I'm a special ed teacher myself. Ignoring emails for several days if definitely against policy. If I had a student emailing me hw, and my printer was down, I have other options...ie: forward it to a colleague to print, send to another printer, print at home if need be. Also...all copies emailed to me would still be in my inbox somewhere; did she delete them all? She could grade them from the inbox as a worst case scenario.
Maryland makes an excellent point.
This situation does have the flavor of "special ed kids are too much work," perhaps compounded with "it's close to the end of the year so I can get away with this." I'm appalled.
ABQ, since it matters to your son, my feeling is that it's worth the effort to work on this. I would see it as a moment for him to see in action the life lesson that you sometimes have to politely and firmly argue for what's right-- because this isn't the last time his civil rights are likely to be violated.
Maybe you could let him see and understand the process, and make it a way for him to learn how to politely advocate for himself? (This time with you leading, but eventually he'll be doing it for himself.)
DeeDee
