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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Sped teachers are in such short supply that schools can’t hire more and can’t do anything about your complaints. Teachers can’t be let go either because see above. But you are welcome to complain anyway. [/quote]

Yep.  In my school district (Howard County, MD) they recently cut the number of SPED teachers.  Our school has 3-5 classrooms per grade for K-5 so about 20-25 classes.  With only around 10 SPED teachers, they just can't be in every classroom, so they have most of the kids in 1-2 classrooms per grade.  Even still, the SPED teachers can't be everywhere they are needed.

And as I said, in trying to meet the new MD pre-K mandate, which sucks a ton of money out of the school budget, one of the changes that the School Board and Superintendent implemented was a cut to SPED resources across the district.  Many schools are losing SPED teachers that they can't afford to lose and they will have an even harder time trying to meet the SPED demands.  So, this will only exacerbate the problem and likely the problem that the OP complained about will become more common rather than less.

It's not the school's fault that their budget for SPED support is cut.  They can only do what they are budgeted to do.  And this is the only way that they can meet the demands with the resources provided for them.

I urge parents to make sure to go to BoE meetings in the Fall to start to lobby for increased funding for special educators so that schools can provide the federally mandated support that these students need.  It needs to be emphasized that the school and school district are not provided adequate support for the students who need it and it is hurting non special education students who are becoming casualties of the budget cuts because too many special education students are crammed into limited classrooms because that is what the school can support.  Schools need better support for the special education students so that they and the students that they share classes with actually get a comparable eduation to those in other classrooms.  Right now the school system is creating a two-tier system within schools by clustering.  It needs to be brought to their attention again and again and especially in the months that the advance prep work for the following year's school budget is debated and decided.[/quote]

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