By Theo Meranze
It’s October of 2019, and in a Glendale Unified School District elementary school bathroom there’s an 8 year old girl in handcuffs. She is screaming. Her parents were unaware. The girl’s school principal, school psychologist and her two aides sit outside watching the police. They’re the ones who called the cops, and they aren’t doing anything to stop the arrest. If the legal reports are any indicator, they may have been relieved.
What does it take in Southern California for an 8 year old to be put in handcuffs? In the case of the now 13 year old I will refer to in this piece as Sonia, a simple phone call to the police from Abraham Lincoln Elementary School reporting a child having a mental breakdown sufficed. Though the conditions that contextualized such a call — a spiral of malpractice and misplaced blame that stretched back over a year — were much more complex.
Sonia was diagnosed with autism in 2015. Like a lot of children with autism, she had issues with language development and sensory regulation. And, like a lot of children her age at large, she could throw tantrums when she didn’t get her way. Yet she was, all things considered for a child of her age with autism, on track and generally receptive to proper supports.
One of the key rights at play in Sonia’s family’s eventual legal case against Glendale Unified School District would become “FAPE”. Short for Free Appropriate Public Education, FAPE requires children with disabilities be provided with an educational program “reasonably calculated to enable a child to make appropriate progress in light of the child’s circumstances”. Such “progress” is supposed to be guaranteed through the implementation of an IEP, short for an “Individualized Education Program”. This personally tailored regiment, meant to address the individual needs of the child, is intended to allow them to participate in the general body of their school as much as possible. The IEP also includes a behavior plan. This behavior plan is functionally upkept by “IEP meetings” which are meant to involve the child’s caretakers and the school. For Sonia, her program consisted of placement in a special needs classroom (though she did spend time in general education learning environments as well), an hour a week spent in a speech therapy group, an hour a week of occupational therapy, and, starting in 2016, the implementation of Applied Behavior Analysis (“ABA”), a form of Autism specific behavior therapy at school.
The two years at the school that followed the implementation of her IEP were generally smooth. Sonia did well in her special education and general education curriculum, receiving, according to a report, “satisfactory remarks in having good work habits, understanding the essentials of working together, producing quality performance, communicating effectively, and using a variety of resources effectively and ethically.” Though at the tail end of her 2018 school year, she had three “behavioral incidents,” all of which revolved around the school bus driver.
According to Dr. Jefferey Hayden, a board certified behavior analyst with a doctorate in Special Education, Disability, and Risk and an expert witness in Sonia’s trial, aggressive behavior in autistic children often stems from defensive responses to overstimulation or frustration. They are more so cries for help then not consciously directed aggression. This was, by their analysis, the case with Sonia: “[o]verall, and based on a variety of factors including observations, parent and teacher interviews and classroom performance, it appears that the function of Student’s behaviors was significant in the following order: Sensory, Attention, Tangible, and Escape.” Highlighted in another report is a quote which summarized Sonia’s situation well: “She will often say “I need help” and when not helped, becomes aggressive.”
As Sonia’s third year began, her once occasional aggressive behaviors began to become more frequent. Her family recalls the shift that occurred in this period as drastic. Tantrums became regular. Often, Sonia would attack one of her teachers or classmates, pulling their hair or hitting them. Sometimes, she would knock everything off of her desk or even attempt to flee the classroom.
It is important to note here the deceptive nature of bare language. These behaviors may sound significantly disturbing, and, in many ways, were certainly disturbing to the classroom environment. Yet their drastic-ness and embeddedness can become overstated by the generality of a simple description. Empathy and context when describing the lashing out of children is important. A lack of it can turn understandable, changeable behaviors into unconscionable extremes. “If the student is engaging in challenging behaviors, we need to understand why,” says Dr. Hayden. “Whether it’s because they’re repeatedly placed in an aversive context, because the school work is too hard, or they don’t have a learning history of success within a particular curriculum, or even if the classroom is too noisy, some people with autism can’t handle that level of stimulation.”
Sonia’s family responded to these behavioral developments with warranted concern. Like Hayden, they wanted to know the root cause of this shift in behavior and what could be holistically done to stop it. The school wasn’t interested in either question. From the perspective of the school bureaucracy, in direct conflict with Sonia’s right to a FAPE, removal without attempted accommodation was the desired solution.
In November of 2018, at a fateful IEP meeting, the district officially branded Sonia as a child with ED, i.e. “Emotional Disturbance.” A condition eerily defined by the California Code of Regulations along these lines:
(4) Emotional disturbance means a condition exhibiting one or more of the following characteristics over a long period of time and to a marked degree that adversely affects a child’s educational performance:
(A) An inability to learn that cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, or health factors.
(B) An inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers.
(C) Inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances.
(D) A general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression.
(E) A tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems.
(F) Emotional disturbance includes schizophrenia. The term does not apply to children who are socially maladjusted, unless it is determined that they have an emotional disturbance under subdivision (b)(4) of this section.
According to the district, Sonia qualified for the label by falling into category C, displaying “Inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances.” “I have a problem with that label. It’s not a diagnosis. I think people who use that label are saying “we don’t know what to do,” asserted Dr. Hayden when discussing use of ED branding by school psychologists. “This occurs with children with Autism, because the school doesn’t know how to address the student’s behavior. Typically because they’re not using the science of behavior analysis, i.e. ABA, to address the behaviors. But it also occurs often with students who come from minority populations, like African American students.” The intersectional nature to discourse surrounding ED is important to note. It makes clear the labels disciplinary nature and the embedded power structures in its context. “Having done this for a while and having looked at a lot of behavior plans, even when the school tries to do the “right thing,” over and over what I see ends up being the “plan” is just a collection of strategies to get the student to comply, when that’s not the purpose of a behavior plan,” reflected Dr. Hayden. “That’s not the purpose of a behavior plan. What we want to do is find the functions of what the behavior is, what the student is trying to achieve or communicate, and with that knowledge teach them a more effective or “appropriate” way of communicating that.”
At the same IEP meeting, the district made ED Sonia’s primary disability, with ASD (Autism) becoming a secondary one. This change in many ways functioned as a pretense. Now, from the institutional perspective of school bureaucracy, rather than a product of a susceptibility to overstimulation caused by her autism, Sonia’s behavior became the product of a supposedly reactionary, antagonistic attitude toward authority: a fundamental inability. In short, the school had relieved itself of the responsibility of accommodating Sonia’s autism, and by extension, of its responsibility to empathy. They resultantly did not make any meaningful changes to her IEP to account for her ASD.
This definitional change created the conditions for a more punitive, unempathetic regime of treatment and punishment for Sonia. In the following months her family received an increasing amount of calls regarding her behavior. She was assigned a behavioral aide, who was most likely only trained for three days. The aide was not qualified to deal with Sonia’s behaviors, which only exacerbated them. As things escalated, Sonia began to be sent home often as her aggression worsened.
During this period Sonia was suspended multiple times. Her parents began to receive calls about her behavior from the school at extremely high frequencies. At times, they were daily. The school’s myriad of aggressive strategies were compounding as Sonia continued to spiral. In response, Sonia’s family requested that there be updates made to Sonia’s IEP. The school never attempted this. Instead in March, without consulting her parents — as they were legally required to do — they assigned Sonia a second behavioral aide.
The function of these aides was, according to the school, to help facilitate Sonia’s education and protect other students from her aggressive outbursts. Nearly daily, the aides put her in what are known as CPI holds, restraints named after the educational training organization “Crisis Prevention Institute” that, according to Dr. Hayden, range from “all manner of holding arms, all the way down to, you know, a basket hold.” These antagonistic restraints obviously did not quell Sonia’s distress and subsequent aggressivity. It made it much worse. In his deposition as an expert witness, Dr. Hayden stated that in his opinion the aides needed to have more supervision. “The standard dictated by our board is five percent of hours worked by direct staff there needs to be supervision. And as I recall, that was not provided.”
At an IEP meeting in April of 2019, as Sonia’s behaviors and psychological state worsened, the district contended it would be best for Sonia to be placed at nonpublic school which was a “specialized academic institution” for children with behavioral issues. Her family rejected the proposal. Why should Sonia be punished and segregated from the rest of her peers when she had not been given the proper care needed to succeed in the first place? The district’s response was to place the blame on Sonia’s supposed issues with “ED”. A report on her progress from 2018 states: “ Student likes to do her own thing and often does not comply with adult directions. She engages in outburst behavior (screaming, throwing self on floor, taking/throwing objects, kicking, hitting, pulling hair, eloping) in order to avoid a task, draw attention, or get something she wants.” Rather than approaching her issues as defensive reactions to feeling overwhelmed due to her autism, the district settled on now relegating her into the realm of the fargone — a dangerous place to be for any child, particularly one trying to grow up with a disability.
At her special education due process hearing, Sonia’s attorney and family questioned the school’s analysis along multiple, related lines. Firstly, why did the school ignore the possibility that her aggressive behaviors were attempts at communicating sensitivities related to her autism? Secondly, why did the school employ a second aide without alerting her family? Lastly, why did the school never consider the family’s requests to update her IEP to account for her Autism? The reality of the situation was that the school’s perspective was a product of both ignorance and lack of ability, as well as quite possibly a concerted effort to have Sonia’s reactive outbursts pushed to a point of justifying her removal from school.
In June of 2019 another IEP meeting was held to address Sonia’s behavior. The school, lamenting her continual aggressive behavior towards her aides, reported that Sonia had even begun to hit herself. Once again, the district recommended Sonia be sent to the nonpublic school. Once again, her family rejected it. And again, no meaningful changes were made to her IEP.
In mid October of 2019, Sonia’s family were summoned to the school and received an eerily unique report. Apparently, Sonia had been touching her privates and then attempting to touch her aides. This behavior was new for Sonia and disturbing for her family. They didn’t know what to make of it. But it did point to a terrifying underlying reality: that things were getting out of hand, and the school had no intention of doing anything but watch and wait.
Finally, in late October of 2019, Sonia exploded. The incident that would become the sun of Sonia’s personal and legal universe for the following years began with her urinating on herself. After being brought to the nurses office, she peed on herself again and began to have a very bad tantrum. She began to scream, lick the walls, throw items, slip and fall multiple times, touch herself, yelled, and de-clothed herself. The district employees who were present did not help de-escalate the situation, but instead characterized it as a psychotic episode. Without telling her parents, they called the police to have her taken from campus. When they arrived, Sonia, at eight years old, was handcuffed and taken to a hospital.
Following the incident Sonia spent two nights in the hospital under a 5150 hold, which is a Californian legal idiom that allows for a person to be involuntarily held for 72 hours during a mental health crisis. The school claimed that she was experiencing a nervous breakdown. Her family, understandably, was ineffably distraught when they heard Sonia had been arrested. They saw her once 24 hours into her 5150. The next time they were allowed to see her was two days later, when they took her back home. An expert would retroactively testify that this was not a psychotic episode but an autism related behavior.
The reverberative effects of her arrest would leave a long-lasting mark on Sonia. In its immediate aftermath she demonstrated symptoms of PTSD, becoming more emotional, beginning to over-eat, and showing less of a desire to leave the house. When her parents kept her at home for the rest of the semester from fear that the school would call the police again, Sonia would often point at pictures of her former classmates and cry.
According to another expert in her hearing, “a review of the records revealed “Sonia” has suffered multiple traumas beginning with her inappropriate treatment in third grade while attending “the school.”As a result, “Sonia” has not developed as a child with autism spectrum disorder would be expected to develop, in spite of the fact that she received intensive behavioral and school intervention after the incident in 2019.”
In 2021 Sonia’s family, with the help of the Law Offices Of Hirji & Chau, filed a due process request against the school district, and then a federal discrimination complaint on her behalf. They accused Glendale Unified School District of denying Sonia her right to a FAPE, alleging that her treatment by the school and subsequent arrest was not only a product of negligence and discriminatory exclusion, but a calculated attempt at avoiding their responsibility to provide her with an appropriate education. At the hearing and in depositions, Dr. Hayden and other expert witnesses on behalf of Sonia. The California Office of Administrative Hearings in OAH Case No. 2021010304, found in Sonia’s favor, declaring that the “Student proved that Glendale Unified denied her a FAPE by failing to provide her with appropriate behavior goals, a behavior intervention plan and behavior intervention development services.” The federal lawsuit, in P.A. v. Glendale Unified School District (C.D. Cal., Jan. 29, 2024, No. 2:21-CV-01101-DSF-E), resulted in a favorable settlement for Sonia’s family.
The urgent reality of Sonia’s story is that in Southern California, and most other places in this country, it does not take particularly much for a child with disabilities, or any child for that matter, to be put in handcuffs. Nothing more than a phone call to the police is necessary. And, while Sonia and her family did eventually receive legal restitutions through the court system, that was the product of years of work. It will never be able to undo the traumatic effects of her mistreatment.
When asked about the changing treatment of disabled children in Californian public schools, Dr. Hayden observed that things are getting worse. “Twenty years ago the movement was one of inclusion. Now we’re resorting back to placing kids in special schools or minimally in special day classes, some districts who have tried to make inclusion the mantra did so without providing training or support to their teaching staff, so it just failed miserably. Now we’re retreating back to isolation as opposed to inclusion.” Sonia’s case is a testament to this wider reality and its underlying violences. In her resilience and her suffering we see the potent reminder that regimes of abuse hide themselves through claims of ignorance and re-directed blame. Abandoning a child is never the answer, even if that makes institutions uncomfortable.
