For families of children with disabilities, sending a child to school often requires an additional measure of trust that educators will recognize their needs, protect them and listen when something goes wrong.
A new lawsuit against D.C. Public Schools alleges that trust was misplaced.
The case involves a 6-year-old boy whose father says a teacher slapped him at Neval Thomas Elementary School in 2024, according to The Washington Post. The teacher, Vickey Nelson, later pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree cruelty to children and received probation. But that was only after school officials initially described the incident to the boy’s mother as the teacher simply “popping” him.
The child was enrolled in special education and had difficulty with speech and verbalization, as reported by The Washington Post. His parents say his behavior changed after the incident and that he became fearful of school and adults. The family eventually moved to Maryland.
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Their lawsuit comes months after federal findings revealed systemic failures in DCPS, specifically in the alleged mistreatment of students with disabilities and other vulnerable children.
In March, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights concluded that DCPS discriminated against students with disabilities and violated federal disability rights laws. The agency cited delays of four months or more for some evaluations, untrained personnel making decisions about students’ educational needs and problems providing transportation.
“The district must take immediate action to remedy their violations and protect the rights of current and future students to a free and appropriate public education,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey wrote in a statement.
Federal officials also described an “adversarial” system in which families were forced to fight for services their children were legally entitled to receive.
A disabled child may communicate differently, be nonverbal or struggle to describe traumatic experiences. Parents can become their children’s most important advocates. When those parents say they can’t get answers from the institution responsible for their children’s safety, the problem becomes bigger than any single classroom.
Then, there are the individual cases.
KTVL reported that Imani Davis, a teacher’s aide at J.C. Nalle Elementary School, pleaded guilty in March after forcing hot sauce into the mouth of a nonverbal autistic student as punishment.
Other parents, like Keysha Powell in 2024, have brought lawsuits alleging that DCPS failed to accommodate or protect children with disabilities, including allegations involving medical care, according to WTOP News.
Another mother told WJLA that school officials never informed her of her autistic daughter’s sexual assault by another student. The mother found out one week after the incident.
“I just hope that I can be able to get her back on the right track. From all the trauma, on top of trauma,” the mom told the outlet. “To be able to grow and not have to hold that in the back of her head that she experienced in school, which should have been her safe place.”
The problem is not unique to the nation’s capital, but federal investigators have already documented systemic problems throughout the District. Now, families are describing what those failures can look like in individual children’s lives.
For the family at the center of the latest lawsuit, their son, who is now eight years old, still dreads going to school.
“If I could take this whole incident back, I would,” the boy’s father, Duvel Brown, told the Post. “But it happened.”
