A New York school aide pulled an autistic third-grader’s arm so hard and yelled so loudly that a teacher intervened but the aide was allowed to continue on duty, the child’s family alleges.
Staff at Ward Elementary School outside New Rochelle allegedly pulled 8-year-old Nathan Pauley’s arm in March 2023 after he disrupted a classroom reading session. – The child’s mother recently spoke out in a lawsuit filed in March, saying it’s part of a nasty pattern of conflict between young students and aides.
According to the lawsuit, the Westchester County school’s principal called parent Leah Griggs Pauley the day after the “alleged assault” to tell her the school was investigating “an incident in which someone placed a hand on NP.”
According to court documents, the aide’s screams during the encounter with Nathan were so loud they could be heard down the hallway and the teacher had to tell the aide to stop.
Griggs-Pawley said she hasn’t heard anything about an investigation after reaching out to school leaders.
The family said the aide no longer worked directly with Nathan, but the school allowed her to work with other students with special needs, and she continued to have contact with Nathan because she worked on the bus that carried special needs students home from school, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit alleges that New Rochelle “maintained the child in continuous and frequent contact with the caregiver” despite the resulting “physical and emotional harm.”
“It was very confusing and disturbing for my son,” Griggs Pauley told The Washington Post. “He couldn’t understand why she was still there taking care of him if he’d done something wrong. It was surprising to me as a parent too. I never wanted this woman anywhere near my son.”
A school district spokesman declined to comment, citing New Rochelle’s policy of not making statements about pending litigation.
But legal documents filed by district attorneys have said the district didn’t have enough information about specific charges or denied the accusations and asked for the cases to be dismissed.
Following the March incident, the child told his mother he had been forcibly pulled by his arm in hallways and on stairs, and that he had even been barred from going outside during recess during parts of 2022, according to the lawsuit.
While other students were allowed to run around outside, Nathan and the disabled child were allegedly allowed to stay in the auditorium with a carer.
Griggs-Pawley said the horrific experience left her family with no choice but to send her son to a private school in New York City.
“I was desperately looking for a school where my son could learn safely,” she said, adding that her son, now a fourth-grader, was doing well in his new environment.
The Polley family’s second lawsuit demands that the New Rochelle school system pay for new education costs for Polley and outlines other problems with the school’s failure to properly educate Polley and other children with disabilities.
“New Rochelle needs to do better for students with disabilities,” Griggs-Pawley said. “No other child should have to go through what Nathan went through.”
