Mother says 'bullying or neglect' at school led to 2 concussions and a broken elbow for her 6-year-old son
A mother has pulled her 6-year-old son with special needs out of public school after he suffered from a broken elbow and two concussions, she said.
Jennifer Britton said her son, Noah, has had at least eight incidents at his school, Nelsonville-York Elementary in Nelsonville, Ohio, since September 2017. She says the injuries were due to “bullying or neglect” occurring at the school.
“The worst part is my child is getting hurt in a place he should be safe,” Britton, a home health aide, told Columbus, Ohio, news station WSYX.
“[Noah] broke his arm on the playground… But [the school] never contacted us until five in the evening that he was even in an accident. When my boyfriend picked him up from school, he was crying, and [school employees] said he wanted to ride the bus, that’s why he’s crying,” Britton told Yahoo Lifestyle. “There was a lot going on. We were worried about getting him to the hospital; we didn’t ask why they waited so long to tell us.”
Britton says she plans to now homeschool Noah after he was taken to the hospital, again, on Wednesday for a severe concussion. Britton says another boy kicked Noah in the back of the head. This weekend, he was vomiting so much from nausea as a result of the injury that they returned to the emergency room.
Noah’s sister, 16-year-old Chloe Britton, was the first to share her brother’s story on Facebook. She says the school is not providing a safe environment for Noah, who has a rare lung disorder, is on the autism spectrum, and weighs only 30 pounds, despite the family speaking to the principal and asking for an investigation.
“The injuries that he’s gotten that hasn’t been due to other children [bullying him] should have been preventable. Like him on the playground, where was the teacher? My son is special needs. There should have been somebody there watching him. No one around ever sees anything?” Britton informed Yahoo Lifestyle.
She added that after his arm injury last school year, Noah was provided an aide who would monitor him while transferring classes and during recess. However, that aide was not implemented again at the start of this school year, as Noah entered the first grade.
“He has an [Individualized Education Program], and we had agreed that he would have an aide. It wasn’t written in the IEP, I don’t know why, but we had verbally agreed to it, and I assumed it would be this year too,” she said.
According to WSYX, the school district’s superintendent, Mick McClelland, says his investigation showed that Noah was not being bullied and that students at the school are safe. He also said an aide would join four staff members on playground duty.
Neither McClelland nor the principal of Nelsonville-York Elementary, Becky Steenrod, immediately responded to Yahoo Lifestyle’s requests for comment.
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