Spanaway Lake High School, Spanaway | Fees, Rankings, Address, Admission, Vacancies, Reviews & More

My daughter attended the special ed program there and the experience was disturbing beyond words.
Below is the main portion of the letter I sent them when we pulled her from the school.

I have nothing pleasant or kind to say about the treatment my daughter endured at Spanaway Lake.
Her IEP seems to indicate she would have been best served with general integration and a “least restrictive environment”. Instead she spent the beginning of this last semester/quarter in only sped classes and was helping to walk other children around the gym in braces, and to push others in their wheelchairs. Additionally I understand she was doing the recycling weekly or bi-weekly.
Somehow there must have been something educational about this, but I am at a loss to understand what it could have been.

When my daughter tired of reading the exact same book she had read last year in 9th grade, and spoke with her teacher about it, she was told that she needed to do it anyway so the other kids could catch up to her. So much for her “least restrictive environment”. What a truly incredible thing to say to a child who is interested in expanding her reading skills. This alone has amazed more people than you can imagine, when we have told this story to our friends and coworkers over the last week.
My daughter was unhappy with the children in whose time she spent most of her day as many of them were seriously less functional than she is, and therefore she had no opportunity to gain social, language, or any other skill from kids around her. She came home and told me incredible detail about other children in the sped classroom with her, which words they could say, how often they said them, etc.

Although I dearly loved (previous teachers at the junior high) – both clearly and obviously had my daughter’s best interests at heart – I truly came to despise my daughter’s current sped teacher. I spoke with her on several occasions and found her to be more often inappropriate than not.
I don’t believe my daughter’s IEP was followed or perhaps even read at all. I recall her records were lost at the beginning of last year, and I wonder if they were ever even in the hands of her current sped teacher once.
My daughter told me she was informed about the sped class having to be split, and asked to help with the less functional children because they were short of staff at her school.
I don’t believe her vocabulary even included the phrase ‘short of staff” until she was told this, so it is very credible to me that this is true.
In summary, she was not learning or exposed to children from whom she could gain language or social skills. She was instead, used to help with recycling and caretaking of the less functional children.
We can hardly wait to put this chapter in her life behind all of us, and feel only pity for those who have no other choice but to send their children to the sped teacher at SLH.

Have had two students there with terrible experiences. They seem to be highly prejudice. My first student was a flake so not school blame, my next student, administrators kept badgering on totally idiotic issues such as a doo rag, assistant principal Mayhne(sp?) saw two other students with one on leaving the restroom but targeted my kid and suspended him! Really, what about the two prior to him? SMH

The staff are very helpful along with the counselors one of the counselors told me that all I have to do to graduate was pass all my classes and my conference and I will graduate plus this is the school that 3 of 4 family members have graduated from this high school.