The Trenton Times published the following article on October 27, 2013. To read the full article, click here.
Trenton’s parents of special needs children struggle to ensure their children are properly taken care of at school
By Jenna Pizzi/The Times of Trenton
on October 27, 2013 at 7:30 AM, updated October 27, 2013 at 7:34 AMTRENTON — Riickeema Potter’s 3-year-old son, Mahkeen Wisseh, speaks only a few words. His vocabulary is slowly growing, but not as fast as it ought to be, Potter says.
Diagnosed with severe autism when he was 18 months old, Mahkeen was supposed to get speech and occupational therapy with an one-on-one instructor at the Stokes Early Childhood Center, run by the Trenton school district. But because of transportation problems, Potter hasn’t been able to send Mahkeen to school this year.
“He qualifies for door-to-door transportation,” Potter said. But because she has to go to work before the bus can pick Mahkeen up, he isn’t going to school, but is instead at an in-home day care facility run by one of Potter’s neighbors.
“They are unwilling to drop him off or pick him up at the day-care provider’s house,” Potter said. “They said they will only transport him from his house. They are not willing to make any exception.”
Potter is one of many parents of children with special needs who have filed complaints with the district about failure to provide services their children are supposed to receive.
The special needs division in the Trenton school district has been making efforts to improve outreach to parents this school year, but it has always had a multi-step process through which parents could seek solutions to problems if they felt the system was failing their children in some way, district spokeswoman Kathleen Smallwood-Johnson said last week.
“The legal department and special education are holding weekly meetings. The legal department facilitates the scheduling and processing of mediation matters,” she said.
Despite those review channels and efforts to improve outreach, there are many parents who struggle desperately to see that their children are properly taken care of, said Nicole Whitfield, the founder of the Trenton Special Parent Advocacy Group and a mother of special needs students herself.