Decision on dog won't come until next school year for autistic boy

Three times each day, Derek Hughes puts on his shoes. He takes the brown leash for his big yellow dog, Bo, and clips it to the chain around Bo’s neck. He slips the large loop of the leash around one of his shoulders and the two take off to the backyard, to the small yellow guest house.

There, Derek, 11, and Bo watch television and hang out.

Derek’s parents, Bill and Brenda Hughes, had hoped Derek would move to the guest house when he was older, to give him a sense of autonomy. Autonomy is important, especially for someone as special as Derek.

But, as much as the Hugheses want their son to live in their little yellow guest house, the family might all be sleeping under the same roof for quite some time.

That’s because the Hugheses are considering selling their Golden Gate Estates home to move somewhere else for Derek’s education.

They are frustrated because they probably will not have an answer until next year as to whether Derek, who is autistic and has epilepsy, will be placed in a school with a full-time nurse and be allowed to bring Bo, his service dog, to school.

“As parents, what can you do?” said Bill Hughes.

The news comes at the conclusion of a hearing under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which requires public schools to make a free appropriate public education available to all eligible children with disabilities in the least restrictive environment appropriate to their individual needs.

The Hughes family alleges the Collier County School District was negligent by not amending the Pine Ridge Middle School student’s individual education program (IEP) to allow Derek to bring Bo to school and to recognize that he has epilepsy.

Bill and Brenda Hughes further allege the district was negligent for not providing a full-time school nurse to administer Derek’s epilepsy medication, Diastat. It is seizure medicine in the form of a gel that is inserted into the patient’s rectum to stop a cluster of repeated seizures, according to epilepsy.com. Emergency personnel sometimes give diazepam by injection to stop prolonged or repeated seizures, according to the Web site.

The Hughes family made attempts to meet with school officials about Derek’s educational needs after he had two seizures, including one at school, and had been diagnosed as epileptic by his physician. The family scheduled an emergency IEP meeting with Derek’s team for Jan. 17.

During the meeting, the district denied the request to amend Derek’s IEP, which is the student’s learning and behavior plan, to include acknowledgment of his medical diagnosis of epilepsy or to provide him access to his service dog, Bill Hughes said.

“He had a seizure at school and another one on Dec. 30. Despite that they knew he was in a fragile medical state, that he could have a seizure again, the school would not provide a nurse full time,” he said.

Bill Hughes said if the district denied Bo’s access, that would be one thing. But putting Derek in school without a full-time nurse was unacceptable and unsafe for Derek.

Adding to the problem, Derek’s sign language aide resigned her position with the district. Although the district planned to get Derek, who is nonverbal, another interpreter, that person was not in place by the time Derek was to go back to school, Bill Hughes said.

Following the denial to amend Derek’s IEP, Bill and Brenda Hughes asked for a due-process hearing under IDEA. They have pulled Derek from school and have elected to have him home-schooled until the issue is resolved.

That is when the frustration began, Bill Hughes said. They asked for the hearing on Jan. 17. Under the IDEA law, a hearing must be conducted within 45 days from filing the request.

The hearing was scheduled to begin Feb. 20, but the district requested a delay to May 1. Hughes said it was delayed four times after that, finally concluding June 22. It was six months and five days after the initial filing.

Bill Hughes said both sides were told by the judge a decision would not be made on the issue until after the start of the 2006-07 school year.

Since this issue is not resolved, the district also has denied Derek’s access to an extended school-year program, which is not being held at Pine Ridge Middle School and is therefore acceptable to the Hughes family. As a result, the family has filed another IDEA complaint.

“When it is not at Pine Ridge Middle, the issues of the classroom and other safety issues go away,” he said. “This delay is in retaliation for this family filing for a due-process hearing.”

Collier County School Board attorney Richard Withers declined to discuss the details of the Hugheses’ case, citing the judge’s orders for him not to do so.

In his opening statement to the court, Withers said the district was doing everything to provide Derek with a Free and Appropriate Education (FAPE), but its solutions were balked at by Bill Hughes.

“At the IEP meeting to determine if the district was providing FAPE, Mr. Hughes arrived with a huge chip on his shoulder and said if he did not get what he wanted, he would take us to a due-process hearing,” he said. “Our relationship has been adversarial since that meeting.”

The Hugheses offered to have Derek put back into Vineyards Elementary School, which is a facility the family deems adequate for Derek’s educational and health needs. According to the Hugheses’ federal complaint, the district has objected to sending Derek to Vineyards Elementary School because “it is not an age appropriate environment.”

Derek, though a sixth-grader when he was pulled from school, functions educationally at a first-grade level, according to Bill Hughes.

Bill Hughes knows that the fight is not over, whatever the judge’s decision on the case. In February, the family filed a discrimination complaint against the Collier County School Board with the Office for Civil Rights in Atlanta.

The 23-page complaint alleges that Derek’s rights were violated under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, as well as his right to FAPE.

“We are taking this to district court,” he said. “In the state of Florida, you have to have an IDEA hearing before you can get into federal court. This is not a Hughes family problem, this is a district problem. We have to make sure other families do not go through what we go through,” he said.

The family already has spent more than $50,000 in legal fees to fight the district, Bill Hughes said. He believes to continue the fight will be an additional two years and even more money, but the family will not give up.

Where they will educate Derek, though, is another matter.

“We cannot put his education on hold for two years while we wait,” he said.

Derek has been home-schooled since his parents removed him from school and the family has considered putting him into a private school that specializes in educating autistic children.

But the tuition for those schools can run to $80,000 a year, and the Hugheses said they always hoped Derek could be socialized with his peers in public school.

Feeling there is no viable option in Florida, the family is considering moving back north.

“It may be too late for us, but it is our hope that we make a difference in other children’s lives,” said Brenda Hughes.

The family will not give up their fight, though. Bill Hughes said the next family to face these obstacles would have case law to back them up.

“If we leave, we will not leave this case. We want things changed,” he said.