To a certain elementry school where the fuck do you get off locking an autistic child in a storage closet with gym mats taped to the wall? What kind of fucked up school are you? And to the teachers who did nothing to stop it, do you have any morals what so ever? And to the school board who will not get involved, what is the fucking point of having you if you won’t intervene in a situation like this?
—Seriously Pissed Off Citizen
This article appears in Feb 26 – Mar 4, 2009.
Poster, contact me at timb@thecoast.ca. Please.
This is appalling.
I have two Autistic brothers and therefore when working with them and in their classrooms as well I have come to know a great deal about Autism. They’re amazing people, and for the most part just need a little extra patience. After 19 years it still astounds me how the disability is treated in the school system.
We’ve struggled quite a bit with both of my brothers’ schools over the last few years, but I have never heard of something so ridiculous as locking them in a closest. What point does it prove, and what good does it do other than to agitate the student even further?
That is absolutely appalling. What kind of backwardly unbelievable way of handling special needs students. This isn’t the 30’s where people are pigeon holed and throw into some Sanatorium and left to themselves. I don’t know much about Autism, but I do know this, that teacher needs to have it’s licence to teach pulled and burned. If I were that parent, I’d be consulting a lawyer and preparing to launch a law suit
against the school / teacher / school board.
Well, I assume it’s bullshit until the poster can give me some details.
I get people calling or emailing with this or that “scandal” all the time, but then they can’t back it up with real information.
People make shit up. Or take things out of context. Or have axes to grind.
As I haven’t heard back from the poster, this is in the “bullshit” category.
Tim: can you not contact them via email if they’ve registered?
If this is true, then it sucks. It sucks ass.
If someone made this up, they are fucked in the head, especially coming out in a public forum. It’s just bad taste, and libelous in nature.
If something like this happened as a parent I would be making two calls. The first to the police and the second to the media (CTV, CBC, Global, The Herald). I definitely would not put it in the Way We Bitch column of The Coast (Sorry Tim, a weekly just would not cut it).
I have an Autistic child, and if I ever got wind of this kind of treatment of my daughter there would a shit storm, the magnitude of which, would never before seen. People would lose their jobs all the way up. There’s no excuse for abusing the most vulnerable of our society.
Looks like this is legit:http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotia/1109046.html
Ah, Annapolis Valley. Out of my coverage area.
Carry on.
“The woman, who didn’t want to be named, said she was told of the event by another adult connected to the school and that the other person said…”
yep, sounds legit to me.
This does bring some attention to how our resources are allocated to special needs students, though. The school system is wasting a lot of resources and shortchanging special needs AND regular students with an inclusion policy. Check it out.
What gets me in the C-H story is two things: First, The child in question is not called autistic once, just that the child had behavioural problems. Secondly, the person who reported it to the C-H did not want to be named and heard it through someone else.
While I don’t condone the action of putting children in padded rooms, I think that there is more to this story than we’re led to believe. Especially due to the not being named bit. I honestly think somebody’s just trying to stir the shit-pot.
Like I said, people make shit up. They lie. They exaggerate. All sorts of things.
If they don’t want to put their name to an allegation, and don’t even want to tell a reporter why they don’t want to put a name to an allegation, well, screw ’em.
I believe this to be true. I also believe that most (all?) of you haven’t been in a public school in quite some time.
Time-out rooms are a normal part of schools, the only difference with this situation is the door apparently didn’t have a window to monitor the child. Which does indeed make it wrong.
I am a close family friend of this child in question and the reason they haven’t gone to Global, CTV or any where else is because they have a meeting with the School Board on Monday and wanted to get this settled that way first. This is because the family wants to act in the best interest of their child and his education. If they didn’t like what the School Board had to say the mother (who has already been contacted by Elizabeth Choo), then she was going to go to the media with the story. As for C-H’s story not all of the facts are correct. The event did occur, but to clarify one thing the child in question does have behavioural problems but that is due to the fact he is a special needs child.
The article that was posted in the C-H was done by someone outside of the family, and the family had no idea it was even written. I have talked to the family today and they are disappointed that this has gotten out into the media before they got a chance to talk with the School Board.
“There are schools that have “time-out” rooms, she said but added that parents of students who might be put in such rooms know about them.
Ms. Tait said the rooms are available so students can calm themselves, and staff would normally be inside with the student. She said if staff were outside, the doors would not be locked and there would be a window so the student could be monitored.”
If you all think our school system is underfunded you should see how much money eventually trickles down to the “special needs” area. Its a joke. But its not a funny one.
AVRSB…..figures.
I spent 6 years in ABRSB schools and….yeah. Figures.
I agree. I find it is always a good idea to blame an entire organization for one person’s actions.
Sometimes there are systemic problems that allow this kind of thing to go on, and then YES it does become the organization’s fault. If this story is true, could one person even put together a padded cell in a janitor’s closet and put the kid in there? Not like they could exactly keep this on the DL.
If this is true, I believe that the school board wasn’t very cooperative when it was brought to their attention. I know many wonderful people working within this org. but I also know the alternative. I spent just as many years within the Hfx school board and honestly, it was a pretty good board to be under (at that time at least).
The family involved in this incident has decided to speak out to the media. Tune in to the CBC Sunday News at 6:00pm to see Dylan’s story.
I have to wait until Sunday for the next chapter in this saga?
Oh well, still beats Little Mosque.
Sorry ‘Cranky’, that was a spellcheck typo, the story was on the evening news tonight. Perhaps it will be repeated on the 11’oclock? Or posted on the CBC website…
http://www.cbc.ca/video/popup.html?http://…