CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (WCIA) — Advocates of the special education program are begging the Champaign School District for more properly trained staff and urging families to know their rights.
They say improper training is leading to injuries, families leaving, and lawsuits. One family is still dealing significant injury of a student.
“I’m really seriously concerned where we’re going with this school district,” said Julie Duvall, Executive Director of the Champaign Urbana Autism Network.
Duvall is also an advocate for families who have children with special needs.
“They’re not getting their services. They’re not getting quality services. They’re not getting the legal services that they’re required,” Duvall said.
She said not getting those services has been keeping her and families busy. Duvall says no school policy trumps state or federal laws. Her main concern is individualized education programs, or IEPs, not being followed.
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“When they don’t follow it, there are state ISBE and federal guidelines that they are breaking,” said Duvall.
In May of last year, Duvall said on student’s IEP wasn’t followed. She works with the family of a student who was sent home with two broken hips and a fractured ankle.
“He got physically hurt to the degree that he will have therapy for the rest of his life due to this,” Duvall said, “And there was no accountability.”
She said the student’s parents were notified about the accident, but feels the extent of it was not fully or properly explained.
“When mom was calling from the hospital, asking, ‘How far did he fall?’ and looking at possible surgery and, you know, ‘Did he eat lunch?’ — they wouldn’t even tell her that information.”
The district released this statement:
Champaign Unit 4 Schools educators provide individualized instruction and related services to more than 1,600 students with disabilities so they have access to our rich programming and make progress toward meeting IEP (individualized education program) goals, curricular goals, and Illinois State Standards.
Our team of dedicated professionals takes these responsibilities very seriously. In some instances, information portrayed by others is not an accurate or complete reflection of our work. In other circumstances, as is true in many large systems, we fail to meet the high standards we have for ourselves and our community expects from us. These instances are immediately and thoroughly investigated and corrective measures are implemented.
While we cannot comment on individual student matters, we want our families and community to understand that we are fully committed to working with them to provide quality educational experiences and improve where we are missing the mark.
Among our current areas of focus in the Special Education Department based on feedback from internal and external stakeholders are increasing the capacity of our staff members to support our students’ diverse needs, improving allocation of resources, providing higher quality specially designed instruction to boost student outcomes, enhancing central office support and providing more training for our building administrators and other staff, solidifying compliance with processes and procedures, and reviewing our programming gaps and opportunities.
While we have much to do, we are confident that we are headed in the right direction and are committed to this important work.
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Duvall said from what she’s seen, the district is simply not following the special education guidelines.
“The federal government made these rules, and it’s challenging, but you need a way to find a way to follow them.”
The district said they want the families and the community to understand they are committed to improving where they are missing the mark. Now, the community is helping to pick up the slack.
“We all kind of work as a team and not everybody has the resources. We put out a GoFundMe for her a few weeks ago,” said Duvall.
Duvall wants to make sure other parents know what steps to take when things go wrong.
“That’s how your voice is going to get heard. And you might not feel like you’re being heard right now,” said Duvall, “But all those voices, all those complaints will be answered. They are agencies of guarantee that they will address everyone that they get into.”
Duvall said having the Regional Board of Education step in to help the district recently has been a good thing, and she’ll continue to spread as much awareness as she can.
If you’d like to help the family of the student who was injured, visit the GoFundMe page.
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