Families allege years of trauma in Lawrence special education

One word repeatedly came up as Annette Camlin described her family’s decadelong experience with Lawrence Public Schools’ special education services: trauma. 

It began with the district failing to accommodate her son Calen’s autism and chronic health condition. Despite medical documentation and support from special education staff, Calen was marked truant, denied access to therapy during class and pressured to shorten medically necessary restroom breaks. 

All of this occurred despite Camlin’s repeated pleas to the district. 

“I know we were not the only family out there whose lives were made hell,” Camlin said. 

USD 497 serves approximately 2,430 students who receive SPED services, according to district spokesperson Julie Boyle. That number includes “gifted” students, who are included within the SPED system in Kansas, and represents nearly a quarter of total enrollment.

This designation grants these students an Individualized Education Plan, or IEP, that creates specific guidelines to best meet their needs, including an exact number of instructional minutes a student should receive on specific skills. But according to students, parents and former teachers, those minutes are rarely met — a shortcoming that leaves students in special education underserved across the district. 

Parents and former teachers say many other guidelines on IEPs are often not met, mostly stemming from understaffing and a lack of oversight.

Boyle said the district special education team oversees compliance with requirements, and building principals supervise teachers and paraeducators. 

“If a teacher or a parent has a concern about IEP services not being met, we encourage them to contact the building principal about their concerns and/or bring their concern to the student’s IEP team for discussion and resolution,” she said. 

In the case of every parent and student interviewed for this story, they attempted to use those channels to resolve their concerns but said they were not adequately addressed. 

Boyle said the district does not respond through the media to individual parent concerns. 

‘This is a nightmare’

When Calen looks back at his journey through the district, he says he would be in a very different place today had he received better special education services. 

The Camlin family moved to Lawrence in 2012, and Calen enrolled at Liberty Memorial Central Middle School two years later. Calen has autism and a chronic health condition called a motility disorder, which affects movement of muscles in the digestive tract. This meant he had both an IEP and a health plan at the school. 

The motility disorder caused Calen to miss chunks of school as he dealt with extreme pain and trips to the hospital. Despite support from his SPED teacher and a note from Children’s Mercy Hospital explaining Calen’s reason for absences, then-LMCMS principal Jeff Harkin didn’t accept the excuse for absences. 

Calen was marked as truant. Being placed in truancy meant Calen was forced to go to school on days when he felt extremely ill and complete a diversion program. All of the additional stressors caused Calen’s anxiety to spike. Camlin described it as a downward spiral that led to more behavioral problems at school. 

“He (Harkin) just acted like Calen just didn’t want to go to school,” Camlin said. “Like, they didn’t buy the health issue anyway.”

Calen’s health condition also required him to spend 20 to 25 minutes in the restroom after lunch. But Camlin said nurses at the school would offer him Mustang Bucks, a form of school currency, if he sped up the trips to the bathroom, which could aggravate his health condition even more. 

During this time, Calen also had a Serious Emotional Disturbance waiver that provided him with a one-on-one therapist. But Camlin said Harkin would not let the therapist work with Calen during instructional time, effectively prohibiting the therapist from fulfilling the waiver requirements. 

Camlin said she repeatedly tried to bring the issues to the attention of the district, but they backed Harkin’s decisions.

“This is a nightmare, like I said, primarily caused by one man,” Camlin said. “This caused a lot of trauma.”

Harkin is now principal at St. John Catholic School and did not respond to an email seeking comment. 

Eventually, Camlin decided to pull Calen from school, enrolling him instead in an online program for students with special needs. Calen started doing much better and was taking strides in his reading and math skills. 

A few months later, Calen had his truancy court date, where Harkin and the district argued he needed to return to school. The stresses of the truancy case caused Calen to spiral again, Camlin said, even though he had left the district. The judge dismissed the case, finding that Calen had myriad health issues and needed to be homeschooled. 

Camlin noticed two things after the decision was announced. The first was the feeling of relief that flooded her body. The second: “Jeff Harkin could not get out of that courtroom fast enough,” she said. “Boom, he was gone.”

After a few years of an online education program, Calen decided to enroll in USD 497 again as a freshman at LHS. 

He did OK for the first month, Camlin said, but struggled with complex post-traumatic stress disorder from his last trauma at school. 

“Just being in the building was triggering him,” Camlin said. “His anxiety was through the roof.”

Calen was placed with a one-on-one para in the office to do his school work, which was working well. But Camlin said she was surprised one day to find out that arrangement was changing despite the success. Calen was being placed in a resource room because of what Camlin was told were funding reasons. 

Calen, placed back in an environment the school knew was triggering to him, began to spiral downward again. 

Boyle said placements are determined by a student’s IEP team, which include parents or guardians, teachers, specialists and school administrators. The team’s goal is to identify the least restrictive environment for the student to receive the support in their IEP.

“As students move through their time and matriculate through the district, certainly their needs may change and so the IEP is a plan that can and will be revisited if the student has increasing or otherwise changing needs,” she said. 

Camlin had seen enough. She went to the school administration and threatened to pull Calen from the district again. After the threat, the district finally offered what became a lifeline for Calen: a therapeutic classroom. These classrooms are specialized learning environments designed to support students with significant social, emotional or behavioral needs. 

Calen attended these specialized classrooms at the East Heights building and then at Pinckney, where he graduated in May 2023. 

“It felt amazing,” Calen said about graduating. “Even if I didn’t show much emotion, it felt amazing. It finally felt like there was a chance, like there was a chance of something greater.

The therapeutic classroom saved Calen, but Camlin was left wondering why it took so long for him to be placed there. 

“They waited two years to put him in the program, and we shouldn’t have had two years of more hell and more trauma for him,” she said.  

Camlin said even now, Calen talks about how the trauma still affects him. She recalled him saying: “Mom, had that man not done that, I think I’d be in a different situation now.”

‘We can only do so much’

136 hours. That’s how much time outside of the normal workday one former middle school special education teacher worked during one semester, according to a running tally she kept. 

The teacher, who asked to remain anonymous to protect future job opportunities, said the overwork led to severe mental health struggles and eventually to her departure from the profession as a whole. 

It wasn’t just the overbearing workload. She said despite the nonstop work, she was rarely able to actually fulfill the legal requirements of her students’ IEPs. 

The SPED teacher said she had often dreamed of being a teacher and loved working with students. But despite her best effort, and the hours of extra work, there still weren’t enough resources to meet the requirements of each student on her caseload. 

“These minutes aren’t being met because there’s just not enough time in the day, or the time is dictated by other things,” she said. “You do the best you can, but you never feel like you’ve done 100%.”

The teacher said she often felt a lack of support and was pushed by administrators to work the extra hours with little to no extra pay “for the kids.” Some SPED teachers have up to 30 kids on their caseload with specific IEP requirements. 

The pressure created severe health effects that eventually pushed the former SPED teacher out of the profession. She said she started to lose weight and hair, and eventually started to experience severe mental health challenges and suicidal ideation.

You do the best you can, but you never feel like you’ve done 100%.”

— A former USD 497 special education teacher

She said the SPED teachers she worked with frequently asked for more help and support but received little. Occasionally, a district administrator would come to the school and work on their laptop in the library. 

Among SPED teachers, camaraderie is often built “through trauma,” the former teacher said, and turnover is high. 

“From a teacher’s perspective, looking at parents, I feel really bad, because, as a special education teacher and a teacher in general, our hands are tied,” she said. “We can only do so much.”

The Kansas Department of Education collects formal complaints filed against districts for insufficient SPED service. Multiple complaints against USD 497 have been filed in the last few years. 

One complaint against USD 497 found that a Deerfield Elementary School student missed nearly 700 minutes of speech/language therapy and social work services required by an IEP. Another found that the district did not follow proper disciplinary procedures, failed to respond appropriately to a parental request and shirked federal regulations.  

Boyle said the district and school board have demonstrated a commitment to staff retention, including by implementing raises for teachers and staff. Those raises required the district to reduce positions and close schools, Boyle said. 

“Like many school systems across the state and country, we face significant challenges in filling special education teaching positions,” Boyle said. “These roles require a unique combination of skill, training and dedication, and there is currently a well-documented shortage of fully certified special education teachers.”

Allie Lippe-Mackey is a former science teacher in the district, who now works as a freelance virtual science teacher and reading specialist. She said during her time in the district, the SPED staff was spread so thin, it was impossible for most teachers to meet all of their needs in large classes. 

“What you’re doing is you’re piling all of these students with these significant needs in one class and I can’t possibly meet those,” she said. “And also, that’s not inclusion.”

She said many of the SPED support staff like paras are undertrained. 

“We pay our paras like crap,” she said. “They’re lucky if they get half a day of professional development before school starts. They’re working with the schools’ most high-needs students and they have the least amount of training.”

When Lippe-Mackey first started teaching, she tried to access her students’ IEPs through the district’s PowerSchool software but couldn’t find them.

The district’s tech support told her she needed to request access from SPED teachers. She began emailing teachers to request copies of the IEPs. She said the lack of access was problematic because she couldn’t see important details, like whether a student had specific needs that would require more support. 

“I was not given access to their IEPs, which are legal documents required for every teacher to have access to so that we can best support those students,” she said.

Both Lippe-Mackey and the former SPED teacher said the first step to better special education services is more financial support, both by paying paras and SPED staff more and hiring more staff to fill needs.

Finding those funds can be a challenge. Special education is legally underfunded at multiple levels of government. Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the federal government committed to funding up to 40% of the excess costs of SPED, but it consistently provides less than half that amount — typically around 13-15%.

The Kansas Legislature consistently underfunds SPED by failing to meet its legal obligation to cover 92% of excess costs, forcing districts to divert resources and stretch limited budgets to try and meet student needs.

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‘I don’t know because you’re not telling me’

Ashley Hendricks’ 8-year-old son has attended Quail Run Elementary School since kindergarten, completing second grade this year and moving to third grade in the fall.

His first year was promising, but the experience began going downhill in first grade. Hendricks said during the fall 2023 parent-teacher conferences, the SPED teacher said she had no prior experience in the field.

Boyle said the district, like others across the state, is struggling to fill SPED teaching positions. She said to mitigate the problem, the state allows for alternative licensures and apprenticeship models that allow qualified individuals to begin teaching while they complete the required coursework for full certification.

Alarmed, Hendricks said she still wanted to give the teacher the benefit of the doubt but knew it’d be a challenging year. 

That was an understatement. The teacher had six kids in her room and five of them, including Hendricks’ son, were not yet toilet trained, she said.

Her son is diagnosed with Level 3 autism and Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. He’s mostly nonverbal and uses TouchChat on a personal iPad to communicate. He drinks meals out of bottles that Hendricks prepares and sends to school. They’ve been in extensive feeding therapy outside of school.

Multiple times throughout the year, Hendricks said her son would come home “acting like he was starving” and with diaper rashes, making her suspicious his plans weren’t being followed.

Hendricks said her son hasn’t experienced any bullying from other students, to her knowledge, and that Quail Run students are exceedingly supportive of him. 

She can tell, however, when her son is upset due to an authority figure. She said he’s come home after school hitting key words on his device, like “teacher, mad,” “teacher, angry,” and “cry, cry, cry.”

Hendricks said the teacher and paras during school were turning the volume down on his iPad. She filed a formal complaint to undergo due process with the district.

If you take away a nonverbal child’s communication device or turn down their device, that is abuse. You cannot do that.”

— Ashley Hendricks

“If you take away a deaf person’s hearing aid, that’s abuse,” Hendricks said. “A physically disabled person’s wheelchair, that’s abuse. If you take away a nonverbal child’s communication device or turn down their device, that is abuse. You cannot do that.”

Ultimately through due process, KSDE investigators found the district had not violated her son’s IEP and that when his personal device’s battery died, the school temporarily replaced it with a district device.

Hendricks had also made a report to the Kansas Department of Children and Families after noticing odd bruising on her son after school.

Although she empathizes with the workload placed on special education teachers, Hendricks believes good communication with parents is their responsibility. 

Communication breakdowns continued this year with a new teacher.

In an autism room at school, Hendricks’ son often comes home with small notes from his teacher, such as “we had a good day” or “went swimming today,” Hendricks said. The notes are loosely in his backpack, instead of in the proper folder. One time, she said, an orange band was attached to the top loop of his backpack, notifying her to bring more pullups to school the next day. She almost didn’t catch it until her son was out the door for school in the morning and she was able to quickly stuff some pullups in his bag.

“I want to know the daily activities my son does,” Hendricks said. “Are you just letting him play? Is this a f—ing day care, or is he going to school? Is he learning shit? I don’t know because you’re not telling me.”

‘If I didn’t know to fight this, it would not have gotten fixed’

Noel Jackson moved to Kansas during the summer of 2020 and enrolled her daughter in first grade for the upcoming fall semester. Immediately, it was not a smooth transition. 

Jackson’s child has autism and had an IEP in California, where she was placed in an autism room. When she enrolled her child at Prairie Park, though, her child was placed in a general education room. Jackson said she was told the placement was because autism rooms in Lawrence were mainly for nonverbal students. 

But during the peak of COVID, the general classroom placement meant distance learning for Jackson’s child. Jackson bought a desk and hired a nanny, but eight hours of distance learning in front of a tablet was challenging for any student, especially one with autism. 

Jackson pleaded with the district to rethink the placement, and argued that they had a responsibility to place her child in the closest equivalent room to where she was at her old school. But she said the district responded by saying they didn’t have the data to support the child being in an autism room.

“It’s circular logic,” Jackson said. “You can’t educate my child in person because you don’t have the data, but you don’t have the data because you’re not educating her in person.”

After five months, the district agreed to have Jackson drop her child off for one hour a day to work with a special education teacher. A couple of weeks later, the district called an IEP meeting and agreed that Jackson’s child needed to be in an autism room — exactly what Jackson had been saying for months. 

A couple of years later, Jackson’s child switched schools, from Prairie Park to Quail Run. The school switch was not communicated by the district to the busing company it uses, First Student. Jackson was the one to discover this, when she received the bus dropoff and pickup times and they didn’t align with the new school’s schedule. 

That meant Jackson’s child did not receive bus services that were legally required by her IEP for about two weeks. When the bus finally did start arriving, it was an array of substitute drivers, which led to inconsistent pickup times and routes — including frequent instances where no bus ever showed up. 

Jackson recalled one day where her child’s bus driver was late to their house, one of the last stops on the morning route. When Jackson called a First Student employee to ask where the bus was, they said they could not reach the driver, meaning a bus driver had a bus full of students and could not be contacted. The driver eventually showed up 30 minutes late and said they were confused by the route.  

For nearly half of the school year, Jackson was left wondering if and when a bus would show up. She communicated frequently with district administrators, including Ron May, director of human resources; Laura Basham, director of special education; and then-Superintendant Anthony Lewis. 

Finally, when Jackson emailed the school board and threatened legal action, demanding safe, reliable transportation as legally required in her student’s IEP, a reliable bus started showing up every morning. 

Boyle said that when busing issues are reported, the district investigates and works with First Student to “resolve any concerns to ensure safe and reliable transportation for all students.”  

This year, Jackson’s daughter has finished elementary school and is preparing to start middle school. She said her child had made lots of progress both socially and academically. Jackson believed her child needed to attend Southwest Middle School instead of remaining in an autism room at a different school. This was especially important for Jackson because her child had built a friend group in elementary school who were all going to Southwest. 

Do you know how hard it is for a little girl with autism to make friends?”

— Noel Jackson

“It was increasingly important to us that she go to the same middle school as all of her friends were going to,” Jackson said. “Do you know how hard it is for a little girl with autism to make friends?”

But as the year wound on, they were never called in for an IEP meeting. Districts are required to hold an IEP meeting every 12 months that includes parental input. In late February — 13 months after their most recent meeting — Jackson asked the district why they hadn’t had a new IEP meeting to discuss the middle school transition. 

She got an email in response, but not the one she was expecting. The district told her they had placed her child in an autism room at Billy Mills Middle School. 

Immediately, Jackson confronted the district. The placement is an example of predetermination, when an educational agency makes its determination prior to or without an IEP meeting. 

Boyle said the district follows a process to ensure compliance with SPED law if a parent has concerns about a placement decision. 

“We are committed to ensuring that families are meaningful participants in all special education decisions,” Boyle said. “Placement decisions for students with IEPs must be made through the IEP team process, which includes the parent. Parents play a critical and valued role in the IEP process.”

Jackson had to work for nearly a month with district administrators to correct the placement, placing calls and holding meetings. Eventually, she got it worked out and her child will attend Southwest in the spring. But Jackson’s whole experience showed her how much effort she had to put in to correct the district’s errors.

“This absolutely activated my PTSD and made me very sick, both mentally and physically,” Jackson said.

At one point, Jackson said she asked one administrator whether the issue would have ever been resolved had she not been so adamant about getting it changed. Jackson said the administrator could not articulate a clear response. 

“So I believe the answer is no, very clearly was no,” Jackson said. “If I didn’t know to fight this, it would not have gotten fixed. So absolutely, there are students not getting what they’re legally entitled to and what they deserve because their parents don’t know to fight or don’t have the time or energy to do it.”

Cuyler Dunn (he/him), a contributor to The Lawrence Times since April 2022, is a student at the University of Kansas School of Journalism. He is a graduate of Lawrence High School where he was the editor-in-chief of the school’s newspaper, The Budget, and was named the 2022 Kansas High School Journalist of the Year. Read his complete bio here. Read more of his work for the Times here.

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Maya Hodison (she/her), equity reporter, can be reached at mhodison@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.

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