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

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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]Didn't MCPS dramatically increase the budget number for special ed in last year's budget to hire a large number of personnel to fill the gap in the school setting?  Is it possible that, with that, the overall special ed level of effort at central became less necessary, and that these cuts reflect that?[/quote]

I think that was a big marketing ploy honestly. And even when Taylor was pushing that he admitted that MCPS was understaffed and this was a push to get special education staffing where it should be, not that they'd have extra resources. If you look at last year's budget you can see they did add more special education teachers than the year before- 170 for FY26 compared to 46 for FY25, but that's not even enough to put one more special education teacher in each school. Part of that number will just be normal staffing allocations every school gets if their special ed numbers increase as well. Also, the big paraeducator increase in the budget is mainly from transitioning part time staff to full time staff with benefits so there aren't actually 500 more paras in the schools.

The teachers will only be as good as the training and support they get. Taylor has continuously cut the central office support staff, and it was pretty offensive how he vaguely characterized it as getting rid of extra bloat when the high level admin who aren't in schools stayed or were increased and the people actually going IN the schools to directly help got cut. We see it happening again with the social workers this year. The attitude from Dr. Cage from the get-go has been that special ed is a mess and she's here to fix it- no interest or curiosity in how things are done or figuring out what has worked well. Just a dismantling because they think they know better.

Page 26-27: https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/siteassets/district/departments/budget/fy2026/fy2026_boe_operatingbudge_final_03_05_2025.pdf

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+1 This

As a parent who has interacted with that office - it was pretty apparent that she thought parents here all paid for diagnoses to get special treatment. She distrusts parents - particularly the more affluent vocal ones (like aforementioned Wooton crowd). Hence, she’s “here” to whip us into shape because she knows better than us whiny parents.

As for private placement comments - there is a supply and demand issue. Not enough supply, way too much demand because MCPS competes with DCPS, FCPS, and into Virginia for the same small amount of spots. Also,the State cut their contribution which has raised the cost for mcps. Most of the existing in-house programs in MCPS have been eliminated or “watered down” in the past decade so there is nowhere to go.

The state has goals to have at least 71% of students in mainstream. MCPS does not meet this — because they can’t provide services students and teachers need in mainstream. But, the incentive is there to push more kids into mainstream classes whether they should be there or not. So, the law is kind of in her favor….

Doesn’t make it right.

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Our school psychologist and ap both think that parents are trying to game the system and deny ieps and 594sand it’s a huge battle.  [/quote]

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