Reply to Petition to DC Council for FY 2024 Charter School Budgets

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Reply to "Petition to DC Council for FY 2024 Charter School Budgets"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Dear Charter supporters: which one of your schools has a life skills classroom? I'll wait. And MANY (not all, I realize) so called "highly regarded" charters have no self contained classrooms special ed classrooms at all.

If you're not going to educate all our kids, don't come at me with "it isn't fair." [/quote]

There are self contained classrooms at my charter school. Why do you think there aren’t? Which school concerns you?[/quote]

Special Ed teacher here. (have taught DCPS and Charters)

Segregated Special ed classrooms are NOT required to provide special education services, and generally not advised under most circumstances for children.  At my current charter, students with IEPs are not segregated in full-time self contained classrooms.  DCPS's self-contained segregated classrooms are rooms with 12 or less children and have multiple-grade levels in one room and receive interventions in one room; they exist with the intent of eventual integration for younger children or with documentation pipelining extreme cases toward more extensive or private placement.

The charter where I work achieves this by having more frequent pull outs for one-on one/ two on one interventions.  Every child has a general classroom enrollment and IEP goals are integrated with grade level goals. The approach is just different.  Not better or worse.  DCPS varies from school to school and does the same thing at some schools.

[/quote]

This is not entirely accurate. Least restrictive environment IS required by law, and the LRE for some children may very well be a self-contained classroom. Some charters don’t offer this and *claim* inclusion in the gen Ed classroom is least restrictive when it may not be. The way you have described the intent of DCPS self-contained classrooms is also false. There are diploma track programs and there are high school certificate programs. The hope would be that students in the diploma track programs would eventually be able to join inclusion settings, however that is not a realistic expectation for certificate track students with severe disabilities. For example, the CES program is for students with an IQ <50. It’s not that they are pipelined into a more “extreme” or private placement; they simply remain in a CES classroom throughout their time with DCPS. Also, DCPS does NOT vary from school to school. The only thing that varies is which programs are at which schools, but those programs aren’t only for students at the schools with the programs, they are city-wide programs with feeder patterns. So for example, if you need a CES classroom but your IB school doesn’t have one, you would be placed at the school within your feeder pattern that does have one. [/quote]

I’m a CES teacher, the IQ thing is n absolute lie and we do not categorize students that way even if you read it in the DSI handbook. Next the goal is to get them out of self-contained or a more restrictive placement, however yes some do just stay in CES.
DCPS absolutely varies from school to school and not all CES classrooms are equal, not sure who told you this lie.
I have had several privileged parent’s interview 4+ schools with CES. And we don’t take kids city wide, they live very close or as close as possible since surprise surprise NW doesn’t have many CES programs.

But your original point is true, charters get away with saying the inclusion model is the LRE and I have received student’s from charters - after the fiscal year starts of course so the charter gets the money. [/quote]

Ok but some charters are only 1 building and not a whole school system like DCPS.  It’s not like they can send the kid to anny other campuses or school that have the facilities. There is no network.

Reality is if your kid is in small private school or small charter school, the abundance of services will not be there.  No surprises here and families with these kids who do their homework know this.[/quote]

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