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Behaviour problems for Germecia Thomas began in first grade. She knocked pictures off a classroom wall, broke a clock, locked herself in a bathroom and ran away from her teachers at Souder Elementary School in Everman. Her mother, Tawnya Thomas, spent the next few years meeting with administrators and teachers, facing what she interpreted as a reluctance to get her daughter properly evaluated and into an extensive special-education programme. Instead, school officials questioned Thomas about her parenting abilities and called Child Protective Services to her home. In middle school, Germecia, 13, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. But by then, she had acquired school-related court tickets totaling nearly $1,400. Germecia is one of hundreds of Texas students who have been repeatedly remanded to school discipline programmes, even though their behaviour may be linked to psychological problems or other conditions. About one-third of school districts in Texas have placed disproportionate numbers of special-education students in disciplinary programs for one or more years from 2001 to 2006, according to a study by the nonprofit Texas Appleseed, a public-interest legal group in Austin. The group has been calling for more state funding to support students with severe behavioural problems brought on by mental conditions. Some special-education students have been charged with disorderly conduct, received municipal court tickets, and been sent to disciplinary alternative schools or received in- and out-of-school suspensions. The offences can range from arguing with teachers or other students, to swearing or disobeying instructions in the classroom. The Texas Education Agency acknowledges that it is a problem. "This topic is certainly one that we are working on," said Kathy Clayton, the TEA’s state director of special education. The TEA is also providing training to many districts, so the districts realise that "this is not the first choice in assisting students," Clayton said. The options Some districts in Texas, including several in Tarrant County, referred special-education students to disciplinary programs at a rate of two to three times their representation in the student body. According to the Texas Appleseed report, failing to identify or misidentifying a student’s disability may explain why special-education students are disciplined at disproportionate rates. Regulations require school districts to have hearings before placing special-education students in disciplinary settings, officials said. But it can be difficult to prove whether a student’s behavioir is related to a disability. And some behaviors, such as assault, will automatically result in disciplinary action. In the Arlington school district, special-education students represent 10 percent of the student body. But they represent 24 percent of students referred to disciplinary alternative education programmes. Malcolm Turner, Arlington’s executive director of student services, said he believes that part of the reason may be an increase in students who have oppositional defiant disorder — meaning that they are simply not going to listen or behave in class. "One of the exceptions deals with law offenses," Turner said. "The law does not recognise handicapping condition. If a child commits an offence and it is a serious violation, they would suffer consequences regardless of how they are identified in the special-education system." The Grapevine-Colleyville school district has a special-education student population of 7 percent. But 26 percent of students in disciplinary programmes were special-education students, according to the report. District officials did not respond to requests for comments. From February 2000 through May 2007, disciplinary actions by Texas school districts prompted 292 civil rights complaints to be filed with the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights in Dallas. Of those complaints, 154 of the 292 involved actions taken against special-education students. Rey de la Garza, an attorney at the civil rights office in Dallas, noted that the figures represent the number of cases filed. It does not mean that the complaints were all merited, he said. Ticketing students Thomas says she met with teachers and talked with administrators for several years, but nothing seemed to help her daughter’s behavioural problems. She became upset after learning that another child in the district was given the option of attending a private school. After Thomas complained, Germecia was placed at that school. This spring, Germecia landed in the North Texas State Hospital in Wichita Falls for more than a month, Thomas said. But when she turns 18, Germecia will be responsible for paying $1,380 in municipal court tickets. Under changes made to state law during the last legislative session, violations such as disobeying the dress code or chewing gum no longer carry criminal charges, said Dustin Rynders, an attorney with Advocacy Inc. of Houston, which helps protect the rights of people with disabilities. However, schools still can ticket students for disrupting classes or school transportation. And disorderly conduct charges can include profanity. Kids as young as 10 are receiving citations for swearing and are going to court, Rynders said. "We would not see any adult with the same charge," he said. Parents are often at a loss to figure out how to navigate the legal system. "There is a lot of pressure to accept whatever plea bargain is being offered," Rynders said. "Some of them must go the next nine months with no trouble in school and no tardies." That’s a tough task for students with severe disabilities. "It’s absolutely difficult to guarantee to be perfect and exhibit yourself as someone who doesn’t have those disabilities," Rynders said. Schools and parents should work together to identify behavior expectations as well as academic goals, he said. "Instead, the two most common ways of dealing with it are disciplinary removal and the involvement of law enforcement, and neither is particularly effective," Rynders said. Area districts’ efforts Everman school district officials said federal privacy laws prevent them from discussing individual student cases. But they agreed to talk about general procedures for special-education students. "We can handle pretty much anything here," said Maggie Stevens, director of special education for the 4,500-student district. "We have the people who are trained to do it. We have good psychologists who work with us." Stevens said the district works to place students in the least restrictive environment. "A parent may ask for something to be done, but if we feel like we haven’t done everything on our end in making it the least restrictive environment, we can’t always do what the parent wants," she said. "We have to exhaust all of our options before we can move on to more restrictive things." Each campus has a behavioural interventionist, and there are one elementary school and one intermediate school classroom for students with behavior problems, she said. For students in middle school, the district hires someone to "shadow" the student throughout the school day. Students are not fond of having an adult follow them all day, and the behavior usually changes for the better, Stevens said. Other school districts have also offered additional staff training in an effort to keep more special-education students in regular classrooms. Sorting through the range of plans is a task in itself. "All of us in Texas are required to have positive behavioural support for students, which would be anything from counseling to social-skills groups to coming out of the general education class," said Lydia Scozzari, director of special education for the Hurst-Euless-Bedford school district. "Every student is going to look different." Misbehavior is often not treated as a mental illness, even though that can be an underlying cause. "Sometimes, if a child cannot behave, it is not a disability," Scozzari said. H-E-B school officials say staffers will get additional training to help them recognize and handle the problems, she said. Clint Bond, a Fort Worth district spokesman, said fewer special-education students are now being disciplined. In the 2006-07 school year, special-education students represented 9 percent of enrollment in Fort Worth. Nineteen percent, or 745 students, assigned to disciplinary alternative education placements were in special-education programmes. In 2007-08, that number had dropped to 673 students. The district offered workshops for all staffers last summer on how to accommodate special-education students and provide classroom modifications. More workshops are planned for this month, Cindi Neverdousky, the district’s director of special education, said in an e-mail. The district has also assigned an evaluation specialist to each campus to consult with teachers who ask for help with difficult behavioural issues. Thomas said she made her daughter’s story public in the hope that it might help other parents. "Other parents are probably more afraid to step up, or either they just accept what the teacher or principal is saying," Thomas said. "I want to know why and how they came up with something."