Parents of children with special needs in California’s Central Valley are urging state lawmakers to require cameras in special education classrooms after allegations that teachers abused their children.
Support for the proposal is growing through online petitions, including more than 12,800 signatures from the Bakersfield City School District and over 2,700 from the Visalia Unified School District.
“I would never have assumed that was happening at the school,” Brittney Camacho, a mother of three, told EdSource.
Visalia police contacted Camacho in September 2025 to tell her that her children may have been physically abused by their teacher.
Police investigated Lacie Ann Horsting, a 34-year-old kindergarten teacher who taught all three of Camacho’s children, after receiving child abuse reports related to the 2024–25 school year.
The Tulare County District Attorney’s Office filed 10 misdemeanor child abuse charges in April. However, the case was dismissed after the one-year statute of limitations had expired.
Camacho’s children—two daughters, now nine years old, and a seven-year-old son—were among those identified in complaints reported to police.
One of her daughters has echolalia, a condition that causes her to repeat words or phrases spoken by others. Camacho’s other two children are nonverbal.
“Cameras are so, so important because these children don’t have a voice. From our experience, putting a child’s safety in the hands of adults’ word of mouth has failed our children,” she told the news outlet.
Ashley Hopwood, a mother of nonverbal children with special needs, created the Bakersfield petition. She said her “children, like many others, are unable to communicate if they are experiencing distress, discomfort, or harm in their school environment.”
Hopwood said parents are left anxious about what their children may experience in their absence, particularly as reports of abuse involving students with special needs continue to emerge.
“Without proper monitoring, children who are already vulnerable due to their disabilities are at a heightened risk for neglect or abuse,” she said. Hopwood added that classroom cameras could also help educators refine teaching strategies to meet each child’s needs.
A widespread requirement to install cameras in special education classrooms can only be enacted by the state Legislature as a 1976 California law prohibiting recording devices in classrooms without teacher and principal consent has been cited by the Bakersfield City School District as a potential obstacle.
The California Teachers Association (CTA) previously used this law to argue against mandatory live online instruction during remote learning, though CTA board member Angela Normand said the union has no official position on cameras in special education classrooms.
