Anonymous wrote: Sped coordinators are a waste of money since they don’t service kids and they don’t even write IEPs. It does not mean the school cares about sped. It means they are very bad at the legal aspect and/or they care about that part more than anything.

I disagree, based on our experience. We've worked with a few SPED coordinators at different schools, and this role really does matter. In most cases, they were former SPED teachers who were promoted into leadership.

SPED coordinators schedule the IEP meetings and make sure due process is followed, including timelines - if your child has a lot of providers, aligning everyone's schedules, getting the goals and progress updates from everyone, entering everything correctly - it's a lot of logistics, and they do it for every kid with an IEP in the school. They take a lot of the admin stuff off of teachers' plates. A good SPED coordinator can also be the difference between an IEP meeting running efficiently or badly, and be a point of contact for existing and prospective families. They also do sourcing if any related service providers need to be hired to offer specific services a student needs that aren't already available at the school. At one of our schools, they also did coaching for some of the newer SPED teachers.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do your own research and ask to observe any suggested placements. Also, look at the special education staffing via the FY26 budget worksheets to see how well resources they are. For example, some schools only have part time OT and SLPs and some have full time dedicated positions. This can indicate how stingy they will actually be with services.

Also, for you and others, don’t go to Burroughs with an IEP. There are several special education families having very awful experiences there.

This is untrue. My school has a full time OT and another we share. We also have 2 full time SLPs but they aren’t included on the budget as they are based on need and are ‘central office’ staff- regardless if they are there everyday.

What school is this? Would be helpful to know an example of a school that may seem better resourced than they appear on their budget — perhaps this school is better at advocating to central office than others.

No, I am saying speech pathologists and occupational therapists are NOT on any school’s budget. You must ask the school. So my school has MORE resources than what is shown on our budget.

You may look at the number of specialized supports such as special education teachers and mental health professionals but this doesn’t mean they actually were able to hire all supports. Which again you’d have to ask the school directly.

Apologies let me add, it’s not just about advocacy. It’s about the number of sped students. Some schools are stingier with hours than others. So even if the school says they have 2 they may still be stingier with hours to keep hours manageable for staff. This is not the case with my school but it may be in the future with some complaints from some staff.

OTs and SLPs aren’t in school budgets, but SWD teachers & SPED coordinators are.

Yes, which is based on the number of sped students. Sped coordinators are a waste of money since they don’t service kids and they don’t even write IEPs. It does not mean the school cares about sped. It means they are very bad at the legal aspect and/or they care about that part more than anything.

Also having 4 sped teachers doesn’t matter if there’s 60 students (the ‘limit’ is 15 kids a piece) but there’s a lot with 15-20+ hours of specialized instruction. Larger group sizes, less differentiating, and skipping hours is 100% likely.