DOJ launches probe of Littleton Public Schools after beating on school bus for children with disabilities

The U.S. Department of Justice has opened an investigation into whether Littleton Public Schools and The Joshua School violated the Americans with Disabilities Act in how they handled a school bus aide who reportedly beat at least two non-verbal kids traveling to a special needs school earlier this year.

CPR News confirmed the federal investigation, which was launched in June, through a lawyer representing the victims’ families.

“It appears the parents’ cries are falling on unsympathetic ears,” said Qusair Mohamedbhai, a civil rights attorney representing the McBride family, the Vestal family and the Yarbrough family.

“LPS has shunned the parents, silenced them. They have literally tried to remove them from board meetings using law enforcement … They are compounding the harms.”

Parents of the families have severely disabled and in some cases non-verbal, children who were LPS students who took the bus to The Joshua School, which is a special needs school that had a contract with LPS to provide services and education to kids with disabilities.

On bus rides to and from school between January and March, police say a school bus aide named Kiarra Jones regularly beat and stomped on the feet of at least two students, both of whom can’t talk. The students were restrained in car seats and cried while the beatings were taking place, according to documents provided by police.

Lawyers representing the Yarbrough family said their son also received a foot-stomping injury that wasn’t captured on a surveillance video.

Jones was charged with multiple felony and misdemeanor child abuse charges and has pleaded not guilty. She has a trial scheduled for 2025 and has been fired by LPS.

Parents calling for reforms

But parents said the district has been disrespectful when they pushed for more reform and more accountability — including the termination of the school bus driver, who has said she didn’t know any of the abuse was happening even though the aide sat right behind her.

“How does a bus driver not know what’s going on?” said Blake McBride, the father of one child who was allegedly injured by Jones. “They believed her … It feels like it’s more lip service than getting something done.”

The LPS school board recently approved a new policy where staffers will more regularly review surveillance camera footage inside and they will start putting two paraprofessionals on buses with the most vulnerable kids.

But the families, many of whom attorneys say have shown up at LPS board meetings and been asked to leave, call the changes window-dressing and have called for a higher authority to take a look.

“Someone higher up needs to take a look,” McBride said. “We’ve been saying stuff and someone needs to hold their feet to the fire. I’m grateful for it. No one is listening to us, it seems like. We’re being swept under a rug.”

Mohamedbhai called the changes LPS made are “about as minimal of a change as they could do.” He confirmed he plans to sue LPS on behalf of the three families.

“They are simply bandaids. To honor and protect diverse students and to protect disabled students, this needs to be found throughout all policies,” he said. “You can see that they are not interested in holistically addressing this issue. They’re not interested in getting to the root cause of these problems. They simply want to do largely proformative stop-gap measures and it’s simply insufficient.”

David Zalubowski/AP

Jess Vestal, whose son was a victim, said she is also grateful The Joshua School is a part of the investigation, too. Initially, she thought her son’s strange and fearful behavior only came from the abuse on the bus, but she said staffers at the school weren’t treating him well either, including forcing him to sit on a toilet for long stretches even when he said he was done. Vestal said he now is afraid of going to the bathroom.

“I feel really stupid having their back as hard as I did,” Vestal said. “And there are good people there and they unfortunately are not under good guidance.”

LPS policy change

LPS didn’t comment on the federal probe into the district, but a spokeswoman emailed the new bus camera footage surveillance and staffing with paraprofessionals policy.

“The policy changes that have been adopted by the Board include significant improvements to our protocols in the areas of bus video monitoring and bus staffing,” LPS Superintendent Todd Lambert said in an email sent out to parents.

No one from the district agreed to be interviewed for the story and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Colorado had no comment on the active investigation.

This is the third known school district in seven years in Colorado where a bus aide reportedly abused children with severe disabilities. A Larimer County paraprofessional with a history of child abuse was accused of punching autistic kids on a Poudre School District bus in May 2023. In Boulder, in 2017, a woman was convicted of abusing a disabled girl on a school bus repeatedly for seven days.

The Littleton parents have been talking to state lawmakers representing them in Arapahoe County to push for a proposed new law that would add protections and training for people working with the most vulnerable kids.

To view the article in it’s entirety, visit www.cpr.org.