Two Tacoma-area families are suing the owner of a now-shuttered private special education school, alleging that school staff abused and neglected vulnerable students.
The Northwest School of Innovative Learning was Washington’s largest publicly funded but privately run school for children with disabilities until it closed in early 2024. Its owner, Kirkland-based Fairfax Behavioral Health, shut down the school after a state investigation found an “unacceptably high” number of incidents in which staff restrained and secluded students.
A 2022 investigation by The Seattle Times and ProPublica revealed that for years, the school, also known as Northwest SOIL, was accused of injuring students and isolating them in small rooms while failing to provide a basic education.
The lawsuit, filed earlier this month in Pierce County Superior Court, also takes aim at Tacoma Public Schools and University Place School District, saying both districts were responsible for these students’ education and kept them at Northwest SOIL despite knowing about some of the problems.
The students, who were 7 when they first attended, say the school was filthy and violent, according to the lawsuit. They claim that staff locked students in isolation rooms with walls coated in human blood and waste. Staff members “physically tormented” the students, they said, twisting their arms behind their backs as “punishment” for their behavior and, in at least one case, choking a student.
They learned very little or nothing while attending the school and left traumatized, according to the lawsuit.
“What happened there – it doesn’t just stay there,” M.M., who attended Northwest SOIL from 2018 to 2023, told The Times. “It follows every student, like with them, for a longer period of time than it should. And what happened to me isn’t OK.”
His mother, Alicia, said she felt “helpless” when her son described being choked by school staff and locked in filthy isolation rooms. (The Times is not publishing their full names to protect the student’s privacy.)
When Alicia learned that a staff member wrapped his hands around her son’s neck and choked him, she tried to reach someone at Tacoma Public Schools who could help. But she was repeatedly ignored, the lawsuit says.
Alicia complained to Northwest SOIL’s staff about the abuse, but it continued for years, she said. “I was distraught,” she added. “But they always swept everything under the rug.”
The problems got “worse and worse and worse as it was going on through the years,” said M.M., who is now 13 and attending another private program in the region.
Fairfax Behavioral Health and Tacoma Public Schools did not respond to requests for comment.
Placed by the University Place School District, the other child in the lawsuit attended Northwest SOIL as a second-grader in the 2021-2022 school year. He often came home with bruises and scratches, and he said school staff locked him in dirty isolation rooms and twisted his arm behind his back, according to the lawsuit.
In an emailed statement, the superintendent of University Place School District, Jeff Chamberlin, said the district was limited in what it could say because of “the sensitive and confidential nature of this matter, and to respect student and family privacy.”
But Chamberlin added, “The allegations brought forth in the complaint are very concerning to us. The safety and well-being of all students, no matter where they attend school, is our first priority and greatest responsibility.”
Washington school districts can turn to private schools and other organizations, together called nonpublic agencies, when they decide that public schools can’t meet a student’s special education needs. Using public funds, these schools take in hundreds of students each year with some of the most complex conditions, such as autism, deafness and emotional and behavioral disabilities. Northwest SOIL was known for accepting students with challenging behaviors that other schools refused.
But under state law, school districts are ultimately responsible for ensuring that students receive an education.
“We really think they’re just as culpable about facilitating the abuse of these kids,” Whitney Hill, one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, said about the school districts. “They had the responsibility to be sure they were safe, but they just turned their back.”
The lawsuit against Northwest SOIL and the districts alleges negligent failure to report child abuse, failure to provide an appropriate education, discrimination, intentional infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment and assault and battery, among other claims.
The Times and ProPublica investigation found that some districts were made aware of serious problems at Northwest SOIL and continued to place students at the school, which, in addition to its Tacoma campus, had schools in Tumwater and Redmond.
For years, a longstanding flaw in Washington’s oversight put the onus of monitoring these private special education schools on individual school districts, not the state. Despite receiving millions in public funding, these schools were subject to scattered oversight, preventing state officials from tracking widespread problems at Northwest SOIL, The Times and ProPublica found.
Northwest SOIL’s billion-dollar corporate owner, Fairfax, exploited that system for years, the investigation found. The company skimped on staffing and basic resources while urging administrators to enroll more students than staff could handle.
Citing The Times and ProPublica’s reporting, the state in 2023 reformed its oversight of the schools, including complaint investigations and monitoring.
“There’s not enough awareness of what’s happening to them. We kind of just shove them all into this little corner to be cared for, and they’re not cared for,” Alicia said about students with disabilities. “Where’s the empathy and the care and the support that they need? The education?”
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