By Hannah Curran, Editor
TRUSSVILLE — A Trussville family filed an Office for Civil Rights (OCR) complaint form on February 4, 2022, about Trussville City Schools to advocate for their 10-year-old Type 1 Diabetic daughter, Isabella. This OCR Complaint is under an ongoing investigation.
According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), a type 1 diabetic’s pancreas doesn’t make insulin or makes very little insulin, and that insulin helps blood sugar enter the cells in your body for use as energy. “Without insulin, blood sugar can’t get into cells and builds up in the bloodstream. High blood sugar is damaging to the body and causes many of the symptoms and complications of diabetes.”
Michael Kidd explained that Isabella was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes on January 17, 2022, and was admitted to Children’s Hospital’s Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) in critical condition.
The OCR Complaint states the doctors released her to participate in normal activity on January 20, 2022.
Kidd said that Isabella has a right to an Individualized Health Plan (IHP), “that lays out exactly how she’s supposed to be cared for by the school system,” and a 504 Plan, which is developed for how the school will support a student with a disability and remove barriers to learning.
However, Kidd stated when he contacted Cahaba Elementary School Principal Joy Tyner, she “refused to allow return” due to the staff needing “to be trained first, and it would take time.”
“We later discovered all staff is trained annually,” Kidd said.
Kidd explained that he and his wife, Denise, took copies of their daughter’s discharge documents from the hospital and hand-delivered them to the school.
“Of course, her endocrinologist sent us a letter that she had sent to the school requesting that they provide our daughter with an IHP and a 504,” Kidd said. “We forwarded that again as well. The Diabetes Educator in children’s hospitals sent them all the documents.”
Kidd said they contacted Tyner and the school nurse and requested that any food that Isabella might eat be accounted for and the nurse be notified prior to their daughter eating it. He then contacted Assistant Superintendent Dr. Rachel Poovey on January 30, 2022, and asked that she attend the 504 meeting scheduled for February 1, 2022.
“We had the very first in-person meeting with the whole 504 team,” Kidd said. “That is the 504 coordinator and Assistant Principal, the assistant superintendent Dr. Poovey, the principal Mrs. Tyner, and the school nurse; everybody was there.”
During the meeting, Kidd said they brought all accommodations that they wanted to be included in Isabella’s 504 plan. He said that Poovey assured them that all accommodations would be included. However, when they received the documents, Kidd said there were mistakes, including insulin dosing information.
The complaint states, “Nurse Byran was incapable of properly completing an individualized health plan and refused to follow the doctor’s orders.”
Kidd said they received an updated form from “Ms. Osburn [who] was directed to complete a 504 plan by Assistant Superintendent Poovey, but failed to properly execute.”
“Most of the accommodations that Dr. Poovey agreed to put in there weren’t there at all,” Kidd said. “The ones that were there had been modified to the point that they didn’t even resemble what they started out to be. They weren’t even close.”
Kidd stated in the OCR Complaint form that they “attempted several times to work with all parties involved to correct obvious errors in both documents without success. Multiple times we have received documents for review that were consistently incorrect, unsigned, incomplete, and otherwise unsatisfactory.”
Kidd said they were desperate to get Isabella back in school and were reassured that their daughter would be taken care of and safe.
When the OCR Complaint was filed, Kidd said that Nurse Bryan was moved to Paine Elementary, and a nurse was moved from Hewitt-Trussville Middle School (HTMS) to better accommodate Isabella’s needs.
“On February 9, 2022, everything had finally been done correctly,” Kidd said. “There’s no reason why it took from January 19 to February 9 to put together a set of documents. They’re very straightforward documents.”
So the next day, on February 10, 2022, Kidd said they sent Isabella back to school.
However, Kidd said that after an incident with the principal and the SRO, he was informed on a subsequent trip to the school that he had been trespassed from the premises.
According to the OCR Complaint filed by Kidd, “Trussville City Schools has been investigated previously for civil rights violations, and there are several other families currently experiencing discrimination and retaliation due to their children’s disabilities. Trussville City Schools is engaging in a pattern of discrimination against children with disabilities by providing parents with incorrect information, unnecessarily delaying and/or preventing admission or return to school, and delaying or preventing implementation of protections afforded by federal law, by grossly extending the process via repeatedly providing flawed documents, and refusing to work with parents in good faith.”
Kidd explained that they ended up taking Isabella out of school for almost the entirety of the last month of school. Isabella returned to school this year on August 12, 2022, but after another incident with the nurse, Kidd removed his daughter on August 19, 2022, and she hasn’t returned.
Kidd filed a second OCR Complaint form on August 23, 2022, that is currently being evaluated by the Office of Civil Rights.
The Trussville Tribune repeatedly requested comment from Trussville City School Superintendent Pattie Neill over the last two days but did not receive a response at the time of publication. The story will be updated if a response is received.