For Kacey and Scott Burnett, the reality that their daughter Destri would face challenges is just a fact of life.

The child was born with Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome, a rare genetic condition that impedes growth. The girl, now 11 years old, weighs just 57 pounds and is only a little above three feet in height. Those with the syndrome have low muscle tone, making Destri’s ability to walk independently a significant accomplishment. She is largely nonverbal, with a current vocabulary of about 30 words, and also has routine seizures due to epilepsy. She was also born with a heart defect that ultimately required surgery.

What the couple didn’t anticipate was that their daughter would also face severe neglect at her local public school—including de facto starvation at the hands of school staff.

“If any of these things happened to my son, who is now a third grader in a typical classroom—that he was starving all day, that he was being made to sit down in his chair, strapped in all day, that he was being made fun of by his teachers, not feeling safe, being exposed and not given any privacy in a classroom—this would have been all over the media. Your school would be shut down—because my son could express how it made him feel,” Kacey said. “But because my daughter is not able to express, verbally, in that way, it’s discounted.”

Making things worse: A loophole in state law means individuals involved in the reported abuse remain able to work in any public school in Oklahoma, with one recently returning to Destri’s local school in Moore.

Now Kacey and her husband are urging lawmakers to close that loophole and provide greater protection to children across Oklahoma.

The Burnetts enrolled Destri in the Moore school district. All went well for a few years, but in 2021 the Burnetts learned their child was spending much of the day in physical restraints, as were other children with special needs.

When a school employee provided the family a photo, Kacey said it showed “the whole multiple-disabilities class, all in chairs, and they’re just lined up against the gym wall.”

“It wasn’t just my daughter, who can walk independently,” Kacey said. “There were several other kids in the class that were being, basically, strapped into a chair all day and being wheeled around the school.”

She placed an audio-recording device in her daughter’s backpack. The recordings soon demonstrated things were even worse than feared.

“In the audio recordings, we found out they weren’t feeding her,” Kacey said. “They were lying about her daily sheet. And we were sending food.”

The child lost weight. Because of her medical conditions, the weight loss compounded other challenges by, among other things, making her more prone to seizures.

Kacey had previously told school officials she would personally feed her daughter if needed. She was never asked to provide that assistance.

The recordings showed other troubling behavior by school staff.

“What I started hearing in the audio records was, basically, just bullying and verbal abuse,” Burnett said. “They made fun of the kids.”

The class included children ages seven to 13 with significant challenges.

The Burnetts eventually met with the Moore school administration and provided their evidence of abuse, and hired an attorney. The school conducted a two-week investigation. Ultimately, three of four school staff members who were responsible for Destri’s education were shifted to other schools in the district.

“What we didn’t know at the time is that state law says if you transfer someone, if you terminate someone, if someone quits willingly during an investigation, the investigation ends, so there’s no more information given,” Burnett said. “There’s no more punishment. Nothing. It just goes away. So that’s what happened.”

The next two years were much better, Kacey said, with new staff and additional services provided to children with special needs.

But at the end of the 2024-2025 school year, one of the paraprofessionals involved in the prior abuse was allowed to return to Destri’s school. The Burnetts promptly shifted their daughter to a homeschooling option offered through Moore, and eventually sought a transfer to a new district.

“We didn’t trust our daughter around her,” Kacey said.

When the Burnetts filed a complaint with the Oklahoma State Department of Education, they were told that state law does not allow any action to be taken since no charges were filed against the employees.

This year, lawmakers voted to partially close that loophole.

House Bill 1075, by state Rep. Derrick Hildebrant and state Sen. Ally Seifried, requires schools to submit to the State Board of Education the findings of any investigation into a teacher or superintendent accused of student abuse, even if the teacher resigns mid-investigation. Any investigative findings substantiating abuse claims will be kept part of a teacher’s state record and can be referenced by other school districts when doing background checks. The law takes effect on Nov. 1.

“I actually was working with some attorneys that had faced this loophole,” said Hildebrant, R-Catoosa. “They had gone to court and not been able to follow through with prosecution because the individual moved on, and the investigation was dropped. The school doesn’t want the stigma of ‘I’ve got a sexual predator in my school,’ and the predator just wants to get away.”

While the new law is beneficial, Kacey Burnett said it does not go far enough because it does not include support staff, such as paraprofessionals (or “paras”).

“They’re not tracking paras, and in our case, most of the sped (special education) classes are taught by paras that are emergency certified,” Burnett said.

As a result, she noted a paraprofessional can “do something blatantly wrong, be transferred to another school in the same district, work again as a para, and then go back to being a teacher.”

Those who work as special education paraprofessionals in Oklahoma schools do not have to have a college degree and can qualify by passing the ACT WorkKeys Assessment, which tests skills such as the ability to solve basic math problems with a calculator or read and understand charts.

Hildebrant agrees that more must be done.

As originally filed, Hildebrant said HB 1075 included school support personnel, but he was told that was too broad. To ensure the bill received a hearing, he amended it to address only teachers and administrators this year, but plans to take another run at the issue during the 2026 legislative session.

“My intent was to run the support staff this year, which would cover coaches and janitors and bus drivers and everybody else that doesn’t have a teaching certificate but works in the school,” Hildebrant said.

Former state Rep. Sherrie Conley, a Newcastle Republican who worked as a teacher and administrator prior to serving in the Oklahoma Legislature, has focused on the problem of school employees who abuse children.

Kacey Burnett reached out to Conley while dealing with her challenges in Moore, including the lack of reporting on allegations against support staff.

While staff in Moore were shuffled to other schools within the district, Conley said the situation is similar to occasions when other schools have allowed accused abusers to leave one district for employment at another.

“It’s very consistent with what we’re seeing with the ‘passing of the trash’ of sexual predators in schools,” Conley said. “They’re being allowed to resign and just move on to other schools.”

Moore schools sent a brief statement in response to a request for comment.

“While we disagree with the report as made to you, we are unable to speak about student matters and personnel matters,” a Moore spokesperson wrote. “In any instance involving students and staff, Moore Public Schools follows federal and state law, the Oklahoma State Department of Education Special Education Policies and Procedures, school board policy, and applicable rules.”

Conley said the system created by HB 1075 is beneficial but agrees support staff must be included.

Conley said she believes many school administrators fear bad press when abusers are identified, but when districts try to sweep abuse allegations under the rug she said it almost guarantees the problem will reoccur because that makes the school a place where predators will “flock.”

“There’s some schools that have a history of bad actors, and I believe that’s because they had just continued to cover those things up and hide it,” Conley said.

Kacey Burnett said she believes all school employees should be held to the same standards as other professionals.

“I’m a registered nurse,” Kacey said. “We have to go through training every single year on restraint and seclusion because in most states, but especially in Oklahoma, it is illegal to seclude a person, a child, put them somewhere secluded, or to restrain them without a doctor’s note. Even if they’re self-harming, even if they’re hurting you, you cannot do it. I mean, I would lose my nursing license.”

 

NOTE: This story has been updated since publication to include a comment from Moore Public Schools. A request for comment was sent to the district more than three days prior to initial publication, but Moore did not respond until the story was published.