When the swim coach at West High School first approached Tora Frank to ask if her daughter wanted to join the team, Frank doubted it would be possible.
Her daughter, Asha Shukla, was a rising sophomore at West High who had taken swim lessons for years and competed at All City Swim, where she now holds records in the unified swim division. But Frank thought the high school team would exclude Shukla because she has Down syndrome.
“As a parent of a kid with a disability, you often don’t ask, because you know that if you get an answer that’s going to hurt, you still have to live with that school,” Frank said. She recalled thinking, “I’m not even going to push for this, because there’s no way … that it is going to happen.”…