Accessibility At Middle School.

Location: North Carolina

What responsibility does a public school have to make sure that it’s reasonably accessible?

My daughter is in middle school. She has a medical condition that makes walking difficult at times. The school is two stories and stairs are impossible. Going into the front of the school, there are two entrances. One has three inside stairs that you cannot get around. In order to get around these stairs you must go around to the back of the school building to the gym entrance. The second entrance is the entrance that goes into the office. This is the only way in during the school day. This entrance was just built 3 years ago. It has 5 steps. When I drop her off after school has begun and she’s having a difficult walking day, I must go in to the school. Tell the front office desk that she needs to go in the back. Go to the back with her. Wait on the SRO to open the back door. She then must walk back to the front office because the lift is next to the office. She then has to wait for the SRO to go the office and get keys to the lift. I cannot just call because there is no cell service.

If she needs to leave early, they call for her in her classroom. Another student walks with her. That student must go to down the stairs to get the keys. Run back up the stairs. Then she gets on. The student puts the keys in the lift to make it work on the outside of the lift. The other student then must run the keys back down to the office before she returns to class. This process takes 10-15 minutes. I feel awful to take that much time from another student. Then my daughter has to go to the office. I show ID. Then the SRO is called to let her out the back door while I walk around the school building. She then has to walk back around the school building to my car.

She has a class on the bottom floor during the school day. So this entire process happens twice during the school day too.

Even though technically the school is accessible, she is missing huge portion of her down stairs class since the class is only 50 minutes and she arrives late and leaves early since she has core classes on both sides and math/ELA are more important than health careers class. On top of this they have another student helping her, so that student is also missing class. At what point does a place become not accessible enough? It looks like she may be on her way to a wheelchair, so this is not likely to change anytime soon.