Special Day Class Students in Limbo: Junction Elementary District’s Alleged Failure to Comply with Special Education Law Sparks Pushback

5.12.2025 2:22 pm: We have updated the story to clarify wording about the departure of a special education teacher.

During dismissal procedures at Junction Middle School on March 4, Shannon Vallejo noticed her son’s beloved 7th grade teacher wasn’t exuding her usual cheerful demeanor. 

After checking in with the teacher, who provides services for students classified with moderate-to-severe disabilities, Vallejo learned she would not be returning for the 2025-2026 school year. 

Concerned about the plan for her son, whose special needs require significant educational support, Vallejo immediately scheduled an in-person meeting with Junction Unified School District Superintendent, Darin Pust. 

She says she spoke with Pust two days later, on March 6, asking questions about whether the teacher’s departure meant there wouldn’t be a moderate-to-severe special education classroom at Junction next year. His answers were vague, Vallejo says. 

“He basically said the model we have is not working,” Vallejo says. “And (told me), ‘I really can’t go into personnel issues.’” 

The District has not announced that the special day class will close next school year. But Vallejo can see no reason why the teacher’s employment would have ended if the District intended to keep her classroom open. Her meeting with Pust, she says, provided her no certainty that her son’s needs would continue to be met on campus. 

“And so now, I’m looking at… what teachers is he going to have? Is he (still) going to be in the district?” Vallejo emphasized, in a conversation with Shasta Scout. “When you take a special needs kid and you move them, you have just disrupted their entire being.”

“You don’t realize what impact this is going to have,” she continued. “Not just on him but on us too.”

A federal law known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires that students with disabilities be placed in the least restrictive environment. This means they should be able to attend the same school they would if they were not disabled, unless their needs specifically require a different setting. Placement should be as close to home as possible, with careful consideration of any potential harm to the student or their access to quality services.

In response to Shasta Scout’s question about whether special education services for all qualifying students will continue to be provided on Junction’s campuses next year, Pust provided a brief statement via email saying that services will be provided on campus for students “for whom their IEP teams have determined such services are appropriate.”

The acronym he used, IEP, stands for Individualized Education Plan. By law, parents are required to be part of their child’s IEP team and must have a voice in decision-making related to their child’s education. California law also requires adequate prior written notice from the school district of exactly what the district is proposing or refusing to do when it comes to student’s special education services, and why.

But Vallejo says she was never called to an IEP meeting to discuss a change in plans for her son’s educational services at school and has not received a written notice regarding how her son’s needs will be met now that his teacher has been terminated. 

In March, she submitted a formal complaint letter to the District about the matter. When that yielded little result, Vallejo and her husband sought legal counsel. On April 22, their attorney, Timothy Prentiss, sent a legal demand to Superintendent Pust, accusing the District of denying students’ right to a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE).  According to Pust, that’s not true. He told Shasta Scout by email that “the district is keenly aware of and follows all laws to provide FAPE.”

Shasta Scout obtained a copy of the letter from Prentiss’ legal office. It lists a number of alleged legal violations by the District, including Failure to Provide Prior Written Notice, Predetermination of Placement, Stay-Put Violation, Discriminatory Stereotyping and other California Education Code Violations. 

“It’s pretty clear to us that they (the District) have not gone through the proper procedures to initiate a change like this,” Prentiss said in a phone interview with Shasta Scout. “There’s a number of intertwining laws that require them to do certain things before we can even start on the merits of whether or not it makes sense.”

“There really hasn’t been any type of explanation from the district as to why they are terminating,” Prentiss continued. “Why are they? Why are they terminating or trying to terminate services that seem to be very effective and that help these families?”

Prentiss’ legal demand letter also includes accusations such as “discriminatory rhetoric” surrounding students with disabilities, claiming Superintendent Pust made harmful statements about students in the mod-severe classroom. According to Prentiss, the Superintendent’s comments suggested an inherent bias toward mixed classrooms – that is, classrooms in which general education students learn alongside students with disabilities – something which would potentially violate disability rights laws. 

Superintendent Pust responded to Shasta Scout’s request for comment on the letter, including those allegations, by emphasizing that “the district cannot comment on confidential student matters.”

Vallejo’s attorney demanded that the alleged violations at the District be remedied no later than May 6, 2025. To do so, he said, the District needed to schedule an emergency IEP meeting with all members of the student’s team, provide copies of any board meeting minutes, votes and communications related to the moderate-severe program’s termination, reinstate the program for the 2025-2026 school year, cease all discriminatory rhetoric and train staff on IDEA and Section 504 compliance.

Failure to do so, Prentiss wrote, would compel the firm to pursue further legal action against Junction. The District has not yet responded, Prentiss said, but could still begin working to rectify the situation at any time.

“It’s as simple as declaring that they’re going to stop any effort to terminate these programs,” he explained. “The second step is, I believe, that there still needs to be some type of justification. They still have not consulted or brought in the people who are most affected by the situation, which are the parents and the students.”

“As of now,” Prentiss said, “it seems like an unjustified, abrupt change that’s going to harm students without following the rules and without any kind of justification.”

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