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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][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I taught in self-contained rooms for ED kids for years and they do work. Kids are taught at their pace, learn to use self-control strategies, and are not in trouble all day. These kids that are so often in heightened states are damaging their brains, and the kids that have to witness it all day ate experiencing secondary trauma. A self-contained program is not for life. It’s a reset, time to heal and get in control. The ones in my county have incredibly low enrollment, because the bar is so high to move them now. It’s not juvenile detention. It’s meeting their needs, building success, and then determining scaffolded returns to gen ed.[/quote]

Yes, but that’s not what’s being proposed in this thread. They want to move all of the kids that are significantly disruptive in gen ed classrooms into the self-contained classrooms. And then they only want to move them back out after they’ve been able to demonstrate self control in the self-contained setting, where we all know they’re not likely to provide the necessary and appropriate resources.

How do you think that would go?[/quote]

Are you a teacher? If not, do you understand what you're expecting from classroom teachers? It is too much. That's why they're quitting. I know a young teacher whose nose was broken by a student 6 weeks before her wedding. Most teachers do not have the training and do not want to deal with those types of behaviors day in and day out.[/quote]

As a parent of a child with special needs, few would understand as well as I. My kid is younger, but I can certainly imagine what it would be like to scale him up by 2x or 3x.

I would certainly agree that teachers need help with these students. [b]But you’re not asking for help. You’re trying to hide those students away so you can forget about them[/b].[/quote]

No, I'm not. I posted above that I've tried to help students with significant special needs for years. I was a special ed teacher and later a school psychologist. I'm just stating the obvious -- that classroom teachers are leaving because they can't cope with the large number of students with significant behaviors, and many school districts don't have the resources to provide 1:1 paras. Another factor -- I would imagine that very few DCUM posters are encouraging their children to become teachers. We have a problem that can't be ignored and will be even worse when the current teachers aged 55+ retire. [/quote]

You didn’t say what your plan is, except to apparently build more overpasses for the kids you’d like to leave behind to live under.  Though, I imagine you’re at an age now where that doesn’t really matter to you.[/quote]

Not true. I still work part-time. You're distorting my words, not sure if intentionally or just not understanding. My plan would be to hire more teachers and paras, with smaller classes; however, I don't control the funding and have no influence over the number of teachers leaving the profession.[/quote]

Ok, but if you look further up in the thread, the proposal was to fast-track kids into self-contained classrooms if they disrupt gen-ed classrooms, and make them earn their way back. This would obviously grossly increase the number of kids in those programs. And with no hope of fully staffing those programs, those kids wouldn't have a realistic path to get out of there.

The idea that more self-contained classrooms is the answer here is ridiculous. Yes, there will always be some set of students where that really is the best environment for them. But it will always be a small number, and it needs to be a small number because we'd never be able to recruit enough staff to handle large numbers effectively. 1:1 aides obviously have their own challenges, but for those that actually need it, its going to be cheaper and easier for the school district to provide than it would be to provide them with a self-contained program of similar educational quality.

The problem is, school districts are taking the easy way out, choosing to spend their money on lawyers to fight parents, rather than actually staffing and improving their programs.[/quote]

A one in one aide who is not allowed to touch a kid who is out of control may as well not be there. Frankly these kids are given free reign to run around the school while available staff “block the exits” they are out of control because no teacher is going to touch your throwing spitting biting kicking and hitting child when you will file a lawsuit if we do. So your kid runs around destroying the school until they “burn themselves out.” I don’t think you truly understand the manpower involved when a kid starts running around the school. If we could just take the child to a sensory or break room to calm down it would be helpful but no one is allowed to touch them to get them there so they run wild. We are too scared of lawsuits to touch your kid. It is mentally and physically exhausting to go to work everyday knowing a kid may abuse you or the children you are supposed to protect at any point during the day and your only recourse is to move out of the way and or take the blows. [/quote]

How does moving those kids out of your class solve those problems for everyone but you?[/quote]

I’m not the PP, but all of the other kids and their parents, as well as the teachers, will be much happier if they’re able to learn in a safe and relatively calm environment at school. Educational outcomes world improve dramatically for 95% of students (or at least stop declining) and teachers wouldn’t be leaving the profession so rapidly either. How is that not obvious?[/quote]

And the kids, teachers, and paras in the segregated classrooms? Screw ‘em?[/quote]

Well the kids in that classroom are all disruptive so yeah, they will just need to deal with the disruptions from the other kids. As for the teachers and staff, of course they should receive different training to keep them safe, a higher salary for the worse conditions, and/or lowered expectations for reporting and other admin since they’ll need to spend more time on classroom management. Also of course these rooms would have a higher staff/student ratio with shared aides.

And 95% of kids (and teachers!) will no longer be sacrificed and we might be able to save what’s left of our public education system.[/quote]

Why not use the substantial resources you’re referencing to actually support students and teachers in the LRE?

It’s because you know the schools wouldn’t properly staff the special education programs. It’s pretty clear from the tone of your post that you’re not interesting in helping those kids- you’re just trying to get rid of them.[/quote]

The problem is that people like you make an assumption that LRE automatically means Gen Ed. It does not.[/quote]

I’m not the person you are responding to, but it’s a big hurdle to get out of Gen Ed. That is certainly the default. [/quote]

Yeah, that definitely needs to change. I wonder how much of the resistance is about money and how much is about misinterpretation of the law.

We need to start some behavioral problem schools and fund them at the state level so the school districts don’t need to foot the bill for it. Towns and cities can then share the schools. If schools don’t make sense because there are only a couple of students in a town or rural area then we should fund private tutors or private placement, but the default needs to be a public option and getting all of those kids out of gen ed as soon as it’s clear to teachers and admin that the student has a real problem that can’t be quickly solved with normal classroom management techniques. That should improve conditions significantly for teachers.[/quote]

This is how public funded special ed schools already work. Places like Phillips, etc. Kids are bussed for many hours to them from far away, their local school system pays the tuition. [/quote]

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