Parents and concerned community members are planning a protest of a Cracker Barrel in suburban Maryland after they said special-needs children were refused service and treated rudely while on a field trip there. Meanwhile, a representative from the company plans to meet with parents on Monday evening to address the incident.
Charles County Public Schools Superintendent Maria V. Navarro released a statement in which she said she was “disheartened” by the way students enrolled in a program for autistic students were treated during a Dec. 3 outing to the chain’s Waldorf, Maryland, location. She said Cracker Barrel staff turned away the group of 11 students and seven staffers, who were at the restaurant as part of a curriculum in which students practice skills in community settings. “The alleged treatment of CCPS students and staff at Cracker Barrel is one that no one should experience,” Navarro wrote.
Cracker Barrel called the incident “unacceptable” and apologized in a statement from a national representative. But Cracker Barrel blamed it on logistical failures, saying the restaurant had encountered “unexpected staffing issues” and had closed a portion of its dining room. “Our missteps last week were unfortunate but were unrelated to the students’ capabilities,” the statement read. “Our failure to follow certain operational protocols combined with poor communication on our part then led to misunderstandings and misperceptions.” The students and teachers “were, are, and always will be welcome to dine with us,” the statement said.
Navarro said teachers had contacted the restaurant ahead of time and told them the purpose of the trip and the size of the party, but she said the restaurant told them no reservations were needed.
The parents of several children on the field trip expressed disappointment on social media and in interviews.
Kisa Lee, whose son is in second grade at Dr. James Craik Elementary School in Pomfret, said in an interview that her son, who is autistic, and his classmates were looking forward to last week’s outing, in which they went to a Dollar Tree to buy presents for their families and then planned to go to Cracker Barrel for their favorite food, fries. On these trips, she said, the students practice navigating settings that might be louder or less predictable than their classrooms and learn such things as how to stand in line, how to place an order and how to pay.
She said she was “heartbroken” when she learned how the day had ended. She said she has never experienced something like that but has always known it could happen. “With children with autism, they sometimes have atypical behavior, like meltdowns or panic, and so you’ll see people react, mostly stares or wondering what’s going on,” Lee said. “You’re prepared that one day they going to be discriminated against, but not so young and in a classroom kind of setting.”
A letter to parents from a teacher who was on the trip began circulating online, drawing more attention. The letter detailed how the staff members offered to split the group into smaller tables to make it easier to seat. The group was then told to wait, the teacher’s letter said. “During this time, the servers were very rude to our staff and ignored all of our students,” he wrote. Ultimately, the manager told the staff that they should remove Cracker Barrel as an approved destination for community outings for the students, the teacher wrote, because “we don’t accommodate this type of group.”
Eventually, the group got takeout orders after waiting more than an hour, the teacher wrote.
One parent, Dustin Reed, posted on Facebook about a protest scheduled for Dec. 15 at the Waldorf Cracker Barrel. “Thank you all for the support, and we hope to see as many of you there,” he wrote. Dozens of people, some who said they had disabled children in their families, responded to his post, promising to attend.
“My mind and heart are torn between crying and wanting to set the world on fire,” wrote one woman on Facebook whom local news identified as Stacey Campbell, whose autistic, nonspeaking child attends the program involved. “Our babies don’t deserve this. These trips are done to help our babies become comfortable with uneasy environments.”
Lee plans to attend the meeting Monday night with the Cracker Barrel representative, hoping to ask why the restaurant staff weren’t more polite – even if they were having a staffing shortage. She studied hospitality and worked in hotels, she said. “When you can’t accommodate someone in a service setting, you try to do what you can, but they didn’t – there was no acknowledgment of these kids, who spent an hour waiting for fries and grilled cheese,” she said, noting that autistic kids can have a particularly hard time settling down. “The lack of empathy in that situation is what broke me.”
And no matter what happens at the meeting, Lee also plans to attend the protest, which she hopes will draw wider attention: “The protest is letting people in the community know that this is what happened.”
Others in the community have chimed in with support for the children and parents and concern about the company. The local NAACP chapter released a statement saying it was “deeply troubled” by the incident, which it alleged was a violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act. The organization said it sided with the Charles County Public Schools “in advocating for answers and urging Cracker Barrel to take immediate steps to correct including training in disability awareness and partnering with CCPS to become a work-based learning site.”
Navarro, as well as the NAACP chapter, said many retailers and restaurants in the community have offered to welcome students on similar trips, and Navarro said she hopes Cracker Barrel will take up the schools’ offer to help train restaurant staff. “It is encouraging to learn that the district manager said the business would be willing to work with CCPS to do better,” she wrote.
