This post was updated July 20 at 7:20 p.m.
I was kicked out of a private Catholic school for having ADHD.
The Unruh Civil Rights Act, originally meant to protect students with disabilities and their accommodations in private schools by labeling them as businesses, uses vague language to identify religious schools covered under the act.
Religious schools are covered under the Unruh Act based on how often they teach religious doctrine or the extent to which enrollment is limited based on students’ religion.
The Unruh Act only applies to business establishments, meaning that private religious schools in California may not be covered if their primary functions are religious and they do not operate commercially. In such cases, the law does not require these schools to offer student accommodations, and they may legally deny them based on religious doctrine.
I remember sitting in my small kindergarten classroom, often with a stamp on my hand, meaning I was in trouble. I could never quite understand why.
My peers escaped the classroom for their parents’ cars. Meanwhile, I waited quietly to be admonished while gazing at the floor in quiet shame, swinging my little legs, unable to hold still.
After my first year of kindergarten, I was diagnosed with ADHD, and the principal and vice principal of St. James Catholic School asked my mother that I not return for first grade the following year.
These nuns didn’t want to deal with me, nor could they find the kindness in their Christian hearts to accommodate me. So, I went to public school instead.
From a young age, I knew my ADHD was why I could not return to my friends at St. James Catholic School, where my older brother completed most of his K-8 education. He was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, so I was the anomaly in my family for years, with an official diagnosis seemingly stunting my access to private school education.
My diagnosis made me feel different and inferior, adding salt to the wound of my self-hatred. Getting kicked out of kindergarten marked the infancy of a snowball of insecurity that grew over time.
I was never enough.
My ADHD was a weapon that ripped open my academic fragility. Even worse, I began to lean on my ADHD as a crutch when I failed. Though my accommodations in public school helped, nothing was a direct cure.
Nothing eased my feelings of worthlessness.
I prayed desperately to be normal, to be able to concentrate without medication for more than an hour. Everything in school frustrated me – even the subjects I enjoyed – since the constant noise in my brain never went away.
I was trying to align myself with a standard that did not allow failure to be a learning tool but instead acted as an oppressive grading system of self-worth.
Nothing changes all at once, especially in terms of self-acceptance. There is no easy linear ending for this story, and I assume I will be working on my self-worth in terms of my diagnosis for an innumerable number of years.
But, eventually, things got better.
As I began college, I pushed myself to take the subjects I loved, and eventually transferred to UCLA, my dream school. This achievement was undeniable and something I had been working toward for years.
The acceptance email was the ultimate form of validation: actual, physical proof of my capabilities. Again, I pushed myself in my classes at UCLA and found community and friendship here.
Things, however, did not get better for the nuns. They got their karma years later.
My former principal, who had taken a vow of poverty as a nun, was revealed to have been embezzling school tuition for 10 years to pay off her trips to Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe, alongside some other credit expenses.
The final figure amounted to over $835,000. My former principal was ultimately sentenced to 12 months and one day in federal prison.
Unfortunately, my experience of being neglected by the private religious school system is not unique. It is built into the vague language of California laws, like the Unruh Act, which could be doing so much more to prevent discrimination against students with accommodations.
Students with disabilities should not be barred from education on the basis of their mental or physical disabilities. This only negatively influences such students’ longterm self-esteem. I know that it affected mine.
If only I had known back in kindergarten at St. James Catholic School that my biggest sin was not my ADHD — it was not realizing my innate worth and capability all along.
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