Teacher puts autistic student's desk over bathroom commode, school calls it 'creative use of space'
In a distressing turn of affairs, a middle school in Bellingham, Washington stood by its decision to relocate an autistic student's desk from the classroom to a bathroom. Lucas Goodwin, who attends Whatcom Middle School, has both an autoimmune disorder and autism. Since he performs best in a quiet environment, his mother, Danielle Goodwin, talked about Lucas's situation with his teacher. The teacher's 'solution' was to shift Lucas to a bathroom where his desk was placed over a sink, and a camping mat was left on the floor for naps.
In a Facebook post, Danielle Goodwin wrote: "My son has special needs and does best in a very quiet place. This was his teacher's solution... yes, that is my son in a bathroom. Yes, that is my son's desk over a toilet. She also provided a camping mat and pillow for him to nap... on the bathroom floor. I asked if he could work in the library and she said no. She also said it was fine for him to be in there because they "don't use it as a bathroom." My son was humiliated, embarrassed, and disgusted at this inhumane suggestion that he work in a bathroom."
Speaking to a news channel, Lucas said he was "sad, stressed, embarrassed" and did not believe such a thing was happening to him. Danielle also reportedly asked the teacher if there was another place to put Lucas's desk and the teacher said no. Since Lucas suffers an autoimmune disorder called PANDAS (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections), he cannot be in an environment that could have germs.
Even after Danielle's Facebook post went viral and local news channel's picked up the story, the school did not apologize. In an online post, Bellingham Public School Superintendent Greg Baker said: "To our knowledge, the room had been used as storage, not as an active restroom. [However] no students spent time in the repurposed space as part of their school day. This current situation is an example of staff trying to seek a solution to temporarily repurpose a room."
Baker failed to acknowledge why, when ordinary students were too disgusted to use this 'repurposed' bathroom as even a storage space, why the teacher or the school thought it was ok to relocate a special needs student, who is vulnerable around germs, to this room. Baker in his post also blamed "limited" school funding for constructing new facilities and the consequent lack of space. "We are always looking for creative ways to best use our facilities to meet students’ needs. For example, throughout the years in order to provide full-time kindergarten, we have sometimes converted staff lounges into temporary classrooms and principals’ offices into meeting spaces." He also admitted that schools often have "limited space to meet students’ instructional and social-emotional needs."
Danielle wrote in her Facebook post that after the incident, she "immediately" took her son back home and once they reached their place of residence, "he was throwing up from the anxiety". She questioned: "How is this best practice? How is this ok? We must do better."
The incident is the most recent case of educators and employees at public schools abusing students who are on the autism spectrum. In January 2019, a teacher and two teacher's aides in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, were arrested for abusing an autistic child sensitive to loud sounds. In one instance, the three blew a whistle into the ear of the child while holding his arms down to keep him from covering his ears. In 2018, a mother made a secret recording of a teacher and a teaching assistant, at the Greater Baton Rouge Hope Academy in Louisiana using a voice recorder hidden in her son's backpack. She did this after she noticed he had started to wet his bed, had increased anxiety and aggression. The tape provided clinching evidence about how employees at the school routinely and mercilessly bullied her autistic son.
A 2018 study conducted in 11 counties in Middle Tennessee revealed that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were nearly 2.5 times more likely than children without ASD to be reported to the Child Abuse Hotline by the age of 8. According to the study, children with autism are also less likely than children without autism to take further action after they have been abused. Zachary Warren, PhD, executive director of the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center (where the study was conducted) said: "This represents a very vulnerable population, and we have a responsibility to work with mandated reporters, service providers, school systems and those who respond to these allegations to make sure they're equipped with all the tools necessary to meet the complex needs of these children." Warren also admitted that the rates found through the study were a conservative estimate as many cases of maltreatment occurred without being reported.