Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s time to put on big girl pants and move on. Pandemic impacted everyone 100% and not just the kids with special needs and disabilities. I hope we all (parents and schools) learned from it. I will forever appreciate the teachers and staff that did their jobs during an unimaginable situation.

It’s such a head scratcher to see comments like this. Almost every family I know with a SN kid also has at least one NT kid. So the fact that these parents are still talking about the long-term and unresolved issues that impacted iep students says something. They’re not wholly distinct groups of people.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fcps needs to disband their sped and pay the parents about 50k each to find an acceptable option. Not the parents fault they can't hire and provide services require by law.

Why, of course. That’s the answer! There are all these private agencies/schools just overflowing with high quality teachers. There are empty classrooms just waiting to be filled with FCPS students.

Anonymous wrote:Fcps needs to disband their sped and pay the parents about 50k each to find an acceptable option. Not the parents fault they can't hire and provide services require by law.

Anonymous wrote:Fcps needs to disband their sped and pay the parents about 50k each to find an acceptable option. Not the parents fault they can't hire and provide services require by law.

Anonymous wrote:Fcps needs to disband their sped and pay the parents about 50k each to find an acceptable option. Not the parents fault they can't hire and provide services require by law.

Anonymous wrote:Fcps needs to disband their sped and pay the parents about 50k each to find an acceptable option. Not the parents fault they can't hire and provide services require by law.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All this means is teachers will be asked to do more without compensation. That’s how things always get done.

Without compensation? That’s horrible that teachers don’t get paid. I thought they collected salaries and benefits.

Funny. (/s) It’s the “more” that isn’t compensated and is making SPED teachers leave the profession and creating a hiring crisis for the district. I don’t teach SPED and I never would. You have no idea how much “extra” these teachers do in terms of paperwork and meetings. It’s unmanageable. How do you think FCPS is are going to perform the mandated audit of all SPED kids? Who do you think is going to perform the review of those 200,000 or so files in the next few months? Who else would know how to best evaluate the kids and figure out plans for learning acceleration or compensation?

DP. I've got 2 kids with IEPS in FCPS, the younger is still in HS. I have a lot of respect for teachers and recognize school systems have never had sufficient funding for the requirements of FAPE. It's unfortunate that teachers and students are crushed by this. Yet, it's not the fault of parents who demand their kids receive a FAPE. Your anger should be directed at administrators, school boards and elected officials. I'm surprised school systems haven't sued for being required to provide a FAPE without sufficient resources.

Can’t squeeze blood from a stone.

Anonymous wrote:I was a self-contained special ed teacher for many years in FCPS. I came early and stayed late. I was required to eat lunch in the cafeteria with my students to provide behavioral support, which was a duty I traded every other day with my IA, in return for covering recess. We each got about 23 minutes daily for lunch with this trading off system, although if a child was in crisis, I had to deal with that, and ate my sandwich when I could.

I was supposed to get four hours of unencumbered planning time per week. That’s an hour a day while the students were at specials. One of the days, I was required to attend a grade-level team meeting. This often had little to do with my students, as they might be discussing new groups for the gen ed math or reading instruction, and my students were not involved. Now, most schools require two meetings a week for this, so one is math and the other reading. That takes me to three hours a week of planning time. Remember that I teach all subjects, at varying levels. I often had three distinct reading levels, plus a kid that was very advanced or very low as an outlier.

Now, I also had to use one of my hours to meet with the special education team for staffing, and of course IEP or other meetings held while my kids were at specials. On top of this, I had a ton of paperwork, to include IEP data, responding to parent emails, etc. When did I have time to actually plan lessons, gather materials, and otherwise do what any elementary teacher had to do? Not much time.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All this means is teachers will be asked to do more without compensation. That’s how things always get done.

Without compensation? That’s horrible that teachers don’t get paid. I thought they collected salaries and benefits.

Funny. (/s) It’s the “more” that isn’t compensated and is making SPED teachers leave the profession and creating a hiring crisis for the district. I don’t teach SPED and I never would. You have no idea how much “extra” these teachers do in terms of paperwork and meetings. It’s unmanageable. How do you think FCPS is are going to perform the mandated audit of all SPED kids? Who do you think is going to perform the review of those 200,000 or so files in the next few months? Who else would know how to best evaluate the kids and figure out plans for learning acceleration or compensation?

DP. I've got 2 kids with IEPS in FCPS, the younger is still in HS. I have a lot of respect for teachers and recognize school systems have never had sufficient funding for the requirements of FAPE. It's unfortunate that teachers and students are crushed by this. Yet, it's not the fault of parents who demand their kids receive a FAPE. Your anger should be directed at administrators, school boards and elected officials. I'm surprised school systems haven't sued for being required to provide a FAPE without sufficient resources.

Anonymous wrote:Fcps needs to disband their sped and pay the parents about 50k each to find an acceptable option. Not the parents fault they can't hire and provide services require by law.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All this means is teachers will be asked to do more without compensation. That’s how things always get done.

Without compensation? That’s horrible that teachers don’t get paid. I thought they collected salaries and benefits.

Funny. (/s) It’s the “more” that isn’t compensated and is making SPED teachers leave the profession and creating a hiring crisis for the district. I don’t teach SPED and I never would. You have no idea how much “extra” these teachers do in terms of paperwork and meetings. It’s unmanageable. How do you think FCPS is are going to perform the mandated audit of all SPED kids? Who do you think is going to perform the review of those 200,000 or so files in the next few months? Who else would know how to best evaluate the kids and figure out plans for learning acceleration or compensation?

DP. I've got 2 kids with IEPS in FCPS, the younger is still in HS. I have a lot of respect for teachers and recognize school systems have never had sufficient funding for the requirements of FAPE. It's unfortunate that teachers and students are crushed by this. Yet, it's not the fault of parents who demand their kids receive a FAPE. Your anger should be directed at administrators, school boards and elected officials. I'm surprised school systems haven't sued for being required to provide a FAPE without sufficient resources.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was one of the parents who immediately emailed the email in the announcement and to our kids case manager about- how are these meetings going to be scheduled- just because I wanted to see the response.

Well, just got the response. The school has no guidance and doesn't expect any guidance until January. And the auto-email from the announcement said thet staff will be trained on the meetings and compensatory services in the next "2-3 months."

So short answer- FCPS has no plan for this.

Why did you immediately email the case manager, who is just a "lowly" teacher? Obviously, you were just trying to throw him/her under the bus, when you knew fair well that the case manager would not yet have an answer.

You realize that your action, which is bullying, probably made your child's case manager, someone who is NOT responsible for the actions of the district two years ago, feel absolutely awful about him or herself, correct?

Whut? I emailed the case manager because that is what we are told to do when we have questions about our kids IEP. Who should I have emailed? The superintendent? The US Department of Educatiob? This was not bullying at all. I am sympathetic to the case manager because she is very nice and has been great to work with.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All this means is teachers will be asked to do more without compensation. That’s how things always get done.

Without compensation? That’s horrible that teachers don’t get paid. I thought they collected salaries and benefits.

Funny. (/s) It’s the “more” that isn’t compensated and is making SPED teachers leave the profession and creating a hiring crisis for the district. I don’t teach SPED and I never would. You have no idea how much “extra” these teachers do in terms of paperwork and meetings. It’s unmanageable. How do you think FCPS is are going to perform the mandated audit of all SPED kids? Who do you think is going to perform the review of those 200,000 or so files in the next few months? Who else would know how to best evaluate the kids and figure out plans for learning acceleration or compensation?

Honest question - is there a way to provide administrative staff to SPED or classroom teachers to help with the paperwork?

DP. I'm a Special Education teacher and my supervisor asked about this at the meeting with the county. The answer was a big, fat NO. It will fall squarely on the shoulders of the teachers at each individual school to handle. There were 10 Special Education teachers in the room during our last meeting when this was brought up. Every single one of us plus our supervisor has a plan to leave the profession much sooner than we'd originally planned. I wouldn't be surprised if 2-3 people put in their notice after Winter Break.

I'm so sorry, PP. From your answer, it sounds like those of you in the trenches think that administrative support would help? It's flabergasting that higher ups won't even consider giving you any support you need to reduce your workload. I mean, we can't manufacture teachers who don't exist, but there has to be a pool of workers who could support your non-teaching workload. Crazy!

Thanks for what you do.