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YOU ASK: Autistic child not invited on trip

Posted at 6:07 PM, May 31, 2016
and last updated 2016-05-31 21:19:38-04
A pair of angry moms want answers after they said their sons' class was left out of a school field trip.
 
The issue started when Josh brought home his school yearbook.
 
"He was upset because he said, 'Mom where am I? I'm not with the fifth graders,'" said Kesia Gladney. "And I said, 'well you're in there.' He goes, 'but mom I'm not, with the fifth grade, see it doesn't say fifth grade.'"
 
Instead, the pictures of his class are behind all of the other grades, near the back of the book and not labeled like the others. Josh's mom Kesia Gladney said her son felt very left out after the yearbook came out - something she works hard to prevent.
 
But she was even more upset when she found out he was left out of another end-of-the-year activity. Gladney saw another mom posting on social media about a fifth grade trip to Disneyland. When she looked into it, she found out the only class not invited on the trip was her son's.
 
"It's hard as far as, just a mother watching your children be overlooked," said Gladney.
 
She contacted the principal at Stuckey Elementary, who she says told her the teachers were responsible for organizing the trip. So she went to Josh's teacher.
 
"She did admit that it was partially her fault," Gladney said. "She had told me that last year there was a fifth grader in her class that they advocated to go to Disneyland and so to me, I felt like if you knew about it last year, why wasn't it addressed to the parents this year?"
 
The principal apologized to Josh and offered his family three tickets to Disneyland. But they never got the tickets, and Gladney thinks they need to make things right for every student in the class, not just Josh.
 
Cindy Huebner, whose son Vinny is in Josh's class, was also upset she and her son were not notified about the trip.
 
"This trip is supposed to be an inclusion with your peers, for them to be a part of everything," said Huebner. "This is how we teach them, to include them with their typical peers and this opportunity was robbed of them."
 
Action News reached out to the Clark County School District. They said the reason for the yearbook design is because the classroom is open to several different grade levels and is not exclusively a fifth-grade classroom.
 
They sent us the following statement about the Disneyland trip:
 
 
"This was a fifth-grade-only trip. The students in this class who are fifth-graders should have been invited on this trip. It was never the school's intention to exclude fifth-grade students from the trip.
 
"There were instructions to all fifth-grade teachers at the school regarding the trip. Because this teacher is not exclusively a fifth-grade teacher, there was an oversight.
 
"The parents of these students have been contacted, and a trip to Disneyland is being planned for them should they wish to participate."