Special Ed At Lakes School Passes Muster Cda Official Gives State Consultant’s Report Lukewarm Reception

A state education consultant could find no major problems with the way disabled students are treated at Lakes Middle School.

Patrick Pickens, special education director for the Coeur d’Alene School District, said Thursday he was neither happy nor disappointed with Mary Bostick’s report.

“I would have liked to see something that said more concretely that we’re doing a good job,” he said. “She just really hasn’t a lot to say about how to make things better.”

The Lakes special education classroom became a center of controversy this winter when the school district fired Jerry Roth, a teacher’s aide there.

Roth’s supervisors said he lost his job for not following orders. Roth said he got in trouble for trying to stop physical abuse of children.

He described students put in strangleholds, dragged across the floor and put for hours in a small “time out” room.

Bostick suggested that staff should avoid, whenever possible, dragging a disabled teenager out of the crowded hallway when he throws himself there and poses a hazard to other students.

Bostick also concluded that, based on her observations, staff members are properly using “safe hold” techniques to keep students from hurting themselves or others.

However, Bostick said it was not her assignment to investigate incidents of alleged past abuse. That, she said, is being handled by the Coeur d’Alene police, who are investigating “injury to children” complaints filed by Roth and several parents.

That investigation is complete, according to Capt. Carl Bergh. Next week it will be sent to the prosecutor, who will decide whether to file charges.

Bostick’s main recommendations are:

That staff members get more training to make sure they understand proper procedures for dealing with disabled students.

That school officials evaluate the effectiveness of intervention methods, such as the use of “time out,” when students aren’t behaving properly.

Pickens said it wasn’t clear how the district could improve in those areas, but he would review the report with his staff. He doesn’t plan to distribute copies of the report to parents of Lakes Middle School special education students, but will make it available if they ask.

Before giving the report to the school district, Bostick predicted in an interview that neither school officials nor parents would be happy with it.

Parents had questioned Pickens’ choice of Bostick to review the program, because she works for the state Department of Education. They believed she was too closely associated with the school district to be objective.

Bostick herself had not been eager for the assignment.

“No one is going to view me as an unbiased person in this scenario,” she said.

, DataTimes