In the past years, education gurus from across the nation routinely visited the Henderson K-12 Inclusion School in Dorchester to observe and replicate the school’s successful model of integrating high-needs students alongside general education students.

But, according to parents of current and former students, no one would want to visit or bring back home any of what’s been going on at the Henderson Upper School over the last year. Although Boston Public Schools (BPS) says emphatically that the inclusion model is not being changed, several Henderson parents of high-needs students say that the once-successful school is slipping into chaos.

There have the well-documented acts of violence, particularly in the case of Principal Patricia Lampron, who is still recovering from injuries sustained when she was attacked, reportedly by a Henderson student, last fall.

Less well-publicized are the ongoing concerns of parents who feel that the once-heralded inclusion model is in jeopardy.

Carol Gracia’s daughter, a middle-schooler with a learning disability, has attended the Henderson in an inclusion model since kindergarten. Two months ago, the Dorchester mom was shocked to discover that school administrators are recommending that her daughter go to a different school next year.

“The Henderson is where my daughter should be if they are doing things properly,” she said. “I just think the mission has been lost this year and there are a lot of people in there who don’t know exactly how the school should be run. As invested parents, we need to get it back to how it was.”

BPS officials say the Henderson model is not being changed, but they are looking to expand it.

“Our commitment to our vision for inclusion remains unchanged and we stand by our belief that every student deserves and has a right to an education that meets their needs,” said BPS spokesperson Gabrielle Farrell. Administrators acknowledge that there has been high turnover with staffing and a learning curve for new personnel in understanding the vision for inclusion at the Henderson.

BPS has added positions, they say, so the school’s co-teaching model can expand into science and history classes at the middle school for the first time.

Her mother says that Gracia’s daughter has found great success at the Henderson learning alongside her general education peers. She has also found integration in the neighborhood with sports and other activities alongside her peers of all abilities, the mother added.

But next year, she said, the school would put her in a classroom separate from her peers and with less-functioning students; noting, they said, that the move would “boost her confidence” and let her be “top of the class.”

“That is what is infuriating to me because you have teachers that have been there and now it seems others are trying to change what people – like Bill Henderson – set in place,” said Carol Gracia. “The Henderson model has been broken this year. People who are involved in the school need to come together and get it back to…its original mission.”

That original mission is something that Dorchester’s Dianne Lescinskas knows a lot about. Her special needs daughter graduated from the Henderson K-12, and then continued going there until she was 22 in 2019.

“Inclusion was at the center of the Henderson and what it was supposed to be about,” she said. “That’s why we pushed so hard for inclusion because someone like my daughter that has different abilities can be successful…When I talk to people about inclusion and benefits of it, I use my daughter as an example, and I say my daughter is who she is because of the Henderson and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Dorchester.”

Lescinskas’s daughter now works two jobs and has found a level of success that likely could not have happened, she said, without the inclusion model, which has Lescinskas’s name all over it, as well as that of the many other parents who lobbied for years to set up an inclusive model in Dorchester.

Having seen it work at the old O’Hearn School on Dorchester Avenue under former Principal Bill Henderson in the 1990s and 2000s up to grade 5, they spent thousands of hours advocating for its expansion to grade 12. That happened in 2013-14 when the Henderson Innovation Plan was approved. It called for students of all abilities being educated side-by-side for their entire schooling years.

Lescinskas said she and other founders are really concerned now, particularly because the district has been assigning students to the school without an understanding of its mission. The model works best, they say, for students and families that are deliberate about choosing the Henderson.

“They don’t understand why they are sitting next to a kid with Down’s Syndrome and why they are there and what it’s all about,” she said. “If you grew up in that environment and if you make the decision as a family to go there, it’s a very different experience. If you’re put there and didn’t choose it, that’s when the problems happen.”

Lescinskas noted that children with serious disabilities or intellectual disabilities who attend the school are defenseless against a student who is violent or a bully. “The worst thing you can do is send troubled kids to an inclusion school,” she said.

BPS countered that they are pro-active about getting supports to students if they are not getting positive outcomes in the model, and there is a process that they follow.

Some of the needs that have manifested themselves have had implications on school safety. If after trying interventions, there is no improvement, the school team considers whether a different placement would better suit the student’s needs.

The schools indicated they have had recent instances when the school team and the parents have felt a different placement was in everyone’s best interests.

Parents and school founders would like to see BPS bring in a principal with inclusion experience who will vow to fulfill the school’s original mission. They would also like tosee more oversight from BPS over the school.

For long-time parents and students like the Gracias, they want to know if the mission is being changed – and if so – who made the decision.

“I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt, but I have to wonder who it was that decided, and how it was decided, that a child who has been through inclusion from the get-go needs to go into a sub-separate classroom at a different school,” said Gracia. “After Patricia Lampron got hurt, the school fell apart,” she said.