The call from her son’s school came as a shock: the vice principal told her to come in immediately.
But when Lisa Manwell arrived at Pioneer Middle School in Plymouth, Michigan, her son wasn’t sick or injured. He was just sitting quietly in the principal’s office.
John, who has ADHD and finds fidgeting in class calms him down, was once removed from class after he refused to stop using safety scissors to cut his cuticles.
Manwell said when she asked why she couldn’t stay at school that day, the school told her that if she didn’t take her son home, they would call Child Protective Services.
The call was just one of 12 Manwell received last fall about John’s behavior preventing him from attending school because of his disability. Many schools have pledged to reduce suspensions because kids don’t learn well without class time. But none of the calls were recorded as suspensions, despite the fact that John missed class.
The practice is known as informal removal, which the U.S. Department of Education defines as when school officials remove a child from school for part or all of the time, or indefinitely, in response to the child’s behavior.
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Excessive informal expulsions amount to a form of off-the-books disciplinary action that effectively denies education and avoids responsibility, advocates and legal experts say. This has special implications for children with disabilities: Informally expelling these students circumvents federal laws that protect them from discipline or exclusion from class for disability-related behavior.
If you have experienced your child being unofficially expelled from school, we would love to hear your story. Tell us about your experience with unofficial expulsion from school.
Since the pandemic began, parents of children with disabilities have complained of an increase in practices that deny their children their legal right to an education.
“This is a problem that we’ve seen repeatedly across the country for many years,” said Katherine E. Lamon, assistant secretary for the department’s Office of Civil Rights. “What this means is that this practice is entrenched in ways that are dangerous to students and it needs to be addressed.”
“We don’t want the school community to send a message that there are kids out there who can’t get there.”
Katherine E. Lamon, Under Secretary for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Education
The ministry released guidelines in July on discriminatory practices in disciplinary actions against students with disabilities. Ramon said the guidelines include informal expulsions because they came up frequently when the ministry investigated complaints against school districts. Informal expulsions could be done through frequent parental pick-up, shortened class time, or extended time spent in a “time-out” room.
The Associated Press/Hechinger Report interviewed 20 families in 10 states who described receiving multiple calls to pick up their children at any time during school hours — some parents received calls within an hour of school starting. Others said they lost their jobs because they had to leave work so often to pick up their children. Many families felt they had no choice but to change schools or school districts.
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The removals are not recorded, so it’s not possible to quantify how often they occur, but the National Disability Rights Network says they have increased during the pandemic.
A teacher shortage means fewer staff members are available to assess and provide services to students with disabilities, “creating greater incentives and pressures to remove students with behavioral problems,” said Dan Stewart, the group’s administration counsel for education and employment.
Anecdotal reports submitted to the network from disability advocacy groups across the country suggest that students of color with disabilities are disproportionately affected.
Students aren’t allowed to be removed from the classroom for extended periods of time without recording it as a suspension, but that happened to John Jinks 12 times last year. Credit: Paul Sancia, The Associated Press
“It’s widespread,” said Ginny Fogg, an attorney with the North Carolina Disability Rights Coalition, “because most parents don’t know their rights and the impact on the school system isn’t enough to make parents stop doing it.”
“The solution is not, ‘No school,'” she added. “This law was enacted 50 years ago to prevent this exact outcome: that students with disabilities are unable to attend school and receive an education.”
Manwell said the calls from her son’s school felt relentless.
“They called my personal phone, my work phone, they called my husband who works the night shift,” said Ms. Manwell, a resource planner for Ford Motor Co. “It was impossible. There was nothing I could do. I had no idea when they were going to call me or what was going to happen.”
Officials with Plymouth-Canton Community Schools in Michigan, where John attends, said they could not comment on specific student issues, citing federal student privacy laws.
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Federal law protects students with disabilities from being repeatedly disciplined or expelled for disability-related behavior. If a student is suspended for more than 10 days, their family has the right to meet with the school to determine whether the behavior was due to their child’s disability. If it was, the school must provide an accommodation rather than suspend them. For example, if a student’s disability makes it difficult for them to concentrate in a noisy classroom with dozens of other children, parents have the right to request a quieter classroom or a classroom with fewer children.
Department of Education guidance from July made clear that students who are informally expelled have the same rights as those who are formally suspended, including a review of whether their behaviour was due to a disorder.
Tricia Ellinger said if she had known that her 10-year-old daughter, Cathy, being frequently removed from the classroom constituted suspension, she would have requested a hearing to make sure she was receiving appropriate services and supports.
One day last spring, she got three calls in quick succession from Kenneth J. Carberry Elementary School in Emmett, Idaho, telling her to immediately pick up Kathy. When she arrived, her daughter was sitting quietly in the school’s resource room, eating a snack. She said school staff told her Kathy hadn’t been doing her homework and needed to go home.
“When I got her in the car, I asked her, ‘Cass, what happened? Did you tear up your notebook? Did you throw your pencil?'” Ellinger recalled. “She said, ‘No, it was just hard. Math is hard.'”
The call was one of about 20 Ellinger received last year at the school, which specializes in educating students with disabilities. Ellinger said her daughter was repeatedly removed from her classroom and locked alone in a room. The expulsions are not recorded as suspensions.
“The solution is not ‘no school.’ This law was enacted 50 years ago to prevent the outcome of students with disabilities not being able to attend school and receive an education.”
Ginny Fogg, an attorney with the North Carolina Disability Rights Association
Emmett School District Superintendent Craig Woods said he couldn’t comment, citing federal student privacy laws.
Families often don’t know what grounds they have to file a complaint, Ramon said, and sometimes they don’t realize their child should never have been suspended in the first place.
“It’s extremely concerning when a school excludes a student for unlawful reasons,” she said. “We want kids to be able to attend class, learn with other students, participate fully and be respected as learners. We don’t want school communities to send the message that there are kids who can’t be there.”
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Manwell said the majority of calls she received from her son’s school last year were about bullying. On his fourth day of school, John was pushed in the locker room and she received a call asking her to pick him up. Another time, a student threatened to hit him when he went to the bathroom.
Because John has a disability, he should have been allowed a quiet room to recover from difficult events, but she said there were often no rooms available or he didn’t want to return to class, leading to a phone call to pick him up.
“It was stressful every day not knowing what I was sending my son into, and I worried about him every day he was gone,” Manwell said. “I could see the damage being done.”
“He was starting to withdraw. He started talking about hurting himself,” she said, her voice choking up.
In January, she decided to home-school John, sending him to a tutoring center for about two hours each day and adjusting her work schedule, which she said has made her life more predictable and John’s behavior more like before.
She said she wants her son back in school but isn’t sure what will happen.
“You want to protect your child,” she said. “You can’t send him to a school that’s not safe.”
This story was produced by The Associated Press and the Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. If you’ve experienced your child being unofficially expelled from school, we’d love to hear your story.
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