Statement Read at an Appeal Hearing
I read this statement in December 2025, as part of an appeal process for a disability discrimination complaint I filed against the school district in May 2025.
Names and identifying information have been redacted for protection.
I am sitting before you today because in May, I withdrew my daughter from school to protect her from disability discrimination—and the district’s complaint process has now replicated that same discrimination.
The school district has consistently shown that it does not understand high-masking Autism. Without that understanding, the district cannot claim to have provided a safe, inclusive, or legally compliant educational environment for my daughter, a high masking Autistic student. The district discriminated against her while she was in school, and it has now discriminated against my family by failing to provide the competent, unbiased complaint process that a non-Autistic family would have received.
School is structured to center non-Autistic norms. The sensory environment, the social rules, the pace and structure of the school day, the classroom size—every part of the system is designed for non-Autistic bodies, nervous systems, and ways of being. My daughter walked into that environment as a high-masking Autistic child and did what most Autistic children do: she masked so she could belong.
Masking is the suppression of one’s natural instincts, behaviors, and innate expressions in order to mimic non-Autistic norms for the sake of safety, acceptance, or to avoid punishment. To call it a ‘mask’ can sound misleading. It is a fully embodied role an Autistic person adopts to appear non-Autistic. For an Autistic person, masking is not a sign of regulation—it is a sign of distress.
An Autistic person who is safe and regulated does very little masking. An Autistic person who is masking is, by definition, feeling unsafe, overwhelmed, or dysregulated. And prolonged masking—sustained across every school day for months or years—has documented, severe consequences for Autistic mental and physical health. Research shows that chronic masking contributes to burnout, trauma, and, in the most extreme circumstances, suicide. Autistic children face suicide rates many times higher than their non-Autistic peers.
I have repeatedly explained what it means that my daughter masked at school, and yet school and district personnel continue to misinterpret her masked behavior as evidence that she was “doing fine.”
When staff interviews in the investigator’s report described my daughter’s seemingly calm and compliant appearance as evidence that she was “being fine at school”—including a statement that “[She] presents at school as being fine and they do not see many behaviors at school”—it revealed the depth of the district’s misunderstanding. My daughter was not fine. She was masked. The school misinterpreted her masked appearance as compliance, calmness, and “being fine.” My repeated concerns as her parent were dismissed because staff pointed to her mask and told me there were no signs of distress, never recognizing that the mask is the sign of distress.
Meanwhile, other signs of distress were visible and consistent: violent school refusals at home, violent after-school meltdowns, a pattern of trying to get sent home from school, high numbers of tardies and absences, and frequent nurse visits. We reported these patterns over and over, but the school minimized and dismissed them because they only recognized distress when it showed up in the narrow ways they were accustomed to seeing.
The only “distress behaviors” the school personnel were looking for were the externalized behaviors non-Autistic children—or Autistic children who do not mask—might show. Because my daughter’s distress did not match their expectations, they treated it as nonexistent. Instead of recognizing the signs that did exist as indicators of an inaccessible environment, the school relied on what they saw in the building—the mask—to deny that anything was wrong.
What I am explaining to you now, I have explained at every step of this process—before withdrawing my daughter, with school and district staff, in my formal complaint, and again during the investigation. I described what masking looks like in an Autistic child and how it was showing up in my daughter, and the same misunderstanding persisted each time. A district that cannot grasp this basic, foundational aspect of high-masking Autism cannot reasonably claim that it provided a safe, inclusive environment in which my daughter was understood, supported, or able to learn.
My daughter spent much of her school day in a trauma state—masking her Autistic behaviors and natural instincts out of fear, in an Autistic shutdown, an extreme form of internal withdrawal similar to ‘freeze,’ or alternating between the two. A child in a trauma state cannot learn—which means my daughter’s ability to access her education was compromised in ways the school never recognized.
Starting in the spring of kindergarten, my daughter repeatedly tried to get herself sent home from school, using increasingly desperate and dangerous methods. At one point she reported chest pains severe enough that she was given a chest X-ray and prescribed prednisone. These episodes were not signs of illness; they were attempts to escape an environment where she felt unsafe. In her interview with the investigator, my daughter explicitly stated multiple times that school was not safe for her and that she felt unsafe there, yet this was neither pursued nor meaningfully reflected in his findings.
By the fall of second grade, my daughter’s mental health had deteriorated so significantly that her after-school meltdowns involved violent self-injury—ripping fistfuls of hair from her head or scratching her face and neck until she bled. She made a suicide gesture with the understanding that it could end her life. She began expressing, consistently, that she should not exist, that she does not belong on this planet, and that something is wrong with her. She was seven years old.
By winter, my daughter’s physical health had begun to collapse. She experienced three bouts of intense viral and bacterial infections in a short span, as well as intermittent episodes of vomiting and profound daytime fatigue. We later learned she had been experiencing abdominal migraines. The doctor who diagnosed her explained that the primary cause of abdominal migraines in children is stress. In other words, her body was breaking down under prolonged distress at school.
By the time we withdrew her, my daughter had missed three straight weeks of school, on top of 38 tardies, 29 absences, and 60 nurse visits during the 2024–25 school year alone. The district’s investigator confirmed these numbers but failed to recognize them as visible, documented signs of disability-related distress. These harms were not hidden. They were documented. They were visible. And they were repeatedly dismissed by the school.
In her own written statement to the school before her withdrawal, my daughter wrote: “Even if you never see me cry, jump, play, or walk around the classroom, I want to move my whole entire body the whole school day. But I hold it in because I know you don’t allow that.” Her words made clear what her body had already been showing: she was in distress. And once again, she was ignored. My daughter’s voice was dismissed while the perspectives of non-Autistic professionals—who misunderstood her disability—were elevated above her lived experience.
The school and district repeatedly pointed to my daughter’s 504 plan as evidence that they had met their legal obligations, without ever examining whether the plan was sufficient to meet her disability-related needs or whether it was implemented as written. Neither was true.
The 504 plan was built on a fundamental misunderstanding of her disability, because the school did not understand high-masking Autism and therefore did not understand what supports she actually needed. And even the limited accommodations that were included were not implemented as written—for example, the only environment consistently available for breaks was loud and brightly lit, and breaks depended on staff availability rather than my daughter’s needs.
A 504 plan that is misunderstood, misapplied, or based on inaccurate assumptions about a disability cannot be used as evidence that discrimination did not occur. Citing the 504 plan as proof of nondiscrimination only reinforces the same misunderstandings that harmed her in the first place.
Because the school misinterpreted my daughter’s masked behavior as evidence that she was “fine,” it denied her the additional supports she needed. The school created the very conditions that forced her to mask, and then used that mask as justification to refuse further help—including denying our request for an IEP evaluation in the fall of 2023 on that same basis. A school cannot support a disabled child when it fundamentally fails to understand her disability and her needs. The school’s lack of understanding made her distress invisible only to the school. It was never invisible to my daughter or to us, her parents. That is what disability discrimination looks like.
In response to my formal complaint of disability discrimination filed in May, the district assigned an investigator who had no understanding of high-masking Autism. The investigation repeated the same misunderstandings that caused the original discrimination, interpreting my daughter’s masked behavior as evidence that no harm occurred—and, in doing so, reproduced the very discrimination it was charged with evaluating.
It is illogical to suggest that someone who does not understand high-masking Autism can determine whether discrimination against a high-masking Autistic student occurred. This is how disability discrimination persists within systems: the people in charge do not see it because they do not understand the mechanics of it, and from their inability to see it, they claim it does not exist.
In my formal appeal, I asked that the “no discrimination” finding be overturned and that the case be reinvestigated by someone with this specific expertise. A district official agreed to locate such an investigator.
However, when the district identified an investigator, there was no indication—in the bio I received or on his professional website—that he had any expertise in high-masking Autism.
When I raised this concern and explained that proceeding under those conditions would replicate the same harms a third time, I was told to contact the investigator myself to vet his qualifications. This is a deeply inappropriate offloading of the district’s legal responsibility onto the disabled parent of the disabled student it harmed. And when I clarified that vetting qualifications is the district’s job—not mine—I was told a second time to contact him directly.
Throughout our correspondence, the district official repeatedly treated “special education experience” as equivalent to expertise in high-masking Autism— even after my daughter’s father explicitly explained that these are not the same thing. In their most recent email, the district official wrote: “I think the suggested investigator will have much more familiarity with special education matters than the first one,” as if that familiarity were sufficient to evaluate discrimination against a high-masking Autistic child.
This is not a small misunderstanding; it reveals the core issue at the heart of this case. High-masking Autism is a distinct disability with distinct needs and risks, and generic special education knowledge cannot substitute for understanding it. The district’s inability to distinguish between these forms of expertise demonstrates exactly why it was incapable of evaluating my daughter’s experience accurately.
In that same correspondence, the district official stated that the district may not be able to find anyone with the necessary understanding of high-masking Autism required to investigate this case fairly. That is a direct admission that the district cannot provide an investigator who understands the disability at the center of this complaint. And without that expertise, the district cannot provide us meaningful access to the complaint process—access that is required under federal disability law. Furthermore, it is not possible to fundamentally misunderstand a disabled person’s needs and also claim to have accurately evaluated whether that person received meaningful disability-related support and care.
A system that cannot locate someone qualified to understand a disabled student’s experience cannot meaningfully investigate its own discrimination.
The district has now discriminated against us twice: first in the events that led to my daughter’s forced withdrawal from school, and now again in the procedural process that was meant to address those harms.
I am no longer asking for a reinvestigation. I am asking this board to overturn the district’s finding of ‘no discrimination,’ issue a formal finding that discrimination did occur, and direct the district to take the remedial and systemic corrective actions necessary to ensure my daughter—and any future high-masking Autistic student—is not harmed in this way again.
The disability discrimination that occurred here is clear. I am asking this board to recognize it and reflect it accurately in the record. Until you do, the systemic failures that allowed it at every level will continue—and more high-masking Autistic students will be harmed in your schools.
It is not a moral failing to acknowledge when harm has occurred and take accountability for it. It is not only the right thing to do—it is the only way to prevent further harm. I am asking you to truly listen to the Autistic people in your community who are telling you this system has egregiously hurt us and unjustly discriminated against us. Believe us. Learn from us. Take my labor, our pain, my daughter’s story—and the truth you have heard here today—let it teach you something new, and then, do better.