Two families have reached out to WPTV about their autistic children being removed from their schools.
Meredith Colosimo enrolled her two-year-old nonverbal autistic son into All About Kids Learning Center in Lake Worth Beach. She told the school that her son had been diagnosed with autism and wanted to make sure he was still going to be able to attend. She was told that as long as her child was non violent, they would work with him.
Colosimo says All About Kids did work with him for eight months before she was told he could no longer go to school.
"The director said that she felt like I was doing my son a disservice by leaving him with regular kids when he has special needs. They never expressed they were concerned and he never received any type of disciplinary infraction. They didn't even give me a two-week notice," she said.
Colosimo says the incident has forced her to take a leave of absence from her job so she can take care of her child. As a single mom who is no longer working, she is worried how she is going to feed her family and pay her bills.
WPTV called All About Kids and never heard back. We stopped by the school to find out why the child was unenrolled. We were told that they had no comment.
The Early Learning Coalition says they help families who find themselves in similar situations. They can connect families to a wide range of resources to make sure children succeed in and outside of class. They provide resources like helping families pay for child care, early head start programs, child care resources and referrals, as well as book clubs.
Aruna Gilbert with the Early Learning Coalition says the number of students being removed from classrooms for emotional behavior has decreased post pandemic.
"A 49% decrease in classroom behavior and just this last year we saw an over 15% decrease," Gilbert said.
She is encouraging parents that are experiencing any type of hardships with their children, special needs or not, to reach out to them for help.
WPTV connected Colosimo with the Early Learning Coalition in hopes of finding a solution. In the meantime, she says she will never stop fighting for her child because she is his voice.
