Teachers, students sue Compton schools, demand ‘complex trauma’ be treated as disability

This is an example of a genuinely true destructive process that can't be solved by schools. There is a set of real discrimination effects because of trauma, with lifelong implications. But, there is no reason to think that making such discrimination based effects the sole responsibility of our school systems will produce any positive effects at all.

Back before there was a national special education system (early 70's), there was a long discussion among advocates and families about the best way to structure education and social support for students with disabilities. One strategy was to make the responsibility part of the separate responsibilities of all support systems in the community (what we would later called wrap-around services). The other was to hold schools solely responsible for all delivered support services. The second of the two was chosen, I think, largely because of the success of civil rights litigation at the time, and the civil rights legal model seemed the best one to embed in law and rule.

But continuing community-level trauma shows the real limits of trying making one community entity responsible for what is clearly ecological and social damage. The schools are an easy target, but not the right one......

https://goo.gl/H5JoVy

Examples like that are what the lawsuit refers to as “complex trauma,” citing studies that show a child’s brain will change after a severely disturbing event. The ability to focus and reason can be drastically scaled back, inviting more frustration, misbehavior, and even violent outbursts. Subsequently, the student could be pushed further away from education, toward a vicious cycle of punishment that can end behind bars, what some teachers and school officials call “the school-to-prison pipeline.”

The lawsuit contends that complex trauma “limits major life activities… including ‘learning, reading, concentrating, thinking, [and] communicating,'” and estimates that a quarter of CUSD’s 22,000 student population have suffered such violent episodes. That’s about 5,500 pupils.

“Because the student plaintiffs and the class members have experienced complex trauma, they meet the definition of ‘individuals with disabilities'” under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, the lawsuit goes on to claim.

“These children are, as a matter of brain science, not able to learn,”lead attorney Marc Rosenbaum told CNN. “They are unable to get access to equal opportunity and to fight for their right to be recognized in the same way as if they didn’t have teachers or books in their classrooms.”

One of the Compton teachers suing the district, Armando Castro, told CNN, “These kids sometimes overreact to the smallest things. Or they keep their heads down and get real quiet. Then I know something is wrong.”

Micah Ali, president of the CUSD school board, doesn’t dispute the brain science referenced in the lawsuit, but sees the lawsuit as frivolous, telling CNN it will not “get solutions for the students and families who are dealing with violence either at home or in the neighborhood.”

Implementing all the lawsuit demands would cripple the district’s budget, Ali said. Even defending against the lawsuit could do so, he claimed.

“It would decimate the school district and adversely impact people who the individuals have filed the lawsuit are asserting they would like to help,” Ali said.

The lawsuit was initiated by lawyers who then sought out the students and teachers who joined. It asks the district to train teachers and staff to identify those suffering from complex trauma, then for the district to provide them with supplementary help and resources.