Key ES in NW DC

[Anonymous]

Does anyone have any recent feedback on how well IEPs are managed at Key ES in DC? Is there a preference for push-in services? Are the general ed teachers good at working with different learning styles and abilities? How do they handle kids who have some trouble focusing? Any other feedback would be appreciated. Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone have any recent feedback on how well IEPs are managed at Key ES in DC? Is there a preference for push-in services? Are the general ed teachers good at working with different learning styles and abilities? How do they handle kids who have some trouble focusing? Any other feedback would be appreciated. Thanks!

Not Key specific, for any student with fewer than 20 hours of services in their IEP, DCPS' default position is to place them in a typical classroom push-in or pull out services as required (e.g. it may be better to deliver speech out of the classroom).

[Anonymous]

both special ed teachers from last year are leaving the school - there is high turnover in those positions and assuming they will be refilled by the fall. They can generally accommodate limited pull out services for kids, but for kids with needs beyond that, they are usually referred to another school with those resources. Our experience is the classroom teachers have varied in their skill and ability to deal with but all have tried hard..

[Anonymous]

Two out of two sped teachers are leaving? They have only been there a couple of years. Why the huge turnover?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Two out of two sped teachers are leaving? They have only been there a couple of years. Why the huge turnover?

It is DCPS. Teacher turnover is pretty common. There are only 2 special education teachers because few students at Key have IEPs at all.

What grade will you child be in and do they have an IEP now? How many hours are in your current plan?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two out of two sped teachers are leaving? They have only been there a couple of years. Why the huge turnover?

It is DCPS. Teacher turnover is pretty common. There are only 2 special education teachers because few students at Key have IEPs at all.

What grade will you child be in and do they have an IEP now? How many hours are in your current plan?

Wow - I can not imagine only having 2 Special Education teachers in a school that goes from PreK4 - 5th grade and is a large as Key.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two out of two sped teachers are leaving? They have only been there a couple of years. Why the huge turnover?

It is DCPS. Teacher turnover is pretty common. There are only 2 special education teachers because few students at Key have IEPs at all.

What grade will you child be in and do they have an IEP now? How many hours are in your current plan?

Wow - I can not imagine only having 2 Special Education teachers in a school that goes from PreK4 - 5th grade and is a large as Key.

There are 438 students at Key. 8% have IEPs - so about 34 students.

Of course we have no idea what their IEPs are for or how many hours with a special ed teacher they need. Some may need no time with a special ed teacher but instead need 4 hours a week with a speech therapist or time with a psychologist. Some may need 1-2 hours with a special ed teacher a week.

But special ed staffing is dictated by the IEP hours in the aggregate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two out of two sped teachers are leaving? They have only been there a couple of years. Why the huge turnover?

It is DCPS. Teacher turnover is pretty common. There are only 2 special education teachers because few students at Key have IEPs at all.

What grade will you child be in and do they have an IEP now? How many hours are in your current plan?

Wow - I can not imagine only having 2 Special Education teachers in a school that goes from PreK4 - 5th grade and is a large as Key.

There are 438 students at Key. 8% have IEPs - so about 34 students.

Of course we have no idea what their IEPs are for or how many hours with a special ed teacher they need. Some may need no time with a special ed teacher but instead need 4 hours a week with a speech therapist or time with a psychologist. Some may need 1-2 hours with a special ed teacher a week.

But special ed staffing is dictated by the IEP hours in the aggregate.

with 2 special ed teachers - that is at most 55 teaching hours a week for special ed (I assume 9AM - 3PM for a teaching school day and some time for lunch)
with 35 students with an IEP, that averages to 1.5 hours a student.

My child who has dyslexia [not at Key but a NW DCPS] has 5 hours a week of pull out / push in. This does not include Speech and OT services. I know this is at the high side - but as 1 child he would take a little less than 10% of the total hours available across the school. I would guess Key is under staffed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two out of two sped teachers are leaving? They have only been there a couple of years. Why the huge turnover?

It is DCPS. Teacher turnover is pretty common. There are only 2 special education teachers because few students at Key have IEPs at all.

What grade will you child be in and do they have an IEP now? How many hours are in your current plan?

Wow - I can not imagine only having 2 Special Education teachers in a school that goes from PreK4 - 5th grade and is a large as Key.

There are 438 students at Key. 8% have IEPs - so about 34 students.

Of course we have no idea what their IEPs are for or how many hours with a special ed teacher they need. Some may need no time with a special ed teacher but instead need 4 hours a week with a speech therapist or time with a psychologist. Some may need 1-2 hours with a special ed teacher a week.

But special ed staffing is dictated by the IEP hours in the aggregate.

with 2 special ed teachers - that is at most 55 teaching hours a week for special ed (I assume 9AM - 3PM for a teaching school day and some time for lunch)
with 35 students with an IEP, that averages to 1.5 hours a student.

My child who has dyslexia [not at Key but a NW DCPS] has 5 hours a week of pull out / push in. This does not include Speech and OT services. I know this is at the high side - but as 1 child he would take a little less than 10% of the total hours available across the school. I would guess Key is under staffed.

I think understaffing must be pretty common. Our DCPS (likely with higher needs than Key) has a single special ed teacher for all of PK3-1st grade. My son had 10 hrs of push-in special ed in K. There's no way that she'd be able to serve all the kids who had push-in time (or needed it). As a result the school greatly discourages IEPs, and turns push-in into groups or group pull-outs. Which has worked fine for my son because he also gets additional social skills support ... but yeah, still understaffed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two out of two sped teachers are leaving? They have only been there a couple of years. Why the huge turnover?

It is DCPS. Teacher turnover is pretty common. There are only 2 special education teachers because few students at Key have IEPs at all.

What grade will you child be in and do they have an IEP now? How many hours are in your current plan?

Wow - I can not imagine only having 2 Special Education teachers in a school that goes from PreK4 - 5th grade and is a large as Key.

There are 438 students at Key. 8% have IEPs - so about 34 students.

Of course we have no idea what their IEPs are for or how many hours with a special ed teacher they need. Some may need no time with a special ed teacher but instead need 4 hours a week with a speech therapist or time with a psychologist. Some may need 1-2 hours with a special ed teacher a week.

But special ed staffing is dictated by the IEP hours in the aggregate.

with 2 special ed teachers - that is at most 55 teaching hours a week for special ed (I assume 9AM - 3PM for a teaching school day and some time for lunch)
with 35 students with an IEP, that averages to 1.5 hours a student.

My child who has dyslexia [not at Key but a NW DCPS] has 5 hours a week of pull out / push in. This does not include Speech and OT services. I know this is at the high side - but as 1 child he would take a little less than 10% of the total hours available across the school. I would guess Key is under staffed.

I think understaffing must be pretty common. Our DCPS (likely with higher needs than Key) has a single special ed teacher for all of PK3-1st grade. My son had 10 hrs of push-in special ed in K. There's no way that she'd be able to serve all the kids who had push-in time (or needed it). As a result the school greatly discourages IEPs, and turns push-in into groups or group pull-outs. Which has worked fine for my son because he also gets additional social skills support ... but yeah, still understaffed.

For some kids small group push-in or pull-out services would be great. I'm not sure my child necessarily needs to have the support done by a special ed teacher. I wonder if that's Key's model instead of putting all the work on the special ed teachers. Maybe the teacher's keep leaving because they're burnout with the workload.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two out of two sped teachers are leaving? They have only been there a couple of years. Why the huge turnover?

It is DCPS. Teacher turnover is pretty common. There are only 2 special education teachers because few students at Key have IEPs at all.

What grade will you child be in and do they have an IEP now? How many hours are in your current plan?

Wow - I can not imagine only having 2 Special Education teachers in a school that goes from PreK4 - 5th grade and is a large as Key.

There are 438 students at Key. 8% have IEPs - so about 34 students.

Of course we have no idea what their IEPs are for or how many hours with a special ed teacher they need. Some may need no time with a special ed teacher but instead need 4 hours a week with a speech therapist or time with a psychologist. Some may need 1-2 hours with a special ed teacher a week.

But special ed staffing is dictated by the IEP hours in the aggregate.

with 2 special ed teachers - that is at most 55 teaching hours a week for special ed (I assume 9AM - 3PM for a teaching school day and some time for lunch)
with 35 students with an IEP, that averages to 1.5 hours a student.

My child who has dyslexia [not at Key but a NW DCPS] has 5 hours a week of pull out / push in. This does not include Speech and OT services. I know this is at the high side - but as 1 child he would take a little less than 10% of the total hours available across the school. I would guess Key is under staffed.

It is typically a small group model - where DC would do pull out with a small group of other kids with dyslexia or processing issues in similar category/needs (so the 2-3 hours of that intervention with a group of around 4 kids) - note that most DCPS schools do not have teachers who are certified in OG or Wilson training (even Janney!). the special ed teacher would do the push in also somewhat grouped. The primary classroom teacher did do some additional pull out or individualized work with DC, and also did things like the individual assessments (reading tests, etc). But overall, DPCS is not great with dyslexia (not sure many school systems that aren't places like Lab or Sienna are) - and they also aren't really up to date with the more modern technology assisted learning etc around dyslexia.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two out of two sped teachers are leaving? They have only been there a couple of years. Why the huge turnover?

It is DCPS. Teacher turnover is pretty common. There are only 2 special education teachers because few students at Key have IEPs at all.

What grade will you child be in and do they have an IEP now? How many hours are in your current plan?

Wow - I can not imagine only having 2 Special Education teachers in a school that goes from PreK4 - 5th grade and is a large as Key.

There are 438 students at Key. 8% have IEPs - so about 34 students.

Of course we have no idea what their IEPs are for or how many hours with a special ed teacher they need. Some may need no time with a special ed teacher but instead need 4 hours a week with a speech therapist or time with a psychologist. Some may need 1-2 hours with a special ed teacher a week.

But special ed staffing is dictated by the IEP hours in the aggregate.

with 2 special ed teachers - that is at most 55 teaching hours a week for special ed (I assume 9AM - 3PM for a teaching school day and some time for lunch)
with 35 students with an IEP, that averages to 1.5 hours a student.

My child who has dyslexia [not at Key but a NW DCPS] has 5 hours a week of pull out / push in. This does not include Speech and OT services. I know this is at the high side - but as 1 child he would take a little less than 10% of the total hours available across the school. I would guess Key is under staffed.

It is typically a small group model - where DC would do pull out with a small group of other kids with dyslexia or processing issues in similar category/needs (so the 2-3 hours of that intervention with a group of around 4 kids) - note that most DCPS schools do not have teachers who are certified in OG or Wilson training (even Janney!). the special ed teacher would do the push in also somewhat grouped. The primary classroom teacher did do some additional pull out or individualized work with DC, and also did things like the individual assessments (reading tests, etc). But overall, DPCS is not great with dyslexia (not sure many school systems that aren't places like Lab or Sienna are) - and they also aren't really up to date with the more modern technology assisted learning etc around dyslexia.

you may also want to check out the new Decoding DC chapter in DC where you can get a sense of what you can/should be expecting but also support in advocating if you are not https://www.decodingdyslexiadc.org/

[Anonymous]

What is the role of the intervention teacher at Key? Is that a new role?