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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think that teachers, students, and parents would all be better off if discipline policies were changed to protect those in school buildings from the most disruptive students (who are a minority). Those truly disruptive, abusive, and unruly students take up too much time and emotional weight. Teachers should not have to suffer abuse at the hands of students, just as students should not lose out on their education due to serious disruptions by other students. Children need structure. By allowing this minority of students to have so much power, teachers are exhausted, and children learn that rules are optional. Parents, too, wind up in defense mode. Getting zeros for late or missing work seems excessive when other students can burst in and out of classrooms, throw items at teachers, and attack other kids at recess. Seriously. If you want discipline, then find a way to address the kids for whom conventional discipline strategies don't work. [/quote]

What do you propose?

It's hard to imagine a path to implementing it, but I do think elementary rooms should have two teachers.[/quote]

Teacher here proposing a few things:
1) There needs to be a way to "fast track" kids like this into a special education self contained classroom within a few weeks, not within a few years.  If, with interventions, the child can learn to self regulate, then said kid returns to gen ed, with a full time, 1:1 aide.  If they are successful with that support, then fade the TA out.  
2) Every single K-1st grade room needs a certified teacher and either a full time TA or a co-teacher.  OR, limit K-1 rooms to no more than 10 kids.  
3) Pass legislation that requires insurance companies to provide for the educational needs of kids who need to be outplaced.  This is primarily a health issue and then second, an education issue.  Insurance companies DO YOUR JOB.  And the government needs to build, staff, train and supply schools to deal with kids like this.  [/quote]

From your posts (at least, the posts I think come from you), you seem to be at breaking point. And as a parent of a child with special needs and behavioral challenges, I get how exhausting and painful (emotionally and physically) it can be. So I suspect your intentions are pure here. But I don't think you're really thinking through how this would play out for kids with special needs.

The reason we have IDEA to begin with is that states and local school districts were not providing appropriate educational services to kids with disabilities. And I get it-- it is expensive to do so. But essentially eliminating principle of Least Restrictive Environment would bring us right back to that. Kids would quickly get shuffled out to self-contained classrooms that would likely become even more short-staffed and resource poor. Once there, many kids would likely regress. Kids that might otherwise be successful in a gen ed classroom with an aid would never get that chance. Rather than giving kids the benefit of the doubt that they could be successful with supports, they'd instead have to prove themselves in an environment stacked against them. And much of the political pressure to provide resources for the needs of these students would disappear as quickly as the students would disappear into their segregated classrooms.

I don't think health insurance is the right funding path for a variety of reasons. For one, I hope we'll move to single-payer relatively soon anyway. But even more, it sets a bad precedent, would be complicated to regulate, and would likely pose serious challenges to low-income and/or underinsured families.  We don't expect insurance companies to reimburse schools in order to make the environment accessible to kids with physical disabilities- why should developmental disabilities be different?

Developmental disabilities come in spectrums that are particularly hard to define and measure. I don't see how you could ever separate educational services that could be covered by the school from habilitative and support services covered by insurance. Any attempt to do so would likely result in battles between insurance companies and schools, where ultimately only the kids would lose. While there are some related challenges already in public schools related to this, at least public schools are arms of the government and ostensibly should have an interest in the public good. The same cannot be said for private insurance companies.

And this would likely get incredibly expensive, assuming these services would be billed like other habilitative services paid through insurance. Since my child was diagnosed with ASD as a toddler, we've simply accepted that we'd hit our out-of-pocket max every year, sometimes exceeding coverage limits and having to pay for things in full.  It isn't easy financially, but we're able to do it. But while our income bracket may not be particularly high by DCUM standards, we're in a pretty high HHI percentile with good employer-subsidized health benefits. Not everyone is so lucky.[/quote]

Every child -- those with special needs or not -- deserves the best we can give. Unfortunately, the number of students with special needs in public schools has increased substantially, along with parents who have very high expectations for services, correspondence updates, and paperwork; and they bring advocates and/or attorneys to meetings. I understand why that's being done, but the reality is that the typical school system across our country does not have the resources or personnel to provide that level of service. We are facing a crisis with too few teachers.[/quote]

So, [b]we should sacrifice the students with special needs for the benefit of the other students[/b]?  I think you're starting from a place of good intentions, but there's a fine line between being burnt out and simply not caring.[/quote]

Well, what if the special needs child is physically harming other students?  Or if the special needs child throws materials and the other children need to clear the room fairly often?  Just like with masking and other issues.  We are having the problem of where does one individual’s rights end and another’s/greater good needs begin?

I don’t think there is an easy answer in some of these situations and it does deserved to be looked at from the perspective of BOTH the rights of the special needs child AND the rights of the other children in the class.  Sped kids get advocates, but who is advocating for the general education student and how the sped child impacts their education? [/quote]

THIS - ALL OF IT

Kids internalize a lot. People have no idea the fear that children go through. [/quote]

100%. Also, this contributes to the lack of respect for adults in education. Why should a kid get punished for not handing in homework when another kid is hitting and pushing other students on a regular basis? Structure and stability matter. Chaos hurts everyone.[/quote]

As mad as some of the posts make me in this thread, where several people seem to be explicitly or implicitly proposing that we sacrifice children with special needs, I certainly do recognize the very real and very serious challenges faced by schools, teachers, and kids.  This isn't the only example, but it is one that I've long thought about.

My younger kid has autism, but generally doesn't require much in the way of supports.  He has long had increased behavioral issues compared to his peers, although luckily they've gotten better over time.  When he started his 4 year-old preschool class, his teacher (with our blessing) basically created a little unit on autism for the kids.  At that age, there wasn't a stigma attached to it for my son or the other kids in the class- to them, they were just learning about each other.  It normalized it. I know there are confidentiality policies and laws in place that complicate that sort of thing in public schools. And while I understand the need to tread carefully, I think we should generally be willing to be more open to having those kinds of discussions and lessons.

Separately, I think we've gone overboard with concerns over physical interventions.  I get why, and I get that it is complicated, but I still think we've gone overboard.  My kids have gotten hurt a number of times at preschool and school.  Nothing too serious- the worst things just requiring stitches, which have been quite rare.  When those cases happen, I can hear and see the fear/worry in the school staff when they talk to me about it. They seem to calm down rather quickly when it's clear I'm not mad at any of them, but it makes me think they've had some bad experiences with parents.  So I get why they'd be reluctant to do physical interventions.  And I get how it becomes particularly challenging and dangerous to do them as the kids get bigger and stronger.  But, when possible/appropriate, and when there are staff capable of handling the students, I am completely fine with physical interventions.  And I understand that means some kids would likely get hurt in the course of those interventions, just like some kids would get hurt without them.

We should all be more understanding and less litigious.  I really don't think it's hard to determine when someone is acting in good faith, even when mistakes are made or accidents happen.

I don't have a good feeling for whether parents of children with special needs really want these strong notions of confidentiality practiced, or how litigious/angry they get over physical interventions and injuries.  I would expect it to be a very small number, but I very well could be grossly misunderstanding that (particularly in the DMV, where everyone seems more uptight than where I grew up in the midwest).[/quote]

SPED teacher here another problem no one is addressing is that the child with the extreme behavior gets the attention from the SPED teacher. What happens to the other students with IEP's when the teachers time is given solely for one child with extreme behaviors.  that is not fair or legal for the other students who have needs and IEP's.  The system is broken for teachers and students. Teachers are exhausted and can not help children when they are constantly stressed and in survival mode keeping everyone safe. This conversation needs more attention. This on top of the fact that due to the teacher shortage  some SPED teachers have 3-4 grades on their caseloads.[/quote]

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