Assistance Dog 1 and School District 0

A young child with a hearing impairment attempted to bring his assistance dog to a High School in East Meadow, New York. Apparently, the school and the family have been at odds over this issue for some time. When the parent and her son refused to leave with the dog in tow, the school called the police.

The police to their credit informed the school that there was no law against assistance dogs in school,  and in fact the law states that assistance dogs can not be barred from public buildings. The police to their credit left without slapping two sets of cuffs on Simba, the assistance dog.

Throughout this episode the dog remained calm and behaved impeccably; too bad the same can not be said about the adults involved [the mother admitted that she used vulgar language when she realized the school had called the police].

The lessons we learn from this episode are:
1. Assistance dogs are trained to have better manners than some people;
2. School people too often resort to calling police when something less drastic would seem reasonable;
3. Schools are slow to adapt to the need  for assistance dogs despite the increasing popularity of these dogs for children with a variety of disabilities.

Comments

[Felisha]

We have been on the waiting list in Texas for MDC for over 6 years and finally got the call. Anyone dealt with inital approval from nurse and assigned caseworker then get denied siting "not disabled enough"? How is a child with 3 permanent disabilities - cerebral palsy, partial deletion of a chromosome, and spina bifida occulte not "disabled enough"? And only signs and has just a ten word vocabulary at almost 8 years old. I have filed for an in person appeal. Too disabled for private insurance but not qualified for help or assistance. She cannot attend regularr afterschool care, so finding a job has been ridiculous. And my husband works until 8pm 6 days per week. If she gets the MDC, it is a medicaid waiver program so she would get medicaid. Anyone with advice. We have applied for SS twice and been denied because we make "too much money" - the worker at the SS office actually told us to get divorced and refile using only my income, which is none. And they told us that to get SSI she would have to be a disabled adult that had worked in the past. HELP!