(This week’s civic education and engagement column from Danville’s The Republican newspaper.)
Not that long ago, the family of a seventh-grader in Hamilton County sued their son’s school district and lost. The parents’ grievance was that the boy was not allowed to bring his emotional support chicken to his middle-school classes. No, I’m not making this up.
Common sense prevailed for once, preserving the right of school districts to control which species aside from ours may set hoof, claw, or paw in their schools. (Whether you side with the schools or the parents, I’m sure you’ll agree that placing a live chicken in a classroom full of seventh-grade boys isn’t likely to end well.)
I don’t know how many other schools experienced an onslaught of emotional support animals, but the issue was important enough to emerge on the General Assembly’s radar. The matter was argued as thoroughly as is usual for the folks whose decisions govern your daily life. If we let students attend school with service dogs related to a disability, does that obligate us to accommodate someone’s emotional support monitor lizard? Are all kinds of animals acceptable? And how do we decide whether this is a legitimate service animal and not just the family Fido wearing an official-looking harness?
Ultimately, the legislators decided that two criteria were needed to allow a student’s emotional support animal to accompany them to class. Rule number one: the animal had to be one of only two approved species. The first is obvious, given our attachment to the canines in our lives. Go ahead and make a guess as to the second. We’ll get there eventually.
The second rule ended the days of parents declaring that Mr. Grumbles was an emotional support cat and simply must attend school with young Chris. In addition to being an authorized species (cats are not), the emotional support animal must have been professionally trained and certified for that role, with documentation to prove it. (No, the fake authorization letter your brother-in-law whips up won’t work this time.)
Let me be very clear: I’m not making light of student mental health in any way. One of my proudest achievements as a school board member was the dramatic expansion of services addressing those needs, including services you’d expect social workers to handle. We didn’t do that to be trendy or woke. We did it because of the significant level of need among the students for whom we were legally responsible for serving and protecting during the school day.
Public schools exist to educate young people. If there isn’t any food at home or they’re not sure where they’re going to sleep that night, their attention won’t be focused on learning. Indiana schools don’t embrace students with mental and emotional needs because they want to play social worker. They do it because almost nobody else out there is taking care of those kids. From basic poverty to eviction to Mom’s addiction landing her in jail again, the first place desperate families turn for help is often their child’s school, because they trust the teacher and the principal more than any other authority figure. Who else would take time to express sympathy and patiently explain how to pick up the pieces?
The reason I shared the story about the boy and his poultry pal is that your local school districts are forced to deal with more nonsense than you can imagine. The demands some parents make and the amount of work they’ll devote to trying to sneak around the rules would astound you. What’s the big deal? It wastes a significant amount of time for the professionals who need to focus on educating kids, and when legal matters are involved, money that might have gone to fulfill educational needs goes to pay attorneys. Who’s really paying those pricey attorneys? You guessed it: as a property taxpayer, it’s you.
The story also underscores the broad range and complexity of the laws governing Indiana school districts and how they operate. When people came to me with complaints about something involving our schools, most of the time I’d have to explain that what we did followed state or federal law, and we were legally required to follow both, even when we disagreed with them.
And oh, the second species? I’m not exactly sure why they were chosen, but it’s miniature horses.