In Denver, Colorado, a 7-year-old boy who is partially deaf is locked away in a special room called a " padded room" because he's not performing well enough in public school. His mom, Kelly Fletcher, says her son should be in a regular classroom.
00:01:31.000It's a padded room, and they lock the kids up in these, and I guess the kids are kind of encouraged to go wild in them.
00:01:39.000It's kind of the whole liberal view of time out, but what struck me in this article out of NWCN TV Is that more and more the kids are frisked.
00:01:57.000The smallest thing gets you sent to the principal's office, gets you locked up in these little time-out rooms.
00:02:04.000And then joining me is Kelly Fletcher and her seven-year-old son is partially deaf.
00:02:11.000And she doesn't think that he needs to be in this special class environment where they lock kids up.
00:02:15.000She says her child has never been in trouble.
00:02:19.000Kelly Fletcher, thanks for coming on the show.
00:02:23.000Tell us about how your child got into this part of the public school and why you're upset about what's happening.
00:02:29.000Well, in February, his home school had approached me and said that the accommodations that they were using on Dante Was not helping him to academically progress.
00:02:42.000We've known about the hearing problem all along and just wanting him to get the proper help, I was open to whatever options they gave me.
00:02:53.000One of the options was a class in the North Shore School District at one of the other schools that's close by.
00:03:01.000This class is a little bit smaller in size and they can give the children a little more intense one-on-one.
00:03:07.000uh... not that's not a great because you know i want my father's exceeding
00:04:46.000You know, my son says he was locked in this room and the lights were turned off.
00:04:50.000And, uh, I didn't think that any place could, in a public school, could perform this sort of discipline, especially without the OK to care.
00:04:58.000The Denver Post has reported, 2020 and 91 reported, they locked kids in small boxes.
00:05:05.000It's all part of a psychological operation.
00:05:09.000Do they even have the credentials to be performing psychological?
00:06:24.000Yeah, so anyway, the kids were, you know, teasing him and being a little insecure just moving to the school and putting in the factor of different colored eyes.
00:06:32.000Now that he's at the school, he's had some negative feedback from his eyes from some of the children.
00:06:38.000He starts to tell his children, stop looking at me.
00:06:40.000So the teacher got mad because I guess this is one of the times that the children were coming back from recess and it's called quiet down time.
00:06:47.000And which they didn't, I didn't know about this.
00:06:49.000He had to go grab a happy toy or a pillow and lay down on the ground like a two-year-old, which I'm now upset because, you know, my son's almost eight.
00:06:58.000This hurts the children to put them in special education.
00:07:05.000And there's too many disabilities in together at once.
00:07:08.000You need to be specialized in one disability.
00:07:10.000You can't treat autistic children and then know about a hearing impaired child.
00:07:15.000You don't have the knowledge for both.
00:07:17.000And generally, the special ed teacher, and not all of them, I'm knocking all of them, but usually it's somebody who's washed out of the other classes.
00:07:25.000Yeah, well, as far as I understand, this person is just getting their first teaching position.
00:07:37.000You thought it was some, you know, special curriculum to help him, but you found out it was really where they just stick to all the kids.
00:07:45.000No, well actually this class was based, is geared for children on behavior problems, and I was also told two times that children do not come to this class unless they're referred from with behavior problems.
00:07:57.000So what did they tell you when they referred your child?
00:08:00.000Matt, it was just the smaller class size that he would be able to get a little more of the one-on-one that he needed, you know, due to his hearing loss.
00:08:07.000It's hard for him to follow directions in the class and participate like all the rest of the team.
00:08:11.000Now, the news says here that your son didn't have any record of being in trouble before.
00:08:33.000This is, you know, I'm just new to this.
00:08:37.000The reason I took the steps for the news is because it became more of a power control.
00:08:41.000You know, I'm like, hey, I got a doctor's note, and I was told, hey, you don't get to choose where he's placed.
00:08:46.000You know, I'm like, hold on, this is no longer about helping my son.
00:08:50.000It's more about, oh, we're going to do what we want to do with your child.
00:08:52.000Well, it's called Goals 2000, and a sub-directive of it is all children by the fifth grade, they're already doing computer testing, federally paid for, the government will decide what trade school or what you're going to be.
00:09:05.000Then you'll have to have that letter of accreditation.
00:09:07.000It's the Soviet model or the old Europe model.
00:09:10.000They'll have to have a letter of accreditation for what college you can attend and what you can be.
00:09:15.000So already they're doing it by pushing the kids into these schools.
00:09:21.000So the Seattle Teacher Conference or Senate Tribal Hearing, this area will help him.
00:09:26.000You didn't know the school got tens of thousands of federal dollars, I'm sure, as a motive to do this.
00:09:32.000Now he's in there and having problems and they want to keep him locked up in there.
00:10:41.000I tape-recorded our last conversation.
00:10:44.000I knew that from day one, when I found out that there was a lie, that I had to take different steps in this whole... Oh, they're total liars, the turtle, yes.
00:10:52.000Yeah, so you know, what I did is, when I came in to our meeting, and I had no knowledge of anything about this class, I said, I hope you don't mind I'm tape recording this.
00:11:00.000Turn the tape recorder on and then start confronting them about the situation.
00:11:03.000Why did you tell me that this class was for the academic class?
00:11:05.000That's right, you get on the offensive about this point.
00:11:08.000And then I sent it off to the investigators.
00:11:10.000Olympia. Now that you let them know, now we'll just quietly pull him out. If you've got family
00:11:16.000with another address, say he lives there, do whatever you have to, get him into another
00:11:20.000school district, be very quiet about this, and just tell him he's going to have to cope with it.
00:11:25.000He doesn't want to go back into that mind control class.
00:11:27.000Yeah, no, I'm trying to get him into a school that is cared for children with hard of hearing.