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Friend,
Kate Centellas and her husband, Miguel, are professors at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. They have three children and live in a comfortable, upper-middle-class suburban house in a professional family neighborhood.
Kate will tell you matter-of-factly that she is white, well-educated, financially secure and “privileged.”
She will also tell you that even with those considerable advantages, she has had to wage a relentless, yearslong battle with the Oxford School District to ensure that her daughter Zoe, who has autism and is soon to be 14, receives the special education (SPED) services she needs and which the federal government requires under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
Under the IDEA, each state and its school districts must provide children with disabilities a “free appropriate public education” and “special education and related services.”
Yet for 18 months after Zoe was diagnosed with autism in 2020, she received no autism-specific treatment.
After a breakdown in 2021, Zoe spent 18 months at an all-day, locked and restricted outpatient treatment center at the district’s expense, but her parents felt that she was being “warehoused.” They wanted the academics, structure, socialization and SPED services they believed a public school could provide. After getting nowhere, Centellas took family leave and then a deferred sabbatical.
“Advocating for my daughter became my full-time job,” she said.
Every day, parents across Mississippi experience similarly daunting struggles because most school districts fail to comply with state and federal law.
To address the dire need for child disability attorneys to help parents navigate these challenges in Mississippi, the Southern Poverty Law Center last month co-sponsored a special education legal clinic in Oxford along with coalition partners the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of Mississippi, Disability Rights Mississippi (DRMS) and the private law practice of Frye Reeves. The clinic provided training for lawyers interested in representing families, for advocates who help parents navigate the system without an attorney and for parents who need to know their rights under the law.
The coalition plans to hold clinics at least three times each year, rotating between the northern, central and southern regions of Mississippi.
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In solidarity,
Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
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