My Son Has Cerebral Palsy, and His Public School Won't Accommodate Him

Sep 23, 2023

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Alexandria Brown. It has been edited for length and clarity.

My son Kayden has cerebral palsy, a motor disorder that affects his ability to move and maintain balance and posture. He can talk and loves to learn, he knows his colors and shapes, he loves swimming and playing, and he loves to go to the playground and go down the slide. He can do many things that other kids his age can do.

He's pretty much a typical 6-year-old. The main difference is that he uses a wheelchair.

Cerebral palsy is caused by damage to the developing brain. In Kayden's case, he was born early, at 23 weeks. We spent eight months at the hospital in the neonatal-intensive-care unit. When he came home, he was on oxygen until his lungs grew strong enough for him to breathe on his own.

There's no cure for cerebral palsy, but early intervention can significantly improve motor functions and prevent or delay the development of secondary complications. Since he was released from the NICU, I've been advocating for him. I've fought for him to get the medical care he needs — and now I'm fighting to ensure that he receives an appropriate education.

During the early days of COVID-19, some of Kayden's learning was online.

He resumed in-person therapies in 2021 and went to in-person preschool as soon as he could. At his preschool, there were typical children they called "peer models" — that is, nondisabled children who are meant to serve as positive examples. And then his class had kids with special needs. It was a smaller class size, so everyone got the attention they needed, but it had both sets of kids — and it was a mainstream school, as opposed to a therapeutic school for disabled children only.

Kayden sat at a desk. The kids practiced letters, shapes, numbers, and all those typical preschool things. He was successful. So when I started to hear rumblings in our community about how our special-needs children could be sent to a different school, I worried. The rumors weren't specific to Kayden — we heard that all children with special needs were educated in a different building, away from their nondisabled peers. I didn't want this for my son, but it turns out that this was exactly what the district recommended for him. When it came time to find out whom his kindergarten teacher was going to be, the district informed us that it intended to bus Kayden to an alternative school, one solely for kids with special needs.

Students with disabilities have a fundamental right to receive their special education in a regular classroom unless the student's individualized education program cannot be satisfactorily implemented in that setting, even with the use of supplementary help. Under the Least Restrictive Environment requirement, a child with a disability should be allowed to attend a general educational class in his or her zoned school and receive the services needed to make that placement work unless there's proof that he or she cannot receive educational benefits in that setting.

We had hoped that Kayden would at least be given an opportunity to stay at our local public school and that Kayden and his brother could go to school together. He has friends in the community. The school is right down the street, and he does well among nondisabled kids.

Sure, he would need a paraprofessional to provide one-on-one help. He can maneuver his own wheelchair, but he can't go to the bathroom on his own, so he would need extra support. He can feed himself, but he needs someone to prepare the food and put together a plate. In other school districts, it's not uncommon for a paraprofessional to assist a special-needs student in a mainstream classroom, but our school district says it cannot make this accommodation.

This is why the school district recommended that Kayden attend an alternative school. It wants to group him with mostly kids who are nonverbal and have intellectual disabilities.

Kayden can talk. He's a little developmentally behind, but I'm working hard to keep him near grade level. I fear he will fall behind in a setting without an appropriate peer group, one that's not designed to educate a child with Kayden's intellectual abilities. Our only option is to sue the school district, but every due-process case decision on individualized education programs in Franklin County since 2005 has been ruled in favor of the school district. If we won at the hearing, the district would be mandated to place Kayden in a regular classroom — but a hearing would take years, and Kayden is supposed to start kindergarten in September. So we have no options, really.

When Kayden was born, he weighed just 1 pound. He's come so far, and I'm determined to see that he continues to succeed.

We've spent tens of thousands of dollars on advocates and lawyers, but it's not like we're rolling in the dough. The district hasn't changed its mind, so we've looked into private schools, but they're not legally obligated to accommodate our son — and every school I've called says they won't.

One school said the building wasn't wheelchair-accessible. Most places don't even return my messages. We just wish people would look at our son as an individual, not a disability, and give him a chance.