Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Special Ed teachers (and paras) need a 10 or 20% stipend on top of MCEA or SEIU rates.

It isn’t about money. It’s about the workload and the working conditions. I wouldn’t go back to Special Ed even if you gave me a 30-40% raise.

Same. Principals who don't care about this population, the unrelenting pressure from parents, many with lawyers at thie point, and Central Office is absol-effing-useless. Amd it's been am ongoing problem that they have done anything to solve. With McKnight "we're 99% staffed" last year, no one knew there was a problem except the remaining spec ed teachers and the parents begging for suppport

Anonymous wrote:Special Ed teachers (and paras) need a 10 or 20% stipend on top of MCEA or SEIU rates.

It isn’t about money. It’s about the workload and the working conditions. I wouldn’t go back to Special Ed even if you gave me a 30-40% raise.

Anonymous wrote:Mcps is repugnant in its treatment of special needs students

? most school districts cannot deal with it. If you think plenty of other school districts do better, then you should move to one of those districts.

And I'm not a rah rah MCPS fan. I dislike a lot of the sh1t they do, but there's a teacher shortage all over the country, especially for SN. It's not unique to MCPS.

I moved from a very wealthy area out west, and a parent of a SN kid I knew had to sue the school district to get their kid services. So, again, not unique to mcps.

Anonymous wrote:Mcps is repugnant in its treatment of special needs students

+1000

It’s culture.

IMO, one of the problems is that MCPS has not developed any standardized, evidence-based "special instruction" curriculum for any kind of disability. For example, only recently has MCPS even begun to train teachers in the gold-standard reading instruction packages that have an evidence basis for dyslexia. As a result, kids don't progress - although they could be with the right instruction - and endless meetings, documentation and conflict ensue. Worse, this means every special ed teacher is left to reinvent the wheel, which is time-consuming and ineffective. Multiply that by, literally, every single kind of disability, and huge amounts of time are wasted, not to mention the waste of a child's development and the increase in a negative ripple effect - depression, anxiety, negative conduct in the classroom and conflict with parents.

Another problem is neither special educators nor general ed nor admin really understand their legal obligations. As a result endless hours are wasted when do something wrong - it's often wildly wrong and, again, results in lots of meetings, documentation and paperwork to force the teacher or admin to do the legally-required thing. I was always mind-boggled how much time I and the entire IEP team wasted on these, extremely obvious matters.

Finally, structurally, MCPS's support framework for SPED is crap. Teacher Reports are generic and don't match IEP goals and objectives so there is no data collection, the gradebook system is not modifiable in any way for accommodations and while there is standardization in terms of ideas for offering accommodations, there is no standardization in the delivery and documentation of accommodations, which, again, leaves sped teachers to reinvent the wheel.

Anonymous wrote:MCEA does not represent special education teachers.


Well, maybe on paper…

What I mean to say is they actually represent all teacher, but I hate unions so I like trash talk.

Anonymous wrote:How can schools meet the needs of students with disabilities without filling these positions? Some schools do not have any Special Education
Teachers:

https://moco360.media/2023/09/21/nearly-half-of-all-current-mcps-full-time-teacher-voids-fall-within-special-education-data-shows/

It's just that these days, there are 300% more students requiring special education than even ten years ago. The problem is especially bad in the wealthy areas where people can get a private diagnosis where almost every kid has ADHD or something similar.

What does MCPS do with funds allocated for full-time Special Education teachers but they don’t fill the positions?

Special Ed teachers (and paras) need a 10 or 20% stipend on top of MCEA or SEIU rates.

This is only going to get worse. We need parents to advocate for teachers. The pay isn't worth it. There is just not enough time in the day to do the job well. It is unsustainable.

MCEA does not represent special education teachers.


Well, maybe on paper…

Money isn’t the issue. The workload is unmanageable and SpEd teachers are often tasked with dealing with behavior issues even though it may be unrelated to the disability. Standard caseload is 20. It should be 15.

We easily have 50 more SpEd certified teachers in the system who teach mainstream now. They left because of the workload and constant required training.

Mcps is repugnant in its treatment of special needs students

This is a very good example of why we need a special pay scale for sped teachers.

How can schools meet the needs of students with disabilities without filling these positions? Some schools do not have any Special Education
Teachers:

https://moco360.media/2023/09/21/nearly-half-of-all-current-mcps-full-time-teacher-voids-fall-within-special-education-data-shows/