A New York school district has settled a lawsuit that claimed school staff failed to provide a student with autism their proper resources and care. The case went to trial and settled for $1.55M.
The plaintiff’s family sued the North Syracuse Central School District in 2018 when their son was 5. The lawsuit alleged that the district declined to provide applied behavior analysis and a teaching assistant trained to provide the therapy. The lawsuit said that by failing to provide the care, the district violated IDEA.
The student, who was not named in the suit, was nonverbal with limited motor, cognitive, and social skills. The family believed a limited window of opportunity to address their child’s disability closed when the school insisted on using a different methodology.
The district is facing a second lawsuit by parents of a student with autism. The lawsuit, filed in April in federal court, claims staff strapped a nonverbal 5-year-old girl to a chair every school day.
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