Anonymous wrote:My child got a concussion at MS caused by another student. The school did a CYA, the nurse mis-diagnosed and it took a teacher calling me directly to let me know there was a serious issue. Afterwards, some teachers were kind and helpful in handling missed work, but others wouldn't even answer emails. One teacher actually just changed his grade from a 9% to a B in a class when I complained to the administration trying to get supports -- again, never emailing me back. We had to hire an outside tutor, but even then couldn't get him caught up and he ended up having to repeat the class the following year, thankfully with a different teacher.

The school never suggested an accommodation plan of any kind. For future, at least I now know from all of you how to handle if this happens again. Sigh. Schools should be more forthcoming.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any tips out there on how to get IIS and the school staff to communicate so there is a clear understanding on who is in charge of teaching the curriculum, who decides what the child needs to do, and who is responsible for grading what is completed? This experience has been a nightmare because no one is taking ownership of helping my child get caught up.

The IIS teacher who visits your home is responsible for teaching the curriculum. They have access to most guides. The office supplies other materials/resources IIS teachers can't retrieve on their own. The classroom teachers may be asked to provide textbooks, for example, but their main role is to share where they are in their instruction so that the IIS teacher can keep the student at the same pace as the classroom. However, this can be challenging due to numerous factors (time, health of the child, complexity of the content, gaps in skills). But the expectation is to teach the content with fidelity. Therefore, compacting lessons is often good practice.

The IIS teacher plans instruction and grades assignments. Ideally, a graded assignment per session is good practice. This is assuming the student is working between sessions, however.

Even with the limited IIS instruction, my child is behind in EVERY subject. First, there was a delay in the school telling us that the program even existed. Then after I found the forms, gave them to my child's doctor, and hand delivered them to the counselor, there was a delay in the school getting their portion of the form filled out and sent to IIS. Then IIS had to hire teachers. The first teacher began working with my child 2 weeks after IIS received the paperwork. Only 3 out of the 4 teachers my child was supposed to have were provided. So the delay in beginning services caused a mountain of work to pile up that my child is struggling to work through.

As far as assessments, our IIS teachers are sending them back to the school teachers for grading. Why??? It seems that some of the instructors are completely new to the program and may not know what their full responsibilities are. Have all of the IIS teachers had the same training to follow the same best practices???

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any tips out there on how to get IIS and the school staff to communicate so there is a clear understanding on who is in charge of teaching the curriculum, who decides what the child needs to do, and who is responsible for grading what is completed? This experience has been a nightmare because no one is taking ownership of helping my child get caught up.

The IIS teacher who visits your home is responsible for teaching the curriculum. They have access to most guides. The office supplies other materials/resources IIS teachers can't retrieve on their own. The classroom teachers may be asked to provide textbooks, for example, but their main role is to share where they are in their instruction so that the IIS teacher can keep the student at the same pace as the classroom. However, this can be challenging due to numerous factors (time, health of the child, complexity of the content, gaps in skills). But the expectation is to teach the content with fidelity. Therefore, compacting lessons is often good practice.

The IIS teacher plans instruction and grades assignments. Ideally, a graded assignment per session is good practice. This is assuming the student is working between sessions, however.

Anonymous wrote:Any tips out there on how to get IIS and the school staff to communicate so there is a clear understanding on who is in charge of teaching the curriculum, who decides what the child needs to do, and who is responsible for grading what is completed? This experience has been a nightmare because no one is taking ownership of helping my child get caught up.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our experience is that IIS is overwhelmed right now by the number of kids who need their services. Instructors are hired on a as needed, part time basis. This short term approach and outlook affects their ability to hire and retain quality instructors.

With it being football season, has anyone considered or studied how many kids play sports for their school who become injured and subsequently need IIS services? If money is a factor on IIS ability to hire and retain instructors then perhaps funds for IIS should be subsidized by the sports programs that impact the need for services. Increasing the extracurricular fees from $35 to $50 with the $15 increase designated for IIS to cover the additional expense if children are injured would be one option. IIS then should consider hiring a core group of well qualified full-time instructors who are enticed to stay with benefits similar to what MCPS teachers receive.

You can't give benefits to people who work on an "as needed" basis. Furthermore, working FT means a 40-hour week. Even if the IIS teachers were permanent PT employees at 20 hours a week, there's no guarantee there would be 20 hours of instruction. Most of the kids on IIS don't have the stamina to work in longer shifts, which means these FT or PT permanent teachers would be paid for not instructing.

Even if you paid them more hours for designing lessons, there would always be an imbalance btw planning and instructing b/c each case is different.

Allocation of funds is a whole other issue, too, as transferring $ from pot to pot isn't typical.

It's a tough situation all around.

There is more demand than teachers available for IIS. There is enough work to keep a core group of teachers on a full-time 40 hour a week basis. MCPS choses to not hire full-time teachers for this program, like they do other staffing positions, so they don't have to pay benefits. The net result is less qualified individuals and difficulty filling the positions.

You could have a core full-time group - especially for English and Math - then supplement with part-time as needed for the waxing and waning periods of demand.

If there's isn't a regular "9 to 5" time frame, it's hard to justify a position like this.

Supplement with PT? What do you mean? People taking on these cases have to be flexible, as there are cancellations mainly due to illness. So if I'm an IIS teacher with two cases that were canceled in one week, where will you place me so that I may justify my 40-hour week?

Logistically, to hire FT people, you'd need multiple folks who could handle K-12. And at the HS level, not everyone can teach biology or chemistry, for example. You need people comfortable with specific content areas. With cases changing from year to year, from month to month, some FT teachers would have more work to do than others. While English teachers can handle 6-12, that's not the case with math or science. Even social studies has its specific courses.

not disagreeing with you in theory - But I am saying that logistically, this structure would be difficult to manage.

FWIW, a couple of years ago, when I looked at info about HHT (the predecessor to IIS) it was clear to me that it was part of the teacher's union contract that union teachers who didn't have full-time placements in school got first crack at these HHT positions and then other union teachers. I think part of the problem was at that time that MCPS didn't actually hire any separate pool of people to teach HHT. These were teachers who were either 1) very old and no longer really able to teach full time in the classroom or 2) regular teachers who were only available to teach afterschool between about 3-6.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our experience is that IIS is overwhelmed right now by the number of kids who need their services. Instructors are hired on a as needed, part time basis. This short term approach and outlook affects their ability to hire and retain quality instructors.

With it being football season, has anyone considered or studied how many kids play sports for their school who become injured and subsequently need IIS services? If money is a factor on IIS ability to hire and retain instructors then perhaps funds for IIS should be subsidized by the sports programs that impact the need for services. Increasing the extracurricular fees from $35 to $50 with the $15 increase designated for IIS to cover the additional expense if children are injured would be one option. IIS then should consider hiring a core group of well qualified full-time instructors who are enticed to stay with benefits similar to what MCPS teachers receive.

You can't give benefits to people who work on an "as needed" basis. Furthermore, working FT means a 40-hour week. Even if the IIS teachers were permanent PT employees at 20 hours a week, there's no guarantee there would be 20 hours of instruction. Most of the kids on IIS don't have the stamina to work in longer shifts, which means these FT or PT permanent teachers would be paid for not instructing.

Even if you paid them more hours for designing lessons, there would always be an imbalance btw planning and instructing b/c each case is different.

Allocation of funds is a whole other issue, too, as transferring $ from pot to pot isn't typical.

It's a tough situation all around.

There is more demand than teachers available for IIS. There is enough work to keep a core group of teachers on a full-time 40 hour a week basis. MCPS choses to not hire full-time teachers for this program, like they do other staffing positions, so they don't have to pay benefits. The net result is less qualified individuals and difficulty filling the positions.

You could have a core full-time group - especially for English and Math - then supplement with part-time as needed for the waxing and waning periods of demand.

If there's isn't a regular "9 to 5" time frame, it's hard to justify a position like this.

Supplement with PT? What do you mean? People taking on these cases have to be flexible, as there are cancellations mainly due to illness. So if I'm an IIS teacher with two cases that were canceled in one week, where will you place me so that I may justify my 40-hour week?

Logistically, to hire FT people, you'd need multiple folks who could handle K-12. And at the HS level, not everyone can teach biology or chemistry, for example. You need people comfortable with specific content areas. With cases changing from year to year, from month to month, some FT teachers would have more work to do than others. While English teachers can handle 6-12, that's not the case with math or science. Even social studies has its specific courses.

not disagreeing with you in theory - But I am saying that logistically, this structure would be difficult to manage.

Anonymous wrote:After reading this thread, I'm already feeling discouraged about our upcoming experience with IIS. My child has been out of school for six weeks. Up to this point, he hasn't been physically able to begin any kind of instruction. We submitted all paperwork a little over a week ago, and are waiting to hear about scheduling some part time instruction. I thought this would get us moving in the right direction. However, after reading all of these comments, I'm now more worried than before. My child is in middle school. Has anyone been through IIS support with a middle school child?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our experience is that IIS is overwhelmed right now by the number of kids who need their services. Instructors are hired on a as needed, part time basis. This short term approach and outlook affects their ability to hire and retain quality instructors.

With it being football season, has anyone considered or studied how many kids play sports for their school who become injured and subsequently need IIS services? If money is a factor on IIS ability to hire and retain instructors then perhaps funds for IIS should be subsidized by the sports programs that impact the need for services. Increasing the extracurricular fees from $35 to $50 with the $15 increase designated for IIS to cover the additional expense if children are injured would be one option. IIS then should consider hiring a core group of well qualified full-time instructors who are enticed to stay with benefits similar to what MCPS teachers receive.

You can't give benefits to people who work on an "as needed" basis. Furthermore, working FT means a 40-hour week. Even if the IIS teachers were permanent PT employees at 20 hours a week, there's no guarantee there would be 20 hours of instruction. Most of the kids on IIS don't have the stamina to work in longer shifts, which means these FT or PT permanent teachers would be paid for not instructing.

Even if you paid them more hours for designing lessons, there would always be an imbalance btw planning and instructing b/c each case is different.

Allocation of funds is a whole other issue, too, as transferring $ from pot to pot isn't typical.

It's a tough situation all around.

There is more demand than teachers available for IIS. There is enough work to keep a core group of teachers on a full-time 40 hour a week basis. MCPS choses to not hire full-time teachers for this program, like they do other staffing positions, so they don't have to pay benefits. The net result is less qualified individuals and difficulty filling the positions.

You could have a core full-time group - especially for English and Math - then supplement with part-time as needed for the waxing and waning periods of demand.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our experience is that IIS is overwhelmed right now by the number of kids who need their services. Instructors are hired on a as needed, part time basis. This short term approach and outlook affects their ability to hire and retain quality instructors.

With it being football season, has anyone considered or studied how many kids play sports for their school who become injured and subsequently need IIS services? If money is a factor on IIS ability to hire and retain instructors then perhaps funds for IIS should be subsidized by the sports programs that impact the need for services. Increasing the extracurricular fees from $35 to $50 with the $15 increase designated for IIS to cover the additional expense if children are injured would be one option. IIS then should consider hiring a core group of well qualified full-time instructors who are enticed to stay with benefits similar to what MCPS teachers receive.

Not a bad idea, but I would prefer to see that the head injury-causing sports programs should be stopped.