Jessica LaVigne was nervous but hopeful on a recent afternoon that the team managing her son’s special education plan at Roseburg High School would tell her something she had dreamed of for more than a decade: He would be able to attend a full day of school for the first time since second grade.
During her son’s elementary years, Ms. LaVigne was called almost daily to pick him up hours early because he was having “a bad day.” By middle school, he was only attending an hour a day. By high school, he was told he had to “earn” back two class periods taken off his schedule by proving he was academically and socially ready.
As she and her son, Dakotah, 15, entered the school for the meeting, Ms. LaVigne, 37, a banquet server at a local casino, felt she had run out of time. “I used to want him to go to college, but now I just want him to live a normal life in society,” she had said earlier. “If he doesn’t go to school, I don’t know how that can happen.”
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