by BorderBelt, North Carolina Health News
October 27, 2024

By Rachel Baldauf

Border Belt Independent

Eric Cromartie III thrived at Lumberton High School, where he maintained a grade point average above 4.0 and received academic awards.

Cromartie, who has autism, graduated in 2022, although his mother, Selena McMillan, had thought he would return to Lumberton High the next school year in accordance with his individualized education program. 

Frustrated, McMillan filed a petition with the N.C. Office of Administrative Hearings, and her son was re-enrolled for the 2023-2024 school year. 

By that time, however, Cromartie had spent a year in limbo. He struggled without the regular routine of school and was diagnosed with anxiety disorder, according to McMillan. 

“Because of all of the things that Robeson County did to my child, mentally he regressed with his learning, with the anxiety,” she said. “The behavior disorder that developed was off the chart.”

When Cromartie returned to school in 2023, he attended classes virtually because of his anxiety. He had successfully taken virtual classes during the COVID-19 pandemic, but this time, his teachers were often late logging onto their computers. Sometimes they didn’t show up at all. 

Cromartie’s employment preparation teacher was late or absent for 60 percent of his virtual classes from August to January last school year, and his English teacher was late or absent for 20 percent of classes, according to a complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. Legal Aid of North Carolina filed the complaint in April on behalf of Cromartie’s mother.

When teachers did log on, they would often turn off their cameras for long stretches of time, isolating Cromartie from interacting with classmates, according to the complaint. On one occasion, a teacher turned off the camera while a visitor was speaking to the class. Another day, Cromartie was given a worksheet to complete while the rest of the class watched a movie.

“I was literally watching my son being prevented from getting his education,” McMillan told the Border Belt Independent. “I was watching him just drift away in front of me.”

The BBI spoke with McMillan and three other parents who say Robeson County public schools are failing to provide an adequate education for their children with special needs. They said their kids are not receiving services outlined in their individualized education programs, commonly called IEPs, and are placed in classes with unqualified instructors. When they voiced concerns, some said they faced retaliation from school officials.

“We do repeatedly hear from parents that they’re not getting the services that they should be getting from the district,” said Hetali Lodaya, an attorney with Legal Aid of North Carolina, a nonprofit law firm that has helped several Robeson County parents of children with special needs file discrimination claims.

Public Schools of Robeson County, which enrolls more than 21,000 students in southeastern North Carolina, did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.

McMillan said she became so frustrated that she withdrew 21-year-old Cromartie from Lumberton High School, although he could have stayed another year under state rules. He is homeschooled now.

“These children have disabilities, and they have the right to go to school,” she said.

The complaint filed by Legal Aid of North Carolina calls for an investigation of the school district’s alleged failure to provide Cromartie “with appropriate instruction and inclusion opportunities.” It also calls for an investigation into schools’ ability to provide proper opportunities for students with disabilities that prevent them from attending in-person classes. 

Frustrated parents

Robeson County public schools serve about 3,000 students in its exceptional children’s program. Like other school districts across the state and the country, it has struggled with a shortage of instructors certified to teach classes geared toward students with disabilities such as autism and visual and hearing impairments. 

The district had 19 vacancies in its exceptional children’s program in 2023, according to an analysis by EdNC. 

Jennifer Davis, who taught special education classes at Lumberton High School for five years until 2020, said it was common for special education classes to be taught by uncertified teachers or substitutes due to staffing shortages.

Davis said it’s crucial to have certified teachers because they undergo special training. “Working with special needs kids, in order to keep their attention, you have to be very creative.” 

Michelle Brower, whose daughter is deaf and blind, said the Robeson County school district’s Shining Stars Preschool removed crucial instruction for two years when the school’s teacher for deaf and blind students retired. Now her daughter goes to Littlefield Middle School in Lumberton, where Brower said her class was taught by uncertified substitute teachers for several months last year when a teacher was on medical leave.

“It’s like because we have special needs kids, it’s not important. They don’t address those concerns as quickly as they should,” Brower said. “If it was another regular class, I don’t think they would go that long without a regular teacher.”

Casson Jones said his 9-year-old son Nolan, who has autism and is nonverbal, was taught by a certified exceptional children’s teacher only about half the time from kindergarten to third grade at Prospect Elementary School in Maxton. He called self-contained classes — those separate from general education classrooms — “glorified daycare settings.” 

McMillan said her son was placed in a self-contained class during his freshman year at Lumberton High School. She became concerned when a teacher told her that students in self-contained classes aren’t taught math, reading or writing.

When she asked for her son to be taken out of the self-contained class, McMillan said, her requests were ignored. “We want him to go to college and have a life. He wants to have a career.” 

Marsha Jo Hill-McKenna, whose 5-year-old son Carson attends East Robeson Primary School, says she is also concerned about the quality of her child’s education. Carson, who has autism and is nonverbal, was suspended earlier this year. His mother is considering homeschooling him.

“At this point, he would learn more at home with no homeschooling opposed to being in a school setting, and there is no telling what it is doing to his emotional and mental well being,” Hill-McKenna said in a Facebook message. “A 5-year-old should not be stressing about school. They should stress about what snack they want.”

Some parents said schools are failing to provide the services promised on their children’s individualized education programs.

Officials at Tanglewood Elementary School in Lumberton told Brower that her daughter was receiving regular physical therapy. When Brower asked for a copy of the therapy logs, she said she was told the therapist had not turned in the documentation.

Brower said she also faced difficulties when trying to get her daughter reevaluated. Federal law requires that students be reevaluated at least every three years to assess whether they still qualify for special education services. Brower had to file a complaint with the Department of Public Instruction to get her daughter reevaluated.

McMillan said she had a similar experience. By her son’s fourth year at Lumberton High, she said, he had not been evaluated in six years. She said she spoke up about it but was met with hostility. 

“When you became a concerned parent, you were labeled,” she said. “You became enemy No. 1.”

Some parents said their children have endured unsafe environments at school. 

Jones said he and his wife had pushed for two years for Prospect Elementary School to provide a one-on-one aide for their son, but their requests were denied. In April, Nolan suffered second-degree and third-degree burns after touching a hot serving bar at an after-school program — an incident Jones said could have been prevented. 

Doctors had to put Nolan under anesthesia to properly clean the wound, Jones said. For weeks, Jones and his wife had to apply ointment on his hand. “We had to take a beach towel and wrap him up from his shoulders to his knees, and my wife had to hold him down.”

Nolan regularly sees an orthopedic surgeon and still can’t properly spread his fingers out on his injured hand due to scar tissue, according to his father. 

Davis, who stopped teaching because she is undergoing treatment for cancer, said she often saw students with special needs put in danger.

On one occasion, Davis said, a teaching assistant threatened to stab three of her students with scissors. Davis said she told administrators about the incident, but nothing happened.

“She didn’t even get in trouble,” Davis said. “They just told her to stay away from those three kids.”

More training?

Cromartie is doing well in homeschool, but McMillan says she worries about the long-term impacts of his experience at Lumberton High School.

The complaint calls for special training for school staff members who work with students with disabilities. The training would focus on providing “inclusion, appropriate provision of required supports and services, and supportive communication and relationship-building with parents.” 

McMillan said the ordeal has shaken her faith in the school system. Before the pandemic, she helped run an advocacy group for parents of children with special needs in Robeson County. 

“I used to be the biggest parent advocate for the Public Schools of Robeson County,” she said, “and now I’m the biggest advocate for people to take your children out of the school system.” 

Correction: An earlier version of this story inaccurately said McMillan filed a complaint with the N.C. Department of Public Instruction. She filed a complaint with the N.C. Office of Administrative Hearings.

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