Should he have been included?

 Should he have been included?

 

Samir was excited to get his yearbook.  There had been lots of photos of him during the year.   As he and his mom went through the book they had ordered, there was no mention of Samir or of the other special needs young people who attended the school.  Samir’s Mama Bear was over-the-top furious.

But before you get too whipped up, here is the rest of the story.  Samir attended a post-high school federally funded program that was housed Northwest Career and Technical Academy in Las Vegas.   Technically they were not students at the school and since they had already graduated from high school, they would not be students at any other high school either.

Samir’s mother went to the media to complain about her son and the other “kids” being left out.  There are several issues here.   First of all, all of the young people in the program were over 18, some over 21, so they were not officially “kids” any more.  Secondly, they also were not citizens of the high school, merely members of a program that was leasing space from the high school.

Samir’s mother keeps referring to his completion of the program as his “last year of school”.   But the program Samir was participating in is NOT a school program; it is an employment training program for high school graduates.

So why all the confusion?   

First of all, perhaps the managers of the federal grant made an error by renting space in a high school.  That alone could have led to the confusion that the program was an extension of the school.  Yet all of the participants had already experienced a high school graduation.

Secondly, school staff do a notoriously terrible job of teaching families about post-secondary programs, about what they are and what they are not.  Then there is the fact that families also struggle to think of their children with disabilities as adults and not still children.    Certainly, this mom seemed confused as to what kind of program her son was in.

Clark County school district personnel tried to explain that the yearbook is typically for students in grades 9 through 12 and that these individuals were in a post-graduate program that just happened to be on housed on campus.   No dice, the school district was reduced to playing good defense.

Sometimes people, even people with disabilities, are left out because they should be.  I know hard to accept.