She wasn’t going to let the system fail her daughter

Armani is a bright, energetic seven-year-old girl. She loves her parents, the local playground, and anything with sequins on it. But she hated going to her old school.  

Armani is autistic, and mostly non-speaking. She uses ASL and an alternative communication (“AAC”) device to communicate and learn, but in first grade, she was struggling.  

Despite an early diagnosis and lots of support from her family, her elementary school wasn’t providing even the limited services they’d agreed to when first developing an individualized education program (“IEP”). She wasn’t getting speech therapy at school, and experienced tremendous frustration and dysregulation when teachers took away her AAC device, denying her the ability to communicate. 

“At the old school, they’d leave her screaming for hours,” Armani’s mother, Ms. Johnson said. “It was clear she was in crisis, yet they’d leave her in a room with table edges where she could bang her head and hurt herself.” 

Armani started coming home with bumps and bruises, but the school didn’t tell Ms. Johnson what was happening since no one else was involved. It was infuriating. 

Ms. Johnson did everything she could to advocate for her daughter. She found an outside speech therapist so Armani could make progress on that front. But she faced hurdle after hurdle with the school trying to ensure Armani would be safe and learning. 

So Ms. Johnson reached out to Children’s Law Center and brought supervising attorney Sarah Remes into Armani’s team. “The school showed a total disregard for Armani’s experience and feelings,” Ms. Remes said, “instead focusing only on how her dysregulation impacted the adults.” Ms. Remes saw that the school was unwilling to consider changes Armani needed at IEP meetings, and that they would have to take this to court. 

“Once Sarah got into our life – snap – things started changing for the better,” Ms. Johnson said. 

Despite opposition every step of the way, they successfully advocated for new evaluations, an updated IEP reflecting Armani’s sensory and communication needs, and eventually a new school placement where Armani could get those services and thrive in the classroom.  

It’s a process. It’s definitely a process. But you have to stick it out. You know your child deserves better, you know your child is smart. And you just have to stick it out.

Ms. Johnson

Armani started at her new school over the summer, and she’s getting the one-on-one support and services she needs to learn. She feels heard, and isn’t having meltdowns like she did at her old school.  

She’s also now been approved for an AAC device she can use at school and at home, to keep making progress. Armani will be getting a new device with an AAC program designed specifically for her communication needs, including pictures of her favorite things: shows she likes to watch, cupcakes, and her mom’s and dad’s smiling faces. 

“She’s at a good school now,” Ms. Johnson said. “They’ve got her back, they’ve got my back. And it’s all thanks to Sarah.”