BEAVERTON, Ore. (KOIN) — Christy Croghan’s son is one of the students in the Beaverton School District’s special needs programs. The students, like Lewis, go to the Capital Center.
But Croghan said the students are taught in 3 windowless rooms inside the building and when the students are allowed to go out and play, they have to play in a crowded parking lot with cars going in and out. She said she doesn’t feel that’s safe and added she doesn’t feel the students are given the same access to resources as other Beaverton students.
“It’s 3 office rooms, no windows, no access to the cafeteria. They have no library, they have no gymnasium,” Croghan said. “We looked at the facility and said, this is an office building, this isn’t a school. And they said, ‘Oh, we’re moving it.’ We agreed to go out there thinking he was going to move and they never moved.”
Lewis has been in the ACCE program at Capital Center since 2015, but Croghan pulled her son out of it this school year.
Croghan’s lawyer, Elizabeth Polay of Wiscarson Law, filed a complaint with the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. Polay told KOIN 6 News the federal office decided to investigate the complaint.
Read: The letter to the US Dept of Ed Civil Rights Office
Beaverton school district officials said they will cooperate with the Civil Rights Office and is awaiting further instruction.
“The hope is there will be change in the district to give (the students) equal access,” Polay said. “The only option for Lewis to go outside and participate in some sort of activity, to have a makeshift basketball hoop which they have in the parking lot, where cars actually do drive through.”
But school officials told KOIN 6 News as far as they know there were never any plans to move the program’s location, which has been at the Capital Center since 2013. It was not a temporary location.
KOIN 6 News will update this story as developments happen.