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SAWHORSE
Written by John Schutt
Thursday, 03 June 2010 10:35 - Last Updated
Suzanne Thomas, a Las Vegas advocate for persons with disabilities, filed a comprehensive complaint with the Department of Justice (DOJ) alleging that the school board deliberately trampled the civil rights of disabled children and teachers. Parents who have children with autism see their child’s rights violated daily. Evidence submitted with the complaint consists of plans of nine schools recently or currently being remodeled and photographs and allegations written in a formal legal writing method that seems to indicate great knowledge and proof on the part of Ms. Thomas.
Ms. Thomas is the former Regional Representative for the Nevada
Governor’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities. She was with the committee from 1975 to 2001, at which time the committee was disbanded. She has been an expert witness in numerous legal cases, has mentored architects for architectural barriers compliance, and has been on TV and radio and in films on the subject of Americans with Disability Act (ADA). She is a former and/or current board member on 10 local advisory boards and has received numerous recognition awards. Thomas is a well-known children’s advocate and speaks frequently to public entities such as the Clark County Commission, College of Southern Nevada and Housing Authority on the subject of non-discrimination of persons with disabilities.
In 1975 the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) was created by the United States Congress to help put people with disabilities back to work and become taxpayers instead of wards of the state. Since the ADA is a federal law, the Clark County School Board must comply. As a predecessor to the ADA, the 504 Federal Law also required government buildings to provide access to those with disabilities. The complaint to DOJ shows that the Clark County School Board under the leadership of President Terri Janison and past School Board President Mary Beth Scow (current Clark County Commission candidate) has failed to comply with both of these regulations that are still in place and have remained so since the mid 1970s.
During the 1970s most government buildings were not accessible to persons needing to use a walker or wheelchair, or who were blind, for example. The laws required government entities such as the Clark County School District (CCSD) to do an analysis of their facilities and find out what needed to be fixed. They were then required to create a “Transition Plan” describing the work needing to be done. Then they were to incorporate the repairs into the ongoing work and budget of the district. The Transition Plan is required by law to be available for public inspection at any time so that a parent of a child with a disability can find which schools have been corrected and will be ADA accessible.
Contact with Ms. Thomas was made and she stated, “After a few weeks of telephone tag and the runaround, I was told that Dave Broxterman was in charge of the problem. He told me that they had everything fixed and so there was no Transition Plan. At first, I was told that it was in some computer program. So I asked to have a printout or use the computer.
Then he told me that the work was all corrected. It’s a time-tested runaround routine. Of course you can see from driving by any school at 30 miles an hour that they are regularly violating the law.” Suzanne Thomas and her team reported in the list of violations that of 30 schools that were visited to verify compliance, none was in compliance. Part of ADA and 504 is the requirement that restrooms be big enough for people in wheelchairs. It gives requirements for how steep ramps can be, for door widths and for eliminating stairs that people with walkers cannot use. It requires certain door handles. It sets heights for handrails, sinks, drinking fountains and cabinets. There are also requirements for Braille signage for people who do not see well.
Had the Clark County School Board done its job in seeing that federal law was followed, fixing these problems since 1975 would have been insignificant in the scheme of things. The district was remodeling these buildings with money from a 1988 bond election and again using $5 billion in bonds from the 1998 bond vote. So many bonds, so little compliance. If they had followed the Transition Plan and done the work in the course of the many ongoing remodeling jobs, the cost would have been miniscule.
Unfortunately, now much of the expense involved will be due to the need to fix past botched remodeling jobs already done by the CCSD facilities department.
“I have spoken to the head of CCSD Facilities Paul Gerner and his predecessors many times to no avail,” said Thomas. Because the district has intentionally set up a program for ignoring the civil rights of the children,
the complaint alleges that the trustees “continually and intentionally disregarded ADA and 504.” This may bring a higher degree of penalty should the complaint come to trial. The reality of the school district going to trial to defend seems unlikely, given the weight of evidence included in the complaint and the way that the ADA law is written. Not many entities accused of ADA violations win in court because it is too hard to go against the physical evidence. “It is as plain as the nose on your face. I once called Gerner’ s predecessor and told him not to let the CCSD TV shows pan around school buildings unless he wanted the public to see what a bad job they were doing at becoming ADA compliant,” said Thomas.
How could this go on so long without the public knowing anything about it?
Thursday, 03 June 2010 10:35 - Last Updated
Suzanne Thomas, a Las Vegas advocate for persons with disabilities, filed a comprehensive complaint with the Department of Justice (DOJ) alleging that the school board deliberately trampled the civil rights of disabled children and teachers. Parents who have children with autism see their child’s rights violated daily. Evidence submitted with the complaint consists of plans of nine schools recently or currently being remodeled and photographs and allegations written in a formal legal writing method that seems to indicate great knowledge and proof on the part of Ms. Thomas.
Ms. Thomas is the former Regional Representative for the Nevada
Governor’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities. She was with the committee from 1975 to 2001, at which time the committee was disbanded. She has been an expert witness in numerous legal cases, has mentored architects for architectural barriers compliance, and has been on TV and radio and in films on the subject of Americans with Disability Act (ADA). She is a former and/or current board member on 10 local advisory boards and has received numerous recognition awards. Thomas is a well-known children’s advocate and speaks frequently to public entities such as the Clark County Commission, College of Southern Nevada and Housing Authority on the subject of non-discrimination of persons with disabilities.
In 1975 the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) was created by the United States Congress to help put people with disabilities back to work and become taxpayers instead of wards of the state. Since the ADA is a federal law, the Clark County School Board must comply. As a predecessor to the ADA, the 504 Federal Law also required government buildings to provide access to those with disabilities. The complaint to DOJ shows that the Clark County School Board under the leadership of President Terri Janison and past School Board President Mary Beth Scow (current Clark County Commission candidate) has failed to comply with both of these regulations that are still in place and have remained so since the mid 1970s.
During the 1970s most government buildings were not accessible to persons needing to use a walker or wheelchair, or who were blind, for example. The laws required government entities such as the Clark County School District (CCSD) to do an analysis of their facilities and find out what needed to be fixed. They were then required to create a “Transition Plan” describing the work needing to be done. Then they were to incorporate the repairs into the ongoing work and budget of the district. The Transition Plan is required by law to be available for public inspection at any time so that a parent of a child with a disability can find which schools have been corrected and will be ADA accessible.
Contact with Ms. Thomas was made and she stated, “After a few weeks of telephone tag and the runaround, I was told that Dave Broxterman was in charge of the problem. He told me that they had everything fixed and so there was no Transition Plan. At first, I was told that it was in some computer program. So I asked to have a printout or use the computer.
Then he told me that the work was all corrected. It’s a time-tested runaround routine. Of course you can see from driving by any school at 30 miles an hour that they are regularly violating the law.” Suzanne Thomas and her team reported in the list of violations that of 30 schools that were visited to verify compliance, none was in compliance. Part of ADA and 504 is the requirement that restrooms be big enough for people in wheelchairs. It gives requirements for how steep ramps can be, for door widths and for eliminating stairs that people with walkers cannot use. It requires certain door handles. It sets heights for handrails, sinks, drinking fountains and cabinets. There are also requirements for Braille signage for people who do not see well.
Had the Clark County School Board done its job in seeing that federal law was followed, fixing these problems since 1975 would have been insignificant in the scheme of things. The district was remodeling these buildings with money from a 1988 bond election and again using $5 billion in bonds from the 1998 bond vote. So many bonds, so little compliance. If they had followed the Transition Plan and done the work in the course of the many ongoing remodeling jobs, the cost would have been miniscule.
Unfortunately, now much of the expense involved will be due to the need to fix past botched remodeling jobs already done by the CCSD facilities department.
“I have spoken to the head of CCSD Facilities Paul Gerner and his predecessors many times to no avail,” said Thomas. Because the district has intentionally set up a program for ignoring the civil rights of the children,
the complaint alleges that the trustees “continually and intentionally disregarded ADA and 504.” This may bring a higher degree of penalty should the complaint come to trial. The reality of the school district going to trial to defend seems unlikely, given the weight of evidence included in the complaint and the way that the ADA law is written. Not many entities accused of ADA violations win in court because it is too hard to go against the physical evidence. “It is as plain as the nose on your face. I once called Gerner’ s predecessor and told him not to let the CCSD TV shows pan around school buildings unless he wanted the public to see what a bad job they were doing at becoming ADA compliant,” said Thomas.
How could this go on so long without the public knowing anything about it?
