New Orleans Schools Shut the Door on the Disabled

A new third-grader arrives at your school. He is blind. He is autistic. He is developmentally delayed.

How does your school deal with the special needs of this child?

If your school is in New Orleans, the likely answer is to dump him in with the rest of the students and let him find his way.

That’s exactly what happened when one 9-year-old boy recently enrolled at a New Orleans school. “The regular ed teacher just taught the regular curriculum,” said the boy’s mother. “When a worksheet was handed out, they would give one to my son, even though he is completely blind.”

This story—and others like it—explain why the Southern Poverty Law Center, along with two other legal groups, filed a complaint today against the Louisiana Department of Education [2]. The complaint chronicles the department’s systemic failure to protect students with disabilities from discrimination and to grant them equal access to public schools.

Since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the New Orleans public school system has become a blank slate for charter school organizers. The city’s 47 charter schools, each operating as an independent school district, have been held up as a national model for school innovation. The city also has 23 schools operated by the state under the Recovery School District (RSD) and 16 schools operated by the Orleans Parish School Board.

At more than 30 of the schools in New Orleans, students with disabilities have been either denied enrollment or shuffled off to other schools. The 9-year old’s mother had little luck when she went hunting among the charter schools, hoping to get better services. Five out of the eight she visited said point blank that they could not accommodate her son’s needs.

The mother finally found a public school able and willing to meet his needs. But it is across town, requiring a grueling bus trip each day for the boy. 

“When you have a child with a disability,” she says, “everything is a struggle—things most kids take for granted. Just getting dressed in the morning is a challenge. You watch your child work so hard to do basic things. You expect that professional teachers are going to make life easier for your child. We’re finding that’s not the case.”

This complaint is the second legal action taken by SPLC against New Orleans schools this month. On July 8, SPLC filed a class action lawsuit against the RSD for its brutal disciplinary policies [3]. This latest action is being filed jointly with the Community Justice section of the Loyola Law Clinic and the Southern Disability Law Center.

“This complaint is an opportunity for the Louisiana Department of Education to remove these well-documented barriers facing students with disabilities in New Orleans,” said SPLC lead attorney Eden Heilman. “We hope to work collaboratively with the state to craft a solution that will ensure no child is denied access to the innovative educational reforms occurring throughout the city.”