"You're not going to let physical barriers get in the way of your daughter's education, are you?"

Hey, so this is an old story. When I was in the 1st grade I went to my neighborhood public school. I was fully main streamed- not in special ed. But one day I told my mom I was board about 60% of the day. So that propted her to start looking for other schools. So she called 11 schools and explained about me- extremely bright and very physically disabled. Nobody was interested. Even though I brought a one-on-one aide with me to school, so the school didn't really have to do anything in terms of helping me physically or adapting lessons for me.

So the 12th school my mom visited was a good 45 minutes away. When my mom got there, she saw that the entire school was completely inaccessible with stairs going everywhere. She took the tour with 10 other parents but knew the school would not work even thought it would make an absolutely perfect match in terms of philosophy and teaching style. When the tour was over, my mom asked the principal if she knew of any similar schools that were nearer to where we lived. The principal rattled off names of schools but they were all ones that had rejected the idea of me. Not to sound like a jerk, my mom finally told the principal why no other schools had worked and why this principal's school would not work. She loved it, but it was not accessible. The principal looked at her and said, "You're not going to let physical barriers get in the way of your daughter's education, are you?" My mom was speechless (that's very rare for her). The the principal took my mom around the school and figured out what they would need to adapt. Needless to say, I ended up going to this school and loving it. I was the first physically disabled student the school had ever had but by the time I left, 3 more disabled kids had enrolled.