STANFORD, Ky. (CITC) — Parents in a Kentucky school district say they are heartbroken after their children with special needs were left out of their school's fifth-grade graduation celebration.
Lincoln County Schools (LCS) celebrated its oldest Stanford Elementary School students moving on to middle school last week. In a social media post, Stanford Elementary School said it gave fifth-graders congratulatory yard signs featuring individual photos of each of the students.
However, Mikael and Brandie Ives told the LCS school board the next day that not all students received a sign. The parents claim that their daughter, as well as several other fifth-graders in the special education department, was "forgotten."
"As parents, we feel like this is ridiculous," Mikael Ives said during LCS's May 18 school board meeting. "All kids need to be included in this process."
Mikael Ives told the school board that he and his wife were there to "advocate" for students with special needs, who they say need to try "three times harder" to grasp core subjects. He feels that what occurred in LCS was "a slap in the face."
"The district motto here is...'all kids matter,'" Mikael Ives said. "Is it 'all kids matter' or is it just convenient that our children were left out this time?"
Another parent, Tessa Johnson, chose to defend the Stanford Elementary School families during the meeting. Johnson, who is the mother of a LCS senior, said her son would have also been "excluded" if he was still in fifth-grade.
"We had the most fragile and vulnerable of our students excluded in the most cruel ways," Johnson told the school board.
Brandie Ives shared on social media that Stanford Elementary School Principal Julia Duncan eventually called her family to apologize, as well as to share that yard signs will be made for the students in the special education department. It is not immediately clear if the students have already received their signs.
"I don’t want to hear mistakes are made because this should have never been a mistake made," Brandie Ives wrote on social media. "It just proves my point that our kids are second thought."
"As a public school principal, the inclusion of all students is always a top priority. Unfortunately last week we realized we had made a clerical error with an end of school project. As soon as we realized there had been an error, we immediately developed and executed a plan to correct this issue," Stanford Elementary School Principal Julia Duncan told Crisis in the Classroom (CITC) in a statement. "I reached out to each family impacted and sincerely apologized the same afternoon. I was able to speak with each family and let them know there was a plan in place to correct this issue and assure them their child would absolutely have a sign. I also shared with each family that this was, in no way, intentional. We love each of our students and would have never caused this hurt intentionally."
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