‘It’s just the adults’ trying to exclude Truman cheerleader who uses a wheelchair
When Lacy Kiper first made the cheerleading squad at Truman High School last year, she was beyond excited. Her grades and confidence improved, and she felt part of a team for the first time in her life. Until she didn’t, that is.
Kiper has osteogenesis imperfecta, a genetic disease that makes her bones break easily. She uses a wheelchair and loves — and I mean loves — cheering and revving up the crowd from the sidelines. This is an 18-year-old with so much heart, they’re lucky to have her. But her coaches and school administrators have a can-do attitude, too. And they keep coming up with new ways to limit her involvement, as she puts it, to “less than bare minimum.”
She can’t go out onto the football field with the other cheerleaders during the national anthem, supposedly because her chair would mess up the field. She can’t go into the school gym during basketball games, supposedly for her own safety, even though her orthopedic surgeon says otherwise. She wasn’t allowed to participate in a team fundraiser at a local grocery store, supposedly because you had to be able to lift 10 pounds to help bag food for customers. And on and on.
“With all these things that I’ve been told no, and that I’m not able to participate in,” she said, during an interview at the dining room table in her home in Independence, “it makes me feel that I’m not a part of this team, or part of anything. It feels like I’m able to do less than bare minimum.”
She was going to quit, as she believes the head cheerleading coach, ex-Truman cheerleader Alex Parrish, wants her to do. At one point, she said, Parrish suggested that maybe she should try out for the school dance team instead, “because maybe they’d let me into the gym.” But then a co-worker at Walmart — yes, Kiper has a part-time job — told her that he, too, had been barred from activities at Truman because of a disability. “That’s when I decided, no, I’m not quitting; I’ve got to fight, because I want it to be known that you can’t treat people like this. This ends here.”
It should end right here, and right now, because what’s happening in Independence is not only hurtful but potentially illegal — even as school officials are so focused on the law that they seem to have lost all sight of Lacy Kiper.
Lawyer: School waiver signs away student’s civil rights
My messages to Parrish, Truman principal Ronda Scott, activities director Daniel Bieser and spokeswoman Megan Murphy were answered by a lawyer for the Independence School District, J. Drew Marriott.
“Generally speaking,” he wrote, “the District processes matters involving students with unique needs or identified disabilities in accordance with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and all other relevant state and federal laws, as applicable. … The District is happy to provide you information to ensure that any resulting article fairly and accurately depicts the circumstances. However, the District cannot provide that information without a release from Mr. Kiper.”
That’s Lacy’s father, Charles Kiper, whose lawyer looked at the proposed waiver and said that if Charles signed it, he’d be signing away Lacy’s civil rights. I asked if a more narrowly drawn release might be drafted, and Marriott said no. He also said he and the district disagreed with the view that signing the release would hold the district harmless forever and for any reason.
The disagreement over the waiver is typical of the communication between the Kipers and the school, and I can say that because I’ve seen a lot of it.
Truman Activities Director Daniel Bieser said in one note to Charles Kiper that it had been his refusal to sign a waiver allowing them access to her medical records that had made it so difficult to allow her to do things with the others: “Your unwillingness to allow us to talk with Lacy’s doctors continues to play a large role in the district’s concern with Lacy fully participating in cheer activities,” he wrote. “I do hope that you reconsider signing the HIPAA release, as this could potentially allow Lacy to participate depending on the information we receive.”
But Charles Kiper said he did sign the waiver, only to then have the school ask a doctor who doesn’t even know Lacy make the call that she shouldn’t be in the gym during games because she might get hurt. Her own longtime doctor disagreed, and on Jan. 19 and again on Aug. 19 of this year signed waivers I saw copies of to that effect. “They look for ways to keep her out,” her father said.
The reasons Lacy Kiper is being told that she can’t participate are certainly not consistent. At one point, Parrish seemed to have just assumed that she couldn’t bag groceries with the others at the fundraiser. Then the Kipers were told that the rule was that you had to be able to lift 10 pounds, which she can do now, though years ago she could not.
She was also told that she could participate in other fundraisers, and then was told that on the contrary, only those participating in competitive cheerleading could do so. So if it’s not the case that the school is looking for ways to leave her out, I can see why she’d think otherwise.
“We thought the education system was supposed to encourage our children,” said her stepmother, Lena Powell. Instead, “they want to exclude her more.”
This is not the first time in Lacy Kiper’s life that she’s been left out, but the assumptions being made are stunningly mistaken. Charles Kiper says that even the school secretary recently told him, “No doctor would OK her to go into a gym with her disease.” Not so, but that’s now the party line.
Makes A’s in school, works part-time at Walmart
When I asked Lacy Kiper how the other cheerleaders treat her, she said, “not bad. I say hi, and if I ask, they’re glad to help me. It’s just the adults” who aren’t so glad.
If school officials are really only trying to protect her, what they’re protecting her from is life.
If instead they’re acting out of liability concerns, they’re surely creating more liability than they’re protecting themselves from.
And are they oblivious to how much courage it takes to do what Lacy Kiper does every day? If not, it seems like some simple accommodations could remedy a situation that really does not have to be this wounding to a young woman for whom nothing has been easy.
After the grandmother who had raised her from infancy died two years ago, she moved in with her father and stepmother, who encouraged her to become more independent and get more involved at school.
She learned to do a bunch of new things for herself after that. She made A’s last year, and started working after school. “This little girl works up at Walmart,” her father told me the first time we talked. “She rode up there in her wheelchair and got her a job” greeting customers, handing out masks and pushing the shopping carts back where they belong. “I could not be prouder.”
Or more frustrated. At a recent meeting, Charles Kiper says, Amy Chappell, the district assistant director of special services, told him, “I don’t care what you say and what her doctor says, she’s not going into that gym to cheer.”
Other girls on the team this year started practicing together in March, but she wasn’t allowed to start going to practices until August. Though it’s true that she can’t participate in competitive cheering, she wanted to go anyway, and tumble on the mat with the others, as her doctor said she could. What possible harm could that have done to anyone?
The Kipers have met with the principal, Ronda Scott, and here’s Lacy Kiper’s summary of the meeting: “We were in the office for an hour, and she said a lot of words without really saying anything. ‘It’s not against you; it’s safety.’’’
Other cheerleaders get injured, so why is she the only one who is being kept under glass?
On Sept. 9, the district compliance officer sent the Kipers a letter informing them that they had investigated their allegations of discrimination and had decided that nope, that wasn’t happening. “The facts do not substantiate a violation,” said the letter, signed by compliance officer Tiffany Purinton.
So what is going on, then? And whatever the intention of school officials, why let her join the squad only to then keep her from doing what she’s perfectly capable of doing, which is cheering her giant heart out?
This story was originally published September 20, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
