It's almost time for lunch at Fulton Elementary School, and everyone is waiting on Ashley. There is the nationally renowned consultant, crouched next to her wheelchair, who specializes in communicating with children who have severe disabilities. There is her mother, Kelly Meissner, who fought to bring the consultant here. There is her third-grade teacher, her special education teacher, a technology assistant, and the aide who changes her diapers and sits by her side all day long. And there are two of her classmates, Amy Cardaro and Jared Caplan, who are not disabled and are missing the last few minutes of art while they wait for Ashley.
Ashley is sitting in her wheelchair in the back of her classroom, her head cocked to the left and her big blue eyes wide open. Her arms are curled up like paper clips at her side. For more than an hour now, the educators have experimented with ways of communicating with her. Severely retarded, Ashley cannot speak, write or sign. Sometimes she points. But Ashley's mother and teachers believe she knows what's going on around her -- that it's just a matter of their figuring out what's going on inside of her.
There is one thing Ashley's mother is certain of: Ashley is 9 and therefore deserves to be with other 9-year-olds. In school. All day.
(The Washington Post)
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The consultant has asked Ashley to hit a switch that will play a recorded message asking Amy to count to 200. The goal is twofold: Get Ashley to respond, and make her understand that others will respond to her.
Light distracts Ashley, so the blinds are drawn to help her concentrate. She rolls her eyes from side to side as she processes the consultant's requests. Her arm arcs outward, her fingers still curled tight, toward a switch sitting on a tray attached to her wheelchair. She misses. The consultant tries again: Hit the switch, Ashley.
Click. She finds it. A tinny voice floats through the room: "Okay, this one's for you, Amy," the recording says. "Count by 25 really fast to 200."
Amy sets in: 25, 50, 75, 100 . . .
"How's that, Ashley?" Amy says when she's done. A corner of Ashley's mouth turns up slightly.
Kelly and the teachers exchange excited glances. For Ashley's entourage of educators and specialists, every conscious action she makes signals that somewhere inside of her is a third-grader who deserves to join in field day with the rest of the children at Fulton. Who has the right to participate during a social studies class on immigrants, even if she will never be able to find Ellis Island on a map. Who is entitled to give a presentation on How to Make Vanilla Pudding at the end of the year. The switch is just one more tool that Ashley can use to make it in a regular school, with regular kids and a regular schedule.
By now, the other third-graders are on their way to the cafeteria. Before anyone prompts her, she knocks the switch again. Another recorded message drifts through the room: "Okay, time to go to lunch, Amy and Jared!"
The official name of Ashley's disability is white matter hypoplasia, which means that whole sections of her brain are missing. Her CT scan resembles Swiss cheese. Functionally, she is little more than an infant.
Ashley also suffers from intermittent cortical blindness. Though her eyes can see, her brain cannot always interpret the images. Sometimes bright colors and large type can penetrate her mind; other times she stares blankly into space. Thunderstorms brew in her head from the constant misfiring of neurons; at one time, she was having dozens of seizures per day. Her growth is stunted. She has cerebral palsy. Her toothpick legs cannot support her weight and, on a good day, barely inch her along with the help of a walker. She has a bald spot on the back of her head where it rubs against her wheelchair.
Not much is understood about her condition -- no one is even sure how long she will live. She was a baby when her condition was first diagnosed, and a doctor told her mother that she would likely die within a year.
Doctors also cannot say exactly which parts of Ashley's brain are missing, or what those missing pieces might be responsible for. How much she truly understands of the world around her -- the purple butterflies floating on her bedroom wall, the Renoir and Matisse prints hanging above her in art class, even the voices of her teachers, friends and family -- is often a mystery.
There is one thing, however, that Ashley's mother is certain of: Ashley is 9 and therefore deserves to be with other 9-year-olds. In school. All day.
That is the premise behind a controversial national movement known as inclusion, which goes a step beyond the nearly 30-year-old process of mainstreaming. Advocates for inclusion maintain that all children can learn together in the same classroom, whether their IQ is 50 or 150. It's not clear whether this would cost school systems more than they already pay for
special education. Regardless of whether they are placed in regular classrooms or not, disabled students can cost tens of thousands of dollars more to educate than regular students. Ashley, for example, would need a one-on-one aide and all sorts of special services whether she was at Fulton or not.
For many teachers and parents of children with disabilities, inclusion is an irresistible utopia. Who wouldn't want to see their child get on the school bus every morning? Laugh with her classmates when the teacher reads Sideways Stories From Wayside School? Bring home artwork to stick on the fridge? Who wouldn't want their child to lead a normal life?
But critics of inclusion -- and there are many -- say that ideal is far from reality. Teachers are busy, they say, and shouldn't be asked to give up planning periods, lunch time and even weekends to alter lesson plans and complete mounds of paperwork for the sake of one child. All too often, they add, the classroom teacher doesn't get enough help. When that happens, the disabled student diverts instructional time from others in the classroom and still doesn't get the attention he or she needs. Many parents of severely disabled students don't even risk it, insisting that school districts pay for their children to be in special programs and facilities.
"Unfortunately, you still have situations [where] inclusion becomes a dumping plan," says Lisa Thomas, a senior associate at the American Federation of Teachers. "We tend to be very cautious about saying that inclusion is appropriate for every single child because that just isn't the case."
At Fulton Elementary, an army of support staff is dispatched daily to make sure Ashley receives all the services she needs, from physical therapy to wheelchair consultations. Progress is slow. She may never learn to feed herself, much less comprehend fractions.
And yet here she is, sitting in her wheelchair, a purple book bag with daisies hanging off the back, on an ordinary spring morning in a 500-student, red-brick school in southern Howard County where the motto for the year is "Fulton -- Where the Future Begins." The American flag is propped up on her wheelchair while she and 22 classmates in Kirk Hutchinson's third grade recite the Pledge of Allegiance as they begin their daily experiment in how far inclusion can go.
"Ash, are you ready to spin?" Hutchinson asks one afternoon during a social studies lesson.
The class is working on study questions about Ellis Island. Ashley's job is to pick students to answer the questions out loud by hitting a switch connected to an electric Wheel-of-Fortune-style spinner with the children's names written on it.
Click. Ashley hits the switch. Whoosh. The spinner lands on Sean.
"Ack! No, no, no!" Sean sputters. "I'm not ready!"
Click. Whoosh. Ashley runs through a handful of names before her eyelids begin to droop. She takes longer and longer to hit the switch. Hutchinson, whom all the kids call Mr. H, gently pushes her on.
"One more time, and then we'll take a break, okay?" he tells Ashley. "Just one."
Hutchinson used to be a minor league baseball umpire and rarely raises his voice in class. All he has to do is stand in a corner of the classroom with his hands on his hips and the kids quiet down. He's been a teacher for five years, but he's never taught a student like Ashley before. The learning curve has been high. There have been practical challenges like how to use her switches, which are actually large buttons, to help her communicate. There have been pedagogical issues such as how to adapt his lesson plans to accommodate her.
And behind all those concerns, there has been the Big Question: Does Ashley belong at Fulton at all? "My biggest fear" he says, "is that she wouldn't be any better off at the end of this year than she was at the beginning."
Everyone was worried about that. No one had outright complained about Ashley during her first year at Fulton as a second-grader, but life wasn't perfect, either. The kids were polite but wary of the new girl with wide eyes who drooled when she ate and sometimes cried during class. Her goals for the year included holding objects for 15 seconds and consistently making choices. But no one was sure how much she had learned.
The third-grade team met to talk about Ashley a few days before school began. They discussed her disability, her likes and dislikes. They talked about their hopes -- that Ashley feel accepted and participate in class in a meaningful way -- and their fears: that her crying spells would come back and the year would be wasted.
To prepare himself, Mr. H read a book that Kelly lent him on ways to use Ashley's switches. He signed up to go to a conference sponsored by the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education. He cut into his planning time to meet with Ashley's consultants.
Now he watches as Jared and another boy help Ashley make a Mother's Day card. The boys want to draw a picture of Ashley and her mother to put on the cover of the card. They bombard Ashley with questions: What color are her mother's eyes? Brown? Is her hair brown? Is her face peach?
Yes, yes, yes. Ashley answers by brushing a sign on the left of her wheelchair tray that reads "yes" -- even though Kelly's eyes are baby blue, just like Ashley's. She is getting tired again. The boys wear her out.
The questions keep coming: Yes or no, does your mom go shopping all day? Do you like this face we've drawn?
"Ash, you know these questions," Jared chides when she starts to slow down. "You just don't feel like answering them."
The last bell is about to ring. Mr. H asks Amy to record a message on Ashley's switch that she can play for her mom when she gets home.
"Guess what we did in school today?" it says. "We read stories on Ellis Island."
Thirty years ago, Ashley would not have gone to Fulton Elementary. Students with much milder disabilities, from poor hearing to Down syndrome, attended separate schools, where they took a combination of life skills and academic courses. The prevailing educational philosophy was that those students needed intense, specialized services that were unavailable in their neighborhood schools and best provided in cloistered settings.
That all changed in 1975 with the passage of the federal law that became known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Spawned in part by the civil rights movement of the previous decade, the law required public schools to "integrate" students with disabilities into regular classrooms and set up a graduated system of support programs. Schools built separate classrooms and wings devoted to special education. Some disabled students joined the regular kids for extracurriculars like art and music and ate lunch with them in the cafeteria. The movement, known as "mainstreaming," was even portrayed on television from 1989 to 1993 in the drama "Life Goes On," starring an all-American, basketball-playing kid named Corky who had Down syndrome.
Now President Bush's sweeping education reform law known as No Child Left Behind judges schools by the performance of all students on standardized tests, including those with disabilities. At the same time, federal government guidelines call for 80 percent of students with disabilities to be placed in the "least restrictive environment" possible -- which full inclusion activists define as the regular classroom -- at least 80 percent of the school day.
No state has met that goal. During the 2002-03 school year, just over 51 percent of Maryland's 101,618 special education students spent 80 percent of the day in a regular class, according to data from the U.S. Office of Special Education Programs. In Virginia, the number was 36 percent of its nearly 153,867 disabled students. And in the District, it was only about 13 percent of 11,652 students.
Though enrollment at special education schools has plummeted since the 1970s, they still educate hundreds of disabled students in the Washington area. And many parents want them to continue to do so. A recommendation to gradually close 14 of Fairfax County's 20 special education centers has met with resistance from parents and educators alike. Parents in Howard protested loudly when the county announced it could not rebuild Cedar Lane School, which educates 115 severely disabled students, because the state no longer approves free-standing schools for the disabled. The state and the county eventually worked out a compromise that will relocate Cedar Lane to the same campus as Fulton Elementary. That will give Cedar Lane's students more access to regular classrooms, though it will fall short of true inclusion.
About 70 percent of Cedar Lane's children are in wheelchairs. Many are not toilet-trained. Feeding tubes line the cafeteria during lunchtime. These are children whom the mainstreaming movement left behind. Children like Ashley.
Ashley had her first seizure at 5 months. Kelly was wheeling her through the mall when it hit. It wasn't a tongue-biting, eyes-rolling kind of seizure. It was more like a startle. But Kelly knew something was wrong. She called the pediatrician immediately.
It took almost a year before doctors could agree on a diagnosis. By then, Ashley was having 40 to 50 seizures a day, and the Meissners knew that she would be severely disabled. Kelly understood exactly what that meant. She used to be a special education teacher. She taught a class of about eight kids, ages 3 to 6, in Charlottesville when her husband, Rob, was attending business school at the University of Virginia. Some of the children just had speech delays; others were crack babies. One was as severely disabled as Ashley.
"You name it, we had it, all in one classroom," Kelly says. Her years teaching special education were lessons in what not to do. The separate classrooms were like fishbowls -- with everyone always staring in, but no one ever dropping by.
The Meissners were living in Woodlands, Tex., when Ashley started preschool at Powell Elementary. The school attempted what it called "reverse inclusion," bringing regular kids into classes with disabled students. It didn't work, says Kelly, who worried that Ashley was becoming isolated.
Kelly wanted her in a regular kindergarten class the next year; the school refused. Under federal law, school districts must provide a free and appropriate public education to all students, but what exactly that covers is often cloudy. Kelly and Rob threatened the school with a lawsuit, but before they got to court, the family moved again, this time to a small town outside Boise, Idaho.
There were few options for Ashley in the rural community -- and that worked to Kelly's advantage. There were no schools for disabled students, no separate wings or programs. In fact, there was nowhere else to put Ashley other than in a first-grade classroom at Seven Oaks Elementary with all the other kids.
Inclusion became tangible for Kelly in Idaho. It meant being part of the school walk-a-thon. It meant watching another student quiz Ashley on her colors by holding up beanbags.
Ashley spent about a year and a half at Seven Oaks. When the family moved again, in 2001 to Howard County, Kelly and Rob had a vision of what Ashley's school day should look like. "I learned how to fight in Texas," Kelly says. "I knew what I was fighting for in Idaho. And I knew what I needed to get it here."
Fulton has programs for students with emotional disabilities and is one of Howard County's regional centers for special ed preschoolers. But the school had never educated a child like Ashley before.
Principal Karen Moore-Roby had been a special education teacher for eight years before becoming an administrator, and she had worked with students with disabilities like Ashley's. She read Ashley's paperwork and then spoke with Kelly on the phone. Was this really the right place for Ashley? Maybe Cedar Lane would be better?
When Kelly made it clear she wouldn't consider anything but a regular classroom for Ashley, Moore-Roby agreed to enroll her. As long as the principal could be sure that Ashley would have support -- from home, from the staff and from the county -- she believed they could make it work.
It's 7:30 a.m. on a Monday, and the Meissner house is in its usual state of disarray. Packs of diapers -- for both Ashley and her 2-year-old brother, Matthew -- are stacked in the living room. The coffee table is littered with miniature toy dinosaurs, and folded clothes are piled on the couch.
Rob has rolled up the sleeves of his button-down shirt to change Ashley's diaper on the carpet in front of the TV, which is tuned to the "Today" show. Rob pulls the flaps of Ashley's diaper closed and with an "Up, up, up!" settles her at the kitchen table.
"Helllloooo! It's breakfast!" Kelly chirps. She holds up two packets of flavored Instant Quaker Oatmeal in front of Ashley. She can eat only semisolid food or drink thick liquids.
"Do you want cinnamon roll or banana?" Kelly asks, shaking each one in turn by Ashley's ear.
Ashley stares blankly ahead.
Kelly tries again: "Cinnamon roll or banana?"
Nothing.
Kelly sighs. She tries one more time: "Okay, this is your last chance . . . Cinnamon roll or banana?"
Ashley finally grasps at the cinnamon roll. That's good enough for Kelly, who pops the mix into the microwave. Rob tucks a bib into Ashley's shirt and injects a syringeful of medicine into her mouth before feeding her breakfast.
Thump, thump, thump. Chelsea, 10, stomps down the stairs and into the kitchen in her pajamas, hair still sopping wet, and announces that she has absolutely nothing to wear. Katy, 6, trails behind her in a white T-shirt that reaches to her knees. She runs to Rob looking for a hug. One of his hands is holding a spoonful of oatmeal, but he throws the other around her.
For the Meissners, Ashley's condition is a fluke, a genetic mix-up that changed their lives forever. But Kelly and Rob do not ponder the metaphysical implications of Ashley's existence. They do not stay awake wondering, "Why me?" They can't. They have three other kids to take care of.
Today the order forms for the girls' school pictures are due. Chelsea still hasn't brought down her dirty laundry. Katy wants scrambled eggs for breakfast.
Ashley is not eating well. She has been crying on and off all morning, and even letting her roll around on the carpet in front of the television hasn't helped calm her down much. They can't figure out what's wrong. Finally, Kelly just says it: Maybe Ashley shouldn't go to school today.
"Ash, don't do it," Kelly says warningly as her crying grows louder. Then, relenting, she picks her up and rocks her in her arms. "Why are you so fussy? What's hurting you?"
She tickles Ashley's neck, and the tears dry up. Chelsea is next to them on the carpet putting her sneakers on. The bus will be here soon. Maybe Ashley can make it through the day after all.
Ashley's composure vanishes during math.
"Ashley is not in a good mood today," says her classmate Matt to special education resource teacher Mary LaRocco.
Today LaRocco's small group of students is measuring imaginary animals with a ruler. On her turn, Ashley is supposed to hit a switch to play a recorded answer giving the length of her animal. But she has been crying since homeroom ended.
"It's hard to get back into the swing of things on Monday," LaRocco explains patiently.
Matt doesn't give up: "Why is Ashley sad?"
Frankly, LaRocco isn't sure why. Ashley has closed her eyes, but neither LaRocco nor Ashley's one-on-one aide, Kerisha Jones, can tell if she's in pain or just sleepy. They cross their fingers, hope for the best and wheel her into the computer lab to play math games with the other children.
Jones holds up two CDs in front of Ashley: "Math Blaster" and "Math Workshop Deluxe." Which one do you want? she asks rhetorically. But Ashley's eyelids are drooping shut again. At least she has stopped crying. Jones goes with "Math Workshop Deluxe."
"Ashley, I'm playing by myself today!" she says as she puts together a puzzle on the computer. Ashley has fallen asleep. Jones keeps talking to her anyway. She points to the puzzle pieces with the mouse. "Which one, Ash?" she murmurs. "Green, orange or red?"
Maybe Ashley really should have stayed home today. Sometimes, when the teachers and aides can't quiet her crying, the school calls Kelly to come get her before the day is over. Kelly almost always comes -- and she almost always sends her back the next day. Her favorite story about Ashley is from kindergarten in Idaho. A speech therapist had told Kelly that Ashley could not be taught; that all her movements were reflexive, not reflective. Then, one day, a classmate quizzed Ashley on her colors just for fun. He held up pairs of beanbags and asked her to point to certain colors.
Ashley got every one.
So what if she hasn't done it again since then. Kelly still holds on to that story as proof that Ashley can do the unpredictable, the unimaginable even. "The only consistent thing about her is her inconsistency," she often says. She means that in a good way.
The teachers at Fulton have learned to give Ashley plenty of wait time. She needs at least a minute to respond after she's asked a question, a couple of hours to work through a crying spell. Today, she is giggling again by art class.
"Okay, Ashley, we're going to draw a house," Amy announces.
The two girls are sitting with two other friends in the back of Mr. H's room. Ashley is helping to design a paper puppet -- she points to the gender (girl) and the colors for her face and eyes that she wants -- while the other girls draw pictures and designs for an original clothing line they have dubbed "Ashleywear." They're debating the details of a sleeveless top with fringe on the shoulders and knee-high boots when Ashley begins whimpering. The kids instantly pucker up and make kissing noises and tickle her neck. Soon, Ashley is all smiles again.
"Can I push her to music?" Amy asks Ashley's aide.
The other girls chime in after her: "Can I push her back from music?" "Can I push her to recess?"
Mr. H's students have gotten used to Ashley. They take it in stride when she burps in the middle of class or spits out her Frusion smoothies during lunch. Today at recess, Amy skips along the blacktop as she races Ashley from one end to the other.
"One day, I just asked if I could push her, and I got into the habit," Amy says. She is the first to run over if Ashley is crying, the first to make sure she's not left alone during lunch. "She's nice, and she's not mean," Amy continues. "Today I talked to her about having her over because my basement is almost done, and it's gonna look really good."
Amy's mother, Sue Cardaro, didn't know the girls were in the same class until Amy came home one day chattering about how she pushed Ashley around in her wheelchair. Sue Cardaro had a flashback: Her older daughter had been in an elementary classroom next to a disabled boy who cried loudly the entire year, and her daughter often complained about the noise.
"My first thought was, 'Oh no, I hope it won't be like that,'" Cardaro says. "I was a little apprehensive about it, just not knowing Ashley, not knowing who she was, if she would be a distraction to the kids. But as time went on, I realized what a good thing it was. The kids love her . . . There's no reason she can't sit next to them in class and learn, too."
Ashley's last class of this day is a one-on-one speech therapy session with Carrie Bogart. Usually, she eats a snack before the lesson begins. Bogart opens a plastic cup of butterscotch pudding -- Ashley's favorite -- while asking what is normally a rhetorical question. "Do you want your pudding?"
Ashley darts her hand to a sign on the right side of her wheelchair tray that reads: "No."
Bogart is surprised. Ashley rarely says no -- she usually uses her left hand to point, and the "no" sign is a far reach for her. Bogart asks again to make sure.
"Do you want your pudding?"
No.
"Do you want your drink?"
Yes.
She hands Ashley her thermos, and she sucks it up thirstily. Bogart is still not completely convinced. She tries one last time.
"Are you ready for some butterscotch pudding?"
No.
Then, just for fun: "Can Ms. Carrie eat your pudding?"
No.
"No?"
No.
Kelly is not surprised when she hears about the pudding incident. When the kid says no, she means no.
There have been moments when Kelly could almost see the wheels turning inside Ashley's head. She knows they're there. The frustrating thing is that they don't always work.
If Ashley could be with someone like Bogart every day for an hour, one on one, maybe it would help grease the wheels. Maybe if she could have physical therapy every day, she could get all the way across the blacktop by herself. Maybe if the vision therapist didn't have to come at the end of the day when Ashley's sometimes so tired . . .
By law, Fulton Elementary must provide all the services that Ashley needs, and the staff works hard to keep Ashley engaged and her mom happy. But Ashley is just one of hundreds of students. Kelly acknowledges there is a trade-off in sending Ashley to Fulton instead of a special school like Cedar Lane, the county's repository of special education equipment and technology, with everything from a therapeutic swimming pool to gait trainers to help students walk. The entire staff is trained to handle children like Ashley. Resident specialists could tailor their schedules to accommodate Ashley's moods. If she was too tired to practice walking in the morning, she could try again in the afternoon. No one would have to explain that her crying spells are normal.
Ashley went to Cedar Lane for summer camp after second grade. Despite the school's technical advantages and expertise, Kelly felt something was missing: regular kids. Kelly is willing to give up Cedar Lane's advantages for moments like the time when Mr. H danced with Ashley onstage during the winter music concert. When a classmate brought her a twig from a wild cherry tree on a field trip to the Howard County Conservancy because Ashley's wheelchair couldn't make it up a hill. When Amy made sure Ashley got a Popsicle like everybody else after field day.
Kelly keeps Ashley at Fulton because she doesn't want to hide her. She wants Ashley to be part of normal life.
Kelly sent out invitations for Ashley's first-ever birthday party to all the kids in her class. She knew she could probably count on a couple of kids to show up -- Jared, Amy, the next-door neighbors. But there are nearly two dozen children in Ashley's class. How many friends did she really have?
The doorbell rings. The kids have begun to arrive -- Morgan and Alexis and Jasmine and Amy.
"Welcome to my party!" a voice says brightly when Ashley hits her switch.
The theme is Hawaiian. A green grass skirt adorns Ashley's wheelchair, and red and pink leis dangle from her neck. The girls oooh and aaah over the colors. They make kissing noises and bell sounds by Ashley's ear, and she laughs loudly.
More than a dozen children have come, some from her class, some from the neighborhood. The doorbell keeps ringing. Ashley is loving it. Her father, Rob, lifts her into his lap as he scooches next to the other children for a game of "hot coconut," a variation of hot potato.
The theme song from "Hawaii Five-O" starts it off.
"Ewww, it smells funny!" one kid says as he passes the coconut.
"It's kinda hairy."
"It scratched me!"
Ashley is out after a few rounds. She takes control of the music, turning it on and off using a big yellow switch. In between takes, she dangles her legs to the music as Rob bounces her to the beat of "Surfin' U.S.A."
"Go, Ashley!" Jared says. "She's dancing! Ha-ha, go, Ash!"
The kids are hyped up. They squeal during the next game, a limbo contest, as they back-bend underneath the broom handle that serves as a makeshift bar. It's becoming too much for Ashley. She starts to cry.
"Okay, guys, let's quiet down a little bit," Kelly says futilely. But it takes another hour and a hula hoop race outside before the kids are worn out. Ashley cries on and off until Kelly shepherds everyone inside for a quick bite of a cake decorated with a beach scene and palm trees. The children open their presents for Ashley (she gets a lot of CDs), and the doorbell starts ringing again. The parents have arrived to pick up their children.
Kelly hands out sports bottles painted with butterflies and fish and filled with candy and temporary tattoos until the last child leaves. She shuts the door with a thud.
"Whew," she says, as she settles on the carpet next to the window with Ashley in her lap. Ashley is quiet now, blinking slowly, nestled in her mother's arms. "That was a fun party, wasn't it?" she says half to Ashley, half to herself. "All your friends here . . ."
Chelsea rolls around on the carpet in discarded wrapping paper. The flamingo pink and kiwi green crepe paper hanging on the dining room walls has begun to sag. Bits of green plastic from Ashley's grass skirt litter the room.
"The grass skirt," Kelly says as she surveys the room, "was a disaster."
Third grade is over. The summer has whizzed by -- a trip to Maine and summer camp -- and soon Ashley is sitting back in a classroom at Fulton Elementary. Amy Hutchinson, wife of Mr. H and otherwise known as "Mrs. H," is her teacher this year. She's reading the same book her husband did on ways to use Ashley's switches.
The new room is arranged almost the same way as the old one, and Ashley is at her old post in the back corner, where there's plenty of space for her wheelchair. A banner decorated with planets hangs on one wall and reads: "4th grade is out of this world." This year, most students will work on writing in cursive. Ashley will work on feeding herself.
Most of the children in Ashley's class this year know her already. School administrators made sure a core group of kids moved up with her so that she wouldn't be lonely. Amy is back, a little taller but still wearing the same SpongeBob SquarePants T-shirt she had last year. Jared is back, too.
Mr. H is teaching fifth grade this year, which means that he could have Ashley in his class again next year. He says he'd like that. He's become a believer in inclusion.
"When I look at the progress that Ashley has made this year, I am amazed at how far she has come," he wrote on her final report card. "Ashley is a very determined girl . . . I think Ashley has enjoyed this year because she knows that we value her and she values us."
Ashley has gained a couple pounds over the summer. Her bones are growing faster than her muscles, making her fragile body even more brittle. Kelly doesn't know how big Ashley will get. She already uses the largest diapers she can order. Ashley has almost outgrown her car seat in the family minivan. Kelly's not sure where she'll find a bigger one.
The older Ashley gets, the wider the gap between her and the other students will become. When Amy begins quadratic equations, Ashley could still be trying to identify her numbers. While Jared tries out for varsity football, she could still be inching around in her walker. As the classroom focus shifts from basic skills to college prep, the Big Question will loom larger: Does Ashley belong in a regular school?
Cedar Lane is full of students for whom inclusion didn't work -- whose parents sent them to general education classes and then pulled them out when they reached middle school or high school.
"Elementary kids are just so much more . . . into the other kids," says Cedar Lane Principal Nicholas P. Girardi.
"As kids get older, groups form, just naturally. And unless there's somebody there who's consistently nurturing and pushing that social interaction, it stops happening."
Kelly is realistic. She won't rule out ever sending Ashley to Cedar Lane, but she hopes she won't have to. Beyond that, she is reluctant to look too much into the future. Questions about how Ashley would do in middle or high school inevitably raise a more painful question: What if Ashley doesn't live long enough to make it there?
On the first day of fourth grade, Ashley sits by herself with aide Kerisha Jones at the end of the lunch table. Amy and Jared are at the other end, scanning the sea of fourth-graders for their old friends and gossiping about the summer with new ones.
The children make a beeline for the door when it's time for recess. Mrs. H's class starts filing out the door before Jones can get Ashley's wheelchair in gear.
"Let's get behind Ashley," she tells the kids as they leave the cafeteria. "Behind Ashley. Wait, wait, wait."
Ylan Q. Mui covers education for The Post's Metro section. She will be fielding questions and comments about this article Monday at 1 p.m. on www.washingtonpost.com/liveonline.
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