Despite my best efforts to shield my kids from the telethon, I failed. While running around taking care of household duties (and not making my kids slave away), one of our aides tried to get the DVD player working so that the kids could watch a movie. Our aide accidentally changed the TV channel rather than the input, and the over the air signal of the telethon appeared. I picked that opportune moment to ask the aide to help me with something, and neither of us realized that the movie was not playing.
I discovered this horror when my 12 year old came up to me and said “I can’t watch that” which is what she says when she doesn’t want to watch something (you know, when the news appears at the end of her Tivo’d show). I returned to the living room to discover my 8 year old staring at the tv with her mouth agape and her tongue hanging out. It’s the same look I’ve seen on young adolescents when they stumble upon a naked people channel. I quickly changed the tv input and got the movie going.
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September 7th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
I have a mom who is blind and has problems walking her kindergartener to school. The bus says the child lives too close to the school for a bus to pick her up and take her home. Do you know of any caselaw that the school should accommodate the blind mom even though the child is sighted? Sounds discriminatory to me.
September 7th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
I don’t know of any specific case law that supports your position, and have heard of some that has held that schools are not required to provide these accommodations.
If the child has disabilities, the parent and the child have rights under special education laws that could entitle the child to transportation, regardless of distance to school.
In the absence of the child having a disability, the parent can request a reasonable modification of policies, practices and procedures. There are a lot of factors that go into whether a modification is reasonable, and whether the school is providing program access, but if there is a bus that passes the family’s house, for example, it may be a reasonable modification for the bus to stop to pick up the child.
If the parent lives in Colorado, she can contact the Center for Rights of Parents with Disabilities at 303.839.1775 for help.