Special education students left out of high school graduation program feel ‘discriminated’

Months of anticipation turned to disappointment when six California particular training graduating learners recognized their names were not integrated in their high school’s graduation program and their diplomas had been not purchased in time for the ceremony.

Sporting his blue button-up shirt and a red bow tie to match his school’s pirate-themed colors, Joseph Sanchez-Muñoz attended his San Leandro High School graduation on June 9, “super thrilled to make my spouse and children very pleased,” he advised NBC News.

As a scholar residing with a unusual ailment immediately after surviving most cancers as a child, graduating from high school is a milestone that holds excess importance for Joseph and his spouse and children.

But following discovering he and five other special instruction were excluded from the graduation system, he “felt unhappy, depressed,” Joseph, 18, reported.

“I felt discriminated,” Joseph’s mother, Elena Muñoz, informed NBC News. “Why have been the youngsters not in there? Is it because they are particular ed young ones? Why did they leave them at the rear of?”

Joseph underwent liver and kidney transplants while battling most cancers. He was then identified with Hao-Fountain Syndrome, a rare disorder caused by mutations in the USP7 gene that can have an affect on a vast assortment of physical and behavioral properties.

“They shattered a moment that I was meant to continue to keep in memory,” Muñoz, 34, who is a wellness treatment employee in San Leandro, said. “Not recognizing how prolonged I’m going to have my son, just about every milestone, it’s a huge milestone.”

The early morning following graduation, Joseph cleaned the body in which he experienced prepared to location his high school diploma.

Muñoz and a number of of the other parents and pupils went to choose up the diplomas up from the faculty but had been instructed they would have to hold out a thirty day period due to the fact they experienced overlooked to get them, she stated.

“The mothers just felt like the district did not regard us,” Muñoz claimed.

A spokesperson for the San Leandro Unified School District informed NBC Information this form of “clerical error” had not earlier occurred in the particular schooling program’s historical past.

“We are conducting a total evaluate of our graduation processes to make certain that a critical error like this does not happen once more in the upcoming,” San Leandro High College principals stated in a assertion.

As component of an apology, the school promised to hand-supply the diplomas early future 7 days. The families already gained up-to-date graduation applications.

Whilst their names have been not originally provided in the printed graduation system, Joseph and the 5 other graduates have been capable to have their names introduced as they walked throughout the stage the working day of commencement.