HOUSTON – Every day is a challenge for Julie Beeson and her 15-year-old son Beau.
Born prematurely with bleeding on the brain, Beau is battling Cerebral Palsy, blindness, scoliosis and he suffers from seizures.
Luckily for the past several years, Beau has attended T.H. Rogers School and was able to be placed in a special program that caters to students with disabilities and mixes them with gifted and talented students.
“It was just visionary for its time. You assume kids that are higher in intelligence won’t bully our kids,” Julie said. “Its made them more compassionate with empathy for the disabled.”
But, now the Houston Independent School District has plans to move 49 students with disabilities in this program and send them to campuses in their own neighborhoods.
The idea is terrifying for some parents like Julie who worries those schools won’t have the same highly trained staff or equipment to deal with children like her son.
“For instance, there’s a little boy in the program that’s blind and walks with a cane. How is that going to be supportive to him to be going to an unsuspecting school, and be the only blind child at a huge high school?” she added. “It’s ludicrous to separate our children.”
KPRC 2 contacted HISD, asking for answers on why the change is being made.
They responded with a statement saying the programs will be in place at the other campuses and that the decision was made after “extensive consideration and collaboration with tea special education conservators.”
On Friday morning, parents concerned about their students safety and well being attended a meeting at school and demanded to know why a decision was made without including them in the discussions.
“They haven’t even thought it all the way through. That’s what we worry about. All of a sudden, these schools are going to be better than T.H. Rogers? They couldn’t explain to me,” said Jose Sanchez, a concerned parent.
“If I had any control over this, as I told the staff yesterday, you would have been in the initial meetings,” said Tiffany Chenier, the school’s principal.
Parents worry that these new schools won’t provide specialized aides or teachers or equipment to address their children’s complex medical needs.
Some parents want to request a hearing with the Texas Education Agency and some said they plan to file a lawsuit against HISD.
