FCPS is in big trouble

[Anonymous]

Is summer school an option for remedy?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FCPS is way too large and horribly (and corruptly) managed. At some point maybe it will collapse of its own weight and be broken into smaller, more manageable districts but until then the disasters will just continue to pile up.

You think smaller districts don't have corruption and major problems too?

I’m in New Jersey which has notoriously small school districts - and excellent public schools and services.

Having been around both FCPS and this system, I can undoubtedly say the smaller districts have more advantageous and fewer issues.

Virginia law would have to be changed.

No doubt. But having experienced both, I absolutely am a fan of the hyper localized school system in NJ. The schools and public services are excellent and the administrations highly responsive to the local communities whose taxes finance them.

You just described the downside, right there.

See the response directly above this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seems like all FCPS focuses on now is special Ed. They just spent hours this week on special Ed, they had multiple long work sessions this fall on the special Ed audit and paid who knows home much for that study. Now they’re gearing up for more special Ed planning based on the results of that study. I guess this will just be another special Ed issue that the system focuses on. Forget about everyone else.

GMAFB. You need to check yourself when you have no idea what is happening to our children in this system. Pathetic to come onto the SN Forum to make this comment when you have no clue. Maybe the reason they need to focus on special education now is because they have failed tremendously and are being called to the carpet. My kid cannot write one darn word never mind a sentence. Not one. He is an otherwise bright and charming kid. We spend a ton of money on outside services to try to help him partly because FCPS has allotted him 15 minutes of OT a MONTH. They might as well have given him nothing. So, probably you need to march right back over to the FCPS Forum and start another thread complaining about the SN kids in your precious child's class.

So even with your expensive outside services, he can't write and you want to somehow blame that on FCPS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FCPS is way too large and horribly (and corruptly) managed. At some point maybe it will collapse of its own weight and be broken into smaller, more manageable districts but until then the disasters will just continue to pile up.

You think smaller districts don't have corruption and major problems too?

I’m in New Jersey which has notoriously small school districts - and excellent public schools and services.

Having been around both FCPS and this system, I can undoubtedly say the smaller districts have more advantageous and fewer issues.

Virginia law would have to be changed.

No doubt. But having experienced both, I absolutely am a fan of the hyper localized school system in NJ. The schools and public services are excellent and the administrations highly responsive to the local communities whose taxes finance them.

You just described the downside, right there.

See the response directly above this.

There is a lot between impoverished urban and rich suburban that shrinking a district can cut out. If you can afford to live in a great district, then you kids go to good schools. If you can't they don't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seems like all FCPS focuses on now is special Ed. They just spent hours this week on special Ed, they had multiple long work sessions this fall on the special Ed audit and paid who knows home much for that study. Now they’re gearing up for more special Ed planning based on the results of that study. I guess this will just be another special Ed issue that the system focuses on. Forget about everyone else.

GMAFB. You need to check yourself when you have no idea what is happening to our children in this system. Pathetic to come onto the SN Forum to make this comment when you have no clue. Maybe the reason they need to focus on special education now is because they have failed tremendously and are being called to the carpet. My kid cannot write one darn word never mind a sentence. Not one. He is an otherwise bright and charming kid. We spend a ton of money on outside services to try to help him partly because FCPS has allotted him 15 minutes of OT a MONTH. They might as well have given him nothing. So, probably you need to march right back over to the FCPS Forum and start another thread complaining about the SN kids in your precious child's class.

So even with your expensive outside services, he can't write and you want to somehow blame that on FCPS?

Did I blame FCPS or did I say they allotted him 15 minutes a month with that kind of disability and might as well give him nothing. Which, it appears, is what people like you want so that you can press your kid into AAP with onward travel to some Ivy. Congrats on your future success while stomping on everyone who only wants equal education for their kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is summer school an option for remedy?

Traditionally fcps esy is poorly run crap. And they struggle to staff even that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seems like all FCPS focuses on now is special Ed. They just spent hours this week on special Ed, they had multiple long work sessions this fall on the special Ed audit and paid who knows home much for that study. Now they’re gearing up for more special Ed planning based on the results of that study. I guess this will just be another special Ed issue that the system focuses on. Forget about everyone else.

GMAFB. You need to check yourself when you have no idea what is happening to our children in this system. Pathetic to come onto the SN Forum to make this comment when you have no clue. Maybe the reason they need to focus on special education now is because they have failed tremendously and are being called to the carpet. My kid cannot write one darn word never mind a sentence. Not one. He is an otherwise bright and charming kid. We spend a ton of money on outside services to try to help him partly because FCPS has allotted him 15 minutes of OT a MONTH. They might as well have given him nothing. So, probably you need to march right back over to the FCPS Forum and start another thread complaining about the SN kids in your precious child's class.

So even with your expensive outside services, he can't write and you want to somehow blame that on FCPS?

Did I blame FCPS or did I say they allotted him 15 minutes a month with that kind of disability and might as well give him nothing. Which, it appears, is what people like you want so that you can press your kid into AAP with onward travel to some Ivy. Congrats on your future success while stomping on everyone who only wants equal education for their kid.

The denegration of all other student needs is so toxic and frequent. Everyone should advocate for federal funding to support thr mandates of federal law. It’s too much on local districts (especially with staffing challenges and the higher numbers of identified students).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is summer school an option for remedy?

It is in theory but: 1) it’s a lot of busy work, worksheets, etc. to keep kids who struggle with regressions during out of school periods in the habit of going to school. It’s not all that great educationally. 2) they always struggle to staff it and it’s only got worse the past few years. 3) there are a fair number of kids who already have ESY written into their IEP’s, especially in the younger grades where regression is more common. It may not be possible to add too many more kids to the ESY system. In summer 2021, kids who usually got ESY were being denied because of lack of staffing. It was a little less of a problem in summer 2022, but it’s unclear to me if that was because they just “let in” fewer kids/didn’t qualify kids for ESY in the first place or if the staffing was better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Office of Civil Right’s investigation “found that the School Division inappropriately reduced and limited services provided to students with disabilities, based on considerations other than the students’ individual educational needs, and failed to adequately remedy these denials of FAPE.” OCR said it also “identified concerns with staffing shortages and other administrative obstacles that may have limited the School Division’s provision of FAPE, as well as its ability to sufficiently track its FAPE services."

So FCPS was unable to provide FAPE because of staffing shortages and other obstacles - because there was a pandemic.

The crushing scheduling and paperwork burden of having to do an extra IEP meeting for every single current student and a bunch of former students is going to cause even more burnout among the remaining staff and probably feed the spiral.

I don't know what the answer is. Special ed students were failed during the pandemic. They're being failed now. But there are serious, serious structural problems with IDEA, funding, staffing, all of it, and it's coming apart at the seams. OCR's "remedy" is not a solution to any of it and will probably just make things worse. It'll end up with more empty promises and garbage on paper because they can't hire anybody to fill them.

This was my first thought. I wouldn’t have wanted to be a special education teacher even before this. My other thought was that many other districts are probably in the same boat.

I’m concerned this will make things worse.

Chiming in to agree. My youngest kid with an IEP is a junior. The biggest issue is that IDEA has always been appallingly underfunded. It's not just our kids who suffer but there's a high societal cost.

I've had some epic battles with FCPS but I actually have some sympathy for them in this. I have even more sympathy for the teaching staff. It's hard to overcome persistent, pervasive resource shortages.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What about those whose grades suffered because they didn’t get adequate services and they didn’t get into a college that they could’ve gotten into and instead kids who weren’t disadvantaged in that way, got in?

While children with special education needs were disproportionately affected, closing schools as long as they did had a detrimental effect on most students. I have relatives who lived in states where their children went back to full time in-person school during the Fall of 2021 while FCPS school board whined about how dangerous it was to open schools and kept delaying opening schools. I have a child with a learning disability with an IEP and needs a tremendous amount of help. My other child has executive functioning deficits and would succeed in school with some help. However, if you don't have an IEP, it's very difficult to get the extra help. Therefore, I pushed and pushed until that child got an IEP. It's unfortunate that there's no in-between. You either have an IEP and get help, or you don't have an IEP, and then there's very little or no help. There are lots of students in the in between stage that could use extra support but the system is not set up to help those children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Office of Civil Right’s investigation “found that the School Division inappropriately reduced and limited services provided to students with disabilities, based on considerations other than the students’ individual educational needs, and failed to adequately remedy these denials of FAPE.” OCR said it also “identified concerns with staffing shortages and other administrative obstacles that may have limited the School Division’s provision of FAPE, as well as its ability to sufficiently track its FAPE services."

So FCPS was unable to provide FAPE because of staffing shortages and other obstacles - because there was a pandemic.

I have saved an email from the school reading specialist who was working 1-on-1 with my daughter per her IEP that basically said she couldn’t do the 1-on-1 virtually because she was watching her own children.

It still makes me laugh that she put it in writing and thought that was a valid reason to not do her job.

Yup. I’m a lawyer. I can’t imagine telling my clients I can’t write the brief because I’m watching my kids.

Pay teachers like attorneys and they'll be more inclined to make that stretch.

What did teachers do with their kids before covid? If FCPS leadership made it a focus they'd make it happen and find child care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What about those whose grades suffered because they didn’t get adequate services and they didn’t get into a college that they could’ve gotten into and instead kids who weren’t disadvantaged in that way, got in?

While children with special education needs were disproportionately affected, closing schools as long as they did had a detrimental effect on most students. I have relatives who lived in states where their children went back to full time in-person school during the Fall of 2021 while FCPS school board whined about how dangerous it was to open schools and kept delaying opening schools. I have a child with a learning disability with an IEP and needs a tremendous amount of help. My other child has executive functioning deficits and would succeed in school with some help. However, if you don't have an IEP, it's very difficult to get the extra help. Therefore, I pushed and pushed until that child got an IEP. It's unfortunate that there's no in-between. You either have an IEP and get help, or you don't have an IEP, and then there's very little or no help. There are lots of students in the in between stage that could use extra support but the system is not set up to help those children.

Of course not. The schools are required to direct resources in different directions. A kid who just needs extra help isn't anyone's concern

[Anonymous]

I’d settle for two grades from 2020-2021 boosted, due to teachers not following 504. I mean, no one followed it, and DD’s learning and grades suffered across the board, and we are still literally paying for it (with $$$ tutoring), but DD doesn’t deserve her GPA to also be harmed by teachers who refused her extensions and workload reductions that were legally mandated.

Any chance in hell they would boost two grades as a settlement? This is her high school transcript, so it actually does matter.

[Anonymous]

there's money they need to give away

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:there's money they need to give away

Get in line. Plenty of admins at Gatehouse who've been eyeing the money and making plans. Watch the SB meeting tonight and look at the Fiscal Forecast.