From The AP, Port Lucie, Florida (April 2) - A teacher who held a vote to kick a 5-year-old autistic student from his kindergarten classroom lost her appeal for reinstatement. On March 31, an administrative law judge upheld the St. Lucie School Board's decision to suspend Wendy Portillo for a year without pay and remove her tenure.
From the Boston Globe (April 2) - Massachusetts officials say reports of fraud, abuse and neglect by personal health care attendants in the state have tripled over the past few years, just as the state’s Medicaid program has significantly increased the amount of money it spends on the workers.
From the Tennessean in Nashville, Tennessee (April 1) - The recent handcuffing and arrest of a twelve-year-old boy with autism has fueled an ongoing debate in Tennessee about how school officials should handle behavioral outbursts by students with developmental disabilities.
From the National Council on Disability (April 1) - The number of people with disabilities employed in the federal workforce is less than one percent and has been steadily shrinking, according to a report released this week by the National Council on Disability. The nine conditions targeted for coverage in the report are: “deafness, blindness, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, convulsive disorders, mental retardation, mental illness, and distortion of limb and/or spine.” (h/t Patricia E Bauer)
From CBS 5 TV in San Francisco (April 1) - A year-long CBS 5 investigation that uncovered numerous incidents of locking school children up in closet like "quiet rooms" for misbehaving is going national.
From the Associated Press (March 31) - The Special Olympics campaign to ban the R word goes nationwide. Among those who endorsed the campaign were governors Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, Brad Henry of Oklahoma and Chet Culver of Iowa.
From the News Times in Norwich, Connecticut (March 31) - Police say a 61-year-old Connecticut man tricked a 54-year intellectually impaired co-worker into handing over hundreds of dollars a week for a bogus lottery, a theft that added up to $45,000 over eight years. Sixty-six-year-old George Flynn of Stonington was arraigned on a first-degree larceny charge Monday in Norwich Superior Court and is being held on $150,000 bond.
