Ann Gaydos is suing the district for unspecified compensatory damages based on incidents she says occurred in the 2000­2001 school year. Gaydos says her daughter, Paige, was subject to physical abuse causing injury at the hands of Karen Miller, who is no longer in the area.

Paige is now enrolled in a private school in Palo Alto, and Ann Gaydos successfully sued the Cupertino district earlier for the $58,000 private school tuition.

Gaydos has filed a second lawsuit against the district, Superintendent William Bragg, Principal Liz Adams and Miller for physical mistreatment and neglect. She says her attorney advised her that such charges would be better addressed in a separate suit so that Paige would be able to enter the Palo Alto class without delay.

Other parents have also accused Miller of similar abuse with their special needs children, and another family is considering filing a lawsuit.

According to Richard Taylor, the district's director of special education, special education teachers are legally allowed to use physical restraint. All of the special education teachers receive training in the proper techniques, he said.

However, teachers are strongly encouraged to use other means of discipline. "Restraint is a last resort," Taylor says, "and only utilized when a student's safety is at risk."

But Gaydos says she wrote to the district, requesting no physical restraint be used on her daughter, after a series of incidents between Miller and Paige that started in March 2001.

Paige enrolled in Miller's special education class at Eisenhower Elementary School in fall 2000. Starting the following spring, Gaydos says, her daughter returned home from her special education classes at Eisenhower and summer courses at Dilworth bruised and scuffed. On one occasion, Paige had a burrito rubbed in her face and hair; Gaydos says Miller later acknowledged and apologized for the incident. Gaydos also alleges Miller tipped her daughter over on a chair and tripped her.

Gaydos took her daughter to a regular neuropsychological appointment in 2002. The psychologist, Dr. Lynda Heiden, later wrote a statement in which she said Miller tripped Paige as a form of restraint, and that Paige sustained a lump and an abrasion.

An attorney representing the district did write Gaydos in June 2003. "We have been asked to review the substance of your correspondence," wrote Jonathan Pearl, on behalf of the district, "but at this time there seems to be no justification to revive issues that were thoroughly addressed and resolved years ago."

Although district administrators and staff could not comment due to the pending lawsuit, their attorney, Mark Davis, disputes the allegations. "The principal examined [Paige Gaydos] and saw no sign of injury," he says. "There was never any injury where medical treatment was sought. Nothing the teacher did caused them to see a doctor."

While no doctor treated Paul Naleid's daughter in 1999, Naleid says he had a behavior specialist observe Miller's classroom and write a report after his daughter came home one day with a bruise on her chin.

Shortly after, Lisa Cohen's son Doron joined Miller's class. Cohen says Miller put Doron in timeout for 19 consecutive school days without food or water. "He was deprived of getting an education," she says. Doron also allegedly had his face pushed into the carpet and sustained rug burns.

According to Cohen, on one occasion Miller sat on her son and held his mouth shut so he wouldn't scream. "She humiliated him in front of the school," she says of another incident, where Miller walked Doron to the bus with his hands held behind his back.

Cohen, a former special education teacher's aide in the district, says, "Special education teachers are allowed to restrain students ... But they end up using illegal and improper restraint techniques."

Parivash Rezvani was Miller's aide, and began voicing complaints about Miller's treatment of students in the 2000­2001 school year.

According to an email to the district's board of education dated May 28, 2003, Rezvani wrote, "After seeing her mistreating one of the students, I decided to intervene ... I reported her actions to Principal Liz Adams, as it was her job to protect the safety and well-being of staff. She was not receptive and didn't help. I continued to report her every incident without any result."

Rezvani subsequently resigned from the position, after enduring what she wrote were "four long months of false accusations, personal attacks and threat of sending me in front of the board of education to be fired."

But Davis, attorney to the district, says, "Rezvani was not forced to resign. Any decision was based on her performance."

Doron Cohen now attends the same Palo Alto school as Paige Gaydos--with the Cupertino district paying his tuition as well--and his mother says she is considering filing a lawsuit against the district.

Paul Naleid has moved his family to Oregon. "I'm saddened the school district turned its back on the whole thing," he says. "They have chosen to bury the other side of this. They didn't blame the teacher; they blamed the kid."

Miller voluntarily resigned from the district in October 2002. She is now teaching in Clearlake, Calif.

Gaydos filed her lawsuit in August 2003. The case is scheduled to go before the Northern California branch of the U.S. District Court early next year.