<p>"EL PASO, Texas – It all started with a phone call. Well, the school called me it was about nine, and told me that my son had an incident at school, said Charity Walka, recalling a morning about a month ago.</p>
<p>But little did Walka know that her sons trouble in class would hit her in the pocket. She said her son has a behavioral disorder and was on medication and couldnt stay awake in class at Travis Elementary School.</p>
<p>"So he fell asleep again, and when they tried to wake him, he got angry, Walka said.</p>
<p>She said her son then left the classroom after a teacher tried to restrain him. She said her son also made noise in the hall and he laid down on the floor and wouldnt get up.</p>
<p>For disrupting class, officers at El Paso Independent School District gave her 10-year-old son a ticket for $260 and it is a Class C Misdemeanor. She said her son did not hurt anyone.</p>
<p>“It was just devastating. I was just so angry. He doesn’t understand,” Walka told KFOX.
KFOX reporter Miri Marshall spoke with EPISD officials who said the ticket is legal under Texas law."
[10-Year-Old</a> El Paso Boy Gets $260 Ticket - News Story - KFOX El Paso](<a href=“http://www.kfoxtv.com/news/21211677/detail.html]10-Year-Old”>http://www.kfoxtv.com/news/21211677/detail.html)</p>
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<p>Instead of the boy, I think the reporter should be fined for not knowing how to write.</p>
<p>^^ I’ll second that, Booklady.</p>
<p>what kind of law grants a school administrator legal power to issue tickets?</p>
<p>What they did not tell us in that article is why a kid who can’t stay awake in school is placed in a regular education classroom. A self contained classroom for kids w/special needs would be more appropriate. By the age of 10 that placement issue should have been addressed.</p>
<p>Obviously you are not familiar with the current eductional theory of “mainstreaming” where normal kids are penalized by having to have their teacher spend their time with kids who should not be in a regular class.</p>
<p>For those of you condemning the school, have you ever worked in the public school district? There are too many kids with severe emotional disturbances being put into the regular classrooms. These same kids are smart enough to know that they will not have to deal with normal consequences for their actions because their IEP’s protect them from punishments. By the time these kids are in 4th grade, they know the system. I’ve seen it.
I’ve lived it. They disrupt the class and cause chaos. They get mad, pick up the chair, and fling it. They get mad, curse, scream, and cause the other classmates to cower in fear. They spit, kick, and throw punches at the teachers and the aides. The parents are either in denial about the seriousness of their kid’s behavior/disabilities or blame the teachers and the school for their children’s outburst. The school tends to walk on eggs shells regarding these kids because the parents are quick to call in school appointed advocates for their children. I am going to assume that this is not the first time this child acted out to such a degree and the school needs to address the issue for the benefit of the other children in the classroom.</p>
<p>Some special ed. children perform very well in the mainstream classrooms when accompanied by support staff (TA’s, paraprofessionals). Others are simply too emotionally disturbed to be mainstreamed. Some can’t even be handled or educated properly in the self-contained classrooms and should be placed in a school specific to teaching such students (around here, it’s BOCES). Often times, the parents refuse this option. They’re in denial and refuse to accept the diagnosis even when multiple professionals have agreed on the same diagnosis. </p>
<p>The parents must agree to placement. If they don’t agree, then there is a bunch of red tape involved in going against the parent’s wishes and placing the student in a different environment. I have seen the chaos that some of these students have caused within school districts. The parents need to take some responsibility in this situation. They need to follow through with consequences to their children’s behavior; not excuse the behavior and blame everyone else. Years ago, my son was stabbed in kindergarden by one of these kids–stabbed in the head with a pencil simply because he was seated within arms length to the child. No consequence for the kid who did the stabbing because “he couldn’t help his actions”. My 5 year old at the time was supposed to be understanding of the kid that jabbed a pencil in his head for no reason. These types of things happen everyday to the regular kids in the classroom. They get kicked, smacked, pushed, bitten, spit upon, etc. by kids that shouldn’t be placed in the mainstream classrooms. </p>
<p>I’m glad they fined the family. It was probably the only way that they could get the parent’s attention as well as bring attention to the chaos that the regular kids and teachers face on a daily basis.</p>
<p>I can see both sides. I’ve been a special ed teacher threatened with a sharp object by a schitzophrenic deaf kid for whom there was no other placement. I’m also the mom of a kid with Asperger’s Syndrome who threw himself on the floor out of frustration a couple of times in kindergarten. He had an Aspie friend who was so frustrated by high school Spanish class that he’d just stand outside and YELL every day after school. </p>
<p>I do think public school teachers have WAY too much on their plates and that they are expected to handle situations that trained law enforcement officials would find difficult to handle.</p>
<p>nysmile, in IL they changed the law - parents no longer sign anything with respect to placement. If the school places a kid against the parent’s wishes, the parent now has to take some initiative. I imagine that they did this to solve the problem of no-show indifferent parents.</p>
<p>Perhaps the TX school district has no psychologist or social worker available to mediate in this situation, and that’s why they called the cops?</p>
<p>Assuming that the school was at fault here (big assumption, I know) this family might was to consider homeschooling. Based on what I read, the child may really not be well suited for classroom instruction while on this medication.</p>