Reply to Who at MCPS will help if a high school is not implementing a 504

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "Who at MCPS will help if a high school is not implementing a 504"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]MCPS high school counselor here. I would start by reaching out to your child's school counselor and/or assistant principal or grade level administrator. (The school counselor is likely your child's 504 case manager.) When you reach out, it's helpful to email some specific examples of how your child's teacher isn't implementing their 504 accommodations. This will make it much easier for the counselor to follow up with the teacher and, if necessary, the resource teacher for that department. As a counselor, I always prefer receiving these communications in writing, so that if I need to elevate a concern, I have written documentation to share with our building leadership.

I'm not sure how many folks in the building you've talked to. If you ever feel like you've reached the end the road in terms of reaching out to people at school, you should contact MCPS's 504 Compliance team: https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/special-education/compliance/section-504.aspx

[/quote]

OP here. Thank you all. I’m really so upset. The counselor said it’s up to the Assistant Principal and there were so many complaints about the teacher they’ve decided not to let anyone switch. The 504 is meaningless it appears.

The counselor said her hands are tied and she can’t help. She seems nice but she’s also new. She asked if I still wanted to pursue this after being rejected. I said I’ll pursue it until it’s fixed. She said they’d tell the teacher but I don’t see how he can improve his English that fast! She means well but she’s not going to be able to help it seems.

I have documented it all in correspondence with the teacher, head of the department, the counselor, the assistant principal and the 504 contact in compliance. I just feel so awful - my kid said he feels stupid and like crying and throwing up all day. How can he ever take a test when he isn’t picking up any content? He is entitled to class notes in his 504 but my son didn’t ask because he said the teacher is really disorganized and writes over the slides so they aren’t legible. I said let’s get the actual notes and see what they look like. I bought the textbook and hired a tutor but why bother going to class at this point? MCPS gave up on my child and the other kids in the class. It’s so sad.

I also requested access to another teacher in the department at lunch and before school so he has some resource for that class other than me!

It’s unbelievable the school is not doing more yo help my son and the other kids affected. 
[/quote]
OP, you seem confused about what a 504 does and doesn’t do. What it does is provide accommodations to help you student access the curriculum. In your case, you only indicated “copy of class notes” as an accommodation, which you then basically said your son refused. You son probably also has extended time, preferential seating, and maybe breaks. What a 504 does NOT do is give your child special treatment to pick and choose teachers. There is no accommodation of “teacher doesn’t have an accent” or “teacher has neat handwriting”.  While you aren’t getting what you want, that doesn’t mean the school is not meeting the 504. All you’ve done is identify yourself as an annoying parent.

So, let’s go back to the class notes problem. The purpose of that accommodation is to make sure that students have access to the content information provided in class, not a transcript of what happened in class. This could be the class slides, or the course textbook, or answer keys to worksheets. Such things are usually provided to everyone via Canvas nowadays. If that isn’t happening yet, that would be a place to ask the resource teacher to get the new teacher help with setting up. But let’s be realistic, if all of that was available, is your student really going to review materials covered in class?

It sounds like your son has a lot of anxiety and you are only compounding it. I think you would be better working with your son to determine what resources he has available (textbook, slides, videos, etc.) for the content, and to then just focus on the instruction during class without feeling like he has to scramble to keep up with notes. You son can also take advantage of homework help or peer tutoring that the school offers, if he gets stuck on homework.[/quote]

+1. Stop feeding into your child's anxiety. Children with 504s can have teachers with accents. They can also have teachers they don't feel a connection with after 7 days of class. That does not evince that a 504 hasn't been implemented. The fact that you've already contacted everyone in the school about this shows that your kid isn't the only one struggling with anxiety. Get a grip.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics