Here's a story out of Salt Lake City, Utah, that's gained enough traction to be reported in national news outlets from Fox News to The Huffington Post (below).
It's another unfortunate example of the ways in which students with special needs are marginalized in their schools and in their communities.
Quite frankly, it sounds like some old "separate but equal" B.S. to this reader.... NOT happy....
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High School Principal Apologizes After Leaving Special Education Students Out Of Yearbook
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A Utah mother says the high school that
angered her by leaving special education students out of its yearbook
has decided to print special inserts with their photos.
Leslee Bailey says the principal of Blue Peak High School in Tooele, Utah, called her to apologize Tuesday.
Bailey has said her daughter, Amber Bailey, had been upset by the
omission, but the principal told her he never meant to for that to
happen.
"It's too late, but they're trying really hard to fix it," Leslee Bailey said. "They're owning up to the mistake."
Students will be able to pick up the insert page, featuring pictures
of 21-year-old Amber Bailey and her 16 classmates, next week.
The students attend a special job skills program that shares the building with the high school.
Leslee Bailey said the yearbooks from Blue Peaks High School
typically include pictures of the training program students, and her
daughter realized she wasn't in this year's edition only after going
through it several times.
"She was disappointed," Leslee Bailey said. "She was waiting to see herself and her friends."
Tooele County School District Superintendent Scott Rogers wasn't available late Tuesday to discuss the insert.
He said earlier that the decision to leave the special education
students out of the yearbook wasn't motivated by malice or bad
intentions. Rogers said it was intended to reflect the separation of the
training program and high school.
He said workforce transition program participants and Blue Peak
alternative high school students rarely interact, adding that the 18- to
22-year-old special education learners received a commemorative video
instead of a yearbook.
"I don't think anyone at Blue Peak felt like they were doing anything
exclusionary," Rogers said. "We don't exclude special education
students."
Leslee Bailey, however, said the students interact regularly in the lunchroom, hallways and on the bus.
She said parents and students should have been advised of the change.
"The yearbook is not for the administration," Leslee Bailey said. "It's for the students. Nobody asked the students what they wanted."
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