Your Rights Under American With Disability Act

I got this e-mail from a blogging buddy who asked me to post it for her.  It is a story that needs to be told.

I am wondering if you would put my story -- of having gotten exasperated one night and screamed at my principal ending in the Rubber Room on your blog. It's not just the extremity with which I was dealt, but my principal knew I was disabled -- I am a person with XXX. So, according to the American's with Disabilities Act I was supposed to be put in the least restrictive environment especially for my first major offense.

What I want is for other people with disabilities to MAKE THE UFT aware that they have the right to be pulled out of these kind of situations. It was because there was an undercurrent of "potential lawsuit" that my case was expedited so I didn't spend two year there.

But the damage was done. I let myself completely go -- and I've just discovered I have spinal stenosis in my lumbar and sacral regions and in my neck. I spent some of the time in the room helping my mother get her hip replaced. But, I did nothing for me. I didn't care about me. Certainly, a lot was losing YYY. But, I had been living in a room of people considered "outcasts" and that reinforced my overall feeling as an XXX. A guy nearly raped me by scaring me into trusting him and then manipulating me into getting into his car. People taunted me -- other people stuck up for me, but I felt like I had been violent, evil, uncontrollable.

I used XXX for the disability because this could be any one's problem. The goal is that the UFT has to be proactive for these folks -- especially when they have been teaching for over 15 years without a problem.