'We Begged To Stay:' Student Speaks On Hillsborough Prom Ejection

HILLSBOROUGH, NJ — Emily Valentino and Lily Doyle have been friends since they were very young. Valentino never thought of Doyle as being different from anyone else she knew, but as they grew older, Valentino began to realize Doyle had special needs. It didn’t change their friendship, though.

“She goes through the same things all kids go through,” Valentino, a senior at Newton High School, said of her longtime friend.

But on her prom night, Doyle and the group of friends she was with were singled out. Doyle was among a group of special needs students forced to leave the Hillsborough High School prom early on May 17. As her guest for the night, Valentino experienced what her best friend and the other special needs students were going through firsthand.

“At 10:40, three kids were pulled off the dance floor,” Valentino said. “We begged to stay. One of the aides said we could stay. We ended up watching the king and queen through the doors, crying and protesting.”

The adult aides who were paid to supervise the prom — Valentino said there were two she could remember — told a group of seven students to leave the prom before the 11 p.m. curfew, despite the school's mandate that no one was to leave early.

Valentino said that after 10 p.m., the aides told them to get ready for their last dance because they had to leave in 30 minutes. Valentino said she initially dismissed the comment because she thought the aides had gotten something wrong.

The prom ran from 7 p.m. to 11:30 p.m., and the earliest dismissal time should have been 11 p.m., administrators said. Limousines were not supposed to arrive before 11:15 p.m.

The limo for the students involved in this situation was to arrive at 11 p.m. According to the Hillsborough Public School District, which has apologized to the students and families involved, this is done so that students with special needs could leave 15 minutes early to "avoid the crush of the majority of other prom party-goers, most of whom choose to leave at 11 p.m."

The students, which included nine special needs students and two guests, in this case were forced to leave at 10:40 p.m. Valentino said she knew their parents hadn’t arranged for them to be picked up at that time, despite the aides’ insistence that they had.
“But you don’t argue with adults,” Valentino said. “We went home and told our parents what happened. The adults were outraged.”

After parents spoke out to the school district, to the town and in a post on Hillsborough Patch, the district launched an investigation.

"That thorough and extensive investigation included interviews with numerous individuals, including staff, students, parents, and third-party service providers who witnessed or were part of the interactions in question from that evening, as well as a review of correspondence from the parents of various students, the Child Study Team, and the instructional assistants," according to the district.

District administrators said they learned that some parents of students with disabilities did ask for an early dismissal from the prom, which was held at the East Brunswick Hilton Hotel. However, Valentino said only one student asked to be picked up that early.

“He didn’t come with us,” Valentino said. “He wasn’t in our limo, he wasn’t with us, and his parents came and picked him up.”

It might have been an innocent misunderstanding, but Valentino said there were ways it could’ve been avoided.

“If there was confusion, they could’ve just called our parents,” Valentino said. “One girl in our group tried to show them a text from our parents, but they ignored it.”

Deborah Myers’s son Luke was among the group that was dismissed. She said the district had the parents’ phone numbers on the permission slips and could have easily been in touch with them. She said there was no contact, though.

“Luke was sad the prom ended that way, and he’s still processing what happened,” Myers said.

The district apologized in a letter and said it is taking steps to ensure nothing similar will ever happen again, although it was not permitted to specify what actions it was taking. The parents are in agreement that more transparency is needed in this process.

“Apologies are important and I hope the district is sincere, but we haven’t seen any action,” Doyle’s mother Katherine Trusky said.

Trusky said no families have been contacted individually, and that the district has shown a continued lack of accountability and transparency. The only apology they received came in the form of the letter sent out by the district. Lily Doyle’s father, Ken, said he would like to see an in-person apology, training and an assurance that this would never happen again.

“Everything is hard for them as it is,” Myers said. “ … They don’t get to ride bikes like the other kids. They don’t get invited to things, and they don’t know why they were singled out.”

Myers said the district needs to have more inclusive events. Anything her son participates in has been arranged by his parents.

Valentino has been inspired by her friendship with Doyle to take an interest in special needs children in her own school, Newton High School. She helps out with the special needs track and field team and wants to pursue a career as a special needs teacher. She sees the way special needs children are treated by some of their peers and believes everyone should be treated equally.

The students’ parents feel the same way. There’s nothing that can be done to change what happened, but things can change for the future, and Ken Doyle said they will not let this issue go.

“Their words will never be enough to make up for the humiliation they endured,” Trusky said. “I’m not painting everyone in the district with one brush stroke. I want to hold the individuals responsible and see how the district moves forward from this.”

Read more here: Special Needs Students Forced From Hillsborough Prom, Parents Say