This story by Rae Ellen Bichell and Helen Santoro appeared on Chalkbeat Colorado on May 12, 2023. We are sharing it in two parts.
When Riley was in third grade at Del Norte Elementary, he was on an individualized education program for serious emotional disability. Despite that, school officials frequently suspended him and whittled his classroom time down to one hour a day, the Georges said. When school districts in Oregon shortened their special education students’ school days due to behavior, experts determined it was as counterproductive as limiting reading time for students who are struggling to read well.
Aaron Horrocks, superintendent of the Upper Rio Grande School District, declined to comment on Riley specifically but said challenging behaviors are on the rise and schools need more support services and options — funding to hire paraprofessionals or a day treatment center within driving range.
One day, Riley slapped the side of the school bus and cursed, his mother said, and school staffers held him on the ground for an hour — Riley said one sat on him. The Georges filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education that alleged school officials had discriminated against Riley because of his disability. The department acknowledged that IEP documents show Riley was physically restrained three times over the course of a month.
Before an investigation got underway, the school district settled the complaint by adopting new protocols and training staff members on shortened school days and physical restraints. The Georges eventually chose to take Riley out of that school and enroll him in an online school.
That worked for about a year, with his father, Matthew George, staying home to help with schooling while Kelly George became the sole breadwinner.
But when Riley gave his mother a bruise the size of two softballs — and threatened to kill her while she slept — they were stuck: He had to go somewhere that could meet his needs, for his family’s safety. They contacted several residential facilities and even a few hospitals but ran into a string of denials: Some didn’t accept his insurance; others rejected him because he wasn’t yet a teenager, because of his aggressive behavior or his autism, or because they just had no beds left.
Schools in Utah, Arkansas, and Texas didn’t respond, and there was no room in Wyoming. By that point, Hilltop had closed its residential program, and driving more than four hours each way for a day program was out of the question.
In the meantime, Riley was in and out of short-term treatment facilities on multiple emergency mental health holds between September and January. Under Colorado law, emergency holds allow people to be kept for 72 hours for treatment and evaluation if they appear to be an imminent danger to themselves or others.
When Kelly George called her county’s social services department, she said, the response was that “unless he basically puts me in the hospital or is really aggressive towards one of his siblings and actually hurts them, there was nothing they could do, because it’s not an abuse or neglect case.”
So, they pressed assault charges against their own child.
“I just needed help, and it was the last card I could play,” said Kelly George.
Critics of facility schools condemn their segregated nature, but Riley wound up in even more segregated places over the next four months while his family tried to secure a bed at a residential school. After being criminally charged, Riley first went to Pueblo Youth Services Center, a detention facility. That was followed by a stint in a mental health hospital. His belongings moved with him in a garbage bag — the “essentials,” said Riley, plus 10 books about the military sci-fi franchise ‘Halo’.
Then, in late March, the Georges drove him to a Colorado Springs facility school called the J. Wilkins Opportunity School.
“I want to learn to control my anger better,” Riley said on his first day there. He missed his dog. He said he’d be ready to go home when anger no longer feels like “clenched fists.”
The Georges wish there were a place closer to home. “We can’t be the only family in our 200 square miles dealing with this,” said Kelly. A dream scenario, she said, would be to have a school that kids like her son could attend, with transportation to and from school, and therapeutic support at home.
Some provisions in the new Colorado law are intended specifically to help rural areas, such as establishing a statewide technical assistance center to help meet rural students’ needs.
It could provide anything from in-person training for school staffers to a behavior analyst available to coach people over the phone in a pinch, said Malouff, the Santa Fe Trail BOCES executive director, who participated in a stakeholder group that came up with the idea. The details have not yet been determined.
Malouff hopes the center will help rural districts gain the skills they need to keep students at home, and free up facility school spots for others with more severe needs.
Michelle Murphy, executive director of the Colorado Rural Schools Alliance, and others in rural education are skeptical that a single statewide technical assistance center can provide the support districts need when so much of the need is for boots on the ground.
“We have workforce challenges in virtually every aspect of our special education programs, from teachers to our special service providers to our paraprofessionals,” said Murphy. “It’s close to, if not an actual, crisis at this point.”
Pat Bershinsky, executive director of the Pikes Peak BOCES in Colorado Springs, said rural needs would be more effectively met if the money instead went directly to BOCES to create their own programs.
The Georges would have kept Riley at or close to home had they been able to get the right training, services, and support. In states like Minnesota, for example, it’s possible to get personal care assistance at home under certain circumstances, including for help with frequent aggressive behaviors for a home-schooled student with an individualized education program.
Such services were created to keep people in their communities and avoid institutional placement. Colorado does not appear to offer such services specifically geared toward aggressive behavior.
On move-in day in Colorado Springs, the Georges toured the campus with Riley and carried his belongings into his new room. Matthew George excitedly pointed out that Riley will be living mere blocks from a U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Training Center.
“I can’t believe that, finally, after all this time — eight months — it’s finally happening and my family’s needs are finally, finally being met,” said Matthew George. But he was also apprehensive. He, too, was institutionalized as a child, bouncing for five years between foster care and the same mental health hospital and facility school organization as his son.
“I never thought I would be in a position where I would be an adult and witness my son going through the same things that I went through,” he said. “Something really needs to be done, because I don’t want to be going and visiting my grandkids in a facility like this.”
Riley’s move has the Georges’ other children worried, too. Kelly George recalled their 5-year-old daughter throwing a temper tantrum over ice cream, then wailing in fright: “I’m gonna get sent away! I don’t wanna get sent away.” But Kelly, too, is optimistic about Riley’s new chapter.
“It’s sad that we’re leaving him here, but at the same time I’m really hopeful that this is going to be what he needs to get him to where he can be OK and be at home with us,” she said.
When it was time to say goodbye, Matthew George hugged his son close. “You can do this,” he told him. And then the family drove away, back through the mountains, back home.
Chalkbeat Colorado senior reporter Melanie Asmar contributed to this report. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
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