[ The city’s schools, stretched even before the lead crisis, are
struggling with demands for individualized education programs and
behavioral interventions for children with high lead exposure.]
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FLINT'S CHILDREN SUFFER IN CLASS AFTER YEARS OF DRINKING THE
LEAD-POISONED WATER   [[link removed]]

 

Erica L. Green
November 6, 2019
The New York Times
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_ The city’s schools, stretched even before the lead crisis, are
struggling with demands for individualized education programs and
behavioral interventions for children with high lead exposure. _

Nakiya Wakes and her son, Jaylon, in Flint, Mich., Brittany Greeson
for The New York Times

 

FLINT, Mich. — Nakiya Wakes could not understand how her wiry,
toothy-grinned 6-year-old had gone from hyperactive one school year to
what teachers described as hysterical the next. Then, in 2015, the
state of Michigan delivered a diagnosis of sorts: Ms. Wakes’s
neighborhood’s water — which her son, Jaylon, had been drinking
and bathing in for more than a year — was saturated with lead, at
some of the highest levels in the city.

Jaylon would cycle through two schools, receive 30 suspensions and
rack up 70 unexcused absences. In one of Ms. Wakes’s clashes with
Flint Community Schools, she delivered administrators a warning:
“You can’t keep suspending him because soon, you’re going to
have to suspend the whole school system.”

Five years
[[link removed]] after
Michigan switched Flint’s water supply to the contaminated Flint
River from Lake Huron, the city’s lead crisis has migrated from its
homes to its schools, where neurological and behavioral problems —
real or feared — among students are threatening
[[link removed]] to
overwhelm the education system.

The contamination of this long-struggling city’s water exposed
nearly 30,000 schoolchildren to a neurotoxin known to have detrimental
effects on children’s developing brains and nervous
systems. Requests for special education or behavioral interventions
began rising four years ago, when the water contamination became
public, bolstering a class-action lawsuit that demanded more resources
for Flint’s children.

That lawsuit forced the state to establish the $3 million
Neurodevelopmental Center of Excellence, which began screening
students. The screenings then confirmed a range of disabilities, which
have prompted still more requests for intervention.

The percentage of the city’s students who qualify for special
education services has nearly doubled, to 28 percent, from 15 percent
the year the lead crisis began, and the city’s screening center has
received more than 1,300 referrals since December 2018. The results:
About 70 percent of the students evaluated have required school
accommodations for issues like attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder, also known as A.D.H.D.; dyslexia; or mild intellectual
impairment, said Katherine Burrell, the associate director of the
center.

“We have a school district where all that’s left are damaged kids
who are being exposed to other damaged kids, and it’s causing more
damage,” said Stephanie Pascal, who has taught in Flint for 23
years.

Medical experts say there is no way to prove that the lead has caused
new disabilities. Pediatricians here caution against overdiagnosing
children as irreparably brain damaged, if only to avoid stigmatizing
an entire city. The State Department of Education, in battling the
class-action lawsuit filed
[[link removed]] by
the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan and the New
Jersey-based Education Law Center, enlisted an expert who testified
that the real public health crisis was not the lead-contaminated water
but the paranoia of parents, students and teachers exposed to it.

But Dr. Burrell said that proving the cause of the students’
problems was not the point. Many of the problems uncovered by the lead
testing could certainly have existed before.

“We’re not here to prove causation,” she said. “We’re here
to provide answers.”

 

The Flint River in downtown Flint. Five years after Michigan switched
the city’s water supply to the lead-saturated river, Flint’s lead
crisis has migrated to its schools.  Credit...Brittany Greeson for
The New York Times

And school officials said the problems would almost certainly get
worse because there was no safe level of lead exposure.

“What the research says is that as they get older, and the cognitive
demands get harder, we will start to see the demands get higher, and
the resources aren’t going to be there,” said Lisa A. Hagel, the
superintendent of the Genesee Intermediate School District, the county
that includes Flint.

A school system begins falling further behind.

Long before Flint’s water system was contaminated, its schools
exemplified the struggles of urban districts — as its tax base
shrank, its student population drifted to charter schools and its core
public schools were left with a small but troubled and impoverished
student body.

In the 1960s, the city enrolled nearly 50,000 students in more than 50
buildings. Today, it educates 4,500 students on 11 campuses. A 2017
report
[[link removed]] found
that 55 percent of Flint’s students attended charter schools — the
second highest charter enrollment in the country.

When the lead crisis began unfolding in 2014, the tiny school district
had a $21 million budget deficit that required it to cut more than 200
staff members, including special education teachers. It was
transferring millions of dollars from its operating budget to pay for
special education, and in violation of federal law, it was
segregating special education students from their peers for most of
the school day. Flint’s teachers were and are among the lowest paid
in Genesee County, though a new contract has pushed starting
salaries to $35,339 a year, from $32,000 in 2014.

In the 2013-2014 school year, 15.5 percent of the district’s special
education students dropped out of high school, compared with 8.63
percent statewide. In 2014-2015, 13 percent of special education
students in the school system were suspended or expelled for more than
10 days — more than five times the statewide rate.

Then came the lead crisis. The class-action lawsuit, filed in 2016,
accused the city, the county and the Michigan Department of Education
of ignoring dismal outcomes that have worsened after Flint’s
children were exposed to lead.

The partial settlement that established the neurodevelopmental center
was a “critical first step,” said Kristin Totten, a lawyer with
the A.C.L.U., but the lawsuit is demanding that every Flint student be
assessed and get needed intervention.

“This was an unprecedented_ _crisis that warrants an unprecedented
response,” she said.

The suit accuses the school systems of violating federal and state
laws, including the federal Individuals With Disabilities Education
Act, by failing to identify students who could qualify for special
education services, by failing to provide the mandated instructional
services to those who do qualify and by punishing children for
disability-related behavior.

Students were denied assessments for education plans or behavioral
intervention plans, and then were segregated from their peers,
secluded and restrained, repeatedly sent home from school, expelled or
arrested, the lawsuit said.

“The blame for this crisis lies on the state, and instead what
we’ve seen is that the children are shouldering the blame,” said
Lindsay Heck, a lawyer at White & Case, a New York-based law firm that
has worked on the case pro bono.

Flint Community Schools said in a statement that it was “deeply
committed to the well-being and success of all students, and continues
to add staff and enhance special education services, and to work with
the Michigan Department of Education to seek ways to improve the
district’s finances long term.”

The Michigan Department of Education did not respond to a request for
comment.

 

Jaylon would go on to cycle through two schools, receive 30
suspensions and rack up 70 unexcused absences.  Credit...Brittany
Greeson for The New York Times

Bottles of water on the kitchen floor of Ms. Wakes’s home. 
Credit...Brittany Greeson for The New York Times

Jaylon now attends the Michigan Virtual Charter Academy, an online
school, in his living room.  Credit...Brittany Greeson for The New
York Times

The Genesee school district maintains it has done all it can to help
identify and serve students affected by the crisis in Flint. Under the
state’s education system, that district acts as an intermediary
between the state and the 21 school districts in the county, including
Flint, providing administrative services and dispensing special
education funding from the federal government. It also operates early
childhood centers and schools attended by Flint students.

School officials say that funding is disbursed equitably, but they
acknowledge it is not enough. Congress promised to cover 40 percent of
the cost of special education, but Washington funds only 14 to 17
percent.

“It’d be safe to say there’s not enough allocation, much less
when you have a situation like this,” said Steven Tunnicliff, the
associate superintendent of the Genesee Intermediate School District,
referring to the lead crisis.

Ms. Wakes believes she lost four babies — she miscarried two sets of
twins, in 2015 and in 2017 — to the water crisis, and said she is
determined not to lose another. She pulled her son out of Flint
Community Schools in 2017 after she said the district ignored her
pleas to accommodate his A.D.H.D., which his pediatrician said was
exacerbated by elevated lead levels.

Now 10, he attends the Michigan Virtual Charter Academy, an online
school, in his living room. On a recent day, he fired up his computer
and made a few clicks before the screen flashed a celebratory
“Assignment Complete,” then shut down abruptly. The assignments
meet the requirements of a 10-year-old boy who is repeating fourth
grade: They contain three- or four-letter words that he can read and
they pose no more than eight questions, and then he can take a break
to run outside or play his video game Fortnite.

“I’m just keeping him online until we can move the hell out of
Flint,” his mother said.

Flint’s teachers struggle to cope.

In 2016, months after the water contamination was made public, the
Flint superintendent at the time, Bilal Tawwab, told Congress
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bracing for an “evolving, educational emergency.”

“We need resources to measure the intellectual and emotional damage
done to each and possibly every child,” he said.

Instead, as the district’s special education rate rose by a third,
the Michigan Education Department demanded more budget cuts and a
salary freeze. Last school year, when one in five students qualified
for special education services, one in every four special education
teaching positions was unfilled.

 

Angy Keelin helping her blind son, Averey, brush his teeth. Averey
left the Flint school district after it abruptly ended a program for
visually impaired students.  Credit...Brittany Greeson for The New
York Times

The year after Averey was exposed to lead, he had to repeat
kindergarten.  Credit...Brittany Greeson for The New York Times

“He has so much to overcome in adulthood,” Ms. Keelin said. “I
don’t want him to be continuously held back.”  Credit...Brittany
Greeson for The New York Times

Bethany Dumanois, who has taught in Flint for 25 years, works two jobs
to keep teaching because she said she cannot abandon children whose
discolored, rash-covered skin and chunks of exposed scalp haunt her.
In the earlier days of the crisis, she spent class time addressing
questions from her students about whether they would die from the
water like their class lizard, a bearded dragon, did.

“There was very minimal training in dealing with the signs and
symptoms of lead poisoning,” she said. “They gave us a couple of
brochures and called it a day.”

Teachers refer students for special education assessments, knowing the
schools lack psychologists to conduct them. In small acts of defiance,
they withhold their signatures from bureaucratic documents rejecting
students from special education services.

Ms. Dumanois said her first graders were having “extreme”
reactions to insignificant issues, knocking over desks and throwing
chairs. Recently, she said, three-quarters of her class could not
recall five words they had gone over every day for two weeks.

Instead of investing in more teachers, social workers and special
education aides, she said the district had pushed laptop computers and
iPads, “just jumping on any bandwagon, trying to sugarcoat what’s
happening with these kids.”

On a recent night at a local restaurant, Ms. Pascal, the 23-year Flint
teaching veteran, vented over the “injustices everywhere.” The
district adopted a new reading program with no money to buy the
instructional materials. She had been asked to identify a handful of
her students for a new behavior support program, but wants to include
all 21.

She thinks about quitting, but said she refuses to leave another
vacancy for the district to fill.

“If you were driving down the road and saw a kid walking from a car
injured and bloody, do you ignore it?” she said. “That’s what
I’m seeing.”

 

Ethan Reynolds had a mood disorder and A.D.H.D. that required him to
have an aide, but the short-staffed Flint school district could not
always provide one.  Credit...Brittany Greeson for The New York Times

The district’s new superintendent, Derrick Lopez, said in a recent
interview
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a local television station that the district was in desperate need of
help, pointing out that the 28 percent of students who have special
education plans was double the state average. He also expressed the
need to “actually pay our teachers a living wage.”

The Michigan Legislature’s recently passed budget
[[link removed]] provides
a modest increase in education spending, but lawmakers rejected a
proposal by the state’s new Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer,
to give additional funding to schools with high concentrations of
special education students, like Flint.

State Representative Sheldon Neeley, Democrat of Flint, said the
one-time infusion of extra money would be spread across schools in
Genesee County.

“Instead of being delivered to us,” he said, “it’s going to be
delivered around us.”

As families flee Flint’s schools, money drains away.

Flint’s schools are now in a downward spiral. The district is funded
on a per-pupil basis, but it is hemorrhaging students, about 1,000
since 2014, when the crisis began. Two-thirds of children living in
Flint are in charter schools or schools run by the Genesee
Intermediate School District.

Angy Keelin wanted to stay in Flint Community Schools, where her blind
son, Averey, was progressing in a program for visually impaired
students, but then it ended abruptly. She said she was forced to
follow the program 10 miles from her home to a Genesee County school.

It has not gone smoothly. Last year, she requested an aide after
watching her son walk into buildings and almost fall down a flight of
stairs. This year, Averey, now in third grade, has been taught by a
long-term substitute who cannot teach him to read Braille, as required
by his federal education plan, Ms. Keelin said.

The year after Averey was exposed to lead, he had to repeat
kindergarten, and Ms. Keelin fears a Michigan law
[[link removed]] that
calls for students to repeat third grade if they are more than one
grade level behind in reading. “I don’t want him to be
continuously held back,” she said.

Jeree Brown left the Flint district in 2017, but said she still sees
the effect of her son Jabari’s time at Eisenhower Elementary
School. She learned Jabari had autism six months after Flint’s
lead-tainted water began to flow.

His exposure was confirmed, along with his autism, but the school
denied him an individualized education program, or I.E.P., three
times, then told her that such a plan would require him to be placed
in an “autism room” apart from his peers, Ms. Brown said. The plan
called for him to receive speech and occupational therapy services
three or four times a week, but he got them once or twice a month.

 

Jeree Brown with her son Jabari, left, and daughters Jhy’Lah and
Ja’Nyah.  Credit...Brittany Greeson for The New York Times

Eisenhower Elementary School in Flint denied Jabari an individualized
education program.  Credit...Brittany Greeson for The New York Times

Ms. Brown bathing her 1-year-old daughter, Jhy’Lah, with bottled
water in their living room.  Credit...Brittany Greeson for The New
York Times

Now 8, Jabari has transferred to a charter school and receives a
wealth of autism services. He said his favorite teacher “takes me
for breaks to see if you’re happy or sad.”

Some families see no way out. In Michigan, students are granted broad
access to school choice, but schools can reject a student for being
suspended
[[link removed]].

Heather Reynolds’s 12-year-old son, Ethan, had a mood disorder and
A.D.H.D. that required him to have an aide, but his short-staffed
school did not supply one last spring on a day that Ethan encountered
a bully in a bathroom and agreed to trade his dinosaur for the other
boy’s pocketknife. The other student then reported Ethan for having
the knife, and he was nearly expelled.

Ethan, who had also tested positive for lead, told his mother he made
the exchange because he “didn’t want to be punched again,” she
said. This summer, after an evaluation by the neurodevelopmental
center, he was given a diagnosis of autism.

The expulsion was reversed, but the suspension went on his record.

“Once they get a suspension, the good schools don’t want them,”
Ms. Reynolds said. “Then there’s only one school choice, which is
the worst school.”

“The science of trauma and resilience.”

Tucked away in one of the neighborhoods hit hardest by the lead crisis
is a 36,000-square-foot early childhood center that many look to for
hope.

Educare Flint, funded largely by private money in response to the
crisis, opened in December 2017 to serve 220 students ages 0 to 5
with lead exposures among the highest detected. The school is part of
a national network
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early childhood education, brain development and the achievement gap
between rich and poor to shape its approach. The $15 million facility
includes mindfulness rooms and a generous playground.

For parents, the opportunity to send their children to Educare is some
consolation for the outrages in their lives — like paying $100 to
$200 a month for water they do not believe is safe.

 

Educare Flint opened in December 2017 to serve 220 students ages 0 to
5 with lead levels among the highest recorded.  Credit...Brittany
Greeson for The New York Times

Credit...Brittany Greeson for The New York Times

Children at Educare have access to everything they need, including
nurses and laundry services. Credit...Brittany Greeson for The New
York Times

Lydia Willis said her 9-month-old son was “getting so much here,
including filtered water, that may not be possible at home.”

These children keep the pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha optimistic.
Though her research
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the lead in their blood in 2015, she is looking on the bright side.
The crisis has forced a hard conversation about Flint —
“toxicity” existed here long before the water crisis, she said.

Since the crisis, partnerships have drawn in millions of dollars to
expand early childhood education and health care services, and the
fallout has created a road map for other cities — like Newark
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that are on the brink of a similar crises.

“We’re leaning on the science of trauma and resilience,” she
said, “because kids across this country are waking up to the same
nightmare.”

_Erica L. Green is a correspondent in Washington covering education
and education policy. Before joining The Times, she wrote about
education for The Baltimore Sun._

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