Robeson County parents say schools are failing their children with special needs

Robeson County parents say schools are failing their children with special needs

In the Lumberton high school, Eric Cromartie III performed well academically scoring a grade point average that exceeds 4.0 along with earning academic accolades.

Cromartie, who has autism, graduated in 2022; however, according to his mother, Selena McMillan, he was supposed to come back to Lumberton High the following year, as it was … 

McMillan was still not able to get any results, so she moved to the N.C. Office of Administrative Hearings and her son was re-enrolled for the 2023/2024 year. 

By then, though, Cromartie had wasted a year in purgatory. He had a hard time without the structure of school and was eventually diagnosed with anxiety disorder, McMillan said. 

“Because of all of the things that Robeson County did to my child, mentally he regressed with his learning, with the anxiety,” she said. “The behavior disorder that developed was through the roof.”

When Cromartie get back to school in 2023, he engaged with classes online since he was a victim of anxiety. He had been able to effectively attend virtual classes amid Coronavirus outbreak, but this time, teachers were usually delayed to turn on their computers. At other times, they never came. 

Cromartie’s employment preparation teacher missed 60 percent of his virtual classes from August to January last school year, while his English teacher missed 20 percent of classes, a complaint to The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights said. Legal Aid of North Carolina acting on behalf of Cromartie’s mother filed the complaint in April.

If teachers logged in at all, they left their cameras off for extensive periods; in so doing, Cromartie was denied face-to-face time with fellow students, as the complaint described. In regard to this, one time a teacher closed the camera as a visitor was in the process of addressing the students. Yet another day, there were worksheets for Cromartie to fill while other students were watching a movie.

“I was watching my son be denied education literally,” McMillan said to the Border Belt Independent. “He was ever just seeming to be floating far away from me naked.”

With permission from the BBI, the organisation interviewed four parents including McMillan who claim that the Robeson County public schools are depriving their children with special needs of an adequate education. They also complained that their kids are not getting services provided in their IEPs and the children are put in classes taught by ineffective teachers. Of those, some complained that school officials punished them for expressing their dissatisfaction.

“We do repeatedly hear from parents that they’re not getting the services they are expecting to get from the district,” said Hetali Lodaya, the attorney from Legal Aid of North Carolina, a non-profit law firm, that have already helped several parents from Robeson County, whose children with special needs, filed discrimination cases.

Robeson County, North Carolina based Public Schools of Robeson County that currently educates more than 21,000 students in the southeastern part of the state has not responded to interview requests about this story.

McMillan said she became so frustrated that she pulled 21-year-old Cromartie out of Lumberton High School, even though he could have been retained again following the state’s eligibility rules. He is homeschooled now.

“These children have disabilities, and they have the right to go to school,” she said.

More specific the complaint by Legal Aid of North Carolina have accused the school district of providing Cromartie with “appropriate instruction and inclusion opportunities”, and or denied him a same. In that regard, it also seeks to examine the ways and means that schools have and ensured proper accommodations given to students with such disabilities-, which disqualifies them from in-campus learning. 

Frustrated parents

Exceptional children’s program in Robeson County public schools has approximately 3, 000 students enrolled. Like other school districts in the State and across the nation, it has escalated challenges regarding the shortage of instructors fully certified to teach classes for the target learners with disability like autism, visual and hearing impaired. 

EdNC reported there were 19 open positions in the district for its exceptional children’s program in 2023. 

Jennifer Davis, a special education teacher at the Lumberton High School, said that she had taught at the school for five years up to 2020, and she had noticed that special education classes were often assigned to teachers and substitutes who are not certified to teach the class because there is never enough staffing.

According to Davis, certified teachers are important since they acquire some training. ‘When the work involves children with special needs, for example in order to get their attention focus one has to be rather inventive.” 

Michelle Brower, whose daughter Ashley is deaf and blind, said Shining Stars Preschool in Robeson County school district replaced vital information for two school years when a teacher for deaf and blind student resigned. She now studies at Lumberton’s Littlefield Middle when a previous class, Brower said, her class had to be taught by inadequately certified replacement teachers for several months at year because of a teacher, who was on medical leave.

What I do see: People tend to disregard it – It’s like because we have special needs kids, it’s not important.” There they don’t address those concerns as quickly as they should, Brower said. “Whereas if it was another ordinary lesson delivery and teaching activity, they wouldn’t be without a normal teacher for that long.”

Casson Jones said his 9-year-old son Nolan with autism, cannot speak and is a special-needs child practiced with a certified exceptional children’s teacher half the time he was in kindergarten through third grade at Prospect Elementary School in Maxton. He deemed self contained classes — that are different from general education classrooms — as “ glorified daycare settings.” 

McMillan said that her son was moved with other special needs student to a separate classroom during his freshman in Lumberton High School. She got worried some day, when one teacher informed her that students in self-contained classes are not taught math, reading or writing.

McMillan said when she requested her son to be transferred out of the self-contained class, her appeals were rejected. They want for him to be able to go to college and the have a life. He wants to have a career.” 

Also, Marsha Jo HillMcKenna, a mother of Carson 5 years old attending East Robeson Primary School says she too has concerns about the quality of her child’s learning. Carson, who has autism and cannot speak, was suspended earlier this year. His mother is thinking of pulling him from school and home school him instead.

“At this point he knows more at home with no homeschooling than any opponed to him being in school setting and I am not sure what it is doing to his emotions and mind,” Hill-McKenna said in a Facebook message. It is never right for a 5-year-old child to start worrying about going to school. They should be worrying what snack they are going to take.

Parents discussed on their respection interviews that schools have not been fulfilling the early childhood services spelled out on their child IEP.

When Brower asked officials at Tanglewood Elementary School in Lumberton where her daughter was enrolled, they informed her that her daughter receives physical therapy session daily. When Brower asked for the copy of therapy logs, she stated she was informed the therapist had not submit the document.

Brower also agreed with the rest of them stating that she also experienced challenges when was getting her daughter reevaluated. Federal guidelines state that students can only receive special education services for three years without a professional review of the students’ current status. Brower also wanted her daughter to be reexamined, but she had to write a complaint to the Department of Public Instruction.

McMillan said that she had a similar experience. But by the time her son was in his fourth year at Lumberton High School, she said he had received an assessment in the school in 6 years. She said she reported it but was sexually harassed in return. 

You were labelled when you became a concerned parent, she said. “You became enemy No. 1.”

There were complaints from parents that their children have been exposed to dangerous stations in school. 

Jones brought to light that he and his wife had been persistent for the two years demanding Prospect Elementary School to get their son a one-on-one aide and was turned down. In April, Nolan burned his hand with second and third dregree burnings when he touched a hot serving bar at an amy after school — an accuation that Jones alleges could have been avoided. 

Nolan had to be given an anesthetic and Jones said that doctors had to wash the wound properly. Jones and his wife had to use ointment on his hand for weeks. “It was like taking a beach towel and roll him from the shoulder down to the knee and my wife held him all the time.”

Nolan still visits an orthopedic surgeon and still cannot widely open his fingers on the affected hand as there are many scar tissues, his father stated. 

Davis who decided to leave teaching due to illness, which is cancer treatment, added that she often saw learners with such needs at risk.

At one time, Davis, a teaching assistant, had threatened to stab three of her students with a pair of scissors. Davis said that she reported the incident to the administrators but no action was taken.

“She didn’t even get in trouble,” Davis said. “They just said, you should not associate with those three kids.”

More training?

Cromartie is one of the students excelling in homeschool, however, McMillan complains about unfavorable effects he had at Lumberton High School.

The complaint seeks training for school staff members handling students with disabilities. The training would be about offering “recognition and response for inclusion, accommodation for necessary supports and services and constructive interpersonal relations and communication with parents.” 

This experience, McMillan stated, has caused her lose her confidence in the school system. Prior to the pandemic, aske worked at spearheading an advocacy organization for parents of special needs children within Robeson County. 

“I was a huge parent supporter of the Public Schools of Robeson County, and now I encourage parents to get your children out of the school system.”