Discipline Policies That Illegally Punish and Exclude Students with Disabilities Must Stop
August 14, 2018
By: Paul O’Neill and Stephanie Lancet
Source: Education Dive
Last week, a federal judge in Brooklyn issued an order that advanced a discrimination and retaliation lawsuit filed in 2015 against Success Academy, a high-achieving charter school network in New York, by former students and their parents (the plaintiffs). In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs allege that the Principal of Success Academy’s Fort Greene campus placed 16 students — some as young as 4 years old — on a “Got to Go” list because of disruptive behavior.
The suit focuses on 5 of those students, all of whom either have or were perceived to have disabilities. The plaintiffs argue that the principal “deliberately targeted their children for removal” from the school because of their “actual or perceived disabilities.” They allege that their children were subjected to a variety of discriminatory discipline practices and attempts to push them out of the school.