The parents of Oscar Edmunds, who recently forced the New Orleans streetcar system to become wheelchair accessible, filed suit this week against The Willow School (formerly known as “Lusher”). Oscar is a 9-year-old boy with 21Q Partial Deletion Syndrome. Because of his intellectual disabilities, Oscar requires a special education curriculum—that is, a curriculum specially tailored to his needs. But The Willow School does not offer special education, in flagrant violation of federal and state law.
Instead, Willow uses a “selective admissions” assessment—essentially a 3-hour IQ test. This test is specifically designed to weed out students with intellectual disabilities—students like Oscar. That stops now.
Willow receives millions of dollars per year in state and federal funding to educate students with disabilities, but it does not actually accept any of these students. In other words, the school is pocketing the money without complying with its legal obligations. The Orleans Parish School Board cannot immunize a charter school from its legal obligations under state and federal law. Chris Edmunds Law Office intends to put a stop to The Willow School’s discrimination against disabled children once and for all.
The local newspaper, The Times Picayune, covered the suit. You can read that story here: https://www.nola.com/news/education/parents-sue-willow-school-over-selective-admissions-process/article_2dbdff5e-798b-4b9e-9f77-1aa3592e7c9c.html
You can also see a copy of the lawsuit here.
