My friend Bonnie is an amazing special education teacher. She was injured by a student last September leaving her with a traumatic brain injury. She is still undergoing treatment and may never again be able to teach. The district fired her while she was at home recovering and she is now unemployed and disabled but doesn’t qualify to receive benefits from SDI, UI, CALSTRS or SS.
She is no longer receiving Workers Comp payments because she became unemployed in June.
She is a single mom of two teen daughters. She has lost her livelihood, her career, salary and security and is trying to focus on her healing and has a long road to recovery.
She will be unable to work until she is released by her doctor but since she isn’t “able to work” she doesn’t qualify for unemployment.
It has been a challenging time for her over the last 11 months and she still has many challenging months ahead of her.
Please help in supporting her through this terrible time. She would like to donate a percentage to families who have kids with special needs.
Public schools need to have much better support systems in place and be “set up” to successfully teach this population. Classrooms for students with special needs have to be equipped with the proper materials, space, curriculum and support.
Thanks so much for reading and please SHARE her story.
Former special ed teacher is diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury after being head butted by a student. While she was on workers Comp, the district laid her off and chose to not hire her for this fall because she is still injured but is now not receiving any kind of benefits WC stopped when last school year ended, can’t qualify for UI because she is temporarily disabled, doesn’t qualify for disability because her district uses a private insurance that she supposedly wasn’t signed up for and she was recently denied social security benefits.
Not only is she fighting to recover but has the added stress of a huge financial burden that she has no control of.
