APS elementary schools and special needs

[Anonymous]

In my experience, the overall atmosphere at many of the S. Arlington schools is more supportive than competitive, staff ratios are smaller, there is already a lot of built in differentiation. We've been happy with services at one of the title 1 schools.

[Anonymous]

I really think it all depends on your kid, the child's needs, the family's style and preferences, and the individual school. There are complaints and praises for just about everywhere. Go visit the school and talk with special needs parents at the schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ashlawn and Patrick Henry and Long Branch have the best reputation for special needs. McKinley and Nottingham have the worst, although I've heard they are trying to improve that this year.

McK efforts "trying to improve" are words and meetings only. No real action. For example, instead of increasing capacity to teach small groups of kids with dyslexia with a program, to fidelity, they are just putting the responsibility on the gen ed teachers who are not reading specialists and are teaching overcrowded classes already.

What does the even mean? It has the largest population of any ES in Arlington. I doubt they can hire anyone else. Some grades basically have 1 on 1 assistants as it is. If I were choosing now, I'd look for a smaller school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ashlawn and Patrick Henry and Long Branch have the best reputation for special needs. McKinley and Nottingham have the worst, although I've heard they are trying to improve that this year.

Ha! Doubtful. The asst principal at McKinley - who was the root of many of the problems there - was promoted to the principal of Nottingham over the summer.

New poster but YES. The new Nottingham principal claims to be a special ed specialist but she's really hateful towards some special needs kids.

I would really like to know what you mean by “hateful toward some special needs kids.”

[Anonymous]

Special ed needs are so personalized to the kid and honestly a parent/kid can have a horrible experience at the school with the best special ed reputation. It’s hard to know what will work for a kid and 8 out of 10 parents are going to have horrible memories of the school/teacher that raised the flag of intervention needs for their child. Don’t use a forum like this to make any sort of decision.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our team at Arlington Science Focus School is amazing.

I know people love to disparage ASFS but I couldn't be happier.

We have also had a good experience at ASFS - they seem to give strong support for things like ADHD and HFA. I don’t know how they do with severe SN, though.

[Anonymous]

We knew we wanted to move to Arlington last year, and it was very hard to research which schools would be best for special needs. We went to the kindergarten open house and spoke briefly with the principals of every school we were considering. While it's obviously not scientific, it did give us a "gut instinct" on how open the various administrations would be to us enrolling our son with special needs.

[Anonymous]

We were happy with Oakridge. Happy at Gunston MS now as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We knew we wanted to move to Arlington last year, and it was very hard to research which schools would be best for special needs. We went to the kindergarten open house and spoke briefly with the principals of every school we were considering. While it's obviously not scientific, it did give us a "gut instinct" on how open the various administrations would be to us enrolling our son with special needs.

I agree with this approach. It’s almost impossible to know which schools are actually better/worse at teaching kids with sn if you are relying on DCUM for advice. A poster may pop up frequently, saying similar things about a school in multiple threads and suddenly that school has a reputation for not dealing well with SN.

Take advice here with a grain of salt and then visit the schools and meet with admin, armed with targeted questions.

[Anonymous]

by "increase capacity" I meant increasing the number of reading specialists who can conduct small group remediation for those who need direct instruction.

by "hateful" I mean I was yelled at and my child was horribly mistreated and was allowed to be bullied. When I complained about my SN child coming home bloody after being jumped by two kids, for the second time, she said it was the SN child's fault.

That's the worst story but I also had a mom/volunteer from the school call me to tell me about unacceptable behavior that she witnessed.

And, there's quite a few family who have experienced similar. My child goes to another school now and while McK says bulling isn't allowed, at the school my kids at, bullying is just not accepted at all and the "victim" is never blamed. The perpetrator's behavior by other classmates, administration and teachers and changed.

[Anonymous]

Sorry, should have said "behavior is called out"

[Anonymous]

APS gets a lot of criticism for its special education services, but I'm not sure it's all deserved. I know of two cases in the past few years where people who were unhappy with the special education services in APS elementary schools that get particular heat here moved to other counties in part because they thought special education would be better. One family now has their kids in private school and the other family is homeschooling because the services they got in those other systems were actually worse than APS. None of that means APS gets it all right, but I don't know of any school systems that get it all right when it comes to special education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:by "increase capacity" I meant increasing the number of reading specialists who can conduct small group remediation for those who need direct instruction.

I can't speak to the rest of your post, and am sorry to hear it, but FWIW this is not a decision at the school level. APS has defined ratios in terms of how many specialists are assigned based on the population size of a school. No principal can just decide to add a reading specialist, or art teacher, or math coach. Those decisions are at the system level.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:by "increase capacity" I meant increasing the number of reading specialists who can conduct small group remediation for those who need direct instruction.

I can't speak to the rest of your post, and am sorry to hear it, but FWIW this is not a decision at the school level. APS has defined ratios in terms of how many specialists are assigned based on the population size of a school. No principal can just decide to add a reading specialist, or art teacher, or math coach. Those decisions are at the system level.

+1. Staffing levels are determined by central administration and while principals can request additional staffing based on extenuating circumstances, those requests are rarely granted and are only granted for a single year at a time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Special ed needs are so personalized to the kid and honestly a parent/kid can have a horrible experience at the school with the best special ed reputation. It’s hard to know what will work for a kid and 8 out of 10 parents are going to have horrible memories of the school/teacher that raised the flag of intervention needs for their child. Don’t use a forum like this to make any sort of decision.

That may be true but the issues at the schools mentioned are not this type of situation.