If you’ve been following my blog lately, you know we’re fighting like mad to get Jack in school. If you’ve never been here, then I need to do my quick standard introduction.

Jack is my 9-year-old son. He’s severely autistic. Still in diapers. Operation Jack, the name of this site, is also the name of the foundation I created to try to make the world a better place to make some good out of what he goes through. PLEASE CLICK HERE and see how we’ve brought in about $150K in the past three years through Operation Jack and the Operation Jack Marathon.

Jack likes to elope, which means he likes to run away when he gets the chance. He’s a danger to himself. We have a handicap parking placard because he’s a danger to himself in and near parking lots. And he’s currently assigned to a school named Ryan that has a playground that’s unfenced and attached to a parking lot that flows into a fairly busy street.

The school is about 6 miles away from our house and we feel completely unsafe with him there. My wife and I would be sick to our stomachs dropping him off every day. He started there September 26, and we never left him without either my wife or members of his home therapy team, but we just didn’t feel safe with him there. So we pulled him after he attended on September 28. I don’t know who puts an program for children with low-functioning autism at a school with an unfenced playground — 49 percent of children with autism attempt to elope. Actually, the district’s chief academic officer told me the school meets the school district’s definition of a true autism program, but that’s a conversation for another day.

We wanted him back at Kohl, where he would be safe and where the district was going to assign him a 1-on-1 para-professional they were hiring specifically for him, but we had to go through an administrative transfer process. The principal would sign the form and Jack would be in a safe school. But the principal wouldn’t sign the form. She said that despite the fact that we were begging and pleading to let Jack back in Kohl, she said we said we were unhappy with their programming and wanted a true autistic program.

She never would give me an on-the-record meeting to answer questions about her decision and she never would answer why she was putting so much weight into Tiff’s alleged request in August while dismissing what Tiff begged for in October. The assistant superintendent who signed off on that decision cited the same thing about what my wife said, although he never talked to either of us before making his decision. He also wouldn’t give us an on-the-record meeting.

We appealed to the district’s chief academic officer and lost that appeal. I wasn’t surprised. I won’t waste a lot of time getting into the details of that meeting, but a lot of what she said made me think she really didn’t have a lot of insight into the situation because of contradictions with timelines and what other people have said on audio. For instance, when I asked her why Jack was allowed to start the school year at Kohl but not allowed to return, she said, “the more the staff at Kohl got to know Jack, the more they realized Tiffany was right.” The funny thing is, Jack never actually attended Kohl after May. And Tiffany made her alleged comments in August*.

* I’ve asked five people for written documentation or audio of what Tiff’s actual request was, but nobody has provided it to me.

All of our appeals have been denied, and we were told by the assistant superintendent that the Kohl staff feels “slighted” by us and the chief academic officer said the principal at Kohl said she’s “done with us,” so it sure does seem like they’re unhappy with what my wife said. I’m not going to post the audio of what went down in August yet, but it reasonable for an IEP — Tiffany was upset that she removed the behavior plan from his IEP considering Jack has serious target behaviors! But heck, if you’re not gonna let Jack back in school because you have a beef with his mom, stand up and say so!

So anyways, we had to go through some rigorous IEP meetings. That’s where you go through and decide what is appropriate for the student. At a meeting on October 31, the IEP team agreed that he needed to be on a playground that was surrounded by a fence with minimal openings. Then on Tuesday (November 6), the IEP team agreed that it was appropriate for Jack to be on the grade-level playground for his recesses. It’s not appropriate for him to be on a pre-K playground, which was the initial solution.

These are both true, and this is what we’ve been saying all along, and at least we’re finally documenting it through the process. The IEP is not school-specific and if a school can’t meet the student’s needs, then the student can be transferred and that’s independent of the administrative transfer process we were going through.

So FINALLY! The IEP will get Jack in a safe school! But a funny thing happened. The IEP team REMOVED THE PORTION SAYING JACK NEEDS TO BE ON A PLAYGROUND THAT’S FENCED IN!

Now, here are a few things that were covered in the meeting:
– The teacher at Ryan said he elopes inside.
– The teacher at Kohl said Jack elopes inside.
– We had a letter from Jack’s teacher from September 2010 through March 2012 who stated Jack elopes inside and outside.
– The teacher at Ryan said Jack likes to run when he gets outside.
– Jack has a handicap parking placard because doctors think he’s such a danger to elope that holding his parent’s hand while walking through a parking lot is too much of a danger for him.
– BUT, the teacher at Kohl, who seems to have a definite interest in Jack staying assigned to Ryan, said that Jack doesn’t elope on the playground.

Apparently, despite years of eloping outside, starting in March, when he gets outside on a playground (but not anywhere else outside), he doesn’t like to run! And he still likes to run outside, but we’re not really sure if he’s going to elope again so we have to see if he’s going to elope again. Yeah, that makes sense.

So, despite everything else, and solely because the teacher at Kohl said Jack doesn’t elope on the playground, the team pulled the part about the fence out of the IEP!

There were eight educators in there. I asked a hypothetical question, “How many of you would be willing to sign a contract saying you’d give $100K to a trust fund for Jack, quit your job and never again work in education if he eloped from the playground at Ryan and got injured?” There were zero hands in the air. Of course nobody would put their career where their mouth was, but they expected us to put our son’s life where their mouth was.

Despite my objections, they pulled it out. I told them how disgusted I was that they were doing that to fit an agenda. My wife lost it. Here’s an audio clip. PLEASE SPEND 2:17 TO LISTEN TO THIS. IT’S CRITICAL.

The principal and the teacher were right there and heard this. And despite this, they still won’t let Jack in Kohl. About a minute or so after this, the teacher got catty and passive-aggressive with my wife and basically started telling her it was her fault for what she said in August. That made me even more certain that this is all because of something personal the teacher has against my wife.

My wife was so upset and hysterical. When she gets upset, I get even more upset. I don’t like seeing her cry. And I hate when my little Jack gets wronged and he sits there innocently, regressing, not even know how his future is being harmed.

We’ve tried everything. We’ve fought through so many appeals it’s killing us. We wasted money on an advocate who got us nowhere. We spent money on a consultation with a lawyer and wanted to retain him, but he never followed up so we’re trying like mad in the midst of all of this to find another one.

But on the car ride home from the meeting, Tiff was still hysterical. She was so upset. She can’t take what this process is doing to her any more. She can’t take what it’s doing to Jack and to her and to me and to our other two kids. It’s killing us.

I’m a protective husband and father and I’m coming out swinging. I’m not going to let one teacher ruin my wife’s Colorado dream. Ironically, a big part of why she wanted to move here is for some peace to counter the stress Jack’s autism brings to us. She loves it here and she’s not going to be chased away. I will defend my wife until my final day.

I want to launch a social media campaign. I want to try to tap into every connection I have to spread the word about this. It’s my last resort. I want to use everything I learned about social media during my Operation Jack year to try to fight this war.

I was so furious and upset about how upset Tiff was. She went upstairs when we got home to cry herself to sleep. She doesn’t deserve this. She’s an amazing mom who fights for her disabled child and what is right for him. Every child should be so lucky to have a mom like her.

So I went on Facebook:

I went on Twitter.

I communicated with a few folks on Twitter.

People were reaching out.

And I specifically called out the teacher. Operation Jack 2.0, if social media/media warfare is my last option, then that’s what it’s going to be. As any of you who have been around since I was running all those races in 2010 know, I don’t set small goals. And I love my family.

Kind of out of character for me to go with profanity there, but when my wife is upset, I’m upset. Hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have tweeted that. But this whole thing is so ridiculous, all stemming from denying my autistic son into school over a beef with his mama. There’s no good reason Jack can’t be back in a safe school instead of sitting at home and they’ve fought this so hard the whole way. This is how this has snowballed.

Yesterday, I got a call from the principal at Kohl who said me and Tiff aren’t allowed into the building at Kohl any more. She said Cathy (the teacher) fears for her safety and if I’m going to be threatening her on Twitter, we’re not allowed in her building. Our second-grade daughter goes to school there, so I guess we’ll drop her off and pick her up outside until this is resolved.

Now, I don’t really think they feared for her safety. I’m not a violent person. Haven’t been in a fight since the 8th grade. And if you look at my timeline (which they obviously did), it’s very clear that I was talking about social media warfare. The police haven’t contacted me. Nothing has been filed against me in court.

It seems like just like with Jack’s situation there, there’s no regard for reality or truth or process in my situation.

Something that clued me that safety isn’t really the concern was that when the principal was talking to me on the phone yesterday she told me she wasn’t going to let me back in until I stopped making social media attacks against the teacher. That’s the real issue.

Now, somebody correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t comments on social media protected by the first amendment? There are limits, such as libel. But the initial reason for the first amendment was to make sure that you always have the right to speak out against the government if you think it’s acting unjustly. That’s what’s going on here. And I’m not going to sit idly by and let a principal attempt to suppress my first amendment rights as I fight what her school is doing to my disabled son.

So, if you’ve gotten all the way down here, PLEASE do me a favor. I really, really need you to help me pass this around. Facebook, Twitter, please share it! I have a meeting today with the superintendent and I’m confident we’re going to get this resolved. But just in case, if you’re interested in helping Jack get in school, leave a comment or drop me an email at sam@operationjack.org. PLEASE share this on Facebook and Twitter. I need as many eyes as possible. Maybe the right special-needs lawyer will see it. Or maybe the right first-amendment lawyer will see it.

Oh, and pray for my Grandpa Milton. He’s probably my favorite person in the world and he’s not doing well. I love him to death and worrying about him right now makes this stuff with Jack seem like child’s play.

That’s all I have for today. Have a nice weekend …[subscribe2]

2:57 is a time I liked a lot when I ran the Boston Marathon in 2011. It was a new personal best for me, the first time I was able to cover 26.2 miles in less than three hours. 2:57 is a time I really hated yesterday, though. It’s the time I woke up yesterday morning to hear my son Jack having a meltdown, hitting his head into the wall in his bedroom.

If you’ve never been here before, click here to see why I even have this site. It’s because even though I don’t have autism, like Jack, I will fight autism for the rest of my life. I will fight it because Jack has it. Severely. He’s about five weeks from turning 9 and he doesn’t really talk and he’s still in diapers. Some people like to throw out the cliché he might have autism but autism doesn’t have him. That’s not true, though. Autism has him. It controls him and owns him and defines his every day. But I’ll get back to that in a minute.

He woke up at 2:57 a.m. Maybe actually earlier than that, but that’s when I first heard him. I was going to be getting up to run at 4:30 a.m., so when he wakes up in the middle of the night like that, my wife Tiffany goes and takes care of him. Usually, that just means laying down with him until he calms down and goes back to sleep. It takes an average of 30-60 minutes. For most parents, that kind of stuff stops somewhere around 6-12 weeks after your baby is born. Jack turned 464 weeks on Tuesday and we’re still getting up several times a week.

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Technically, this isn’t going to be wordless, but the pictures will do a million times more talking than the sentences I’m going to write. I’m posting two pictures of my son Jack, who is my inspiration for Operation Jack. He is severely autistic, nearly 9 years old with limited speech and still in diapers. Since he can’t really talk, he gets upset over his frequent stomach pain and when he gets frustrated about not being able to communicate that to us, he hits himself in the head. We put him in a padded helmet for his own protection, but sometimes he finds ways around it to still punch himself in the head.

He’s a really cute kid. And a really sweet kid. Everybody tries to be nice and positive with us, to find a bright side to what he goes through. In response to his inability to communicate and his abnormal behaviors, a lot of times we hear, “Well, as long as he’s happy … ”

As I was telling my wife Tiffany yesterday, I won’t accept that he’s happy until he tells us he’s happy.