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The Wake County school system has now paid out more than $1 million this year to settle complaints filed by families of special-education students who say their children’s rights have been violated.
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Last week, the Wake school board announced a $132,000 settlement in a state special-education lawsuit and a $125,000 settlement in a federal special-education lawsuit, A News & Observer analysis shows Wake has now paid $1.2 million to settle 10 special-education complaints this year and $2.5 million to settle 23 special-education cases since January 2025.
The district did not respond to requests for comment from The News & Observer.
But Wake has previously blamed factors such as the rise in students with specialized needs and staffing shortages for the increasing number of special-education settlements.
Details of special-education cases are normally hidden behind student privacy rules. But one of last week’s settlements involves Jessica Ryan, a former Wake special-education teacher who has publicly accused the district of denying her child his right under federal law to a free and appropriate public education.
Keith Howard, Ryan’s attorney, didn’t return multiple requests from The N&O for comment. But Ryan laid out her accusations against Wake in a January 2024 news article published by KFF Health News.
Ryan told KFF Health News that her son had suffered injuries from being physically restrained on multiple occasions by school employees. It got to the point that Ryan said her son, who has autism, no longer wanted to go to school.
“It is disgusting,” Ryan told KFF. “Our kids are being abused.”
Ryan laid out the accusations in a state lawsuit she and her husband filed in 2024. The couple accused Wake of violating their son’s rights when school staff physically restrained the child at Smith Elementary School in Raleigh on Oct. 25 2023. He was 10 and a fifth-grade student at the time.
According to court documents, Ryan’s son, listed as J.R. in the records, became upset when he didn’t go to a school assembly with his classmates. J.R. was restrained multiple times for short periods, alternating with him throwing objects such as chairs and a laptop computer and biting and hitting school employees.
“The use of physical force on October 25, 2023 was appropriate and proportionate to J.R.’s ‘risk behaviors’ towards others and [he] was not responsive to nonrestrictive interventions,” State Administrative Law Judge Stacey Bawtinhimer wrote in her September 2024 decision.
Bawtinhimer found that the family had failed to meet the burden of proof to show that the use of restraint had violated their son’s right to a free and appropriate public education.
Educators can restrain students and seclude them in another room for several reasons, such as stopping a fight or preventing injury to themselves or others. Court records show Ryan unsuccessfully asked Wake to agree not to physically restrain her son.
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Bawtinhimer said it was the family’s philosophical objections against the use of restraint that led them to pull their son out of the school system. The family moved him into a virtual program at a charter school.
Bawtinhimer dismissed several other parts of the family’s complaint. But the judge found for the family in other parts, including:
Based on Bawtinhimer’s decision, the family filed a federal lawsuit against Wake in January 2025 to try to recoup their attorney fees and costs. Wake announced last week it would settle the case for $125,000.
Details weren’t immediately available about the $132,000 settlement announced last week.
The settlements come at a time when North Carolina’s largest school system faces ongoing challenges trying to meet the needs of students with disabilities.
Special-education students account for 22,000 of Wake’s 160,000 public school children.
Wake reorganized its special-education services amid parental complaints, legal settlements and the arrests of several school employees charged with physically abusing students with disabilities.
A proposal earlier this year to eliminate 130 special-education teaching positions to save money drew a backlash from educators who said they already have large workloads. The protests caused school leaders to abandon the elimination of the positions.
Wake opened the school year with special education accounting for 40% of the district’s teaching vacancies and 70% of the instructional assistant vacancies.
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This story was originally published August 27, 2026 at 1:56 PM.