STEERING YOUR CHILD’S EDUCATION
WHEN YOU HAVE A DISABILITY
Police officer Glenn
McIntyre’s life was
altered forever 21
years ago when a drunken
driver hit him, breaking his
back in 17 places and leaving him a paraplegic. After
a long and painful recovery,
McIntyre returned to work
and married. After nine
experimental surgeries,
McIntyre and his wife,
Hellmi, were able to successfully have twin daughters, Natalie and Ferris.
Having the children was a
physical difficulty; educating
them has been almost as hard.
The McIntyres, like many
other parents with disabilities, find
themselves with limited physical
access to schools, being talked to
condescendingly, or shut out of
their children’s educational process.
In the United States, there are
an estimated 8. 4 million parents
with disabilities with children
younger than 18 years old—that’s
approximately 15 percent of all
U.S. parents, according to
research by Through the Looking
Glass’ National Resource Center
for Parents with Disabilities.
Because of inadequate resources,
parents with disabilities face additional financial burdens, barriers
and discrimination that may get
in the way of their children receiving the best possible education.
“There are many issues that
cross ages, disabilities and eco-
nomic backgrounds, and certainly
transportation and
availability of public
resources are some of
them,” says Megan
Kirshbaum, founder
and executive director
of Through the
Looking Glass. Ferris
and Natalie, who just
completed the fourth
grade, now are honor-
roll students at Mesa
Elementary School in
Camarillo, Calif., but
this wasn’t always the
case. The twins began
their education at a
Catholic school close
to where both parents once
worked. The children would have
remained there had it not been for
their mother getting hurt and
being unable to walk temporarily,
leaving McIntyre in charge of
bringing them to school. He
found that he was unable to readily access the school’s wheelchair
ramp—and that was only one of
the problems.
“In a 20-minute conversation,
[the principal] told me that they
are not really set up for ‘people like
me’ and that I should really be taking them to public school. When I
asked what she meant, she said,
‘Well, we haven’t had any cripples
here in a long time,’” recalls
McIntyre. The principal even told
McIntyre she would “prefer not to
have handicapped children or crippled parents at the school.”
This conversation convinced
the McIntyres to move their chil-
dren to a private Christian school.
“Parents often talk about establishing relationships with teachers,
becoming involved or assisting
with their children’s classes as ways
they help the schools and their
children’s peers get familiar and
comfortable with disability,” says
Kirshbaum. “I do think that the
extra need to educate the educational system can be difficult on
top of other work and life tasks.
Hopefully, as these systems gain
more experience with parents with
disabilities, there will be less pressure on individual parents.” DI
BY BRENDA VELEZ
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARK ROBERT HALPER
