yelling “no school!” and crying uncontrollably.
Later, Garhart and the Brittains learned that a former aide at Larne’s special ed program had claimed to witness outrageous mistreatment of kids in 2014. The aide said she saw one child dragged into a dark closet when he didn’t want to eat something, and another having his shirt taken off when he didn’t want to complete a worksheet. An investigation seemed to corroborate many of her claims. Several other aides interviewed during the investigation reported other instances of abuse, but the district blew them off as “isolated incidents.” However, the aide says she was fired soon after coming forward, and is now suing the district for wrongful termination. The first that the Brittains and Garhart heard about the investigation’s details was when WJZY obtained them via a FOIA request.
I have the full video of Thursday’s report linked up on my piece at Liberal America. Click over there to watch. It’s a bit long, but believe me, it’s worth watching in order to see just how egregious this is.
Another family has a different beef with Larne. David and Renee Aldridge have spent the last two years fighting for better access for their eight-year-old wheelchair-bound daughter, Maddie. Earlier this year, Maddie had to crawl into a bathroom because school officials wouldn’t let her bring her wheelchair in. For some time before then, the Aldridges have complained that Larne’s playground isn’t accessible enough, and have also complained that the school bus isn’t accessible. As a result, Maddie’s self-esteem is shot to pieces.
At an emergency meeting on Friday night, school officials essentially blew off the report. That’s simply unbelievable. How in the world do you blow off such disturbing behavior as “isolated incidents”? My girlfriend is a longtime teacher, and she’s wondering the same thing. She thinks it’s a near-certainty the feds will have to investigate at some point, given the blatant ADA violations alleged here. But it shouldn't take an investigation to make heads roll at this school.