BASIS under federal investigation

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08/08/2013 09:57

Subject: Re:BASIS under federal investigation

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Why would a charter need to accept special needs. It's like a magnet school needing to except special needs. Don't you need to pass a test or something.

I think this is correct but I believe since there are public funds the disabled and retarded need to be accommodated.

This is OT from the original theme of this thread, but I cannot ignore the above posts. Both of these posts have severe ignorance issues.

Charter schools are public schools and as such are required to provide FAPE for all students. (Free, Appropriate, Public, Education). They have to abide by all the accessibility laws that pertain to public schools. (eg IDEA). The Charter schools in DC are not magnet schools and do not require entrance tests. Many IEPs are for children with LDs, autism, ADHD... and require accommodations in a general education classroom and not a separate "self contained" classroom. Accommodations can include things like extra time on tests, reduced homework after mastery, a reader, a scribe, use of a calculator, class notes, special seating, smaller classroom for testing..... These are children who have the cognitive ability to access the curriculum but something else makes it harder for them. Schools are required to provide FAPE to children with ID (Intellectual Disability- use of the "R" word is considered extremely offensive), however, they may nor may be able to access the curriculum depending on the the level of ID. There are children with physical disabilities (eg deafness, blindness...) where a child would have additional accommodations. Many of the types of disabilities can be "co-morbid", which means a child could have more than one issue. For example, my DC had dyslexia, dysgraphia and ADHD.

From a practical side, parents of children with ID generally do NOT enroll their child in a school like BASIS, however, if they did, BASIS is required to provide the services the child needs to meet FAPE.

Many accommodations are reasonable and doable but others may be more difficult for schools to meet. Reader? Scribe? The money charters receive isn't remotely enough to pay for the staff wages of a reader or scribe. And also, it needs to be considered how extra time should be dealt with - as many schools have things going on in classrooms all day, those tests would likely have to be scheduled separately, outside of the rest of the school schedule - and that may necessitate that families need to be able to have some flexibility on their schedule as well.

I'm starting to think many posters on this thread are not actually from or in DC. The ignorance of the law here is astounding.

It doesn't matter if the accommodations are difficult to meet. All charter schools in DC, just like all public schools, are legally required to provide accommodations specified in an IEP.

Career govie here - I'm quite familiar with the law, but perhaps you are unfamiliar with the concept of "unfunded mandate". THAT is what the system is full of. I don't know where you are from but evidently you are unfamiliar with what comes around and goes around in DC. Go back to la-la land.

I see is more as a civil rights issue than unfunded mandate. All chidren have a right to an appropriate education. It would be really easy to provide free education to the easy to teach children and tell the rest sorry you are on your own. Rights don't work that way.