Cahokia School Heights District not providing speech therapy to student, parents taking legal action
ST. CLAIR COUNTY, Ill. (First Alert 4) - Tiffany Hammond’s children are students in the Cahokia Heights School District.
“He can’t pronounce it. He can’t say it and he gets emotional about it,” says Hammond.
Hammond claims this is what her 6-year-old son’s teacher shared during an October parent-teacher conference.
She tells First Alert 4, “My son’s teacher informed me that he wasn’t getting seen by speech.”
Both of her children have speech included in their individualized education programs, also known as an IEP.
Hammond says, “My son’s going backwards...they never came to me and said ‘hey we couldn’t provide speech.”
According to Hammond, the school district didn’t officially notify her until November 15.
Hammond is now taking legal action against the school district. Hammond’s attorney says he’s in with at least five other families who are doing the same.
“This is not like one teacher didn’t say something. All the teachers didn’t say something. All the s didn’t say something. All the staff didn’t say something for months.”
According to Cahokia Heights School District Superintendent Curtis McCall Jr., the district’s speech pathologists quit a few days before the fall semester began.
He says, “Today I can tell we signed two people, they just have to be approved by our school board.”
McCall claims the district will double up on the amount of time students are in speech therapy to make up for the months they’ve gone without.
Hammond doesn’t believe this method will be effective.
She and her attorney, Thomas Kennedy III are waiting for a date to be set for the due process hearing.
They are asking the hearing officer to order restoration of speech therapy services, compensatory services for each of the kids, financial compensation, and attorney’s fees.
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