Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unpopular opinion from a parent of a student with Autism- I see students with autism who are working on alternative learning outcomes and a high school certificate in services that have a similar profile as autism services. I believe the autism specific service and specialist exploded in the county and got too specific for public education. Many families from all over the country moved here for these specific autism services and demands, staffing, and programs exploded to something unrealistic for a public school system. Students in self contained special education can benefit from the best practices offered and used in the autism specific programs. I believe the county got too specific, created too many individual set of services that are not realistic to maintain with the funding and staffing of a large public school system.

Then your opinion is that no one should be able to serve these children. If one of the largest school systems in the country can't do it, who do you think is going to do it?

Nothing os changing on terms of real world support.
There has never been enough funding for special needs students. No one has ever cared. Bare minimums have applied to meet the law. The only real change is that now you lnow that no one cares.

Anonymous wrote:Actually, some kids already had their IEP meetings and have ESY for this summer written in. Schools are being told to contact families and change IEPs to reflect less time in ESY, which is illegal. We need a strong presence to fight this.

This

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unpopular opinion from a parent of a student with Autism- I see students with autism who are working on alternative learning outcomes and a high school certificate in services that have a similar profile as autism services. I believe the autism specific service and specialist exploded in the county and got too specific for public education. Many families from all over the country moved here for these specific autism services and demands, staffing, and programs exploded to something unrealistic for a public school system. Students in self contained special education can benefit from the best practices offered and used in the autism specific programs. I believe the county got too specific, created too many individual set of services that are not realistic to maintain with the funding and staffing of a large public school system.

This doesn't make sense to me. If you think more kids could benefit from the expertise of the autism programs then why is cutting their support the answer? This seems like a very Taylor response- everyone should get a piece of this special thing, so we'll spread it around until it isn't special or useful anymore! The different alternate learning outcomes programs do serve different profiles of kids. You may look at them and see they're all cognitively disabled but kids in LFI vs Autism learn very differently.

Because there is not funding to support going deep in autism and still be able to deliver baseline basics for everything/everyone else.

Ah, and there the real answer is given away. Taylor and many people don't care about these kids, better to take away what little support they have so others get theirs. There certainly is enough funding if it is prioritized. And as stated by others before- it'll cost us more money in the end to not serve these kids appropriately.

DP. Interesting take, here, when PP was suggesting basics for others. Really, whether shortage or plenty, there isn't much of an ethical basis for meeting the needs of one group better than another.

That's not to say that, for this group, many might underestimate the relative level of need/costs of meeting that need with reasonable equivalence.

Anonymous wrote:Agree. This Sup has blown everything up to what end? Certainly not an improvement

+1 not voting for any BOE member running for any office that doesn't move to get rid of his MAGA ahole.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unpopular opinion from a parent of a student with Autism- I see students with autism who are working on alternative learning outcomes and a high school certificate in services that have a similar profile as autism services. I believe the autism specific service and specialist exploded in the county and got too specific for public education. Many families from all over the country moved here for these specific autism services and demands, staffing, and programs exploded to something unrealistic for a public school system. Students in self contained special education can benefit from the best practices offered and used in the autism specific programs. I believe the county got too specific, created too many individual set of services that are not realistic to maintain with the funding and staffing of a large public school system.

This doesn't make sense to me. If you think more kids could benefit from the expertise of the autism programs then why is cutting their support the answer? This seems like a very Taylor response- everyone should get a piece of this special thing, so we'll spread it around until it isn't special or useful anymore! The different alternate learning outcomes programs do serve different profiles of kids. You may look at them and see they're all cognitively disabled but kids in LFI vs Autism learn very differently.

Because there is not funding to support going deep in autism and still be able to deliver baseline basics for everything/everyone else.

Ah, and there the real answer is given away. Taylor and many people don't care about these kids, better to take away what little support they have so others get theirs. There certainly is enough funding if it is prioritized. And as stated by others before- it'll cost us more money in the end to not serve these kids appropriately.

Agree. This Sup has blown everything up to what end? Certainly not an improvement

Anonymous wrote:Actually, some kids already had their IEP meetings and have ESY for this summer written in. Schools are being told to contact families and change IEPs to reflect less time in ESY, which is illegal. We need a strong presence to fight this.

We need to fire the superintendent.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unpopular opinion from a parent of a student with Autism- I see students with autism who are working on alternative learning outcomes and a high school certificate in services that have a similar profile as autism services. I believe the autism specific service and specialist exploded in the county and got too specific for public education. Many families from all over the country moved here for these specific autism services and demands, staffing, and programs exploded to something unrealistic for a public school system. Students in self contained special education can benefit from the best practices offered and used in the autism specific programs. I believe the county got too specific, created too many individual set of services that are not realistic to maintain with the funding and staffing of a large public school system.

This doesn't make sense to me. If you think more kids could benefit from the expertise of the autism programs then why is cutting their support the answer? This seems like a very Taylor response- everyone should get a piece of this special thing, so we'll spread it around until it isn't special or useful anymore! The different alternate learning outcomes programs do serve different profiles of kids. You may look at them and see they're all cognitively disabled but kids in LFI vs Autism learn very differently.

Because there is not funding to support going deep in autism and still be able to deliver baseline basics for everything/everyone else.

Actually, some kids already had their IEP meetings and have ESY for this summer written in. Schools are being told to contact families and change IEPs to reflect less time in ESY, which is illegal. We need a strong presence to fight this.

Anonymous wrote:Unpopular opinion from a parent of a student with Autism- I see students with autism who are working on alternative learning outcomes and a high school certificate in services that have a similar profile as autism services. I believe the autism specific service and specialist exploded in the county and got too specific for public education. Many families from all over the country moved here for these specific autism services and demands, staffing, and programs exploded to something unrealistic for a public school system. Students in self contained special education can benefit from the best practices offered and used in the autism specific programs. I believe the county got too specific, created too many individual set of services that are not realistic to maintain with the funding and staffing of a large public school system.

This doesn't make sense to me. If you think more kids could benefit from the expertise of the autism programs then why is cutting their support the answer? This seems like a very Taylor response- everyone should get a piece of this special thing, so we'll spread it around until it isn't special or useful anymore! The different alternate learning outcomes programs do serve different profiles of kids. You may look at them and see they're all cognitively disabled but kids in LFI vs Autism learn very differently.

Anonymous wrote:Unpopular opinion from a parent of a student with Autism- I see students with autism who are working on alternative learning outcomes and a high school certificate in services that have a similar profile as autism services. I believe the autism specific service and specialist exploded in the county and got too specific for public education. Many families from all over the country moved here for these specific autism services and demands, staffing, and programs exploded to something unrealistic for a public school system. Students in self contained special education can benefit from the best practices offered and used in the autism specific programs. I believe the county got too specific, created too many individual set of services that are not realistic to maintain with the funding and staffing of a large public school system.

Then your opinion is that no one should be able to serve these children. If one of the largest school systems in the country can't do it, who do you think is going to do it?

Unpopular opinion from a parent of a student with Autism- I see students with autism who are working on alternative learning outcomes and a high school certificate in services that have a similar profile as autism services. I believe the autism specific service and specialist exploded in the county and got too specific for public education. Many families from all over the country moved here for these specific autism services and demands, staffing, and programs exploded to something unrealistic for a public school system. Students in self contained special education can benefit from the best practices offered and used in the autism specific programs. I believe the county got too specific, created too many individual set of services that are not realistic to maintain with the funding and staffing of a large public school system.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not a big fan of providing special ed services, above and beyond what would be normal at a state/federal level. Unfortunately, that just attracts more special ed families to the area. I know this area is especially attractive in that regard.

I especially dislike the way our county agglomerates services not only at the elite but at the special ed side.

The alternative is to send these kids to private placements where the district would then be spending millions of dollars in tuition. Does that seem like a reasonable solution? Smaller districts certainly do that because the population is small enough, but it's way more cost effective to meet these kids' needs here. I suspect that more parents will file and the costs will go up as the quality of the programs decline though. It's a consequence Taylor is not factoring in at all.

The alternative is to take the fight to state house and congress in order to get the required funding.

Anonymous wrote:I'm not a big fan of providing special ed services, above and beyond what would be normal at a state/federal level. Unfortunately, that just attracts more special ed families to the area. I know this area is especially attractive in that regard.

I especially dislike the way our county agglomerates services not only at the elite but at the special ed side.

The alternative is to send these kids to private placements where the district would then be spending millions of dollars in tuition. Does that seem like a reasonable solution? Smaller districts certainly do that because the population is small enough, but it's way more cost effective to meet these kids' needs here. I suspect that more parents will file and the costs will go up as the quality of the programs decline though. It's a consequence Taylor is not factoring in at all.

Anonymous wrote:I haven't seen any discussion here on changes to the ESY program. One parent I know said her child was going from 25 hours of support per week to 12 hours which is a huge drop.

This is another great point. They unilaterally decided to make ESY 4 weeks in the summer, 4 days per week, for 3 hours per day. So in previous years it was 25 hours per week and now every child is stuck with only 12. ESY is again for the neediest kids who will experience significant regression in their skills if they don't receive special ed services in the summer. In my opinion this goes against special ed law as you can't have a one size fits all approach for ESY. Cutting services in half is criminal. I've heard from teachers that they also are forcing them to make all ESY decisions by March, which means moving all IEP meetings scheduled after that up. Imagine having to fit 3 months worth of meetings into a month while also trying to teach. I really hope if teams don't meet these deadlines that they won't use it as an excuse to deny kids access to ESY. It's also going to be really hard to staff ESY with that hours. Most teachers who do it are looking for a good summer job and these hours will not be enticing enough.