Story and data reporting by Ellie Heffernan
Graphic by Isabel Stellato
CHAPEL HILL, North Carolina – Daniel Attaway, 19, has a need for speed – the faster, the better.
He loves monster trucks, and his mom, Sherry Attaway, has taken him to Monster Jams where drivers compete in races. Daniel also enjoys doing donuts on his mini-ATV, which his parents adjusted to run no quicker than roughly 5 mph.
In some ways, Daniel is a typical young man. But he also has multiple disabilities including nonverbal autism, ADHD and Potocki-Lupski Syndrome, a rare genetic disorder associated with developmental delays.
He can’t read, write or speak full sentences, but he is in an adaptive curriculum classroom at Chapel Hill High. These separate classrooms serve students with severe disabilities.
People with autism have involuntary meltdowns when they feel anxious or overstimulated. When Daniel has a meltdown, he might scream, cry, throw things or hit people who invade his space.
After one meltdown during the 2017-2018 school year, Daniel received a three-day suspension for hitting his teaching assistant.
Sherry Attaway said this outburst happened because Chapel Hill High repeatedly failed to follow laws that protect students with disabilities. This caused Daniel to have more frequent, severe meltdowns – and violated his educational rights, she said.
“They effectively got a warm body in the classroom with zero experience and zero training,” Attaway said. “And I was super furious.”
Evidence suggests that stories like Daniel’s are widespread.
North Carolina’s students with disabilities were disproportionately disciplined in the 2017-2018 school year. This is the most recent year for which data is available from the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection.
Compared to children without documented disabilities, North Carolina’s students with disabilities were more than twice as likely to be expelled. They were more than twice as likely to be transferred to alternative schools. And they were almost three times as likely to receive multiple out-of-school suspensions.
A bird’s eye view hides more severe disparities within individual schools. Consider Glenwood Elementary, another Chapel Hill-Carrboro City school. This school’s students with disabilities were more than 24 times as likely to receive at least one out-of-school suspension.
Media Hub created interactive graphics that help readers explore these disparities within every North Carolina public school and school district. Schools that submitted faulty data showing greater than 100 percent of students receiving a disciplinary action were excluded. This was a small portion of all schools statewide, and it almost exclusively included alternative and charter schools. (Story continues beneath the searchable graphics.)
Is disproportionate discipline legal?
But is disproportionate discipline unfair? Many commonly documented disabilities, such as ADHD, are associated with poor impulse control and trouble paying attention. If students with disabilities misbehave more frequently, that could explain disproportionate discipline.
But students with documented disabilities are legally protected from certain disciplinary measures. Students that a school could have reasonably suspected of needing documentation are also protected, said Barbara Fedders, a law professor at UNC-Chapel Hill. Fedders also directs the school’s Youth Justice Clinic, where her students represent young people in delinquency proceedings and school suspension appeals.
Students with documented disabilities have either an Individualized Education Program (IEP) or a 504 plan. Almost 14 percent of North Carolina’s public school students had one of these plans during the 2017-2018 school year.
The statutes covering these plans say schools must provide students with a “free, appropriate public education” in the least restrictive environment possible. Essentially, because students with disabilities have unique needs, they need extra support, which is explained in their IEPs or 504 plans.
Once these plans are formalized, schools must provide the support detailed within them. If they don’t, the law says they’re discriminating against a student because of their disability.
Students with disabilities are often protected if a behavior that gets them in trouble is demonstrably caused by their disability, Fedders said. If this is demonstrated, students with disabilities usually can’t be expelled, transferred to an alternative school or suspended out-of-school for more than 10 days total each school year. Offenses related to drugs, alcohol or weapons are exceptions.
Students with disabilities are also guaranteed a review process that determines whether their behavior was related to their disability. Or a school’s failure to follow their IEP or 504 plan.
In North Carolina, schools aren’t required to complete this process for suspensions lasting under 10 days, like the one Daniel received. Only a few districts let students appeal these short-term suspensions.
Short-term suspensions also aren’t considered when the N.C. Department of Public Instruction identifies schools that disproportionately discipline students with disabilities.
The state is aware that students with disabilities are disciplined at higher rates, said Sherry Thomas, director of the department’s Exceptional Children Division. This division provides technical assistance and equity-based training for schools with significant discrepancies. These schools suspend for more than 10 days annually or expel students with IEPs at 2.5 times the rate of students without IEPs.
Students who only have 504 plans are not included in this data – weakening its ability to fully assess disproportionate discipline. More than 26,000 students statewide had 504 plans in the 2017-2018 school year.
Why schools struggle to fulfill students’ needs
Failing to implement an IEP or 504 plan can aggravate a student’s disability, making them more likely to act out.
“Worst case scenario, they’ve been labeled a troublemaker,” Fedders said. “They’ve accrued a disciplinary record that will follow them for the rest of their school career. They feel stigmatized. It now becomes harder for them to function with their peers because they feel different from everyone, and they feel singled out for behavior that they don’t really feel they can control.”
It’s a lose-lose situation that can lead schools to get involved in oftentimes tense administrative and legal procedures, Attaway said. Parents say this could be avoided if schools just implemented IEPs and 504 plans. So, why don’t they?
Many schools have under-trained staff.
When Daniel gets frustrated, certain activities calm him down. It helps to take him for a short walk, give him quiet music time or let him sit on a bean bag chair and rest his eyes.
Daniel’s behavior intervention plan (BIP) explains these activities and how they help him. BIPs specify actions to improve any inappropriate behaviors that interfere with a student’s education – not just those caused by a documented disability. Any student can get a BIP.
For students with documented disabilities, BIPs become part of their IEPs or 504 plans, which makes them legally binding. Being unfamiliar with a student’s BIP makes it hard to provide education that isn’t unfairly restricted by their disability, Attaway said.
Daniel’s behavior quickly started changing when he returned to school after winter break in 2018. Attaway noticed because of his daily communication notes, which summarize his behavior and mood. She requested this accommodation because, being nonverbal, Daniel can’t tell her if he’s upset.
Daniel’s notes said he was agitated, moody and pushy, up to three days weekly.
When Attaway communicated with Daniel’s teaching assistant about this, she asked if they had read Daniel’s BIP. They had no idea Daniel had one, Attaway said.
In the days leading to Daniel’s suspension, Attaway repeatedly emailed his assistant principal, expressing concerns about understaffing and a lack of training.
“For example, if I talked to her on Jan. 3, she said, ‘Oh, we have training scheduled for the 15th,’” Attaway said. “But from now until the 15th, people are working with my kid that are not trained, and they don’t know how to do his BIP.”
When given the opportunity to comment on or refute Attaway’s story via email, a school system spokesperson said he did not feel confident they could get someone relevant to speak on this topic.
Daniel’s school didn’t hire a permanent adaptive curriculum teacher for the rest of the school year. But many days, there was also no substitute teacher. Daniel’s teaching assistants were fully responsible for a classroom of students with profound disabilities, Attaway said.
Teaching assistants don’t need a degree in education or special education to work with students with disabilities. They don’t need an undergraduate degree at all, according to the school system.
They need roughly four semesters of college credits, or a combination of seven credits in “core subject matter” – which includes reading, math, science and social studies –- and a passing score on a test that measures skills in reading, locating information and math.
Although training and experience working with children with disabilities is also required, that training isn’t always completed on time, Attaway said.
Even if training is completed, it can’t compensate for understaffing. Daniel’s IEP says his classroom must have enough teaching assistants that he has his own, guaranteeing one-on-one attention. That didn’t happen during 2018 – an IEP violation that contributed to serious consequences.
“Completely crying his eyes out:” A serious meltdown “
One day, Daniel’s assistant principal called Attaway. She said that Daniel repeatedly hit his teaching assistant, and she needed to pick him up because he was suspended. When Attaway reached Daniel’s classroom door, she peeked through its window and saw her son alone with his teaching assistant.
Daniel was having a meltdown, crying, waving his hands and slapping things. Then Attaway saw Daniel’s teaching assistant yank his hands down to his sides, physically restraining him. As Attaway tried opening the door to reach her son, a teacher from another classroom blocked her path.
She wouldn’t let Attaway through to see Daniel. Instead, she made her go to the assistant principal’s office.
The assistant principal and this teacher tried talking to Attaway about how Daniel’s behavior was out of control. Attaway said she was too angry to talk coherently. She refused to answer their questions and repeatedly asked for her son.
“Where is Daniel? Give me Daniel now,” Attaway said.
When Attaway returned to Daniel’s classroom, he was still distressed.
“I open the door and Daniel is in a bean bag chair by himself, and just completely crying his eyes out,” Attaway said. “My son has never, in his whole entire life, ever had this experience in school. He was full-on crying, melting down, just overwhelmed. And it took me probably, 15 or 20 minutes to calm him down. Because I was hugging him, and I was rubbing his arm, and like ‘I’m Mom.’”
What could change, and who has the power?
Preventing situations like this should start with giving staff better pay and more training, Fedders said. North Carolina’s special education teachers earn, on average, no more than around $54,000 annually, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Teaching assistants make less, earning on average no more than $33,000 annually or $15.87 hourly. In North Carolina, that isn’t a living wage for any household with children, according to M.I.T.’s Living Wage Calculator.
There’s little incentive to pursue a degree or extended training for such a low-paying job. This makes it difficult for schools to find properly trained staff. They often settle for what they can get.
But paying teachers more would require substantial increases in state education funding. North Carolina has had one of the country’s largest decreases in inflation-adjusted average teacher salaries since 2000.
In the absence of statewide changes, who is responsible for addressing disproportionate discipline?
“If you talk to anybody from the district, from the school, from the classroom level they will all point to each other and say, ‘It’s their fault,’” Attaway said. “So it’s a systemic problem throughout the district, where there is just no accountability.”
But principals and school boards can unilaterally make decisions that reduce disproportionate discipline and protect students with disabilities.
The Guilford County School Board did this by allowing students to appeal short-term suspensions. McDougle Elementary, another school in Orange County, did this by adopting restorative justice practices – an alternative to punitive disciplinary measures like suspensions. No McDougle Elementary students received out-of-school suspensions during the 2017-2018 school year.
But these improvements might be happening because of something unique to places like Chapel Hill and Guilford County.
Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools has knowledgeable parents who know their legal rights, Fedders said. Orange County, home to Chapel Hill, has the third-highest median income in the state. Guilford County’s median income is higher than over three-quarters of North Carolina counties.
Employers such as UNC-Chapel Hill and N.C. A&T State University also attract people with advanced degrees, who can combine their resources to advocate for their children.
Attaway likely wouldn’t have been able to help Daniel without leveraging certain financial and social resources. She is the school representative coordinator for Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools’ Special Needs Advisory Council (SNAC), a group that advocates for the district’s students with disabilities. Attaway said her “mom friends” from SNAC provided support and information when Daniel faced challenges at school.
After Daniel was suspended, Attaway also tapped an attorney, who contacted his school to request personal files. The school and the district almost immediately organized a meeting to rewrite Daniel’s BIP, which between 15 and 20 people attended to provide input.
Daniel was not invited back to school until this group perfected his BIP and made sure everyone was properly trained to follow it. When asked what their incentive was, Attaway’s response was blunt.
“Me not suing them,” she said.
The next year, Chapel Hill High hired a permanent, fully-trained adaptive curriculum teacher, and Daniel’s behavior returned to the way it was before.
But Attaway doesn’t think justice was fully served. Daniel still has a suspension on his record. His school can’t go back in time and give him the support and accommodations he was denied for approximately two weeks. And then there’s the more systemic problem.
“When a problem is raised, the district will react, but nothing at the district level is proactively mitigated,” Attaway said.
