Utah School That Left Special Needs Kids Out of Yearbook Will Add Special Insert for Them

For weeks, Amber Bailey, a special needs student at Blue Peak High School in Tooele, Utah, had looked forward to the year-end ritual of getting her new yearbook and searching for her picture among the school's nearly 100 students.

"She's had a yearbook every year that she's been in school, going back to kindergarten," says her mother, Leslee Bailey, 58, of Grantsville, Utah.

"It's one of her favorite days all year," she says. "Sometimes, she'll even go through and color everybody's picture on the pages."

But this year for Amber was different.

When the 21-year-old, who has Down syndrome, came home from her life skills classes at Blue Peak's Community Learning Center on May 14 and Leslee asked to see her yearbook photo, Amber replied, "I'm not in it."

"She was so sad that I wanted to cry, but I couldn't because I was so angry," Leslee Bailey tells PEOPLE. "Why weren't she and any of the other 16 special-needs students included?"

Bailey, a single mom who works as a job placement specialist and also has two grown sons, called Amber's school and was told there weren't enough pages to include the 18-to-22-year-old special needs students.

To read more on this story, click here: Utah School That Left Special Needs Kids Out of Yearbook Will Add Special Insert for Them

To read Blue Peak High School’s press release, click here: PRESSRELEASE: For Immediate Release