Lyda Astrove said she was stunned when she heard a school board member from Maryland utter a word that she and many others consider a slur against people with intellectual disabilities. In recent days, reactions like hers have touched off calls for an apology from Montgomery County School Board member Judy Docca, who serves as the board’s vice president. “I have to apologize to my colleagues and to staff for using a term that I should not have used in July,” she said as the school board met. Docca had made the statement at a July swearing-in ceremony for a student board member, Matthew Post. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ford said, the organization began to see a “very, very strong push” by people with intellectual disabilities in the group, who didn’t want the word used.

Source: Washington Post November 14, 2017 23:48 UTC