Any parent of SN child at Bridges?

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

I'm considering Bridges PK3 for my child next year and would like to know your experience with how well they adhere to your child's IEP. My child has some speech delay and some red flags for autism, btw. Thanks in advance!

[Anonymous]

Not a parent of a special needs kid, but I'll give you a bump and tell you what I've observed as a parent at Bridges.

It is very common for kids to be pulled out of class for speech therapy or other therapies. There are in-house staff who just pull the kids into special rooms. Seamless. Also, one boy in my son's class last year was not diagnosed last year upon started but when it became clear that his speech delay was a marker for autism, the school worked with the parents to get him diagnosed and get him an aide mid-year.

Also, there is a Special Needs Parents group. If no one weighs in on this forum, you should call the front desk at the school and ask to speak to someone who is a member or leader of that group and they should be able to answer your questions.

[Anonymous]

Experiences with SN, like some other experiences at Bridges, are I think a bit uneven - possibly just this year in particular. From our experience, I can tell you your child WILL get the related services on their IEP, and they'll get them on the weekly schedule like they should be done. You will get weekly progress notes, providers will offer to meet with you every quarter - I'm sure they'd be open to a meeting at another time if needed. Services are appropriate for kid needs - they seem to do far less (if any) doubling or tripling up on such services, versus our DCPS where my kid was routinely pulled with other kids with speech delays in a group, and basically the speech therapist traded off working with one and then another (so it wasn't a group, but just clocking hours for two kids at once while giving half the services). Bridges will pull with a peer (often not delayed) where appropriate for skills, and will do individual in other instances - much more based on kid's needs than the need to cram all kids in. Their speech and OT staff are full time at the school, they have several, that helps significantly from a service provision perspective - in terms of kid getting support during the time of day they need it, make up sessions, etc. They also have equipment on site to use (like a swing for OT). (I contrast this to DCPS where a month in they still hadn't started one of our related services, they refused to give us tracking sheets, their plan to cover an known extended leave was...well there wasn't a plan, and so on)

They are also more willing to explore/add other services than DCPS. I'd guess they'd be more willing to evaluate as well and it's easier for them to do so as they have people on site, again - they don't have to do the central early stages thing. They've certainly been far more willing (that is, they do it) to follow other pieces of the law in terms of review of things, people at meetings, considering parental input, etc, than we experienced at DCPS. And they write better IEPs. They also have an in house BCBA, and aides when needed don't seem like a nightmare to get. They have more in house support for students and more experience utilizing it than many other (but not all) charters.

That said, in our experience and talking to some others this year, there seems to be a tendency or push for them to decrease classroom support for some kids which some parents find really unsettling (myself included). As in, significantly less support than even DCPS was willing to provide. To the detriment of some kids. They've had some staffing shifts/departures and issues with inclusion support this year - I don't know if that's resolved completely and whether that contributed. But I've heard a similar experience from 3 or 4 other families now that makes me wonder. I'm not clear if that has impacted the provision of some specialized instruction services at all - if any kids are missing some services or what - those are a lot harder to track than related services. However I've also not asked for documentation, yet, for ours, so it's quite possible they do track and can easily show they fulfill those hours. They also tend towards a bit of the same issue as DCPS, where their inclusion classroom (which is meant to have a higher proportion of kids with IEPs and gets correspondingly more special ed support throughout the day) may have tipped the balance into just a few too many needs/not quite enough support for some kiddos. I don't know if they routinely have such a classroom, or it's simply how things worked out this year.

They seem to do really well by some kids, and not quite so well by others, but having experienced both early stages/DCPS and Bridges, the experience and support is better at Bridges for many. It could be better still - we are lotterying for a very few select school where we understand the approach to be better for our child's needs and are contemplating leaving DC, because while Bridges does it better than many, I'm not sure it's good enough and we have one of the kids not getting quite the right support (note that we haven't given up on working with the school on this, just that we don't think they'll get there). However, I know many people who are quite pleased with their experience - at least from what they say - on the special ed side of things, some who left Bridges and returned, others who specifically sought them out, some who came from DCPS. This is where your experience may vary based on your child's needs, diagnosis, those things relative to other kids and other things - though that is true of other places too. I've been impressed with the knowledge of the general ed staff we work with, which makes a difference in a kid's day. And I greatly appreciate not feeling like I have to fight over every little thing that ought to be done anyway - timelines, procedural stuff, actually providing hours - they do it.

I don't know if that answers your question, or was far more than you are looking for.

[Anonymous]

OP here- thank you both for your input! I plan to visit Bridges and this is helpful information for me to have before going in.

[Anonymous]

Current Bridges parent here, and I'm curious: aren't all of the classrooms inclusion? Is there one designated with a higher number of kids with special needs? I thought all of the classes were a mix of kids, special needs and not?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Current Bridges parent here, and I'm curious: aren't all of the classrooms inclusion? Is there one designated with a higher number of kids with special needs? I thought all of the classes were a mix of kids, special needs and not?

At least in the early grades I think there is one (maybe more than one?) where there's a higher concentration. Other kids are scattered through other classrooms and they're all inclusion in that sense, but there seems to be a single class with a higher proportion. Not sure if that was by design (may be, DCPS does it too, as it allows for something closer to co teaching - the special ed teacher is in there more often, sometimes much more, than she is supporting kids in other rooms, would be much harder to support a kid with 10 or 15 hours or whatever, in general ed, if there were 4 such kids in 4 separate rooms versus all in the same. Requires more staff.). Or may be happenstance. Or maybe there are multiple rooms with a (relatively) large number of kids with greater needs, I don't know.

[Anonymous]

Interesting. Would we know if we were in the inclusion classroom? Only one student in the class has a dedicated aide, but there are several others who have varying special needs. Just curious.

[Anonymous]

Hmm...I have no idea. To the extent it's planned, I don't know that a kid in that room who wasn't in that room for special ed support purposes would necessarily know. But I'm now wondering if perhaps there are multiple classrooms with similar set ups? It seems a stretch it'd be all classrooms, I have wondered if maybe they slot some kids with IEPs away from say, the classes targeted towards ELL students (the ones where circle time is sometimes in Spanish, with extra language support some of the rest of the time) to balance out needs etc. I guess it may all depend on the year's population and distribution of needs - unlike DCPS they don't get to refuse to serve (via telling someone they really have to go to X school instead which has the right program), so if they have enough kids with high enough needs there could easily be a few classes. And then of course giving you're working with 3 and 4 year olds, some kids aren't identified initially and only become identified after school starts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. Would we know if we were in the inclusion classroom? Only one student in the class has a dedicated aide, but there are several others who have varying special needs. Just curious.

Yes, you would know. The self-contained classroom has a very high staff:student ratio (about 5 staff to 8 students). All are level 4. Parents of level 4 have the option of inclusion or self-contained classrooms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. Would we know if we were in the inclusion classroom? Only one student in the class has a dedicated aide, but there are several others who have varying special needs. Just curious.

Yes, you would know. The self-contained classroom has a very high staff:student ratio (about 5 staff to 8 students). All are level 4. Parents of level 4 have the option of inclusion or self-contained classrooms.

Well of course you'd know if you were self contained or were a high level (by service) special education student and were placed in an inclusion class. But I think the PP is asking, if you are a general ed student w/no IEP would you have any idea you (your kid) were in the inclusion class, to the extent a single one exists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. Would we know if we were in the inclusion classroom? Only one student in the class has a dedicated aide, but there are several others who have varying special needs. Just curious.

Yes, you would know. The self-contained classroom has a very high staff:student ratio (about 5 staff to 8 students). All are level 4. Parents of level 4 have the option of inclusion or self-contained classrooms.

Well of course you'd know if you were self contained or were a high level (by service) special education student and were placed in an inclusion class. But I think the PP is asking, if you are a general ed student w/no IEP would you have any idea you (your kid) were in the inclusion class, to the extent a single one exists.

At Bridges all classes are inclusion. There is also a self-contained option for Level 4 children.

[Anonymous]

Former parent here,

We were there for Prek3 and Prek4. We moved to our neighborhood school this year for K. My daughter received services for speech and autism while she was there. Early Stages did her initial evaluation and IEP. I have nothing negative to say about the SpEd services at Bridges. They adhered to the IEP, and they were very transparent about what was going on.
I was in the middle of a divorce when my daughter started, and the push-in Sped teacher was very big on making sure everyone was on the same page in order to support my daughter at home. She bent over backwards to make sure she kept us both in the loop, and she would give us a call whenever was convenient for us to give us weekly updates.
The speech therapist was terrific as well. She emailed us every week to let us know what was going on. She gave instructions on what we could do at home, and she even made materials for us to use so that there was consistency.
We saw amazing growth in our daughter, and I truly felt like they helped turn everything around.
I've heard that there has been some turnover in staff since last year, but I find it hard to believe that the quality would diminish too much. The sped team is great.