BUCKTOWN — A Drummond Montessori second-grader is suing the head of Chicago Public Schools and the Board of Education, alleging that the Bucktown magnet school is not accessible and she must "scoot" up and down stairs and crawl between landings.
Filed by disability advocacy group Access Living on behalf of an 8-year-old wheelchair user identified as G.P., and her mom, Karen P., the civil complaint names CPS' chief executive officer Forrest Claypool and the Chicago Board of Education as defendants.
Karen P., G.P.'s mom, said on Monday that her daughter's maternal great-grandparents and grandparents attended Drummond School at 1845 W. Cortland St. in the 1920s and 1940s, respectively.
In 2004, the neighborhood school — housed in an old building that's not compliant with the American with Disabilities Act — was turned into a Montessori magnet school.
Last spring, after requesting that her daughter's classroom be relocated from the second to the first floor, Karen P. was told by a CPS lawyer that her daughter would need to transfer to a school with an accessible building, according to the complaint filed Friday.
For Karen P., the transfer was a rub on two levels: her family's long legacy at the school and the relationships her daughter maintained since her Pre-K year in 2012.
In 2015, the girl was diagnosed with Gaucher disease, a rare genetic condition that severely limits G.P.'s mobility and makes it "generally impossible to climb stairs," according to the complaint.
"To G., everything is special about Drummond. She's proud that her grandma went there. She loves Montessori and her teacher. Mostly, she loves her friends. They have been together since they were three, which is a big deal when you are eight," the mother said.
"When we go other places, kids stare at her in her chair — this is totally normal. But at Drummond everyone knows her and she gets to be G.P. and not the girl in the wheelchair," Karen P. said.
Last spring, a Lurie Children's Hospital physician wrote to G.P's case worker at Drummond and said that that the girl "needs access to an elevator or electric lift chair."
"We implore CPS to make the right accommodations for our patient," the physician wrote.
This past November, the physician said she was concerned about G.P.'s reliance on "scooting" up and down the stairs, while also being denied "her personal dignity."
"This [scooting] is not medically prohibited when G.P. is able to tolerate it. However it is not intended to be a long term solution to the challenges of moving up and down stairs in school," the physician said in a letter included in the suit.
Described in the complaint as "using her arms in a seated position and crawling on hands and knees on the landing between flights," scooting was approved in a May 2016 conversation between Access Living, CPS attorneys, and Karen P., when, with only a few days left in the school year and after G. P. refused to transfer to Oscar Mayer Elementary, it was decided that she would use scooting to get to her classroom in the fall.
But after G.P. returned to school on Jan. 9, 2017 following a mid-November hip surgery, Petrof, a lawyer for Access Living, said that scooting was not an effective long-term solution.
On Jan. 26, Petrof wrote a letter to CPS attorneys suggesting that they install a lift in the school or explore similar possibilities.
Petrof said he gave CPS lawyers a deadline of Feb. 3 to respond.
"They acknowledged getting our letter and asked for additional time to respond. We gave them the additional time, but that time ran out, and our contacts at CPS simply stopped responding to us when we tried to clarify if they wanted to discuss this before we took the matter to court," Petrof said.
Michael Passman, CPS spokesman, said that the district does not comment on pending litigation.
Friday's civil suit follows a discrimination complaint filed last spring against the U.S. Dept. of Federal Education focused on providing specific relief to G.P.
Access Living has a history of battling CPS.
"Magnet school accessibility came out of a complaint Access Living filed with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights back in 1994. That was a systemic complaint. It sought to make all CPS magnet programs accessible," Petrof said.
The 1994 complaint resulted in a settlement agreement requiring CPS to retrofit schools housing its magnet programs through 2003, Petrof said.
But the next year, 2004, CPS opened Drummond Montessori Magnet School in its old "inaccessible building," Petrof said.
According to a 2013 Access Living report, under 50 percent of all CPS buildings were accessible. CPS uses a consulting firm to assess school accessibility.
Karen P. grew up in Northbrook while her grandparents stayed in Bucktown. She decided to move to Bucktown as an adult and raise her family three blocks away from the school her parents and grandparents attended.
"My dad wasn't thrilled and never really understood why I'd want to go back [to Bucktown] after he worked so hard to get out," she said. "I felt a deep connection with the neighborhood. My sister and I grew up hearing stories from my uncles about playing on the train tracks and shining shoes outside of what is now Club Lucky. My grandma was a force of a woman and I loved waking by her house. Bucktown wasn't great in the early 90's, but I didn't think of moving anywhere else in the city," Karen P. said.
G.P.'s grandmother's 2nd grade class in 1949. [Provided]
