Anonymous wrote:My UMC ELL has benefitted a lot from services in our DCPS for the past several years. We got an in-person spot and wouldn't take it if we were convinced that a less needy student could get it off the WL. We're not convinced, not the way things are shaking out. Kids with minor IEPs have the same preference as families on welfare and in homeless shelters. Ugh.

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Anonymous wrote:My kid also didn’t get a spot. He has an IEP for 5 hrs a week of special ED and an hour a week of speech. We’re in PK at an Upper NW school. Can’t imagine many kids there who are at risk or homeless. Not happy. He won’t do any of his therapies virtually and DL is a joke for him.

The non-taxpaying diplomat or WB employee got your child's seat so they can learn some more English before they return home and grow up to be our global competition. These aren't the children of recent immigrants who need a leg up. Most embassies require their families to live in Upper NW neighborhoods schools because of safety concerns (though recent events threaten that a bit), so the concentration of these privileged English learners is particularly high.

This is such a weird sentiment. What do you mean by non tax paying World Bank or Diplomat? They pay taxes, just back at home. They are no different from any of the people that work in DC but live elsewhere as far as their taxes are concerned (MD residents who work in DC do not pay DC income taxes). What about any of the US Military who are attending your DCPS schools. They pay out of state taxes but if they rent, they pay no property tax. I just think that your throw away comment was a huge red herring. So what. Those visitors are here legally and certainly are not taking away from our kids school experiences.

I suppose that time will tell if they are the ones being brought back in for in person learning. But if they are, so what. Maybe the ESL teachers volunteered to come in more than the other specialists.

Anyway, your comment reeks of not knowing how taxes or compensation works in a few communities that you are disparaging.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid also didn’t get a spot. He has an IEP for 5 hrs a week of special ED and an hour a week of speech. We’re in PK at an Upper NW school. Can’t imagine many kids there who are at risk or homeless. Not happy. He won’t do any of his therapies virtually and DL is a joke for him.

The non-taxpaying diplomat or WB employee got your child's seat so they can learn some more English before they return home and grow up to be our global competition. These aren't the children of recent immigrants who need a leg up. Most embassies require their families to live in Upper NW neighborhoods schools because of safety concerns (though recent events threaten that a bit), so the concentration of these privileged English learners is particularly high.

This is such a weird sentiment. What do you mean by non tax paying World Bank or Diplomat? They pay taxes, just back at home. They are no different from any of the people that work in DC but live elsewhere as far as their taxes are concerned (MD residents who work in DC do not pay DC income taxes). What about any of the US Military who are attending your DCPS schools. They pay out of state taxes but if they rent, they pay no property tax. I just think that your throw away comment was a huge red herring. So what. Those visitors are here legally and certainly are not taking away from our kids school experiences.

I suppose that time will tell if they are the ones being brought back in for in person learning. But if they are, so what. Maybe the ESL teachers volunteered to come in more than the other specialists.

Anyway, your comment reeks of not knowing how taxes or compensation works in a few communities that you are disparaging.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid also didn’t get a spot. He has an IEP for 5 hrs a week of special ED and an hour a week of speech. We’re in PK at an Upper NW school. Can’t imagine many kids there who are at risk or homeless. Not happy. He won’t do any of his therapies virtually and DL is a joke for him.

The non-taxpaying diplomat or WB employee got your child's seat so they can learn some more English before they return home and grow up to be our global competition. These aren't the children of recent immigrants who need a leg up. Most embassies require their families to live in Upper NW neighborhoods schools because of safety concerns (though recent events threaten that a bit), so the concentration of these privileged English learners is particularly high.

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Anonymous wrote:Right, the kids with high needs IEPs who got a spot are not going back into a classroom with pullouts for speech and o/t and special education - they are going into a classroom with 10 (or 9 if they are lower grade) other kids with various needs that will all be met virtually. So it seems like the grade level teacher will be there to log the kids into computers in order to have their service hours virtually with SLP etc. Same with self-contained. And the rationale for half of the kids there is that those classes are mandated to have a teacher and TWO aides. So if the teacher or one of the aides isn’t coming back then you can’t have (up to 8) kids. Many of the kids in self-contained are not able to socially distance or potentially wear masks because of their sensory issues and that means those classes will be higher risk for everyone in the room. Again, if the people who made these plans had ever had an iota of actual experience in a classroom, they may have realized that there are other factors than the number of bodies you can fit into a classroom. But they haven’t, and they chose not to involve the people who know the kids best, parents and teachers, and so here we are...

My IEP kid gets about an hour a day of pull-out instruction. I'm fine with his remaining virtual if his math and ELA instruction is in person. It is an great plan for him. I understand it is not great for everyone and I'd prefer a plan that gave more students access to in-person instruction. But it is literally winning the lottery for us.

Anonymous wrote:My kid also didn’t get a spot. He has an IEP for 5 hrs a week of special ED and an hour a week of speech. We’re in PK at an Upper NW school. Can’t imagine many kids there who are at risk or homeless. Not happy. He won’t do any of his therapies virtually and DL is a joke for him.

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Anonymous wrote:I think the idea with bringing back 50% of self-contained children is the lack of staffing. I'd imagine only around half of SpEd teachers assigned to self-contained agreed to return in person. My best bet is that the lottery will select 50%, then the school brings in an additional two (if they have the staff allowing them to be in compliance with the teacher to student ratio).
As for services, OT and PT will be in person but speech won't. This is what they said in a reply to a question during the information session on Oct 6.

But if it is a staffing or space problem, then that’s why we should be doing hybrid!

Why not serve all the self-contained kids part-time rather than some FT and others none?!

(And same for the rest of the kids!)

I 100% agree, but teachers refused hybrid because of the added contagion risk for them and their students. There were lots of posts about that here too - how one teacher with two sets of 10 kids was too dangerous. So the rule is one teacher with no more than 11 kids

That’s not the rationale dcps is using for no hybrid. They said the changed from hybrid because it offered children less instruction than this plan. It had nothing to do with the wtu

This was the rational given to me by my principal. I think the recent email from DCPS about hybrid providing less instruction time is because they are getting a lot of questions about it and are trying to justify the decision especially in light of NYC. BTW, if you read the NYC version of dcum (youbemom) there are students learning virtually in care classrooms because they too struggled to get enough teachers to go back. It doesn't sound like those are elementary school students but it's hard to tell.

But that’s a new answer. In the townhall last month the chancellor specifically said hybrid was off the table once the school year started because it’s too hard to implement midstream. So which answer is correct? Or I guess which one sounds better?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the idea with bringing back 50% of self-contained children is the lack of staffing. I'd imagine only around half of SpEd teachers assigned to self-contained agreed to return in person. My best bet is that the lottery will select 50%, then the school brings in an additional two (if they have the staff allowing them to be in compliance with the teacher to student ratio).
As for services, OT and PT will be in person but speech won't. This is what they said in a reply to a question during the information session on Oct 6.

But if it is a staffing or space problem, then that’s why we should be doing hybrid!

Why not serve all the self-contained kids part-time rather than some FT and others none?!

(And same for the rest of the kids!)

I 100% agree, but teachers refused hybrid because of the added contagion risk for them and their students. There were lots of posts about that here too - how one teacher with two sets of 10 kids was too dangerous. So the rule is one teacher with no more than 11 kids

That’s not the rationale dcps is using for no hybrid. They said the changed from hybrid because it offered children less instruction than this plan. It had nothing to do with the wtu

This was the rational given to me by my principal. I think the recent email from DCPS about hybrid providing less instruction time is because they are getting a lot of questions about it and are trying to justify the decision especially in light of NYC. BTW, if you read the NYC version of dcum (youbemom) there are students learning virtually in care classrooms because they too struggled to get enough teachers to go back. It doesn't sound like those are elementary school students but it's hard to tell.

Anonymous wrote:This is why the teachers had to be involved. DCPS has made a horrible situation a million times worse for the majority of kids.