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Michael Kelly is a high school student at Wichita East High School who has Downs syndrome and autism. As an extra-curricular activity, Michael plays basketball with other special needs students and his mother, Jolinda Kelly, bought him an official varsity letter to wear at school.
Nothing wrong here, right?
Apparently, there was something wrong as Michael was told by school officials to take off his jacket and put on a sweater instead. According to Jolinda, the school told her that some (obviously terrible) parent saw Michael wearing a varsity letter and was troubled by it because he isn’t on the varsity team.
“Another parent, from what I am told, was upset that my son was wearing his letter jacket.”
Ok, well it’s one thing for a parent to have an awful opinion. After all, people have dumb opinions all the time. Surely, a school’s administration could come together and see how absurd it was initially being about the whole thing.
Well…
When principal Ken Thiessen was asked whether they would turn over their decision, he said, “We have considered it, and our decision was no. We decided that is not appropriate in our situation because it is not a varsity level competition.”
This decision is made all the worst by the fact that there’s no district-wide policy prohibiting special needs kids from wearing a varsity letter which means that this was a decision that the school made on its own without being hindered by any district regulations. Sometimes, people just suck.
About Ryan Wong