How to heal relationship between schools and families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I looked up that the average percent of 504s in schools is 12 percent. That's about 250 students at my child's school. Even at $4000 extra per student that is $1 million extra per school. Much more money coming in than just paying the 504 coordinator and even a portion of an overall coordinator for the school system. That easily funds about 8 or so positions and about 4 hours of the 504 coordinator's time per student per each coordinator before it becomes "a burden" on one person. Where is this money going? There aren't extra resources. I'm not sure it's a funding problem if the money coming in is supposed to support 8 positions and yet there is only 1 and my kid barely gets 3 hours a year.

Section 504 doesn't provide any special instruction to students - just accommodations like - extra time on tests, key to the elevator, flash pass to bathroom, computer for essays, etc.

You pulled a number ($4k) out of your #%ss to make a point about the cost - but there is no way the county is spending $4k per child on a 504. and even if they were, IME, most of that cost is due to repeated time-consuming foot-dragging on the part of staff to comply with the law. Meeting after meeting of staff refusing to do things that are legally required until they are legally forced to do so by official written complaint.

Also, please provide a cite for "average percent of 504s is 12%". At Montgomery Blair in MCPS, pop. approx 3000, 7.8% of the students are in "special education", which includes a mixture of IEP and 504.

Blair has 21 special programs of which 20 look academic. Of those 20, 2 are "advanced education" magnet programs (nationally recognized math/computer/science magnet and the "Communication Arts" magnet) plus it has another 18 programs are geared toward the general population.

There are 2 programs - "Learning and Academic Disabilities" and a speech/language resource -that are geared toward special needs. Those LAD kids are counted in the special education population and likely have IEPs. Other kids outside LAD have 504 plans and they need those plans to access the 20 other programs so they can benefit from educational offerings just like neurotypical students.

So, you are telling me that 7.8% of the students (on IEPs and 504s) who have max 2 programs that meet their needs - they are "costing too much" and their funds should be cut, while the other 92.2% of the student population is served by 20 other programs?

Shame on you PP and on all of you arguing to cut special needs funds. If anything, more should be provided and more should been done to teach according to "universal design for access" principles.

Here are the programs from Blair's "schools at a glance"
Accounting and Finance POS
Achieving Collegiate Excellence and Success (ACES)
Apprenticeship Maryland POS
Be Well 365
Business Management POS
College/Career Research & Development (CCRD) POS Communication Arts Program (CAP)
Computer Science/Code.org POS
DCC Academy Programs: Entrepreneurship & Business Management DCC Academy Programs: Human Service Professions
DCC Academy Programs: International Studies & Law
DCC Academy Programs: Media, Music, and The Arts
DCC Academy Programs: Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Early Child Development POS
Early College-Dual Enrollment
Fire Science and Rescue POS
Justice, Law, and Society POS
Learning and Academic Disabilities (LAD)/Resource Magnet—Science/Math/Computer Science
Marketing POS
Multidisciplinary Educational Training and Support Program (METS) Speech/Language Resource

I think you are misreading my post. I was commenting that my 504 child does not have extra paperwork beyond one meeting where they just copy the info from last year and sign it and how that doesn't match with the amount of money our county says they give to each student for special ed. The 12 percent was a national special ed statistic I found and the $4000 was related to a cost that was about 1/3 of the cost of a special ed student in WABE. Wabe lists the cost at around $12k more. 504s do allow time for the teacher to prepare help tools for the student. Copies of notes etc. They just aren't followed through at our school anyway. It could be that 504 students are allocated less than 4k extra but it seemed like a reasonable assumption when comparing the typical $12k student to thr typical $25k special ed student through WABE.

[Anonymous]

The post had nothing to do with removing funding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The fundamental problem is that IDEA has created a bottomless pit of unfunded entitlements. The federal government has imposed huge requirements on school systems while not covering even a fifth of the cost, and the percentage of students covered by the law has doubled and then tripled. The gap between what parents very reasonably feel they are legally entitled to for their child (since that's what IDEA says), and what the school system is actually physically capable of providing, and the tension of trying to magically make 1+1=3, is driving parents crazy and burning out staff. And then the problem snowballs because less staff makes it all worse. Everyone is in a no-win situation.

I think the system is fundamentally broken, possibly beyond repair, we just haven't realized it yet. Special education staffing shortages are going to keep getting worse and bring it to its knees. No other country on earth provides such a vast well of education entitlements, for the reason that it fundamentally can't be supported. There HAS to be a limit--all public systems have to ration care and have a cutoff point at which they say "no more, the costs outweigh the benefits." It's brutal, but what we have now isn't working anyway and at least this way there would be some honesty about it instead of a shell game. And nothing is stopping the private sector from filling in the gaps. Either you have to vastly increase the funding so that all these entitlements can actually be provided and staff actually want to do the job, or you have to limit the entitlements, or some combination of the two.

I'll probably get tomatoes thrown at me but I am really alarmed at how the staffing shortages just keep getting worse and worse in some of the local districts and how fast they burn through new staff. If you don't have anybody to do the job the law sets out, you have nothing. That is the first and biggest problem, and something drastic has to be done.

+1
SLP in the schools
It’s a total shell. All the IEP accommodations and minutes do not equal services when there just aren’t enough staff. People totally fake it/falsify minutes. If you have the means, go private.

[Anonymous]

The amount of paperwork and trainings and mandatory meetings that I’m required to do is about 30% of my time at school. That’s a hell of a lot of time I’m not seeing kids. Which means they aren’t getting their minutes. Which means we’re out of compliance with their IEP. But there’s nothing I can do.

If our admin and parents laid off on the mandatory oversight and paperwork being required it would make such a difference.

[Anonymous]

PP here. Also wanted to add that decades ago teachers would do their paperwork at home. Never. I refuse to bring work home when I’m barely paid a living wage. I do all the paperwork at school. Instead of seeing your kids.

Which is also why I am leaving the schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The amount of paperwork and trainings and mandatory meetings that I’m required to do is about 30% of my time at school. That’s a hell of a lot of time I’m not seeing kids. Which means they aren’t getting their minutes. Which means we’re out of compliance with their IEP. But there’s nothing I can do.

If our admin and parents laid off on the mandatory oversight and paperwork being required it would make such a difference.

Even with oversight our kids are barely getting an education. Can you imagine if there was zero oversight.
I know it’s all broken, we all do but our kids still deserve an education.
And the above if they have a c no special Ed, are you kidding. Grade inflation is rampant. Kids can be reading 4 years below level and still get an a or b, ask me how I know.
At this point just hand me the funding and I will put it toward private. ( and don’t flame me, my kid is in private now) but should every family need to pay 45k/ yr so their kid can get an education without significant damage to them. A disability isn’t a choice, no one is trying to game the system for gods sake. (And dont start with the shopping for a diagnosis bs)

[Anonymous]

Well, this will get flamed but I also think schools/counties/parents need to differentiate between special needs students who, with the right help and interventions, can become functioning members of society and students who, no matter what anyone does, will never hold any sort of job or live alone period. I'm not saying those students are not also deserving of help and support, but trying to paint both kinds of students with the same brush is not helpful to either group.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, this will get flamed but I also think schools/counties/parents need to differentiate between special needs students who, with the right help and interventions, can become functioning members of society and students who, no matter what anyone does, will never hold any sort of job or live alone period. I'm not saying those students are not also deserving of help and support, but trying to paint both kinds of students with the same brush is not helpful to either group.

You won't get flamed from me! My kid is (as far as I can tell) squarely in the former camp, moreover, we have the resources to support him at home. Would I love the school to provide all the services he needs? Of course. But I care more that kids who either can't get resources at home or who need a LOT more of them get what they need from the schools. Use my tax dollars for those things, please.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, this will get flamed but I also think schools/counties/parents need to differentiate between special needs students who, with the right help and interventions, can become functioning members of society and students who, no matter what anyone does, will never hold any sort of job or live alone period. I'm not saying those students are not also deserving of help and support, but trying to paint both kinds of students with the same brush is not helpful to either group.

My kid will hopefully hold a job but will probably never live independently. He deserves and needs as many resources as he can get. Maybe we should separate out the kids who are special needs light and their parents have a lot of money. They take up a lions share of time and resources at my kids school. They are always complaining and having meetings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The amount of paperwork and trainings and mandatory meetings that I’m required to do is about 30% of my time at school. That’s a hell of a lot of time I’m not seeing kids. Which means they aren’t getting their minutes. Which means we’re out of compliance with their IEP. But there’s nothing I can do.

If our admin and parents laid off on the mandatory oversight and paperwork being required it would make such a difference.

Even with oversight our kids are barely getting an education. Can you imagine if there was zero oversight.
I know it’s all broken, we all do but our kids still deserve an education.
And the above if they have a c no special Ed, are you kidding. Grade inflation is rampant. Kids can be reading 4 years below level and still get an a or b, ask me how I know.
At this point just hand me the funding and I will put it toward private. ( and don’t flame me, my kid is in private now) but should every family need to pay 45k/ yr so their kid can get an education without significant damage to them. A disability isn’t a choice, no one is trying to game the system for gods sake. (And dont start with the shopping for a diagnosis bs)

Private with no oversight at all is certainly not better! Those admin just kiss parents butts because they want money. Capitalism!! I can’t tell you the inadequate teaching, inadequate curriculums, and limited understanding I’ve seen from private schools. Yet Public schools have to work with private schools when they “refer” for public school special education testing. Private schools and parents go to the public school for help because the private school is inadequate, can’t do their own testing, and have typically provided inadequate instruction or accommodations and failed the child. And then, the private school families want public school staff to meet with them, test their child, try to get services, and they don’t even go to public school! This is another huge gross misuse of public school resources and it’s just so wrong.

If you send your kids to private school, don’t expect much. And please do not go to the public school for “testing” or “related services” because your private school can’t do it. The public school gets no funding for you, yet you use our resources AND you have means to use your own money. So many things wrong. So much waste of public school staff and resources and waste of tax payer dollars. But of course, let’s hear the parents attack public school teachers and demand more and more from them and then criticize them over and over.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, this will get flamed but I also think schools/counties/parents need to differentiate between special needs students who, with the right help and interventions, can become functioning members of society and students who, no matter what anyone does, will never hold any sort of job or live alone period. I'm not saying those students are not also deserving of help and support, but trying to paint both kinds of students with the same brush is not helpful to either group.

My kid will hopefully hold a job but will probably never live independently. He deserves and needs as many resources as he can get. Maybe we should separate out the kids who are special needs light and their parents have a lot of money. They take up a lions share of time and resources at my kids school. They are always complaining and having meetings.

I feel like this would be one of the easiest places to start limiting entitlements. Allow the school team to decline to have yet another periodic IEP review after a certain yearly quota, or to cut off a meeting after a certain number of hours (not continue it, end it). Somebody posted here once that they made their team have at least 5 IEP meetings per year and I was aghast. One family getting five 2-hour IEP meetings, or three 3-hour IEP meetings, or whatever, where 15-20 other kids miss hours of speech or reading intervention or whatever while the staff sit around the table listening to goals being nitpicked in ways that will have no functional impact, is exactly what "benefits do not outweigh the costs" refers to. I had to sit through 12 combined hours of meetings once for a child who didn't even attend the school and whose family had no intention of sending them. During that time, every child seen by the gen ed teacher, the special ed teacher, the SLP, and the OT missed their services. These are the types of cases that drive teachers out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, this will get flamed but I also think schools/counties/parents need to differentiate between special needs students who, with the right help and interventions, can become functioning members of society and students who, no matter what anyone does, will never hold any sort of job or live alone period. I'm not saying those students are not also deserving of help and support, but trying to paint both kinds of students with the same brush is not helpful to either group.

<sigh> if there were sufficient funding for real individual education plans that met the needs of the students, this wouldn't be an issue. What you, instead, propose is disability-based segregation. Once you start doing that, it's a slippery slope to discrimination and institutionalizing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The amount of paperwork and trainings and mandatory meetings that I’m required to do is about 30% of my time at school. That’s a hell of a lot of time I’m not seeing kids. Which means they aren’t getting their minutes. Which means we’re out of compliance with their IEP. But there’s nothing I can do.

If our admin and parents laid off on the mandatory oversight and paperwork being required it would make such a difference.

Even with oversight our kids are barely getting an education. Can you imagine if there was zero oversight.
I know it’s all broken, we all do but our kids still deserve an education.
And the above if they have a c no special Ed, are you kidding. Grade inflation is rampant. Kids can be reading 4 years below level and still get an a or b, ask me how I know.
At this point just hand me the funding and I will put it toward private. ( and don’t flame me, my kid is in private now) but should every family need to pay 45k/ yr so their kid can get an education without significant damage to them. A disability isn’t a choice, no one is trying to game the system for gods sake. (And dont start with the shopping for a diagnosis bs)

Private with no oversight at all is certainly not better! Those admin just kiss parents butts because they want money. Capitalism!! I can’t tell you the inadequate teaching, inadequate curriculums, and limited understanding I’ve seen from private schools. Yet Public schools have to work with private schools when they “refer” for public school special education testing. Private schools and parents go to the public school for help because the private school is inadequate, can’t do their own testing, and have typically provided inadequate instruction or accommodations and failed the child. And then, the private school families want public school staff to meet with them, test their child, try to get services, and they don’t even go to public school! This is another huge gross misuse of public school resources and it’s just so wrong.

If you send your kids to private school, don’t expect much. And please do not go to the public school for “testing” or “related services” because your private school can’t do it. The public school gets no funding for you, yet you use our resources AND you have means to use your own money. So many things wrong. So much waste of public school staff and resources and waste of tax payer dollars. But of course, let’s hear the parents attack public school teachers and demand more and more from them and then criticize them over and over.

It’s a special needs private school 😳 good grief. It is in every way better than public for sld kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, this will get flamed but I also think schools/counties/parents need to differentiate between special needs students who, with the right help and interventions, can become functioning members of society and students who, no matter what anyone does, will never hold any sort of job or live alone period. I'm not saying those students are not also deserving of help and support, but trying to paint both kinds of students with the same brush is not helpful to either group.

My kid will hopefully hold a job but will probably never live independently. He deserves and needs as many resources as he can get. Maybe we should separate out the kids who are special needs light and their parents have a lot of money. They take up a lions share of time and resources at my kids school. They are always complaining and having meetings.

I feel like this would be one of the easiest places to start limiting entitlements. Allow the school team to decline to have yet another periodic IEP review after a certain yearly quota, or to cut off a meeting after a certain number of hours (not continue it, end it). Somebody posted here once that they made their team have at least 5 IEP meetings per year and I was aghast. One family getting five 2-hour IEP meetings, or three 3-hour IEP meetings, or whatever, where 15-20 other kids miss hours of speech or reading intervention or whatever while the staff sit around the table listening to goals being nitpicked in ways that will have no functional impact, is exactly what "benefits do not outweigh the costs" refers to. I had to sit through 12 combined hours of meetings once for a child who didn't even attend the school and whose family had no intention of sending them. During that time, every child seen by the gen ed teacher, the special ed teacher, the SLP, and the OT missed their services. These are the types of cases that drive teachers out.

I remember needing to have a second IEP meeting pretty quickly once I realized the “ school team” didn’t put any of my child’s 504 accommodations into her IEP. Absolutely zero of them, but I’m sure that was an innocent oversight and I guess that IEP meeting was unnecessary. After all they just want what’s best for the child right.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, this will get flamed but I also think schools/counties/parents need to differentiate between special needs students who, with the right help and interventions, can become functioning members of society and students who, no matter what anyone does, will never hold any sort of job or live alone period. I'm not saying those students are not also deserving of help and support, but trying to paint both kinds of students with the same brush is not helpful to either group.

My kid will hopefully hold a job but will probably never live independently. He deserves and needs as many resources as he can get. Maybe we should separate out the kids who are special needs light and their parents have a lot of money. They take up a lions share of time and resources at my kids school. They are always complaining and having meetings.

I feel like this would be one of the easiest places to start limiting entitlements. Allow the school team to decline to have yet another periodic IEP review after a certain yearly quota, or to cut off a meeting after a certain number of hours (not continue it, end it). Somebody posted here once that they made their team have at least 5 IEP meetings per year and I was aghast. One family getting five 2-hour IEP meetings, or three 3-hour IEP meetings, or whatever, where 15-20 other kids miss hours of speech or reading intervention or whatever while the staff sit around the table listening to goals being nitpicked in ways that will have no functional impact, is exactly what "benefits do not outweigh the costs" refers to. I had to sit through 12 combined hours of meetings once for a child who didn't even attend the school and whose family had no intention of sending them. During that time, every child seen by the gen ed teacher, the special ed teacher, the SLP, and the OT missed their services. These are the types of cases that drive teachers out.

I remember needing to have a second IEP meeting pretty quickly once I realized the “ school team” didn’t put any of my child’s 504 accommodations into her IEP. Absolutely zero of them, but I’m sure that was an innocent oversight and I guess that IEP meeting was unnecessary. After all they just want what’s best for the child right.

Why do you keep putting “school team” in quotes ?