Education and medical officials have known about dyslexia for more than a century. The term “dyslexia” was originally coined in 1887, and federal education law has mandated services for students with dyslexia since 1975.

But, apparently, officials in Lindsay missed the memo, according to parents who say their daughter received little to no real help as a student in the district.

Jonathan and Certaintee Brown say their oldest child, a daughter now in fifth grade, was diagnosed early in elementary school. But Jonanthan said the family had to fight the district, almost from the very beginning, to get appropriate services for the girl starting in second grade.

“They told us, multiple times, ‘Well, we just don’t have any dyslexia kids here,’” Jonathan said.

Certaintee noted one school official wrote that her daughter was “the first initial diagnosis that she’s ever had” at Lindsay.

From a mathematical standpoint, it is highly unlikely that Lindsay officials have not routinely encountered dyslexia prior to the Browns’ daughter being diagnosed.

According to the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity, dyslexia affects as much as 20 percent of the population and “is the most common of all neuro-cognitive disorders.”

Even if the rate in Lindsay is only one in 10, Jonathan noted that would equate to about 110 kids with some form of dyslexia in the district in a typical year.

While Lindsay eventually provided some services, the parents said the individuals providing those services were not properly trained.

“It was like whoever was available that day,” Jonathan said. “They didn’t have a program for a child with dyslexia. They were like, ‘This is what we give everybody.’”

And it appeared district officials put little effort into those services, Jonathan said. When the family obtained documents related to their daughter’s academic program, they found she had been advanced despite not having mastered content on multiple occasions.

In four of 18 lessons, the teacher had “accidentally misgraded” the assignment and advanced the Browns’ daughter.

“She actually never conquered any of the program, but they kept passing her through the program,” Jonathan said.

When the family took the girl to be evaluated by an independent expert, the results were jarring. After 20 months, the evaluation indicated the child was at almost the same place she started.

“It was like she had never had any dyslexia help or any of the services,” Certaintee said. 

“We basically wasted 18 months, 20 months of life, because we thought she was getting help and doing this program, but they weren’t grading it correctly,” Jonathan said.

The school not only wasted their daughter’s time, but also wasted the family’s money.

When their daughter was in pre-K, she also had to receive speech therapy. The school’s speech pathologist charged the couple for services provided on school grounds. But a state review concluded the family should not have been charged for those services, and the Lindsay school district had to repay the family more than $1,200.

“That’s how we got introduced to special education,” Jonathan said.

The couple has four children, two of whom have been diagnosed with dyslexia. A son, now in fourth grade, also has dyslexia. Over time, they said it became clear the needs of their children would not be met in the Lindsay district.

When the school agreed to conduct legally required Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings with the Brown family, they often delayed the meeting up to 45 days after the request, Jonathan said. Email responses from the school could take three weeks.

The Payne Education Center, which serves children with reading difficulties, offered a grant that would allow many services to be provided to the Browns’ daughter online at the Lindsay school district, but officials at the Lindsay school district turned it down, Jonathan said.

The family filed 15 to 18 state complaints and prevailed in about 75 percent of those cases, he said.

Even so, little changed, and officials at the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) eventually warned the Browns that they might have to take extreme steps.

“At one point, OSDE even called us and asked if we had ever considered leaving the district,” Jonathan said.

The family looked at open transfer, but that wasn’t viable because the family had to find a school with not just open slots for all four children, but also two special-education slots as part of the mix.

“There was just no way to find those slots open for everybody,” Jonathan said.

In the end, the family had to take drastic action to obtain a valid education for their children: They moved.

“We ended up buying a house in a different district and selling our house,” Jonathan said.

It was only when they moved into a new district that their daughter received the services she needed, the Browns said. Within a year, the daughter’s reading comprehension jumped from a first-grade level to a fourth-grade level. Today, in fifth grade, their daughter reads at grade level or above, reading “independently for the first time ever.”

Jonathan called it “crazy the world of difference you get because of your ZIP code” when it comes to a child’s education, even for services mandated by federal law.

“Different districts offer different things,” Brown said. “That’s just the gist of it. Your ZIP code matters, unfortunately.”

The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs emailed the superintendent of Lindsay, seeking comment for this article. No response was provided.

Jonathan said other families in Lindsay have heard about his family’s experience and reached out, saying they have experienced similar problems.

“They’re like, ‘We have a kid that’s in fifth grade that we’ve worked with. She’s reading on a kindergarten reading level,’” Jonathan said. “And I finally just told them, about two months ago, ‘You’re just going to have to leave. Lindsay does not care.’”