The two Alexes, Azar and Duarte, are smart 10-year-olds who have been friends since they met in karate class. They used to sit next to each other at Lincoln’s Central Elementary School, but they don’t anymore. Alex Azar isn’t in school.

“He was someone to talk to so I wouldn’t be bored all the time,” says Alex Duarte.

In some ways, Alex Duarte is just what the doctor ordered for Alex Azar. Azar has Asperger Syndrome, and being engaged and focused helps him function at the highest possible level. A good friend is often the best therapy.

Alex Azar is tutored at home now and taught by his mother, Pam, a middle school teacher who thinks her son is not getting what he needs from the system she works for.

It is an educational tangle. It is two bright kids and their mothers trying to convince the Lincoln School Department that the boys’ education would be far better in a different classroom. It has raised the question of how much influence, if any, parents should have in determining how their children are assigned within the schools.

“There’s no creative challenge now,” says Alice Duarte. “My son will fall behind. It’s very frustrating.”

It started last year, when the boys were put in an “inclusion” class, where there are students with a variety of needs. Before that, Pam Azar says, her son was doing well and getting good grades in a regular classroom.

“We were mentors,” Alex Azar says of the inclusion class, putting finger quotes around “mentors.”

It hasn’t worked well. Both boys talk of physical threats in the classroom.

“Alex came home and said that ‘somebody hit somebody,’ ” says Alice Duarte.

Alex Duarte remains in the class, though he doesn’t like it.

“It bothers me a lot,” he says. “I can do the work, but we have to stop every five minutes. There’s nothing creative, and I can hear the kids across the hall working on projects.”

Pam Azar took her son out of school last fall after, she says, school officials refused to move her son to a regular classroom despite the recommendations of a pediatrician and a psychologist.

Now she is the defendant in the case of the Lincoln School Committee versus Pamela Azar, charged with failing to follow the educational plan for her son. She has spent some very long days in a federal courtroom. Nothing has been resolved.

It leaves School Supt. Georgia Fortunato in a difficult position. Because of the pending court case, she says that confidentiality rules prevent her from commenting directly on the situation at Central Elementary School.

“I really believe parents realize that the Lincoln School District puts kids first,” says Fortunato. “But we are not in the business of letting parents pick classrooms. If we were, we’d have 3,500 parents picking classrooms.

“We want to get a good diverse population.”

Fortunato calls it unfortunate that the dispute could not be resolved within the School Department and has ended up in court.

Pamela Azar calls it a number of things. It has not been easy challenging the school system she works for. It has not been easy going before the School Committee to make her case, to say she doesn’t want litigation, and being told to leave.

She is 50 and has been a teacher for 10 years. She graduated from Providence College in 1995, then got her master’s degree in education from Rhode Island College. Now, she is back at PC, pursuing a master’s in history.

She teaches civics at Lincoln Middle School. She discusses civil rights, the Constitution, the First Amendment with her students. She has become a case in point.

Whether she has gone too far, or whether the Lincoln School Department has not gone far enough in pursuing the best possible education for Alex and Alex, it seems clear that the experience of the last two years has not been a good one for the two friends.

Alice Duarte says everybody loses. Her son says the whole thing doesn’t make much sense.

“He gets five hours tutoring a week,” says Alex Duarte as he points to his friend before they settle in for some video games at the Duartes’ house in Lincoln. “And he’s already caught up with us in most subjects. What’s wrong with this picture?”

bkerr@projo.com