Earlier this year, Nathalia Vargas transferred her three older children to Laura C. Saunders Elementary School in Homestead because it was close to home and had a special program for her 7-year-old son with emotional and behavioral disorders.
“The other children that are along with my son in the same classroom, all of them have behavioral problems,” Vargas said.
The mother said her son was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, and oppositional defiant disorder, or ODD.
“Unfortunately, when he's mad, sometimes he responds or he acts aggressively,” she said.
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According to a report Vargas filed with Miami Dade Public Schools Police, that’s what happened in late March. Police said the teacher told them she “removed the boy’s desk because he was disrupting the class by tapping on the desk, and tilting the desk towards another student, and she felt it was a safety concern," adding that she gave him a clipboard to continue his work.
But according to a behavioral therapist assigned to the boy — who took a picture of the child and sent it to Vargas — the boy ended up kneeling on the floor and doing his work for at least three days because the teacher didn’t return the desk.
In the report, police said the teacher told them the boy “got on his knees on his own and did his work.” Two witnesses told officers they did not hear the teacher tell him to do his work on the ground.
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Police said the therapist told them the boy “was not comfortable doing his work on the clipboard, so he got on his knees.” The report concludes that “no injuries were reported.”
“It is okay to remove the desk temporarily, but we would never suggest or for anyone to remove the desk completely,” said Mia Layman, a certified behavior analyst who supervises behavioral therapists in Broward schools.
She doesn’t know what happened in this case in Miami-Dade but said generally, when a desk is taken away due to behavior problems, it’s usually returned the same day.
“Let's say the kid is shaking the desk, and won't stop shaking it. We'd have removed the desk for a minute, and we'd ask them, are you all done shaking or make sure your hands are on the table? You know, we tell them what to do, what the expectation is, and then put the desk back,” Layman explained.
It's unclear how many days Vargas' son didn’t have a desk. The mother said it was for more than a week and the district said it was less than two class days. Over the phone, the therapist told NBC6 it was for at least three days. He doesn’t know when the desk was returned because he was removed from the school after he took the pictures, something that is not allowed.
Nathalia said she reached out to NBC6 and Telemundo 51 in hopes she could have her children moved to another school.
“So I have to find out another school who has the same program that he is,” she said.
After NBC6 contacted them, the school district said they are finding a suitable school site for the student without sacrificing his development and will assist the family in transportation logistics. The district already contacted Vargas and she has submitted paperwork to make the change.
The Miami-Dade school district, the mother, and the behavior analyst all agreed that working with children with emotional and behavior disorders is a challenge. After NBC6 contacted the school district about the incident, they launched an internal investigation that is ongoing.
