Anonymous wrote:I just looked at the 2023-24 budget and FCPS only has +$2 million budgeted for compensatory services next year. They have almost 50,000 students who are supposed to be getting a review for services.

They are making teachers do all of this work and almost no services will be provided. What a waste.

What you’re not seeing in the budget is all the unspent ESSER money sitting in school budgets. The rules are so tight on what the school could spend it on that there is A LOT of money unspent. That will be scooped up at the end of the school year and go towards this. There is plenty of money.

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Anonymous wrote:We heard at our IEP meeting that evening and weekend compensatory hours were available from non-FCPS teachers. No one is making teachers do this work.

Who do you think is combing through the IEPs from the last few years and holding extra meetings on top of the already way-too-full
schedules? What services are being provided to the students while the teachers are dealing with this? They can’t teach and do this at the same time.

Aside from pay, which I agree should be more, what do you suggest? Not provide IEPs? Additional services? Or outsource it altogether?

I'm one of the Special Ed teachers who responded upthread. Central Office should be handling all of it with the possible exception of delivering services. I'd be a lot more willing to provide the compensatory services myself if I had time. I don't, because of all the extra paperwork and meetings I'm now required to handle.

It looks like it is being handled in the annual IEP meetings. How is that such a huge burden?

If you have 15 kids on your caseload and you've already held annual IEP meetings for half of them this year, guess what? You have to meet with those parents again. If the parents don't want to meet, you still have to do all the data digging and figure out which, if any, services their child may be entitled to. If the parents do want services or have receipts and want reimbursement from past services, you have to schedule yet another meeting where Central Office does get involved before anyone cuts a check. Oh, and you also have to make sub plans for the times when you won't be in your classroom teaching your regular students because you're in a meeting. I don't have enough planning time to do all of that in addition to regular lesson plans, grading, data collection, and meetings, so it gets done off the clock. I have my own family and kids and am not interested in missing any more time with them to make a couple extra bucks.

That doesn't include the kids who have left your school. You also have to run their numbers and offer their parents a meeting.

INCORRECT. You do not have to offer them a meeting. If they reach out to you for a meeting, you have it. But you are not supposed to contact them. FCPS already did that.

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Anonymous wrote:Agree that gatehouse staff should be doing the paperwork and meetings. This was a systemic failure and should be handled out of gatehouse not indovodual teachers.

+ a million-teachers are DONE. this has finished a lot of SPED teachers. Good luck next year with your resident teachers.

Okay. I’m still waiting for the resignations that we’ve been hearing about since 2020 to actually occur.

After a while this kind of shrill argument loses its effectiveness. Lol.

You must not have a kid in school….?

Look at the data. There has been no mass exodus of teachers. Period.

And with a recession looming, I don’t see them starting to leave now.

By October 2022, more than a quarter of public schools had multiple teaching vacancies, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Nearly half, or 45%, of public schools had at least one teaching vacancy as of October, according to data released Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics.

7% of SPED positions are unfilled.

https://www.k12dive.com/news/public-schools-teaching-vacancies/638029/

These numbers aren’t normal, but you do you without any information or links to back you up!

I agree that a recession would bring some back…. Careful what you wish for though.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree that gatehouse staff should be doing the paperwork and meetings. This was a systemic failure and should be handled out of gatehouse not indovodual teachers.

+ a million-teachers are DONE. this has finished a lot of SPED teachers. Good luck next year with your resident teachers.

Okay. I’m still waiting for the resignations that we’ve been hearing about since 2020 to actually occur.

After a while this kind of shrill argument loses its effectiveness. Lol.

You must not have a kid in school….?

Look at the data. There has been no mass exodus of teachers. Period.

And with a recession looming, I don’t see them starting to leave now.

I just looked at the 2023-24 budget and FCPS only has +$2 million budgeted for compensatory services next year. They have almost 50,000 students who are supposed to be getting a review for services.

They are making teachers do all of this work and almost no services will be provided. What a waste.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree that gatehouse staff should be doing the paperwork and meetings. This was a systemic failure and should be handled out of gatehouse not indovodual teachers.

+ a million-teachers are DONE. this has finished a lot of SPED teachers. Good luck next year with your resident teachers.

Okay. I’m still waiting for the resignations that we’ve been hearing about since 2020 to actually occur.

After a while this kind of shrill argument loses its effectiveness. Lol.

They’ve been happening. You’re either not listening or don’t care.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree that gatehouse staff should be doing the paperwork and meetings. This was a systemic failure and should be handled out of gatehouse not indovodual teachers.

+ a million-teachers are DONE. this has finished a lot of SPED teachers. Good luck next year with your resident teachers.

Okay. I’m still waiting for the resignations that we’ve been hearing about since 2020 to actually occur.

After a while this kind of shrill argument loses its effectiveness. Lol.

You must not have a kid in school….?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree that gatehouse staff should be doing the paperwork and meetings. This was a systemic failure and should be handled out of gatehouse not indovodual teachers.

+ a million-teachers are DONE. this has finished a lot of SPED teachers. Good luck next year with your resident teachers.

Okay. I’m still waiting for the resignations that we’ve been hearing about since 2020 to actually occur.

After a while this kind of shrill argument loses its effectiveness. Lol.

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Anonymous wrote:I can tell you it is designed to break the backs of the entire FCPS SpEd apparatus, from administration to teachers. If OCR wanted to "help" students by doing this, I think they took the wrong route.

This is my fear. At our IEP meeting I said I think they are going to burn out at the SPED teachers with this and I do not need a meeting. I said if they offer something for X issue (my child's academic issue), please feel free to email and we can communicate that way, but the SPED teachers work enough already.

I’m a teacher. My department chair is a teacher and her husband is a sped teacher in FCPS. When this came out he spent 6 hours alone poring over the IEPs of kids he doesn’t even teach anymore to do all this shit. Been doing elementary sped for 10 years and this has pushed him to thinking it’s time to leave. Sped teachers cannot teach, manage a current caseload, AND go back and redo and provide compensatory services for kids they haven’t taught in 3 years. It’s inhumane.

Six hours is really not THAT big of a burden.

I think how “difficult” this is for teachers is being overblown.

He did it in ONE night. That is not a one off effort. It’s a massive burden on already overloaded sped teachers and it will decimate sped in FCPS.

One night of extra work (even if it’s 6 hours) will hardly “decimate” anyone, let alone an entire system.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We heard at our IEP meeting that evening and weekend compensatory hours were available from non-FCPS teachers. No one is making teachers do this work.

Who do you think is combing through the IEPs from the last few years and holding extra meetings on top of the already way-too-full
schedules? What services are being provided to the students while the teachers are dealing with this? They can’t teach and do this at the same time.

Aside from pay, which I agree should be more, what do you suggest? Not provide IEPs? Additional services? Or outsource it altogether?

I'm one of the Special Ed teachers who responded upthread. Central Office should be handling all of it with the possible exception of delivering services. I'd be a lot more willing to provide the compensatory services myself if I had time. I don't, because of all the extra paperwork and meetings I'm now required to handle.

That's fair. But, another question: Central Office folks are not going to know these kids and their needs. So would that be most helpful to the kids? I hear what you're saying and it sounds like an excellent option on its face. I'm just not sure how it would work in practice?

Sorry to post again so soon. A big part of the time suck is just gathering and inputting all the information from various data sources. You have to get test scores from all over the place, get attendance records, get TLPs, look at progress reports, and then put those numbers onto a spreadsheet. Then you have to figure out how much time from school the student missed and how many hours of services they didn't receive when they were virtual. It's not hard but it takes a ton of time. I don't see a reason why Central Office couldn't do this part. I'm being asked to do it for students who I've never met because I wasn't at the same school during Covid. I also think Central Office could make a lot of the clear cut yes or no decisions based on the data. If a student attended virtual school regularly, passed grade level tests since returning, shows no regression and the parents don't want compensatory services, note the file and be done with it. If a student is visually impaired and has Level 3 autism and the parents had to hire someone to come sit 1:1 with them to access virtual instruction and want reimbursement, Central Office is going to be getting involved anyway.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We heard at our IEP meeting that evening and weekend compensatory hours were available from non-FCPS teachers. No one is making teachers do this work.

Who do you think is combing through the IEPs from the last few years and holding extra meetings on top of the already way-too-full
schedules? What services are being provided to the students while the teachers are dealing with this? They can’t teach and do this at the same time.

Aside from pay, which I agree should be more, what do you suggest? Not provide IEPs? Additional services? Or outsource it altogether?

I'm one of the Special Ed teachers who responded upthread. Central Office should be handling all of it with the possible exception of delivering services. I'd be a lot more willing to provide the compensatory services myself if I had time. I don't, because of all the extra paperwork and meetings I'm now required to handle.

It looks like it is being handled in the annual IEP meetings. How is that such a huge burden?

If you have 15 kids on your caseload and you've already held annual IEP meetings for half of them this year, guess what? You have to meet with those parents again. If the parents don't want to meet, you still have to do all the data digging and figure out which, if any, services their child may be entitled to. If the parents do want services or have receipts and want reimbursement from past services, you have to schedule yet another meeting where Central Office does get involved before anyone cuts a check. Oh, and you also have to make sub plans for the times when you won't be in your classroom teaching your regular students because you're in a meeting. I don't have enough planning time to do all of that in addition to regular lesson plans, grading, data collection, and meetings, so it gets done off the clock. I have my own family and kids and am not interested in missing any more time with them to make a couple extra bucks.

That doesn't include the kids who have left your school. You also have to run their numbers and offer their parents a meeting.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Can anyone explain:

1) Why did FCPS sign this voluntary agreement?

2) Why was FCPS singled out for an OCR investigation? What happened in FCPS to special education students from 2020-2022 was not terribly unique.

I do not understand the dynamic and politics of the settlement at all.

They picked a few large school districts in the US for this investigation. School districts all over the US did WAAAAAAY less than FCPS did but because we're big and always in the news, we got singled out. FCPS was following the guidance they were given by VDOE but someone decided that wasn't good enough.

where is this data? it is hard to do less than nothing.

Yeah, okay...the teachers did nothing. My kids were online every, single day with their teachers learning the curriculum. My child who receives special education services was pulled into small groups online just like she would have been had she been in person. She got her accommodations and she got instruction. You people who keep saying the teachers did nothing are flat out lying. I simply do not believe you. I understand that some related services such as speech and OT got the shaft, particularly since it's hard to provide those services virtually. But do not lie and say your kid literally got no instruction for a year.

I think they are referring to receiving no ‘special Ed’ services for a whole year. No pullouts, no 1 on 1s, no small groups. This did happen to my DC.

I’d be willing to bet at least half of the people saying their children received no instruction really mean “my kid didn’t want to sit/logon to virtual school and instead of forcing the issue/monitoring them during school time I just threw my hands up”.

Rubbish. It’s contrary. The parents of these learning-challenged kids were providing their own tutoring while also juggling their jobs. The virtual setting with 67 page PowerPoint decks was not stimulating for 7-8 year olds. Their attention was lost and it was hard for them to stay engaged. It was a very trying time for the families and the special Ed services were non-existent.

RUBBISH!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can anyone explain:

1) Why did FCPS sign this voluntary agreement?

2) Why was FCPS singled out for an OCR investigation? What happened in FCPS to special education students from 2020-2022 was not terribly unique.

I do not understand the dynamic and politics of the settlement at all.

They picked a few large school districts in the US for this investigation. School districts all over the US did WAAAAAAY less than FCPS did but because we're big and always in the news, we got singled out. FCPS was following the guidance they were given by VDOE but someone decided that wasn't good enough.

where is this data? it is hard to do less than nothing.

Yeah, okay...the teachers did nothing. My kids were online every, single day with their teachers learning the curriculum. My child who receives special education services was pulled into small groups online just like she would have been had she been in person. She got her accommodations and she got instruction. You people who keep saying the teachers did nothing are flat out lying. I simply do not believe you. I understand that some related services such as speech and OT got the shaft, particularly since it's hard to provide those services virtually. But do not lie and say your kid literally got no instruction for a year.

I think they are referring to receiving no ‘special Ed’ services for a whole year. No pullouts, no 1 on 1s, no small groups. This did happen to my DC.

I’d be willing to bet at least half of the people saying their children received no instruction really mean “my kid didn’t want to sit/logon to virtual school and instead of forcing the issue/monitoring them during school time I just threw my hands up”.

Rubbish. It’s contrary. The parents of these learning-challenged kids were providing their own tutoring while also juggling their jobs. The virtual setting with 67 page PowerPoint decks was not stimulating for 7-8 year olds. Their attention was lost and it was hard for them to stay engaged. It was a very trying time for the families and the special Ed services were non-existent.

Anonymous wrote:Agree that gatehouse staff should be doing the paperwork and meetings. This was a systemic failure and should be handled out of gatehouse not indovodual teachers.

+ a million-teachers are DONE. this has finished a lot of SPED teachers. Good luck next year with your resident teachers.

Anonymous wrote:I wish the Federal Government would pay for all the services that they insist that the Public Schools provide so that the schools were actually in a position to do their jobs properly.

SO much this!!