Family removes boy from IDEA over response to health needs

No teacher ever suggested Arnold Lopez was a liar when he attended the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo school district, the 11-year-old said recently.

But at IDEA Public Schools — where students cannot leave class during the first and last 20 minutes of instruction — a substitute doubted the sixth-grader truly “needed” to rush to the restroom on Sept. 8.

“I told her I’m a diabetic. … My kidneys work overtime to lower my (blood sugar) levels,” Arnold said. “She said, ‘Are you making that up?’

“Who would make up something like that? How many kids know about kidneys?” he asked. “I was literally about to just go (when) she walked fast — I heard her heels — and blocked the door with her body.”

Arnold said he never faced such discomfort at PSJA’s Napper Elementary, where every absent teacher left a note specifically explaining his condition to substitutes.

The humiliating incident could have been prevented, mother Marina Lopez said, if campus leaders and staff met with her before his transfer to the charter school’s Alamo campus in August.

“Before day one, IDEA told me they’d do whatever it takes” to accommodate his special needs, she said. “That never happened, (and) we had to pull him out.

She had hoped to discuss Arnold’s Type 1 diabetes with campus faculty and staff as early as possible to explain the frequent restroom breaks and nurse visits his condition required.

Instead, Lopez said IDEA never moved to create a dependable support system for Arnold until nearly a month after school started, which Principal Israel Ybarra flatly denied.

“We did our part. We did everything that was asked of us,” Ybarra said. “The student was safe whenever he was on our campus.”

He said the substitute never blocked the door but, in order to prevent repeat incidents, personally issued him a permanent restroom pass that day.

Lopez rejected that timeline.

And the two adults discredited each other’s recollection of teacher compliance with thrice daily nurse visits, the availability of a specialized lunch menu, if Arnold had free access to sports drinks – a much-needed glucose boost – and who most successfully stymied Arnold’s health treatment plan.

Frustration high, Lopez eventually transferred her son to Sauceda Middle School in Donna on Sept. 20.

Torkelson said having a student leave IDEA doesn’t happen often.

“Gosh, I don’t remember anybody ever leaving or drawing themselves from school because they felt we were not responsive to their medical needs,” he said.

“It sounds like (Lopez is) happy now, and that’s great. That’s what school choice is all about,” said Tom Torkelson, CEO and co-founder of IDEA. “All of the adults (at IDEA) were doing a very professional, thorough job to meet this student’s needs.

“Accommodations were on the way,” he said.

‘A LITTLE BIT LONGER’

Any schools, including charters, that accept federal education funds must provide proper diabetic care under Section 504 of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Ybarra said, per district policy, if Lopez had requested a so-called 504 meeting at the start of school, most if not all of her concerns would have been addressed much sooner.

“I had no indication she wanted communication before” the end of August, when Lopez delivered a 504 letter, the principal said. “Still, she said, ‘I hope we can figure out how this can work without a 504.’

“It seemed she didn’t know what she wanted.”

But Lopez said PSJA schools never required a 504 meeting to cater to her son’s condition. And in Donna, Arnold said the principal “wouldn’t let me step one foot on campus” until she established a full diabetic management plan.

Once the formal request lay in his hands, Ybarra said, he quickly ushered it through a chain of command to satisfy Arnold’s needs. The final step, however, came the very day Lopez withdrew her son.

“I basically asked what we could do to prevent that (but) she texted me sincerely thanking us for what we did,” Ybarra said. “But then she’s going to the media and saying otherwise.

“She was always in panic mode, always emotional,” he added, “and we could never do enough to accommodate this student.”

Lopez disagreed, saying the many teachers, counselors and assistant principals she spoke to before school started could have followed “common decency” and assisted her pleas for help.

Torkelson said that over time, the staff at the Alamo campus genuinely tried to do that.

“It would have been great if things were where they needed to be before the first day of school,” Torkelson said. “It took a little bit longer than all of us would have liked.”

‘PLAIN COMMON SENSE’

That learning curve might stem from a 2005 law that requires schools to offer individualized health plans to diabetic students.

House Bill 984 — which passed with all but two votes in the Texas House and one in the Senate — includes requirements that public schools:

>> Implement a health plan developed by the student’s family and physician.

>> Train campus volunteers as unlicensed diabetic care assistants.

>> Allow students to self-administer diabetes care at all times.

But the law left a conspicuous exemption for private and charter schools, like IDEA, relieving them of the time and effort necessary to accommodate diabetic students.

“I might have made concessions because we were trying to pass a major bill with no time to improve it,” said HB 984’s primary author and former state Rep. Elvira Reyna, R-Mesquite.

Though parents testified strongly in favor of her bill, it faced nearly uniform opposition from lobbyists representing teachers, school boards and administrators.

“I never thought the schools wouldn’t want to enforce it. This is for the students’ health and safety,” Reyna said.

If she had not lost her re-election bid by just 64 votes, Reyna said she probably would have expanded the law to include charter and private schools under its umbrella.

“For parents to be limited to certain schools because they can’t get help in others, that’s not right,” she said. “They should get help no matter the school.

“It’s plain common sense.”

‘FOLLOW THE SAME RULES’

Torkelson supported extending Reyna’s bill to charter schools.

“It’s clear that while we were responsive to the parents and child’s health needs, more up-front planning would have helped,” he said. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

For now, Ybarra said he would do all he could to raise awareness of diabetes prevention care. And though he canceled a training session with the Rio Grande Valley Diabetes Association following Arnold’s departure, the principal promised to host it in the near future.

“I need to be more aware of who’s coming onto our campus,” he said. “We need a better communication process with each of our parents.

“We just have to come back and look at our practice and make sure what we have on paper is done.”

In Lopez’s eyes, that will be a first step on a long road to proper care of diabetic students.

After Lopez filed a discrimination complaint against IDEA with the U.S. Department of Education, a government lawyer contacted her Wednesday saying that since Arnold left the campus, his case no longer has any standing.

Regardless, Lopez said she never wanted a frivolous lawsuit or heads to roll.

“We’re not looking to sue. We don’t want anyone fired,” Lopez said. “We just don’t want this to happen with another student.”

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Neal Morton covers education and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4472.