I Fought the Texas Education System and Won

How to fight an elementary school principal and four 5th-grade teachers at once.

When my son was born, I promised I give him a better life than my dad gave me, who left when I was 19. I would be there his entire life, not just the first part. Nowadays, Grayson, my only boy, is thirteen and halfway through the seventh grade. He likes girls, predominantly brunettes, and plays Fortnite religiously. He also has special needs—not physical special needs, but emotional and behavioral.

We didn’t know how special needs he was until he was five, about to turn six and enter kindergarten. In his pre-school, we received calls from his teacher, who said Grayson had begun to be disruptive. He wouldn’t sit still and wouldn’t listen. He was disrespectful and seemed to have unpredictable emotional outbursts. We thought it might be the teachers who didn’t understand him. My wife, Grayson’s mother, worked at the preschool, and he wanted to see her during the day. We thought the space elementary school would bring would be a fresh start. During his last year of pre-kindergarten, his friends attended his birthday party. Grayson also loved playing sports like baseball and soccer.

Baby Grayson through the years.

We had no idea what was coming for us.

When kindergarten started, Grayson would scream and run around the room. He would walk from desk to desk, talking to kids when he was supposed to be sitting still. But worst of all, he became violent. Grayson once threw chairs across the room. He moved desks, barricaded everyone in the classroom, and wouldn’t let them leave. Another time, he cleared every shelf of every book, crayon box, and school supplies. I was called by a frantic teacher, begging me to come to the school. Remember, he is six. Eventually, they kicked him out of the class and moved him to another kindergarten class. His first teacher was seven months pregnant and couldn’t control him without hurting herself. The other teacher was 65 years old and months away from retirement, but she couldn’t control him either, so there was no surprise there.

When we finally couldn’t take it anymore, and the school began to hand out suspensions, we pulled him from public school and put him in a special school run by doctors. It was a chance to have him evaluated. The doctors said he had one of the worst cases of ADHD they had ever seen, and he was terribly defiant. They even gave him a special medical term for it. You could summarize the diagnosis by stating my kid was an asshole and couldn’t help it… at six. After a lot of debate between my wife, the doctor, and my parents, we placed him on a mood stabilizer for anxiety and regular ADHD medication.

Luckily, the elementary school had an excellent special education counselor who worked tirelessly to help him when Grayson returned to public school nearly two months later. She started with a reward system so that he could choose a small toy or a small piece of candy at the end of the week. When he reached the age of collecting Pokémon cards, she would buy a pack so he could select a card. He continued to have some friends, and his 4th-grade birthday was a fantastic Nerf war at the park, although his outbursts and behaviors ostracized him, he seemed to get by socially. Just as we thought everything was finally turning around, the school received a new principal. And, oh boy. Things went from bad to worse. Much worse.

The first item on the new principal’s agenda was to remove the special ed teacher who had saved Grayson from a much worse fate. Instead of hiring a new counselor for his fifth-grade year, the principal hired a “resource specialist.” This person was not trained for children with special needs. Instead, he was just a nice old man who enjoyed baseball cards and wanted to help the school. While I know he meant well, he didn’t have the creative ideas or the training to deal with Grayson. So, the destructive behaviors returned in force. Fighting, yelling, and arguments were constant problems. The principal also stopped giving teachers his IEP documentation. IEP stands for Individualized Education Program. It’s a document that both the parents, teachers, and a representative of the district’s administration team created together the previous year. Each year, the same group of adults meets together to make adjustments and check in on the student’s needs. However, this new principle decided not to hand that document out at the beginning of the school year.

Grayson, age 8.

Instead, they were simply told about the IEP and left to their own devices. We fought all four fifth-grade teachers, the vice principal, and the principal for seven months. Multiple emails a week to teachers who felt lost, phone calls to the vice principal to explain Grayson’s conditions, and tirelessly working with educators to move in the right direction. It was exhausting. I would explain how Grayson responds to authority figures under different circumstances, and my suggestions were ignored. I called parent-teacher meetings and discussed solutions that were specifically allowed in his IEP, but I was told that their “interpretation” of those rules was different now. The vice-principal told me to “give THIS team a chance” even though the situation was dire.

Conditions were so bad that no one attended my son’s birthday party in October. Imagine a room full of decorations and extended family members and not a single friend, child, or teacher attending—all of whom were invited. But do you know who did appear? My son's former sped (special education) counselor, who didn’t even work at the school anymore and had moved nearly an hour away. She came. My son stared at the window for almost 45 minutes and wondered why no one wanted to go to his birthday party. I had to sit there with my 11-year-old son and explain why, despite him working hard all year, no one came. Even years later, I can’t talk about it without tears.

The final straw came when Grayson was kicked out of choir without a reason. I contacted the music teacher to explain the reasoning but received no response. I emailed her again the next day with the principal cc’d. This time, I received an email stating he would be allowed to return to the choir. However, no reason was given for his removal in the first place. I said I respected her authority to remove children for bad behavior, but I wanted to know why. No response.

Grayson, age 11. Long hair phase.

Later that night, while sitting at the dinner table with my family, my phone rang, which I ignored because we don’t allow phones at the dinner table. The voicemail I received was shocking. The principal had directed the choir teacher to call me while she was standing in the hospital with her brother, who was in critical condition! That’s right. Instead of calling or emailing us with the answer herself, the principal forced her employee to make a parent phone call while she was at the hospital. I lost my mind.

I immediately filed a level two grievance with the State of Texas education department. For those unfamiliar, Texan parents have the ability to open an investigation into the school should they feel that the school is unable to adequately meet their child’s needs. Level one is a letter to the principal. The issue is taken to the school district’s administration at level two. The central state board in Austin, Texas, is involved at level three. So, we skipped directly to level two.

In preparation, I printed every email, wrote down the dates of every phone call, and laid out the entire timeline for an Eagle-Mountain Saginaw school district member. When the day came, I dressed nicely, shaved, put my glasses on, and took my stack of evidence into a recorded meeting. I entered a small room with a table and a microphone hooked into a recorder. A nice older woman greeted me and, for the record, stated her name, title, and the reason for the meeting. Then, I laid out my case in perfect detail.

I recounted months of our requests being ignored, like allowing Grayson to step outside of the classroom to calm down when agitated. Constant emails requesting teachers to read the IEP and clearly being ignored when they continuously claimed not to know certain items that we already discussed and are clearly labeled. In fact, in one previous meeting, the vice-principal claimed to have lost his medical diagnosis. This paperwork was required to place him back into public school, so I know that the school had a copy at one point.

I presented my case to the old woman, who obviously had no idea how many problems I was ready to unpack. For my 15-minute story, her eyebrows were raised in surprise, her mouth partly ajar, and her head shook in disbelief more than once. Did I mention I have a degree in Communications specializing in rhetoric? I do. As a current senior manager of customer support, my skills are still sharp, and I put every bit of emotion and talent into my presentation. Afterward, she had a few minor questions to clarify key points and thanked me for my time.

Grayson, age 11.

I left feeling victorious and satisfied. Even if no changes occurred, I knew I had given it everything I could. About one week later, I received an email with the outcome— victory! The district agreed that the school had not performed the necessary steps to comply with the agreed-upon IEP. The remaining four months of the school year went surprisingly well. Multiple weekly phone calls home immediately stopped, and in-person conversations were always recorded from then on, which hadn’t been the case previously despite me having asked for it. The teachers became responsive and respectful and knew exactly what was in his IEP.

After that, I never heard from the vice principal, only the principal, and she always wrote down everything I said. Luckily, I never had to meet with her, except for one additional meeting after she lost the case. This meeting was professional and calm, and only facts were stated on how to move forward. She never mentioned the case.

Those final four months were some of his best months in elementary school. I loved it. It felt like vindication for all of the shit the principal had put my son, wife, and me through. I slept well for the rest of the school year.

If I had to do it all over again, I would have filed the grievance months earlier. But I didn’t even know about the grievance system until my sister-in-law explained it during Christmas dinner. My brother and her are Texas educators, and I relied on their expertise throughout the process. For that, I’m forever grateful.

Grayson, age 13. Christmas 2024.

Now, Grayson is in seventh grade, and I’m still fighting battles with new teachers and principals, but it’s never escalated that far afterward. He has dated two different girls and seems to have a small group of friends he talks to. After the disaster of his fifth-grade birthday party, we decided not to attempt that anymore. Instead, I offer Grayson the ability to invite one friend to Six-Flags, a nearby theme park. If it’s a big, awesome enough event, someone is bound to agree to come, especially if another person’s parents are paying for it!

I’ll never forget the pain and suffering one bad Texas educator put my family through, but I fought the system, and I won. And I’ll never let anyone treat me or my son that way again. I’ll burn down every career I have to protect my family. I’m intelligent, highly educated, and detail-oriented. I also keep perfect records. If one of my son’s current or future teachers finds this article, know that I sympathize with your impossible, low-paying task, but I’ll walk through hell to make sure I end your career if you cross me or my son.

That, I can promise you.

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