LEWISTON — In an emotional request that was rejected, Auburn parent Megan Parks asked the Lewiston School Committee to allow her special-needs son to attend Geiger Elementary School this fall.

Parks was told the decision rested with Superintendent Bill Webster, not the committee. And Webster said there was no room at Geiger.

Parks explained her son went to Geiger last year.

“We’ve worked extremely hard to get him where he is,” she said. “At the beginning of the year, my son would hide under his bed and cry. We’d get him to school and he’d hide in a corner. If other children talked to him, he would hiss and growl at them.”

Intense work improved his behavior, she said. Moving to a different school would set him back severely, Parks said. He has an inability to adjust to any kind of change.

“It’s detrimental to him, not just academically, but his entire well-being,” she said.

After moving from Lewiston to Auburn, she applied for out-of-district placement in Lewiston and was denied by Webster.

Parks appealed to the Maine Commissioner of Education, who ruled her son could attend school in Lewiston, but the commissioner could not dictate which school.

Webster told committee members Monday night said he understood Parks was advocating for her son, but he turned her down at Geiger because the school was overcrowded. He told her the student could attend McMahon, Montello or Longley.

“I’m holding firm of not adding more students to Geiger,” Webster said. “Many classrooms have 28 students.”

More students who live in the area will likely show up and register between now and when school begins. He has also turned down nine other families who live in Lewiston and asked to go to Geiger, Webster said.

The only way for her son to go to Geiger is for the family to live in that neighborhood, he said.

Parks told the Sun Journal her family last year lived in that neighborhood, renting a house they planned to buy, but there were problems with the property which prompted them to move to Auburn.