Reply to Why can’t some schools open?

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "Why can’t some schools open?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]I'm not sure how you solve the special ed issue in particular. Programs like immersion and magnet are nice extras but are not legally mandated, nor is any transportation to them. Not so for special education. Both the programming and the door-to-door transportation is legally required to be provided by MCPS.

Schools like RICA, Longview, Stephen Knolls, Rock Terrace, and Carl Sandburg have only one location in the county and pull students from the entire county. To duplicate these schools in multiple locations is extremely expensive and probably impossible to staff. To eliminate them would cost the county even more as every student there is extremely high needs and would have to go to a non-public placement like Ivymount or Sheppard-Pratt or even residential schools like Benedictine and possibly with aides. Add in all the related services they'd need (PT/OT/SLP/counseling) and it gets extremely expensive to outsource.

Then there are the programs that pull across an entire quad cluster or multiple clusters, like Extensions or Connections or Learning Center. They may be pulling kids from Rockville to Poolesville to one school. Smaller town districts don't have this diversity of programs, so those kids either don't get anything or the district spends a bunch on out-of-district and private placements for those kids.

You can't just say "Candlewood ES is open, except for the Extensions program which is closed." That's a violation of FAPE. You also can't say, "Candlewood ES is open and so is Extensions but too bad so sad there's no busing for Larlo and Carlo because their neighborhoods aren't cleared, get here if you can." Also a violation of the IEP.

Maybe if the district had never been set up like this in the first place, there would be more obvious solutions. But once it is this way, unwinding it and taking away stuff from special ed students is very fraught. I feel like every other issue could be solved and they can just get rid of magnet and immersion if everybody wants to prioritize weather zones, but I don't see how you get around the special ed problem with how things are currently set up.[/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