A Utah mother is outraged after she bought a Blue Peak High School yearbook only to find her daughter and the entire special needs class had been excluded.
Leslee Bailey told Fox 13 Salt Lake City that the special needs transitional class of 17 students had been included in the yearbook for the past two years. This year, however, her 21-year-old daughter Amber, who has Down Syndrome, and the rest of the class were left out.
"It's kind of like they singled out the students who were in the transition program and said, 'We don't want you in our yearbook,'" said Leslee.
Leslee says Amber takes the same bus to school, attends classes in the same building as the other high school students, and eats in the same cafeteria. The special needs class has even been tutored by high school students in the past.
"It sends the message that, 'We're not including you. You're not part of us. We don't accept you," Leslee told The New York Daily News. "It made me feel very angry."
Leslee said Amber became upset when she couldn't find her photo in the newly purchased yearbook. The school principal reportedly told her it was because "we don't have the pages," but the director of special education for Tooele County, Mat Jackson, gave a different explanation.
"They don't participate in classes with those Blue Peak High School kids," Jackson said of the school's special needs students.
Jackson said the transitional special needs program is intended to help the students move on from high school, so the students should not be involved in high school activities, like the yearbook.
"The expectation is different. The environment is different. So...that was part of the change as well," Jackson told Fox 13.
Leslee said she doesn't buy that excuse, and says all it did was highlight the differences between her daughter and the student body.
"It doesn't just matter because I love her and I want the best for her," she told Fox 13. "But it bothers me because it seems they've gone back in time to where we're not including them. And we are going to tuck them away and say, 'No, they don't exist.'"
Watch the KSTU-TV video report, and leave a comment below.