Parents of inclusion education students express frustration with Elk Grove Unified over the lack of progress to help their children

Parents ask for accountability

As they have since September, parents of the Elk Grove Unified School District’s Inclusion Education program students attended the Board of Trustees meeting on Tuesday, February 7. The parent started attending the meetings after the school district, with no advance notice, discontinued a program to help a group of students with specific needs.

Among the several parents who commented at the meeting from the EG Speaks group were Brandon Morgan and Dustin Nobles. Both parents expressed frustration with what they say is the lack of progress the district has made to develop a plan to address the needs of their children that have gone unaddressed following the district abruptly discontinuing the program at the start of the school year last summer.

Morgan told trustees and administrators, “our time is being wasted,” as he noted last week’s parent workshop did not cover anything new. Furthermore, he said they failed to provide any solutions to resolve the problems the discontinuation created.

“There is no plan, there is no timeline coming up with a plan, and it seems there is no intent to do anything other than to continually kick the can down the road,” Morgan said. “And hope that we move on, that we just forget that this ever happened.”

After Morgan’s comments, Nobles suggested that the trustees exercise their authority and establish a deadline for administrators.

“You are the board of education for the school district. You have the ability to set a date,” he said.

Nobles added, “If my employer asks for a report on x y z, and wants it due, by a b c, I produce the report otherwise, I’m held accountable for not producing that report and data.”

Since the item was not on the agenda, the trustees and administrators could not take action.