Reply to MCPS is executing significant changes to special education that directly affect autistic students and their families.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Unpopular opinion from a parent of a student with Autism- I see students with autism who are working on alternative learning outcomes and a high school certificate in services that have a similar profile as autism services. I believe the autism specific service and specialist exploded in the county and got too specific for public education. Many families from all over the country moved here for these specific autism services and demands, staffing, and programs exploded to something unrealistic for a public school system. Students in self contained special education can benefit from the best practices offered and used in the autism specific programs. I believe the county got too specific, created too many individual set of services that are not realistic to maintain with the funding and staffing of a large public school system. [/quote]

This doesn't make sense to me. If you think more kids could benefit from the expertise of the autism programs then why is cutting their support the answer? This seems like a very Taylor response- everyone should get a piece of this special thing, so we'll spread it around until it isn't special or useful anymore! The different alternate learning outcomes programs do serve different profiles of kids. You may look at them and see they're all cognitively disabled but kids in LFI vs Autism learn very differently.[/quote]

Because there is not funding to support going deep in autism and still be able to deliver baseline basics for everything/everyone else.[/quote]

Ah, and there the real answer is given away. [b]Taylor and many people don't care about these kids, better to take away what little support they have so others get theirs.[/b] There certainly is enough funding if it is prioritized. And as stated by others before- it'll cost us more money in the end to not serve these kids appropriately.[/quote]

DP.  Interesting take, here, when PP was suggesting [i]basics[/i] for others.   Really, whether shortage or plenty, there isn't much of an ethical basis for meeting the needs of one group better than another.

That's not to say that, for this group, many might underestimate the relative level of need/costs of meeting that need with reasonable equivalence.[/quote]

This is the whole point of being equitable. Kids with more needs get more resources. I think it's unfair to say other kids in special education don't get "basics." Most of the complaints here are more about process than services. Improving the process of qualifying for an IEP is definitely a good idea. Honestly, the idea that taking away a handful of Autism support positions is going to equal enough money to fix all the other problems is incredibly disingenuous. These positions are a small part of the system but have a huge impact on the quality of the Autism programs and these students.[/quote]

Negative. They have very little impact on the quality of the Autism programs except to act as barriers to stop the majority of autistic children from accessing them. Only the parents with advocates and lawyers get into them currently [/quote]

I'm assuming you're just a bitter parent. As an Autism Program teacher I receive a lot of training and support from the Autism specialists and I'm really worried how that's going to be impacted next year. None of my students have ever had an advocate or lawyer. A lot of the families are low income and have a lot of needs actually...[/quote]

As a teacher in a different ALO program, I don't get training and support. Except I've had instructional specialist from the autism programs come out several times to observe kids and they've been helpful with strategies and ideas. But that only happened because I had a RTSE who held sway in the county and got it done. That hadn't been my typical experience. That training and support is needed in other programs as well, especially as our autism numbers rise - currently half my class. And especially since in those cases where they came to observe, not once did they recommend or agree with our recommendation that student should go to an autism program.

I'm not saying those supports should be pulled from the autism program, but it would be helpful to have those same supports in other discreet programs[/quote]

Instructional specialists are not being cut. Only the 9 supervisors. Instructional specialists may offer strategies but they do not conduct training (special Ed teacher in mcps )[/quote]

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