To the Editor: 

A recent issue of U.S. 1 told a story that should concern every member of the Princeton community. It is a story of demeaning and harmful behavior directed at a six-year-old child with special needs by the very people whom the community trusted to care for children.

If you ever thought about what it might be like to be caught in a version of Franz Kafka’s The Trial, you only need to read the story of a boy suffering from a developmental coordination disorder known as apraxia. The essence is that a first-grade child with special needs was treated as a pariah by Community Park school staff. They interpreted his self-stimulating behavior as sexual deviancy, ultimately suspending him for it, despite evidence and testimony from the child’s therapist, psychiatrist, and other health professionals to the contrary. Anxiety, like that provoked by school staff when repeatedly accusing the child of willfully bad behavior, simply made his problem worse. Suspending the six-year-old from school made it much worse. The family ultimately had to go to court to request relief. After hearing testimony from the experts, the family and the school system, the judge’s published opinion chastised the system for having caused “irreparable harm” to the child and, in violation of both state and federal law, for failing to create an educational and behavioral plan for the child. The judge took the extraordinary step of ordering the district administration to place the child in a different Princeton school where, happily, he is now prospering.

Mistreatment of a single child in a school community should be a concern to every citizen who expects its schools to act in a professional and caring manner for every child, especially those with special needs. A system that failed one child can be failing other vulnerable children at this very moment. The community expects and deserves the school system to initiate a professional and impartial investigation of the event and, if need be, hold people accountable. I have no doubt that the vast majority of teachers, counselors, and administrators want to educate, not harm. However, when things go dreadfully wrong, as they did in this case, the system has to analyze itself. It needs to open a transparent investigation of what went wrong, who was responsible, and how to make certain it will never happen again. Repeated attempts by the boy’s family to initiate such an investigation have fallen on deaf ears at the district level. It is time for the school system to do the right thing.

Can such “irreparable harm” happen to another child who has been entrusted to our schools for care? We will never know unless the school system undertakes a true investigation so every parent knows that this will never happen again.

Joel Cooper

Prospect Avenue

Editor’s Note: The writer is a former member and president of the Princeton Regional Board of Education. Prior to running the letter, Town Topics sent it to Princeton Public School Superintendent Steve Cochrane, whose statement is included in the story on page 5.