Lawsuit: Removing student’s service dog from Germantown school unlawful
The Germantown Municipal School District is facing a lawsuit brought by a family who claims the district violated federal disability laws when they refused to allow their son to attend school with his seizure-alert dog. (Mark Weber/The Daily Memphian)
Editor’s note: The Daily Memphian agreed to use aliases for the nine-year-old child and the medical alert dog, per the parents’ requests, due to the sensitive nature of this story.
A family is suing Germantown Municipal School District for refusing to allow their son to attend school with his seizure-alert dog, Shadow.
Attorneys for Sarah and Doug Dietz allege in a new complaint that barring the dog from attending school with their 9-year-old son Peter violates federal disability laws.
“And every day that (Peter) is denied the right to be accompanied by (Shadow) to school, he is denied the same public education that every child is guaranteed,” attorneys said in the complaint.
In the Dietz household, Shadow offers comfort. He nudges Sarah and Doug with alerts to their son’s frequent seizures, the parents told The Daily Memphian, and he also alerts Peter’s siblings. Shadow makes Peter feel safe, too, they said. But the Dietzes are concerned that school staff aren’t recognizing Peter’s seizures or Shadow’s alerts.
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Laura Testino
Laura Testino is an enterprise reporter on The Daily Memphian’s metro team who writes most often about how education policies shape the lives of children and families. She regularly contributes to coverage of breaking news events and actions of the Tennessee General Assembly. Testino’s journalism career in Memphis began six years ago at The Commercial Appeal, where she began chronicling learning disruptions associated with the pandemic, and continued with Chalkbeat, where she dug into education administration in Memphis. Her reporting has appeared in The New York Times, The Times-Picayune, The Tuscaloosa News and USA Today.
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