Texas parents, schools spar over special needs

Sarah Viren:

At age 9, Jodie threw tantrums so violent his elementary school threatened to call the police. The next year, the special education student tried to strangle an aide on the school bus, his mom said.

Diagnosed first with bipolar disorder and more recently as having Asperger syndrome, the bespectacled Kingwood boy has a history of biting, kicking, swearing and soiling himself to get attention.

Since he was in third grade, Humble Independent School District administrators have moved Jodie to at least three different schools. At one of the latest, the district's center for children with emotional disturbances, Carol Allred found her son in a timeout room covered in his own waste.

She pushed then, as before, for taxpayer-funded private schooling.

But only this year, after Jodie had fallen behind two grades in reading and spent countless hours isolated from other students because of his outbursts, did school officials agree.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at October 24, 2007 12:00 AM
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