‘I hope the parents pursue this matter to the fullest’

October 12, 2006

Anonymous The Daily Southerner Thu Oct 12, 2006, 11:47 AM EDT

I would like to respond to the letter titled "Maybe 'incident' misinterpreted" (Oct. 4) by Kenneth Pledger regarding the incident at Tarboro High School in which Mr. Carter Ray Suggs allegedly hit a student on the arm with a ruler.

Mr. Pledger, when this story first aired in the media. it was stated that the student was autistic. While it is great that you got to know Mr. Suggs last year and, according to your personal knowledge of Mr. Suggs, and the reputation that he enjoys in the community is good, the fact remains that whether Mr. Suggs is a good person or not is irrelevant to the issue at hand.

I am a parent of an autistic child and I am very knowledgeable when it comes to autism. I am outraged that you would even suggest that perhaps there may have been contributing factors that would have been beyond Mr. Suggs' control. The fact that Mr. Suggs. according to the newspaper, has been a teacher for 17 years would suggest that he should have learned control somewhere within that time frame.

Also, I do not believe that the Police Department would go to the extent of arresting Mr. Suggs without lack of evidence.

I also feel that a teacher who has been in the school system for that period of time would know whether a child should or should not be placed in their room from the start. When you choose to go into the education field, you choose then to work with all the students that go through the school system not just the ones that are easy to teach or easy to understand.

When a student is placed in any class with a disability such as autism, you would think that being a teacher you would want to go the extra mile, do the necessary research and obtain the appropriate amount of training in order to avoid incidents like this.

It is not like Mr. Suggs has not had somewhere within those 17 years to get prepared. Now I realize some people are going to say it is not easy with 20 other students in the class. You know it is not easy on the parents as well – but that's life and we learn to deal with it.

Autistic students did not just start coming through the school system last week. Therefore, passing the blame regarding whose responsibility it should have been just seems irrelevant to me, as well.

Perhaps a lot of people who do not have a disabled child would need to observe his classroom and daily routine in order to understand the full range of Mr. Suggs' responsibilities.

But the fact is I do understand the full range of what the responsibilities because live it every day. And we as parents of children with disabilities are going to take the responsibility to ensure that when we do send our children to the public. schools that our children should not only be in a productive environment but a safe environment as well.

With this said, I hope the parents pursue this matter to the fullest.

Deborah Laughter

Tarboro

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