Bogus Out Of School Suspension

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Hello I'm Joe.

I have an 11 year old son with Asperger's. He has an IEP with the school but we have struggled with them from day 1. They do not have enough staff to cover all the students. They do not have the training to handle my son. We have had to file a complaint with the State Board Of Education for failing to complete his IEP correctly. We have had to file a civil rights violation agianst the super for not allowing my son to attend his IEP. All the compalints we filed we in our favor from the state board as well.
He was having the typical interpersonal issues with the students last year. His IEP was geared torwards that although they were not helping him to any extent with this either. This year they moved his recess and PE time around and the issues with the kids has not been an issue.
Now he is having issues with his Special Ed Teacher. He has stated it too noisy in the resource room for him to do his math. They have appeared to try the forced compliance with him which does not work. When he gets stressed he sometimes wads up his work of pushes it on the floor. This has been the cause of some of the issues this year. They have a sensory room at the school which they refuse to use for him ( not enough staff ) even though it in is IEP.
Once he is stressed and gets pushed it ends in melt down or shut down everytime yet the school still does the exact same thing by pushing him even further.
Well this past incident he got upset during a math test in the noisy room and threw his paper on the floor...yep you guessed it they tried forced compliance again. He got even more upset and kicked a chair over and pushed his desk away from him. They have now decided to suspend him for 3 days.
Wife had to go the the school and pick him up in the resource room and all the teachers and staff were there. No mention of him being suspended while she was there. He came home with discipline report stating what happened and the concequence was a missed recess the next day. No mention of the suspension, no mention of a safety issue. A phone call an hour or so later with message that they are suspending him for 3 days.
Mr Furhop ( the super we had issues with before) was in the room when my wife pick up my son. Didn't say a word to her. It looks as though the pricipal was ok with having him sit out of recess the next day hence the Discipline Report coming home with him. I am assuming that Mr Furhop would be the one behind the suspension.
This makes it look like a form of retaliation due to past issues we have had with him.

Got any advice on how to proceed with the school on this one? We have a meeting on thursday this week with the school and the IEP team.
Thank you,
Sorry if I was rambling got a million things bouncing around in my head right now..

I think you should bring a legal representative in with you to the IEP meeting. I don't know what area you are in, but some areas have free legal advocates and/ or mediators for special ed issues. Google it. If you can't get one by Thursday, postpone the meeting. It sounds like the IEP is out of compliance and that your son's rights were violated.

I think it would be a good idea to file a formal complaint as well.

I find this story sad. It's 2015 and more and more people are diagnosed with AS/HFA etc. and there's still schools that treat Aspies badly.
Seems like the school is trying to keep the suspension a secret...why? That makes no sense. Still I think you need to document everything and yes, bring a legal representative. The school should give your son options other than sitting in a distracting resource room for math. Lots of AS kids have that same problem, sensory issues make them melt down. I'm still in HS and have those problems still, albeit less than it was in elementary school.

Yeah, we were in a district that did forced compliance, too. It looks like you are going to have to do the legal thing again for them not following the IEP. I would suggest seeing if you can find a school that is a better fit, and see if you can make them pay for it. We had to pull our son out and homeschool. Even if we had a better legal case---and I wanted to let him suffer there longer to make it, there is nothing near me that would have been a good fit. Hopefully, where you are, there is a better selection of schools. You also seem to have a good legal case already b/c there is a pattern of not following IEP.

What is forced compliance?

I took it to mean emphasizing the importance of compliance and not working to hard to come up with compromise solutions. Basically the idea that following the rules is the most important goal and learning skills and acquiring knowledge are secondary.

The OP may have meant something else, but that was how I took it.

From what I had been told as a kid, it's illegal to suspend a special ed child without the parents agreement. When a school wants to suspend a special ed student, they have to tell the parents first and have them agree with the suspension before they suspend the kid. The school broke the law. I am not sure if this is state law or federal but we were in Washington when my school illegally suspended me and they also didn't tell my parents.

Where I am, they have to follow a certain procedure, but they absolutely can and do suspend kids with disabilities without parental consent. I did not know there was any state where they were not able to do so.

I haven't been in this situation and can't address the specific question, but your post raised a question for me:

Has the school tried giving him noise cancelling headphones? Have you? If they claim they can't follow the IEP as written because of staffing issues, they should be brainstorming all possible reasonable alternatives, and doing their best to put them into effect. Noise cancelling headphones seem like a simple place to start.

My recollection is that they are allowed by IDEA to suspend, but if they do so for more than 10 days cumulative in a school year, they have to hold a hearing to determine whether the behavior that caused the suspension was a result of the disability (suspending would be illegal in that case).

Seems like you may be coming to a crossroads of whether you want to really FIGHT this school district for his rights, or if you want to go to a Plan B (e.g. homeschooling). It certainly sounds like this school needs someone to stand up and hold them accountable for their failure to follow through with their responsibilities. Definitely recommend getting a legal advocate for this.

FWIW, my son was suspended in Kindergarten for 3 days-- for throwing a block. It was so beyond ludicrous. They also sent paperwork laying out the "code" he had broken (it read like a criminal record, and used language like, "caused, or attempted to cause, serious bodily injury..." I mean, if you didn't know my son and had just read this paper, you would think he was some kind of terrorist. It made me absolutely livid. And of course it taught my son NOTHING. He was glad to have 3 days off.

What I realized is that the suspension had nothing to do with my son, and everything about 1) the staff needed a break from him, and 2) them wanting to massively step up the pressure on me to "do something". (At that time, he didn't have an IEP yet, and while his teacher was pushing for an aide to be assigned to him-- which he needed-- the school didn't want to spend the $$... so I think we were hoping that we'd just Go Away.) It truly felt like we were being harassed because they didn't want the extra work involved in educating my son.

I'm really sorry you are going through this.