This post may contain emotional or triggering content
It's stupefying when one family can admit their children to the same school while refusing to complete the new Residency Form or provide any proof of residency at all, while ours faces a level of scrutiny that includes not only demands for property sales, grocery receipts, ferry tickets, property zoning, but finally a statement from the District's legal team that even IF we provide the requested Bill of Sale on our old home, our residency issue won't be solved because we "could still be using the proceeds to buy property off island."
The above email statement from Vashon Island School District's lawyer encapsulates how impossible it is to prove something people simply do not want to believe. Combined with the letter stating we do not need to provide additional proof "at this time" and calling out specifically that fifth wheels are not typically accepted residences (we do not and never have owned a fifth wheel trailer), it illustrates in stark relief how dangerous it is when individuals with biases weaponize policy and procedure; in this case to deny a high medical needs student access to his educational system. To date, the school continues to deny our child's medical reality, demanding he either home school or push through pain and fatigue to prove he feels it. And as long as we continue to ask them to meet his needs, I feel that the threat of residency harassment and further retaliation is waiting... along with whatever other unpleasantries they can retaliate with "at this time."
Why am I not letting this go--or giving up? Why does a Badger eat a Cobra? Some things are in our nature or we have learned they are necessary.
I was 8 when I realized I was different--in a very lonely and negative sense. Along with not being able to read, I didn't know the letters that help make sense of how I was who I was: ASD, ADHD, cPTSD, LGBTQ+ and I had no one to teach me. Moving in 3rd grade took me to a rural school where no one was sure if I was a boy or a girl. I was unsure why it mattered.
Their solution: Chase me and hurt me until my hair grew into braids and my body conformed into skirts.
My parents' solution: Tell me to be more "likeable."
My solution: Narrowly escape becoming a Trevor Project statistic.
35 years later I am now sending my 8 year old off to the first day of 3rd grade. I am infinitely grateful to the amazing parents here that have created a space where his peers are warm and welcoming to him and to each other. I have never met a kinder cadre of children than the ones that inhabit this island. While I wish he didn't face bullying from the District, I am willing and able to counter them and optimistic that the local parents and school board are working to eliminate the harm our high needs students currently face. As much as I struggle to understand other humans, it's healing to see that while those who caused harm in the 80's and 90's may continue to do so today; the new generations on Vashon have squeezed that behavior out of existence with an expansion of kindness and acceptance. This is part of why so many are creating human sanctuaries. Reacting to horrifically negative childhoods, creating space for healing and growth here.
I earned the nickname Honey Badger honestly. Tenacious, ferocious, often oblivious towards social risk and reward, hostile when surprised. Obsessive focus on logic and justice...Constantly seeking the why and how and what of anything interesting... (How that ASD diagnosis was missed is beyond me!) The most common question I get asked is "how do you know so much about 'X'?" The answer is both, I don't and Google. In a world where not knowing has caused me harm, I prefer knowing. I love peonies, so I know as much about them as I can learn over the time I have been interested in them. I hate seeing children's needs go unmet, so I now know far more than I had ever hoped to about IEPs and OSPI and OCR and WAC.
Knowing is not the same as understanding. A dictionary without definitions is just a list of words. I often feel that way sitting in these conference rooms, never with peonies. Understanding the legal codes, the financial or even the ableist levers behind refusal of services is easy, but I am completely lost as to the dynamics that lead otherwise 'good' individuals to sit in silence as they see parents harangued by administrators or get outright denials of children's diagnoses, sometimes in front of or to the very children trying to explain themselves. It breaks my heart and it's an understanding I don't really want to find.
For myself, I just want to be walking through my sanctuary; taking my T, sipping my tea, sifting through dirt, staring at roots, nattering to animals, watching the gaggle of geese flap wildly toward me, or the gaggle of neighboring children run wildly toward this farm or that farm...marveling that truly kind humans exist and that I get to be here, growing among them.
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