Legal Question in Disability Law in New York
I have a 13 year old son who is a bilateral above knee amputee and is in a wheelchair--he attends JFK middleshool in Utica NY--the school was not handicap accessible when he started attending there--there are 3 floors to the school-- his classes were on the the basement level-the first floor-and the 2nd floor--the schools cafateria is also located on the basement level as well--due to this he has to go outside of the school on the basement level and wheel himself around to the front of the school in order to be able to access any of his classes--he had to do this several times a day--the school had never once tried to accomodate him in any way--they could have moved all of his classes to the 1st floor to make this easier on him--I had to fight to get him an assistant to help him get around the building--we live in upsate NY and there is a very cold and snowy winter here so it is very difficult to wheel yourself in the snow up a hill just to be able to get to your classes--we attended schoolboard meetings and were advised that the school district was funded the money before to make the school handicapp accessible but this was never done--my son was not the first child in the school to have to go through this--he is on a wheelchair basketball team and several of the players also had attended this school in the past and had to also go in and out of the building several times a day to access their classes--the school was then giving more funding to address this problem--they did put in another elevator however he had to go through this for almost 3 years and then once the elevator was completed they never gave him the key to the elevator so that he could use it until almost 3 weeks later--this was only done after we went to the superintendent and the princle as well as the superintendent of building and maintnance--Is there anything that we can do about any of this ? I feel that the school district should have to pay for what they have done to my son for almost 3 years now--never once after any of this did they even apologize for anything--this school should have been made handicap accessible many years ago
1 Answer from Attorneys
It seems that you have been granted the injunctive relief that you requested and you have not stated any monetary losses or expenses you incurred that is addressable under the the ADA.