Fla. kid ‘voted out’ of class has autism

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla., May 28 (UPI) — A Florida family says their 5-year-old son, who was drummed out of his elementary school class, has been diagnosed with autism.

The Palm Beach (Fla.) Post said Wednesday that Alex Barton was found to be autistic by a psychiatrist on Tuesday, about a week after he was allegedly stood up in front of the room at Morningside Elementary School in Port St. Lucie, Fla., and forced to listen to his classmates tick off a list of things they didn’t like about him.

The class then reportedly voted 14-2 to send Alex packing.

“That anyone would do that to a child, it’s just sickening,” Alex’s mother, Melissa Barton, told the newspaper.

The Bartons were angry enough that they filed a police report. The teacher in question has been reassigned outside the classroom, the newspaper said.

The head of the district’s special education department told the Post that teachers generally aren’t given training on dealing with autistic students until one of their students had been officially diagnosed.

The teacher says it wasn’t abuse, but hundreds of parents are joining forces to get teacher Wendy Portillo fired for her Survivor-like tactics in the classroom towards a 5-year-old boy.
Teachers at Morningside Elementary alerted Melissa Barton this year that her 5-year-old son Alex Barton suffers from a high-functioning form of Autism called Aspberger’s Syndrome.
Alex is often disciplined in his kindergarten class for disrupting behavior, but his mother says, eating his paper homework, or humming for 20 seconds at a time are symptoms of his disability, and last week the teacher went too far in removing him from class, then allowing students to vote if he was allowed back in.
Barton says, “She (teacher) told me this is her way of correcting his behavior. So she stands my little 5-year-old boy up in front of all of his peers and individually asks each child to tell Alex what we don’t like about him, and in his words it was ‘tell Alex what we hate about him.’”
Barton tells us her son was very sad and traumatized by the incident.

“Disability or not you have no right to do this to a child, any child,” his mother said as if she were talking to Mrs. Portillo, “Do you understand this is a child? a 5 year-old child, who already has enough in this world against him.”

Alex Barton has not returned to class since last Thursday’s vote.  Alex’s mother said the hardest part for Alex was watching his only friend vote against him,”The child must have felt threatened or coerced into saying ‘Yeah he needs to go,’ and then he went on to say ‘Alex eats his shoestrings’ and ‘Yes he’s annoying,’ and this is Alex’s only friend in the world.”  Alex was voted out of the class 14-to-2.

The district last week could not comment because of the active investigation, but released a statement saying, “Ms. Portillo has been reassigned outside of the classroom at the district offices until any further action may be determined.”

An on-line petition bearing hundreds of signatures from parents of Autistic children across the country is gaining momentum.  Their demand is that teacher Wendy Portillo must be fired immediately.

“It’s a little boy who is completly defenseless and to have every person in his classroom stand up and talk about the negative,” Barton begins to tear up, and adds, ”But then to have an entire world of people who are talking about the positive. It’s amazing to see.”

The file on Wendy Portillo shows “Good” to “excellent” evaluations in her 12 years teaching for the district. Her personnel file shows she is trained and certified to teach special needs children.

To watch our raw video interview with Alex’s mother, click here:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1137883291/bclid1143359274/bctid1576242234

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 at 11:18 pm and is filed under autism, school. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.