West Palm Beach, Florida – 2008, Alex Barton who has Asperger Syndrome was voted out of his class. He had been sent to the Principal’s office for disrupting the class and on his return the teacher asked the class to vote on whether he should be allowed to stay. The children decided to vote him out of class.
Tom Kastanotis for wptv.com reports that Wendy Portillo, his class teacher at the time, told a disciplinary hearing in 2009:
“I felt it was an opportunity just to show all my students there are consequences”
Today Alex is in the sixth grade at a regular school making the honor roll and his mother Melissa says that he wants to be a lawyer when he grows up.
The experience resulted in Melissa becoming director of the local chapter of Autism Speaks.
“It did develop something in me. It developed a passion to step up to be more than just a mother of a child with autism, but to be an advocate,”
The original report and video by Tom Kastanotis on the wptv.com website can be found here