Southern Legal Counsel files complaint with Department of Education on behalf of middle school student with disabilities
March 6, 2023 - After a series of incidents that caused a 12-year-old Gainesville, Fla., middle school student to sustain serious injuries and missed or improperly dosed medication, Southern Legal Counsel has filed a complaint with the Florida Department of Education on his behalf.
The complaint alleges that the Alachua County School District has violated the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the Americans with Disabilities Act, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act by failing to properly treat the student’s disability as required by his Individualized Education Plan (IEP). This failure prevents him from fully participating in school activities.
SLC attorney Dan Marshall said that because his medication was not administered when necessary, he suffered from symptoms such as lethargy, nausea, and sweating, which prevented him from fully participating in classes and school. “Furthermore, our client has been harmed due to a lack of supervision, which is explicitly required by his IEP,” Marshall said. “This led to an incident where he crashed his wheelchair and was injured, requiring treatment in a hospital.”
Because of the school’s poor track record of providing the care required by his IEP even when he was at school, the student’s mother felt she could not trust the school to properly care for him outside that environment, causing her to keep him home rather than allowing him to join his classmates on a field trip to Sea World. This represented a lapse in his education. The school principal also recently suggested to his mother that she keep him home for a couple of days without citing any disciplinary reason.
The IDEA requires schools that receive federal funding to provide a free and appropriate education to children with disabilities, saying, “the state must develop, review, and revise an ‘individualized education program’ that meets the requirements of the Act.” A school that materially fails to implement an IEP violates the IDEA.
SLC is asking the Department of Education to find that the School District failed to comply with the IDEA, ADA and Section 504. The complaint further asks that the school board conduct additional training for its employees so that other students do not experience similar problems to those that SLC’s client has experienced.
“Specifically, the family requests that School staff participate in technical assistance and training by the Bureau of Exceptional Education and Student Services in the areas of effective inclusion practices, family-school collaboration and communication, the proper implementation of Medical Management Plans or Emergency Care Plans, and/or other relevant subjects,” the complaint states.