DURANGO, Colo. — Durango school leaders are vowing to make changes after the state found violations in the district’s handling of a student with disabilities. The student’s parents pulled him out of school during a dispute with school administrators, fearing he was no longer safe after he came home repeatedly saying he was hurt and scared.  

“Hectic and rushed,” is how Mari Z. describes her days since she has been keeping her son home from school. The family couldn’t get answers in their native language, Spanish, so they felt the need to pull him out of classes at Miller Middle School. 

Mari lives in Durango, Colorado with her husband Dani, 20-year-old daughter Heleny, who is in college, and her 12-year-old son with special needs. The family asked Rocky Mountain PBS not to use their full names to protect the child’s identity.

“If I have to work, I take my son with me,” Mari said in Spanish. She cleans houses whenever she gets a chance. Otherwise, her schedule revolves around her son’s therapy appointments, teachers dropping by to support his learning and his extracurricular activities. 

“He can’t be left alone,” she said. 

With a deep sigh, Mari explained how her days used to be different when her son was still in school.

Her son was born with several intellectual and developmental disabilities that she said make him “very vulnerable,” including Tatton-Brown-Rahman syndrome, autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.

He was the kid who loved going to school so much he asked to go on the weekends. He told Rocky Mountain PBS that he likes school and is excited to go back. 

Mari said her son is a “super friendly and happy child.” But this year, everything changed. 

Red Flags

“One day [my son] got home and said, ‘Mom, I got hit at school today,’” Mari recalled. 

She said she asked teachers and administrators about the September incident, but was told it was nothing. Her son, however, kept coming home saying he was getting hit at school.

One day, he came home with a bloody mask. Mari wondered if it was from a bloody nose but deep down, she feared someone had hit him. 

In October, her daughter Heleny, who frequently interprets for her parents, received a text from the case manager at school saying her brother’s glasses were broken. 

“I felt in my gut something wasn’t right,” Mari said.

The parents thought their child’s Individualized Education Program (IEP) included one-on-one attention from a paraprofessional all day. So, Mari and her family wondered how these incidents could happen if someone was supposed to always be with him. Mari asked for an immediate meeting with the school and her son’s special needs team and filed a complaint with the Colorado Department of Education (CDE).

This was just the beginning of a months-long battle with the district that ultimately led the family pulling their son out of school. 

The Complaint

The family filed their complaint with CDE on Dec. 6, 2021. 

In the official complaint, Mari wrote about a January 2021 meeting intended to review her son’s IEP. 

“They never provided interpretation for myself and my spouse in that meeting,” Mari wrote in the complaint.

The Durango School District 9-R responded to the complaint by saying the meeting included the couple’s daughter, who the district described as “the parents’ preferred interpreter-translator.” 

But Mari and her husband deny their daughter, Heleny, is their “preferred” interpreter, saying the district often assumes she will be available, and she feels pressured not to let her family down. 

Heleny had a remote college class at the same time as the meeting and wasn’t present the entire time, leaving Mari and her husband unaware of a major change to their son’s IEP that reduced his paraprofessional time. The couple said they would have rejected the change if they understood it.

Violations Found

In its decision to the family’s complaint published Friday, Feb. 4, 2022, the CDE found the school violated the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) when it did not provide a professional interpreter for the January meeting.

“Without adequate interpretation, Parents did not understand that changes were being made to Student’s preprofessional support,” read the decision.

Per state policy, “schools may not rely on or ask students, siblings, or friends or untrained school staff to interpret for parents.” The district must fund interpretation for IEP Team meetings and does not require parents to request an interpreter or a translation. 

The changes to the students’ IEP from 2020 to 2021 were a “significant reduction” in paraprofessional time, read the decision. The school district conceded these changes were implemented because school was not adequately staffed with paraprofessionals. The 2020 IEP required 6.7 hours per day of direct classroom instruction and extended the support to “non-academic routines” (i.e., lunch, outside time) and extracurricular activities. The 2021 IEP lowered the paraprofessional time to 4.3 hours per day. 

“Case Manager’s understanding was that Student required 1:1 support in the academic environment but that he did not require 1:1 support in other settings (such as transitions, recess, etc.) Nothing in the 2021 IEP indicated that Student needed paraprofessional support for safety,” read the CDE’s decision.

But the family didn’t realize that significant reduction had occurred until the “final straw” incident when the boy came home with broken glasses and the school was unable to provide an explanation for what happened. In November, the family finally received a copy of the new IEP translated to Spanish.

The CDE found that the district failed to provide the parents a copy of the 2021 IEP, which is a procedural violation. Furthermore, the district’s failure to translate the IEP in Spanish was another violation. 

This isn’t the first time Durango 9-R has failed to communicate clearly with Latinx families. In 2021, Rocky Mountain PBS reported the story of a school that threatened to report a mother to the authorities because her five-year-old son failed to log into Zoom classes during a period of remote learning.

After our reporting, the district hired four full-time bilingual liaisons to help with communication between the district and Latinx families. Unfortunately, community advocates say the district did not employ these new resources in the situation of Mari and her family. 

[Related: Principal apologizes for threatening text, commits to making changes]

While the district was cited for several violations, CDE said none of the violations demonstrated systemic issues — instead, the state attributed the problems to inadequate paraprofessional staffing. 

Superintendent’s plan

Karen Cheser has been the superintendent of Durango School District 9-R since July 1, 2021. One of the things she committed to when she was hired was to create an environment defined by inclusion and equity. 

“Actions speak louder than words,” Cheser said during an interview with Rocky Mountain PBS as she explained the changes she has planned for the district.

Cheser said she wants to expand access to translators in schools and create a new position for a district special education director.

“This is one thing I was a little surprised at, that we didn’t have one person who only does special education,” Cheser said. “I feel we have to have someone who is completely dedicated to that only all of the time … Someone who is experienced, someone who can be very focused on making sure every one of our students with disabilities is included.”

Cheser said there are several disciplinary actions, including termination, that she can take if she encounters a staff member who deliberately isn’t following policy. 

“I don’t think it’s a deliberate action, it’s a lack of understanding or knowledge of our accountability,” Cheser said.

In addition to Cheser’s plans, CDE is requiring several actions from the district to remedy the complaint from Mari’s family.

Those changes include requiring a translator be provided at the next IEP meeting and mandating an update to the district’s special education policy to state that parents must receive necessary interpretation and translation services.

Mari said she needs to see evidence those changes are happening before she feels comfortable sending her son back to school. She needs to believe he will be safe.

“It’s hard to run my day around his schedule since he’s not going to school," Mari said. "But I will not send my son to school under those conditions."

Sonia Gutierrez is a multimedia journalist with Rocky Mountain PBS. You can reach her at soniagutirrez@rmpbs.org

Benjamin Waddell contributed to this report. Waddell is an associate professor of sociology at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado.