"It Broke My Heart": Mom Speaks Out After Special Needs Son Excluded From School Yearbook
One mom took action to make sure special needs students wouldn’t be excluded in the future.
At the end of every school year, students and parents from around the country look forward to getting a copy of their school yearbook, filled with photos and memories from the academic year. This year one mother of a special needs child opened up the glossy pages of her son's yearbook, trying to find anything related to his experience over the year.
However, she couldn't find a single entry. Now she is speaking up about the fact that her school completely excluded him from the year-end keepsake.
Mariela Azarpira looked through the 186 pages of her 22-year-old special needs son's Las Vegas school yearbook and couldn't find a single photo. "Where is Sammy?" she asked herself. Her son suffers from hydrocephalus, a condition where fluid builds up in the brain.
She also couldn't find any trace of his friends, all part of a program for students with disabilities at the Northwest Career and Technical Academy. "It's like he didn't exist, not even his name," Azarpira tells the Washington Post. "Come on, you couldn't mention them? You couldn't give him a little corner?"
She sent emails to school employees, and they offered to refund Azarpira if she returned the $90 yearbook. She declined because the money wasn't the issue. "I just want them to put all the kids equally," Azarpira wrote in an email response, "they are students and part of the school."
She contacted a local news channel, maintaining that the school "messed with the wrong mama bear" as they "completely outcast" special needs students. What was the school's response? They typically only include students in grades nine through 12th.
Officials from Clark County School District are now "reviewing the yearbook layout for future years to consider the addition of members of the school community enrolled in pre or post-graduation programs on campus," the spokesperson added.
"They took that away from me, those memories," Azarpira said about what she lost by her son being excluded. She hopes that the special education students who return next year will have "a different story," she says. "You're going to see that they're going to be in there."
