Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Family of autistic teen, CCSD tentatively agree to settle dispute for $350,000
Complaint involved attack on nonverbal Clark High student and his educational services
The family of a nonverbal autistic Clark High School student has tentatively settled with the Clark County School District for $350,000 in response to its claims of an inadequate education and unsafe learning environment that led to someone scratching a swastika into the teen’s skin, an attorney for the family said late last week.
Lawyer Hillary Freeman said the money would go toward providing the student with individualized instruction, designed for people with autism, in a private clinical setting. She said it was a global settlement of the multifaceted due process complaint that the young man’s parents filed in November with the Nevada Department of Education, meaning the settlement agreement waives the family’s claims that their son did not receive his federally mandated appropriate education and that he was assaulted at Clark last spring by someone who scratched the antisemitic hate symbol into his back.
The young man, now 18, is Jewish and wears a yarmulke, a traditional head covering for Jewish boys and men. He was a 17-year-old 12th-grader at the time of the attack and spent most of his day in a self-contained special education class with a one-on-one aide and a service dog.
Freeman spoke on behalf of the teen and his parents, who want to remain anonymous.
Freeman noted that the clips of school surveillance footage that the legal team has do not prove that the attack happened on school grounds. They proposed the settlement based on the information they had at the moment.
“As it currently stands, we don’t have the official videos indicating that anything was absolutely wrong,” she said. “The parents wanted to move forward with accepting a global settlement because the longer they wait, the longer he goes without services.”
The young man’s parents withdrew him from Clark after the attack. He has since regressed and his
behavior has deteriorated, Freeman said.
The teen’s mother noticed fresh scratch marks on his back when she was bathing him on the evening of March 9, 2023, according to a report she filed with the CCSD Police Department. Because of his disability, the young man was unable to explain what happened.
The complaint said a swastika was “physically carved into his back.” According to the complaint, the teen also came home from school that day with his service dog’s bag broken and re-sewn.
The investigating police officer closed the report about two weeks later, writing that it should remain closed “until new evidence or information can be obtained for further follow-up.” Freeman said criminal charges could be pursued if more evidence surfaced.
On the education front, Freeman said the teen’s IQ fell by 38 points because he received such a poor education in CCSD, dropping from 86 — which is considered on the low end of average, but not intellectually disabled — to 48, which is intellectually disabled.
IQ scores “can drop when you don’t have exposure to the environment and to different situations,” said Freeman, who specializes in disability and special education law. “It’s rare. I will say that I’ve never seen, in 20 years of practicing, somebody’s IQ drop that much. But it did, and I had two experts who confirmed that.”
Under federal law, all students in the United States who are identified as having a disability are entitled to a “free, appropriate public education,” and schools are required to create and annually update individualized education plans, or IEPS, that outline the special educational needs, educational goals and specialist services necessary to meet those goals based on the student’s identified disability.
The due process complaint said the teen had made “minimal, if any, educational progress” despite attending CCSD’S autism program since preschool. It also said CCSD proposed an unsatisfactory new proposal for this year.
“Notably, the IEP proposed by the district for the 2023-24 school year did not include any goals that advance his academic goals, functional communication and/or behaviors. To the extent there are goals related to these areas, the ‘goal’ is just designed to maintain an otherwise achieved goal,” the complaint said.
The Office of Inclusive Education in the Nevada Department of Education handles dispute resolution if a parent or guardian believes a school has violated special education law or regulation. Corrective action can include compensatory services or monetary reimbursement. The case was set for a hearing last week, but the settlement offer headed that off.
Freeman said the young man’s private education would be tailored to give him life skills. He will work on taking community outings and using language.
A CCSD spokesman said the district did not comment on pending litigation.