ALTAMONT — The sun is bright though the air is chill on Monday morning as kids in Amy Martin’s fourth-grade class cavort during recess outside Altamont Elementary School.

In a playground game, two girls cross their arms over their chests as a classmate, Michael Puzio, approaches.

“Michael, can you free me?” asks one.

“I’m still in prison — set me free!” exclaims the other.

Michael taps them lightly, and off they fly.

Outside of playground games, in the real world of school, Michael’s classmates have set him free.

“Michael’s part of our class no matter what he looks like,” says fourth-grader Paige Harrison.

Michael is a wisp of a boy with intelligent brown eyes ringed with long lashes. He has cerebral palsy. When he is not in his wheelchair, he wears a protective helmet and walks as if he’s balancing on his toes.

Michael runs with his classmates as they play on the grassy grounds outside the school. A wide smile slashes across his face as he tags a girl.

“He’s sneaky at tag,” says a classmate.

Once, he falls and several kids cluster around him, offering him a hand up. In a flash, he’s back in the game.

“Sometimes it’s more fun to play with Michael than anyone else,” says another classmate, Clare Duerr. “He’s more energetic.”

“We all have differences,” says fourth-grader Ian Shaffer. “Mike thinks the same and learns the same...He’s a regular person.”

“If Mike did not have that one difference, he’d be just like me,” says Angelo Castro.

“He plays the same things as us,” agrees Kristian Rogotzke. “He sometimes has different ways, unique ways.”

Michael enters this discussion with his classmates by using a device with 60 buttons, each with a different picture or symbol. He presses on the buttons and a synthesized man’s voice speaks for him. Michael’s classmates lean attentively forward to hear what will come out of the device that they have named “Bobio” — the name, they explain, is a combination of “Bob” and “Mario,” cartoon and game characters.

“All people,” the voice says as Michael laboriously pushes the buttons, “are the same.”

“We had to think differently”

When Michael first arrived as a student at Altamont Elementary School, he was placed in a self-contained classroom for the most severely disabled students. “He came in in a stroller. We didn’t even know he could walk at first,” said Peter Brabant, Altamont’s principal.

Michael’s teachers observed how bright he is, Brabant said, and pushed to have him moved to a less restrictive setting. Michael was transferred to a self-contained classroom at Lynnwood Elementary School, which had a general-education curriculum, Brabant said. The staff there realized “he needed more,” said Brabant, and so, last year, in a move Brabant termed “teacher-driven,” Michael was placed in a regular third-grade classroom at Altamont Elementary School.

“A bright and funny young man” is how Annemarie Farrell, Michael’s third-grade teacher last year, described him.

“It did not go well,” said Farrell of Michael’s time in a self-contained classroom with other students who had disabilities. But, she said, educators at Lynnwood “had the courage to step back and see his behaviors were his attempt to tell us something.”

“We had to think differently,” Farrell told the school board last Tuesday in a presentation on inclusion.

The courage came, she said, with the decision not to keep Michael in a self-contained program, not to send him out of district, but “to free him” by bringing him into a general-education setting.

Farrell spoke of the eight different professionals — including a social worker, a speech pathologist, a tech expert, and a one-on-one aid — that helped Michael succeed in her general-education classroom.

The first day of school last year, without Michael there, Farrell talked to her other 24 third-grade students to prepare them for the wheelchair he used, the helmet he wore, and the device he used to communicate.

“The children in my class saw him as one of them,” said Farrell. “He charmed us with his big smile…We were continually surprised by him…I learned to never underestimate.”

When disruptive outbursts occurred, she said, she made sure everyone was safe in the moment. As Michael learned to move with the faster-paced learning in the classroom, he began to cope better with the range of emotions he felt.

The educators helping Michael would check in with each other every day, sometimes several times a day, said Farrell.

She concluded, “It is not like a single mountain climb to reach the top and be done but more like a high-peaks challenge. You’re never really done.”

“Not stuck in a corner”

“It’s a lot of work and a lot of people…involving a lot of thinking, planning, and resources,” said Brabant.

Asked about the resources to provide similar services to other students — Altamont has two self-contained classrooms with a total of 16 students — Brabant said, “You start with your belief system. It hasn’t been as much about the resources as the people doing it, believing in it.”

“Some of the best things have been his reactions to certain events or things that will happen,” Brabant told The Enterprise. “He shows such intense positive appreciation.”

Brabant gave an example of his classmates singing “Happy Birthday” to him. “His eyes welled up with appreciation,” Brabant recalled. “The other best thing, selfishly, is how it makes us feel good about our jobs.”

Laura Puzio, Michael’s mother, said his schooling at Altamont Elementary is “going very well…He’s doing a lot better,” she said.

Gregory Puzio, Michael’s father, said, “There were issues at Lynnwood. Altamont Elementary has been a wonderful experience. It’s been a team effort. Mr. Brabant came to our house when Michael was not behaving to try to turn it around…He’s learning now, if he can’t act up at home when things aren’t going OK, he can’t do it at school either.

“Mr. Brabant has turned things around for Michael. Cognitively, he’s there….Being included, integrated, he’s got friends without disabilities. Other kids include him with games and what they’re doing, so he’s not stuck in a corner.”

Michael just turned 10. He has a younger brother, Nathaniel, who just turned 4. “And we just found out my wife is pregnant again,” said Mr. Puzio.

Mr. Puzio had formerly worked in Nassau, making driveway sealer, which was quite a commute from their Guilderland home. He now works for the postal service, processing in Albany, during a shift that lasts from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

“Michael was used to me getting him up in the morning and tucking him in bed at night,” said Mr. Puzio. With his new shift though, Mr. Puzio is home in the afternoons, when Michael gets home from school.

Michael liked playing a Jambox for his music teacher. “He’s getting frustrated with math,” his father said. “He likes reading and creative writing. He writes every day.”

Mr. Puzio concluded of his son’s schooling, “Michael has taken it to heart. It’s a work in progress.”

Asked what he likes best about his school, Michael said this: “Being with my friends.”