My nephew is physically disabled and is medical fragile, that is, he has a trach and severe breathing issues, has to be on an oxygen monitor when he's asleep, that sort of thing. He uses a power wheelchair. At school, he has a one on one aide. And his home nurses go to school with him as well.
His level of disability is such that even medical professionals such as doctors assume that he is also cognitively disabled. This is not the case, but it is sometimes difficult to convince them of this. He signed for a few years until he learned to talk with the trach, but the doctors didn't recognize his signs. DB and SIL had to warn doctors repeatedly that Nephew could not only hear them, he could understand exactly what they were saying and sometimes he'd get frightened or have nightmares based on what the doctors were saying.
So it isn't surprising that other people feel the same way.
Things that my brother and sister-in-law have had to deal with:
Other parents at school requesting that he be removed from their child's classroom. Many of them fear their child will "catch" whatever caused his disabilities.
He needs an air conditioner in his classroom. His body has a difficult time cooling off when it gets hot and he can pass out. Parents have complained that the classroom is too cold for their child who is wearing a sleeveless shirt and they want the temperature raised. So the teachers raise the temperature, and Nephew gets sick, and then my brother and SIL get upset. So now a note goes out to parents at the beginning of the school year, informing them that the classroom will be kept at 70 degrees all year long, and they can send a sweater or jacket to school daily with their child, or send one in to be kept in the classroom.
One of the parents who wanted Nephew out of his child's classroom kicked up such a fuss that they told him that Nephew was staying put, but they could put his child in a different classroom. No, he wanted his daughter in the air-conditioned classroom. Just move the kid in the wheelchair, thank you very much.
The way his school is built, there are a lot of blind corners where you can't see if anyone is coming. Back when he was seven, like any seven year old boy, he'd drive his chair too fast in the hallways, just like a regular kid who'd run in the halls. The school staff was afraid he'd run into someone going around a corner. Their solution was to put him in his manual chair at school--the chair he could not move by himself, thereby taking away all his independence. While my brother and SIL agreed the speeding the hallways was an issue, they proposed other ways of dealing with it--setting a speed limit on the chair at school, and a standard behavior improvement program to stop the speeding in the halls. (Nephew never did hit anyone with the chair.)
There is an on-going issue with the school over adaptive equipment. Because Nephew is fully mainstreamed, his teachers know very little about what adaptive equipment the school has. The Special Ed teachers, who know all about it, have little to no contact with Nephew. So weeks can go by as notes are sent to and from school, until Nephew gets the adaptive ruler that will allow him to do the math problems that require measuring lines. No one seems to be able to figure out how to solve this problem. My brother's request for a list of every single piece of adaptive equipment in the school has gone unanswered.
