SF School District Wouldn’t Honor Its Commitments To Family

Hi, my name is Janice Maez and I am a single parent. I have three children, a daughter who is 14 years and a set of twin boys who are 13 years old. My boys are “special needs” children. Anyone who has a “special needs” child is well aware of the trials and tribulations that you must encounter day to day when working with these special little gifts. The road you travel is often long and hard, with very few rewards, but it all seems well worth the trouble when you can do something good for your children.

My battles, my nightmares, my struggles started shortly after my boys entered the public school system and seemed to get worse as the years went by. As many of you are aware, conflicts with the schools can be much harder battles to fight than dealing with the special needs of your child. Learning what to ask for does not always solve our problems. Sometimes it creates more problems. Like anything else in life, working with the schools becomes a learning process, one that hopefully make one stronger.

My biggest battles with the “system” started in the fall of 1998, when my boys entered Middle School. Now I was faced with a whole different ball game, one that I was truly not prepared for. As I look back , I think that communication was a major factor in what would become my biggest test of faith. As
many of you are aware there are different kinds of communication, from “good” to bad”; from “too
little” to “too much”; and of course the one I think that is the worst, “no” communication. With my story it was a combination of many different kinds of communication.

First there was the “bad” communication. The word of the boys’ arrival came well before the day the boys actually walked through the big doors. So now the boys had a reputation even before they had actually walked through the doors of their new school.

As the days began for the boys, their frustration began to grow, their self-esteem began to drop, and then came the put downs, the lack of understanding, the lack of compassion and the endless road to punishment. The days sitting in the Principal’s office, the long days of in-school suspension, and the countless days of out-of-school suspensions followed. With these suspensions came the endless phone calls and the multitude of “disciplinary” notices, enough to wallpaper an entire house.

Now my children and I had to endure a difficult struggle to accomplish a Free and Appropriate Education for my boys. It was a fight to open up communication between the school district and myself. I kept trying to educate the system that my children are not “bad” children, they are just children struggling with their “special needs.” I have come to realize that people are less compassionate, less understanding if what they see when they look at my children are children with an invisible disability. My boys look normal in every aspect, so it’s hard to understand that they do what they do because of their hidden disabilities.

I have seen the damage that communication or the lack thereof can do to a human being. I believed that I must try and instill self-worth back into my children and help them realize that they have a purpose in life, that they are not bad boys. I have seen a lot of different forms of communication; unfortunately, I have not seen enough good or quality communication. I wish I could say that my story has a happy ending, but it doesn’t, at least not for now. I may have won some small battles, like getting the schools to implement my boys’ IEPs, but the war continues. There is probably no relief in sight, no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but there is hope. Hope is a result of the support that I found working with Protection and Advocacy. Their attorneys and advocates have stood behind me through this entire ordeal: from the endless IEP meetings, to Mediation, to the final hours before a Due Process Hearing. Although my battle is far from over, I know that they will be there for my family but most of all, for me. Without me, who will fight for my children?

I know I can’t change the way the system looks at and reacts to my children, but maybe I can teach my children to look the other way, to become stronger individuals, and to be able to say to themselves, “I am not a bad person”.