Aiden Reid’s mother and grandmother call it the closet.
They say the Concord school district hates that term, but they say it’s an appropriate label. They point to Aiden’s bedroom and say the “closet” is half that size, about 10-by-10 feet, perhaps smaller.
They say it has no windows. They say it’s the wrong way to educate a special needs student, alone, isolated, apart from other children.
Aiden is 8, a student at Broken Ground School. He’s autistic and suffered a series of strokes at birth. He has no idea he’s in the middle of an educational storm. The eye,
really.
He’s the student who was handled by special education teacher Lori Fosdick last October in a way that the administration said broke the rules. It’s called restraint, and using it is against school policy.
Fosdick was fired after the incident, a move recommended by Superintendent Terri Forsten and later upheld by the school board in a 6-2 vote. And since Fosdick’s exit, Aiden’s mother, Emily Reid, and grandmother, Karen Reid, insist that Aiden’s behavior has become more reckless, emotional and aggressive.
That, in turn, has led to Aiden’s seclusion in that tiny room, Emily and Karen say. He’s been there every school day since Jan. 2, according to his family.
There is hope, however. Last week, mother and daughter, armed with their lawyer, Karen Rosenberg of the Disability Rights Center, met with Nancy Pender, the special education coordinator for Mill Brook and Broken Ground schools, and Sarah Lamirande, a board certified behavioral specialist.
Emily said Aiden will now be gradually incorporated back into class with other students, and he’ll be there full-time by the end of May.
And while that’s good news, Karen remained cynical, saying in a phone interview a day after the meeting, “We seem to have made some progress, but I can’t help wonder if it would have gone the same way if we had not walked in with a lawyer.”
Meanwhile, the bottom line remains, with Emily telling me in an earlier, sit-down interview, “They cannot handle my kid after Lori left, and that is why he is in a closet.”
It’s a story with a twist. Normally we hear about an administration backing a teacher, while parents, perhaps a bit overprotective, scream for the teacher’s head.
This time, though, lots of parents joined hands in a show of support for the teacher whom the administration apparently believes mistreated an emotionally and physically challenged student.
Something certainly happened that day six months ago. Enough for Forsten to take drastic measures. Administrators never discuss personnel matters publicly, and this time was certainly no different. So we still don’t know the official reason why Fosdick was fired, but it’s safe to say Forsten believed she was simply doing her job, based on what she was told.
Meanwhile, the school policy on restraint and seclusion is easy to find. Understanding it is another matter.
The policy says restraint and seclusion are “limited to emergencies only.” It says restraint is permitted “to ensure the immediate physical safety of persons when there is a substantial and imminent risk of serious bodily harm.”
From what we know, Fosdick stuck out her knee to stop Aiden from running past. Aiden tried to squeeze by, creating contact. Risk of serious bodily harm didn’t seem to be evident, but Emily and Karen were convinced that Fosdick’s reaction was necessary to stop Aiden from running free and, perhaps, from running outside.
“She was preventing him from leaving the classroom,” Karen said. “He was obviously having a stressful moment. I don’t think he was panicked, I think he was just mad that he could not get his own way and he wanted to be out of that situation.”
On seclusion, the school district policy says “it may only be used when a child’s behavior poses a substantial and imminent risk of physical harm to the child or to others, and may only continue until the danger has dissipated.”
Was Aiden a threat to himself or others? If so, how long did that continue?
Before last week’s meeting, Aiden had been separated from classmates for more than three months. Karen and Emily said he eats lunch alone. They say he’s not learning anything new. They say they were told this would be temporary, a plan that surely would be over by now.
“We didn’t know how big this room was, we knew it would be just Aiden in the room,” Emily said. “There’s no socialization, nothing. He’s learning things he learned in first grade.”
Forsten, declining to comment on specific personnel matters, emailed me and wrote, “I can assure you that the Concord School District does not have any students whose classroom is a closet; it simply is not happening anywhere in our district.”
I emailed Forsten back, asking for permission to see the room for myself. I hadn’t heard back by press time.
What’s clear is Aiden now learns one-on-one, taught by an aid in a place Emily and Karen don’t see as a classroom. They call it something else. Perhaps they’re exaggerating. Perhaps not.
But after initially declining to speak on the record, fearful they’d be accused of bad parenting, they wanted you to know how they see things.
“I don’t want to be told I’m a bad mom because of my kid’s behavior,” Emily said. “It has nothing to do with parenting. His story needs to be heard. He has no voice. We’ve been his voice for eight years, and we’re going to continue to be his voice.”