Statement Read at an Appeal Hearing
This document has been edited for publication and to protect privacy.
I am sitting before you today because 7 months ago I withdrew my child 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 child, 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, social expectations, classroom size, and pace of the school day—every part of the system is designed for non-Autistic bodies, nervous systems, and ways of being. My child 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 child masked at school, and yet school and district personnel continue to misinterpret her masked behavior as evidence that she was “being fine.”
When interviews in the investigator’s report described my child’s seemingly calm and compliant appearance as evidence that she was “being fine at school,” it revealed the depth of the district’s misunderstanding. My child 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 cannot mask as much—might show. Because my child’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 child, 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 child, 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 child was understood, supported, or able to learn.
My child 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 child’s ability to access her education was compromised in ways the school never recognized.
Starting in kindergarten, my child repeatedly tried to get herself sent home from school, using increasingly desperate and dangerous methods. At one point her distress resulted in unnecessary medical interventions. 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 child 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 child’s mental health had deteriorated so significantly that her after-school meltdowns involved violent self-injury. She began expressing negative thoughts about herself. She expressed suicidality. She was seven years old.
By winter, my child’s physical health had begun to collapse. She experienced multiple viral and bacterial infections in a short span of time, as well as other severe and significant symptoms. She was later diagnosed with a stress-related medical condition. In other words, her body was breaking down under prolonged distress at school.
By the time we withdrew her, my child had missed weeks of school, on top of numerous tardies, absences and nurse visits during a single school year. The district’s investigator confirmed these numbers but failed to recognize them as visible, documented signs of disability-related distress. These harms were documented, visible, and repeatedly dismissed.
My child shared her own written statements throughout this process, conveying in her own words that she felt unsafe at school. However, her statements seem to have had no meaningful impact in this process. Her 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 child’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 the supports she actually needed. 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 child’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 child’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 to provide further help—including denying direct requests we made for additional support and resources. 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 child or to her parents. That is what disability discrimination looks like.
In response to my formal complaint of disability discrimination, the district assigned an investigator who seemed to also misunderstand high-masking Autism. The investigation repeated the same misunderstandings that caused the original discrimination, interpreting my child’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. The district 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 repeatedly treated “special education experience” as equivalent to expertise in high-masking Autism. 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 child’s experience accurately.
I was eventually told 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 child’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 child—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 child’s story, and the truth you have heard here today. Let it teach you something new. Then do better.