This School for Autistic Youth Can Cost $573,200 a Year. It Operates With Little Oversight, and Students Have Suffered.
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From the first months that Brett Ashinoff was at Shrub Oak International School in New York, his parents felt uneasy about the residential school for students with autism.
They worried that Brett, who already was thin, was losing weight. They said his nails weren’t getting cut. He would refuse to get into the car to return to Shrub Oak after visits home, sitting for hours on the porch until his father coaxed him into the vehicle.
His parents’ concerns, documented in email exchanges with school administrators, began soon after he started in April 2022 and grew over time. Brett’s speech therapy was reduced because of limited staff. He wasn’t given his medication for at least five days in a row. “Kindly accept our sincerest apologies,” Lauren Koffler, a member of the family that operates the school, wrote in an email to Brett’s mother about the medication. She said an error with the pharmacy was responsible for the lapse.
Then came a series of confrontations with overnight staff in February 2023. Brett, his parents said, had never been physically restrained at a school before going to Shrub Oak. But employees restrained the 18-year-old, who weighed 95 pounds, at least three times one week after he became aggressive with them. One of those nights, several employees took him to a padded room and held him down on the floor. He sustained injuries, including a cut on his leg, according to emails between the school and his parents.
