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Kentucky mom horrified after school nurse, teacher drag autistic sixth-grader through hallway

The New York Daily News - 10/15/2018

Oct. 14--The Kentucky mother of an autistic middle schooler was shocked to discover her son had been dragged down a school hallway by his teacher and nurse.

Jo Grayson took to Facebook last month when son Thatcher, 11, returned home from Tates Creek Middle School in Lexington with a smattering of cuts and bruises all over his body.

"He had a meltdown at school and the teacher apparently picked him up, but if this had been done properly, he wouldn't have marks like this," she wrote at the time.

She recently told CNN that she'd received a text from his teacher about the incident, and was told he had to be physically helped off of the gym floor because he refused to move.

But Grayson says she quickly discovered the teacher's account was wrong -- and that, based on surveillance footage she received from the school, he was actually dragged down a hallway.

"I just don't understand how someone can do this to a child, let alone to a person with disabilities," she told CNN. "I want the school district to take action and not just install cameras in every room of each school, but also train their staff accordingly so they know how to handle children with disabilities, or rough situations with children like Thatcher."

Grayson penned a lengthy blog post earlier this month on the incident, and said that she'd moved Thatcher, who is mostly nonverbal, to Tates Creek because he'd been hurt before at other schools in the Fayette County Public School district.

The teacher involved in the incident has since been dismissed, but Grayson wrote that she wishes the school would instead have offered proper training so that staff members were better equipped to handle students with disabilities.

The nurse, meanwhile, has reportedly been placed on administrative leave.

"My son could have been unharmed if the teacher had had better training in what to do in such an instance as this," she wrote in the blog.

Grayson told CNN she has filed a report with the county district attorney, and that the report is currently under review.

A spokesperson for the school district told the outlet in a statement that it has explicitly trained its staff members to only use physical restraint as a last resort, and that the employees involved did not meet its standards.

* Educators

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