A bad way to handle a bad day

At a coffee talk meeting recently, a parent asked for feedback about her elementary-age son's current school placement. In sharing background information, this parent disclosed that her son's previous school had a habit of calling her on his bad days and asking her to pick him up.

I wish I could say that's the first time I've heard about a school team handling bad days this way, but unfortunately, it isn't. And it sticks in my craw every time because it's totally unacceptable. Leaving aside the school's legal obligations to children with disabilities (we'll get back to those in a moment), sending these children home with their parents when they have bad days forms a dangerous pattern. No matter where they fall on the autism spectrum, our kids are savvy enough to figure out pretty quickly that having a bad day (whatever that is) means they get to go home. Once they figure that out, what are the odds that the bad days will increase?

The main thing parents need to know is that if school administrators call you to pick your child up early, it counts as a suspension. And there are limits to the amount of time your school can suspend your child if the behavior is a manifestation of your child's disability. A student with a disability cannot be denied education services for more than 10 days in a school year, and repeated short-term suspensions can constitute a pattern of exclusion. The bottom line is, the school is not educating your child if they're calling you to come and pick him/her up.

What to do if you're on the receiving end of calls like this? If your child has a behavior intervention plan (BIP), find out if it's being followed. If there's no BIP in place, there should be. Call an IEP team meeting to discuss the situation. If the school can't handle your child without calling you for pickup, then it's time to call in the cavalry. School districts vary, of course, but they should have specialists who can come out and consult with your school team to help them manage your child's behavior. The school should be reaching out for help without parents having to make noise, but in my experience, the schools who are calling parents to pick up their kids aren't the ones that are on the ball.

Given that, it may be time to consider whether another placement is in the best interest of your child. Can the current school right the ship, or is your student more likely to be successful somewhere else? Sometimes the answer to that question isn't easy, but remember that the main goal is for the pickup requests to stop and for education to resume. You don't need the stress of fielding pickup requests, and your child does not need to continue a negative pattern that costs valuable instructional time.

A friend once put it best when she said, "I have a no-pickup rule. I tell my sons' schools not to call me unless there's blood, fever, vomit, or threat of serious bodily harm to self or others. Don't call me to come and get him because he's 'having a bad day.'" Amen.

I recently found a publication by the Maryland Disability Law Center that addresses these and other special education issues. You can download Special Education Rights: A Handbook for Maryland Families and Professionals in pdf format from their web site. The section on discipline and suspensions begins on page 33.

-- Alison Hamilton