One Thursday morning in May, instead of sitting at a desk in her sixth-grade classroom in the Oregon mountains, Khloe Warne sat at a table in her mother’s bakery, doing her schoolwork on a laptop and watching her favorite clips of anime.

Khloe, 12, loves drawing, writing and especially reading — in second grade, she was already reading at a sixth-grade level. But she only goes to school one day a week for two hours. The district said she needed shorter school days last year when Khloe threw a desk and fought with students in outbursts her mother attributes to a failure to support her needs. Khloe, who has been diagnosed with autism, ADHD and an anxiety disorder, had no individualized education plan for her disability when she returned to in-person learning after the pandemic.

Not being able to attend school regularly has saddened Khloe, stunted her education and isolated her from her peers, her mother says. It has also upended her family’s life. Her mother, Alyssa Warne, had to quit her job for a time in order to stay home with her. She described the fight to get her daughter back in the classroom as exhausting, stressful and sad.

“She just wants a friend,” Alyssa Warne said. “It’s not asking much to send your kid to school for at least one whole day.”

Across the country, advocates say, schools are removing students with disabilities from the classroom, often in response to challenging behavior, by sending them home or cutting back on the days they’re allowed to attend.

Schools say the move can be necessary to keep students and teachers safe and prevent disturbances. But parents and advocates argue the shortened days, often referred to as informal removals, amount to discrimination and violations of students’ civil rights. Under federal law, it is illegal to bar a child from receiving the same education as their peers based on conditions stemming from their disability.

Read the full article about full school days for disabled children by Claire Rush at The Hechinger Report.