Special Needs Advocate Recommends more Training for Educational Aides
ROMANS: We talked a lot about bullying on CNN and on this show. This next story is another horrifying example. It's about a boy with autism but he wasn't targeted by other kids. He was mistreated by his own teachers. CNN's Mary Snow has the details.</s>MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ten-year-old Akian Chaifetz, says his father, was diagnosed with autism seven years ago. His father says his son's biggest struggle now is not his condition, but bullying by the classroom staff entrusted to care for him. Stu Chaifetz is documenting the bullying in a very public way online, hoping, he says, that other children won't suffer the same cruelty. Chaifetz says problems started this year when he was told his son had punched a teacher and an aide.</s>STUART CHAIFETZ, NO MORE TEACHER/BULLIES: I have never seen him hit anybody, that just didn't make any sense.</s>SNOW: Frustrated by a lack of answers, Chaifetz put a recording device in his son's pocket during the school day. He was horrified to hear what was on it.</s>TEACHER: Oh, boy, knock it off. Go ahead and scream, because guess what? You're going to get nothing until your mouth is shut. Shut your mouth.</s>SNOW (on camera): What was your reaction when you first heard that tape?</s>CHAIFETZ: Well, when I -- that night when I started listening to it, I just shattered inside.</s>SNOW (voice-over): More than six hours were recorded. Chaifetz says the toughest part was listening to Akian ask if he could see his father.</s>CHAIFETZ: My son, when he transitions back from his mom and I, he lives with me full-time. He just has a little natural anxiety, he says, may I see dad after mom? Which is his way of asking to be reassured he's coming back home.</s>AKIAN CHAIFETZ: May I see dad after mom?</s>TEACHER: No. Did you go to see any books in the library or you just looked at sculptures... (child crying)</s>TEACHER: Oh, Akian, you are a bastard.</s>A. CHAIFETZ: May I see?</s>TEACHER: You can't see.</s>SNOW: Chaifetz says he went immediately to his son's Cherry Hill School and credits administrators with acting quickly. In a statement the school superintendent said: "In February, upon receiving a copy of an audio recording, the district undertook a thorough and rigorous investigation and responded swiftly and appropriately." She said there were specifics she couldn't legally address. Adding, "I want to assure our parents that the individuals who were heard on the recording raising their voices and inappropriately addressing children no longer work in the district." Chaifetz says he felt he had no choice but to go public.</s>CHAIFETZ: Every child is worthy of defense and respect, and that no one deserves to be treated with cruelty and to be humiliated. And that we who can speak for him need to stop it by changing the law, by exposing people who bully kids, and by publicly shaming them.</s>ROMANS: Mary Snow, thank you. Stuart Chaifetz isn't alone, we did a search. We found incidents like this across the country. Chaifetz is now pushing for legislation that would remove any legal barriers to dismissing teachers who bully children, especially those with special needs. Joining us now from Los Angeles is Georgianna Kelman. She's a legal advocate for change in special needs education and she believes the system should be overhauled. Welcome to the program. You know, this teacher, we're told, wasn't fired, but moved to another district. Tenure was to blame here. Mr. Chaifetz, of course, outraged over this. But he says he's not at war with the school district. He's fighting the people that actually bullied his son. You say parents need to go to war with the district to see any real change.</s>GEORGIANNA KELMAN, SPECIAL EDUCATION ATTORNEY: Absolutely. I see this on my practice on a daily basis. What's going on here is there's two components here. First you have to deal with budget cuts. They don't have the appropriate type of aides qualified/certified to be in these classrooms. Two, we have tenure. These teachers -- what tenure does -- I understand the reason for tenure, but a lot of these incompetent teachers cannot be removed from these classrooms because of tenure.</s>ROMANS: You have a child with special needs, right?</s>KELMAN: I do. Absolutely.</s>ROMANS: So you're a parent and you're also an attorney -- you're also somebody who represents families. A woman I know...</s>KELMAN: I represent children with special needs.</s>ROMANS: A woman I know whose son is on the spectrum told me, if you're not there, they don't care. That's the mantra of parents who will put their kids into public school and try to look for help. If you're not there, they don't care, you have to be constantly a fly on the wall. Is that true?</s>KELMAN: Absolutely.</s>ROMANS: Is that true?</s>KELMAN: It's true in some instances. There are some very -- and I don't want to say that there's -- that the system's completely broken. There are some very good teachers out there that care about these kids that their hearts are in this, but I also see a lot of teachers that don't care, that have become jaded. It takes a very special person to teach special education children. However, you must be present in every way. Daily you must ask for meetings, you must to be in the classroom. You have to play an active role with your child when your child has special needs specifically. All parents should be involved, but a mother or a...</s>ROMANS: Should special education teachers and aides, should they be paid more so we attract people who have all of those special characteristics you're talking about?</s>KELMAN: Absolutely. What's happening is budget crises. They're hiring people that are not qualified that maybe have Internet training. You need certified, qualified, seasoned specialists in these classrooms with these kids. You can't hire an aide that has no education, barely a high school degree, has no training whatsoever, is getting paid minimum wage. These aides are in the classroom a lot of the time for the paycheck, but you need to have qualified, trained individuals in these classrooms in order to make sure that these things don't happen and the proper strategies are applied, and the children are treated correctly. Across school districts all over the country, budget cuts are playing a huge, huge role in this.</s>ROMANS: Thanks, Georgianna. We did receive a statement from Kelly Altenburg, the Cherry Hill, New Jersey, teacher accused by the father of being present when his 10-year-old son was verbally abused. It says: "Mrs. Altenburg respects the privacy of her student who has been in her class and who she has taught during the last two years as well as the advocacy of the father. Mr. Chaifetz, however, has been disingenuous in his assertions and has failed to advise the public accurately, including the fact that for at least approximately one hour in the beginning of the day at issue, Mrs. Altenburg was not even in the classroom with Mr. Chaifetz's son."</s>ROMANS: All right. Coming up, our next is no stranger to the entrepreneurial world. She launched her first product back in 1996 for a million dollars, now runs a multimillion-dollar empire, Lori Greiner joins me next.