We are concerned community members circulating this petition to protest the Wilmette Park District's exclusionary treatment of students with special needs. We want the Park District to be a place where all children can learn and grow together.

Unfortunately, children with special needs have been denied that enriching experience. The Wilmette Park District has repeatedly banned special needs students. Elementary students have received bans for behaviors that are products of their disabilities; behaviors that could have been mitigated with the appropriate and reasonable accommodations. However, rather than work with students, as the Park District has done in the past, new leadership resorts to blanket bans and discriminatory policies. Due to these policies, to our knowledge, there are no comprehensive special needs children currently participating in Wilmette Park District after school programs.

We demand a change in Park District policy to foster a truly inclusive environment for all children. We demand the Park District:

• Reinstate banned special needs students
• Eliminate policies that penalize special needs students for behaviors that are tolerated in nondisabled students
• Engage in annual accessibility audits, and
• Implement regular meetings with the families of special needs students to ensure our kids' accommodation needs are met.

Our representative stories below illustrate the Park District's pattern of unacceptable, discriminatory conduct. Our kids are just that, kids. They want to meet friends and interact with their peers at the Park District. Please sign below if you think they should be allowed to do so.

To be clear: this punitive environment is the product of Wilmette Park District leadership. The staff are not responsible for it. They are directly prevented from providing accommodations to our children because of supposed "safety hazards".

P is an 8 year old girl with autism and is nonverbal. For many years, P was successfully enrolled in the Park District. Besides a few weeks in June, when she was in pain from two separate infections (and a broken arm), P has not had behavioral problems. However, P's parents noticed a recent pattern of discriminatory policies that placed unreasonable burdens on P to continue participating.

The Park District took away pre-existing accommodations (being allowed to go to a separate area when P was feeling overwhelmed because it was now a "safety hazard") and refused to let her parents provide their own aide when they had a staff shortage because it was a "safety hazard" to have outside aides. P previously had an outside aide in 2019. This limited her participation to starting a month later than her nondisabled peers and (at most) once every two weeks, even though they were paying for everyday programming. Additionally - P's parents would have to pick her up within 15 minutes of any incidents and if P were to be suspended, she would have to undergo a "formal evaluation and a trial period" to return. Nondisabled students do not have these same conditions placed on them for any reason.

P was written up for minor incidents in an exaggerated manner. When P had a severe ear infection, P bit her aide's arm and even though the aide reported that P did not bite out of aggression and she felt P wanted to tell her something was bothering her, the Park District said that was an example of P's "escalation of behaviors" that caused an "increased risk of physical and mental anguish" to staff and her peers. In another instance, P's aide inadvertently disregarded training on one of P's medical conditions and P became distressed. Because the Park District had taken away P's pre-existing accommodation of taking her to another room to calm down, the aide was no longer allowed to help her and P subsequently pulled another student's hair. P was banned from the Wilmette Park District for being a “safety hazard”.

P's teachers at school where P receives the appropriate accommodations said she has had no behavioral incidents but the Park District said P's ban was "non-negotiable". P continues to have no incidents at school. The Park District had taken away pre-existing accommodations (being allowed to go to a separate area when P was feeling overwhelmed), disregarded proven strategies for her medical condition, and then blamed her for her expected reaction and labelled her a "safety hazard" - even though she has had no incidents at school with the appropriate accommodations.

Q is a 9 year old boy with limited speech and developmental delays. Q participated in the Park District after school program until he was kicked out at age 8 for being a "safety hazard".

In Q's first year of the program, Q’s aide was left to supervise 20-25 kids alone and a group of boys surrounded Q, calling him names, striking him with rocks and forcing mud and leaves into his mouth. When Q's aide became aware of the bullying, she intervened and reported it to her manager. The manager dismissed the incident as "kids playing" and did nothing until Q's mom complained. Only then were the bullies' parents notified of the incident but the bullies did not face any consequences. Q, however, was constantly written up on exaggerated charges. For instance, he was playing with his aide and pretended to spit in her direction. They were both laughing at the time, but Q was written up for "releasing bodily fluids which were potentially hazardous into the aide's face" even though the aide specifically told her supervisors that Q was pretending and was not actually spitting. 

In another instance, Q was wrestling with a classmate. When the boys were separated, the neurotypical classmate described it as "rough housing" and that the boys "were just having fun". The classmate was not reprimanded but Q was kicked out for being "aggressive and a safety hazard".

The following term, when Q tried to enroll for the after-school program, his parents were told no aides were available. Q's parents offered to bring in their own aides but the Park District placed unreasonable demands on them that they were unsuccessful at becoming his Park District aide. Q's parents have asked over twenty separate times for Q to be accepted back into the after school program and they have been denied.

R is an 8 year old boy with speech and developmental delays. R had participated in the Wilmette Park District until the age of six when his parents voluntarily stopped enrolling him. They felt harassed by the amount of times they were asked to pick him up immediately because he was crying. R's parents expressed frustration and exhaustion from trying to explain to the Park District that because they were medical professionals, they were unable to pick up R every day early just because he was crying. R's parents felt that if they had not voluntarily stopped participating in the Wilmette Park District, they would have eventually been involuntarily disenrolled.

S is an 8 year old with developmental delays and limited speech. Her parents wanted her to participate in recreational activities that other children her age participate in so they enrolled her in gymnastics through the Park District. The park district aide was not given the proper training for how to re-direct kids when they wander away and S spent the session walking the perimeter of the room. To my knowledge, there are no comprehensive special needs children participating in the Park District programming. As a result, S's mom was asked by the girls in the gymnastics class if S was even a real human. S's parents decided the environment at the Wilmette Park District was not welcoming of children with disabilities and looked for another recreational program.

These children have felt their social isolation widening because they cannot be with their peers. Like any child, P enjoys being around her friends. She is aware when she goes to the Park District to pick up her younger sister that P is not welcome in the places where her neurotypical sister is because of her disabilities. She sits in the car, crying, because she wants to go inside to play like other kids.

Children with special needs like P will face an increased risk for low self-esteem and mental health challenges because of the loneliness they experience from their disabilities. P will have three times the risk of the general population of hurting herself or suffering from depression and anxiety brought on by the social isolation due to her disability. Research studies have emphasized that inclusion is the most effective way to prevent this. Children with special needs will suffer irreparable harm without a change to the Wilmette Park District.

Here's how you can help. 

First, sign this petition. Let the Wilmette Park District know we demand that it be a welcoming place for all. Second, please share this petition. We need your awareness of what is happening and your collective voices in speaking up for those who cannot speak for themselves. We can no longer let the ugliness and discrimination that is happening to our disabled children be hidden. We demand inclusion and fairness. We demand a stop to the practice of labeling disabled elementary students "safety hazards".