The answer should be yes. Not "how can I get my loved one help?"

Category Archives: P and A

a hypothetical about ethics and parental responsiblity – Updated

The story I am about to relay is purely hypothetical.

When I am done, I will ask two questions.

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A child with emotional and mental health illness is in a 2nd grade classroom.  The parents do everything that they can to ensure that IDEA is followed and their child gets the education that they are legally entitled to receive.

Now let us add a variable.

the parent of that child is a special education teacher.   We will call this parent, Teacher 1.

the parent of another child in the same classroom is a special education teacher.  We will call this parent, Teacher 2.

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Now, teacher 1 takes a position at a neighboring school district.

A year later teacher 2 also takes a position in the same neighboring district as teacher 1.

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Over the course of the next few years, teacher 1 is made to feel less than adequate, unprofessional and generally poorly treated by teacher 2.  Teacher 2 seems bent on running teacher 1 out of the school district.

How?

Teacher 1 is placed on an improvement plan.  No in classroom observations are done.  Teacher 1 is told to do things a certain way, then chastised for doing so, with the idea that she wasn’t doing what she was told to do.

In the last few months of a school year, teacher 1 learns that teacher 2 believes that the child with severe emotional and mental health conditions should have been institutionalized years ago, because… that child disrupted the learning environment for the child of teacher 2.

Never mind that the child of teacher 1 spent a significant portion of their day in the special education area of the school.

Teacher 2 has indicated their beliefs to other staff in the school, but never to Teacher 1.

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Question 1.

Should Teacher 1 be punished for the beliefs of Teacher 2?

Question 2.

Should Teacher 2 continue as a special education teacher if in fact they believe that special education students are disruptive to the education process for other students?

 

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The child in question is currently in a residential facility.

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Update June 2014.
Teacher 2 has left the district.   I wish that teacher the best of luck with new employment.
My new goal in life is to require teacher employment records to follow the teacher.

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Dad, I killed the car!

Another day done. For the most part, I would call this day a success.

My girls, who have both been licensed to drive for less than 6 months killed the car tonight. They thought that they were in trouble, because it wouldn’t start… They walked home, then we went and got it after mom got home. A simple jump start cured it. Probably a weak alternator belt isn’t allowing enough juice to be generated, coupled with someone not shutting the door all the way and an interior light blinking occasionally. No big deal. And even so, if they had wrecked it or something, a car can be replaced.

Lined up another IEP meeting for our oldest boy. Next week unless something shakes loose in the schedule this week. Tomorrow, our youngest son and I are going into the city for a psych consult. Hopefully he can get back on the med that they took him off, clorazil.

Overall, the few times that our youngest was misbehaving aren’t worth noting. There has to be a point where some of his beavior is just because he is the baby in the family and acting as a 10 year old boy. Life is good.

That reminds me, I need to follow-up with the people regarding Respite care for our youngest. That will help alleviate some stresses in our family.

This weekend I am in Bismarck for a class, and he will get to spend a couple of hours with his mentor, and then his Aunt.

Waiting on a call from Department of Public Instruction regarding the facilitated IEP request that we made.  More tomorrow. 🙂 Cheers!

Day 9 ~ more fun than you can shake a taco at.

So I had to stop at our high school to sign some papers for one of my kids special education teachers, and the Superintendent happened to hear my voice.

He came out, asked me if I had a few minutes so he could give me the paperwork for home schooling. Now, if you are following my blog, you already know this.. we are in spirited discussions with our district regarding the return of our youngest to public school. He was in a residential behavior modification program for 7 months. And once he completed their program they discharged him. Now the school doesn’t want him back, they want us to bus him 40 miles one way to another day treatment program. They will pay all expenses.

Our argument is that our son deserves a chance to at least try to be successful in the public school setting. Least Restrictive Environment it is called. Well, they aren’t wanting to do that. So my wife and I toured the facility. It is a nice enough facility, and if our son isn’t successful in public school we would put him there, but we don’t want that to be the only option available to him.

At the conclusion of the tour, we met with the administration of the facility, as well as our superintendent, the reps form the local special education district and a secretary. I asked our superintendent, “If our son completes this program successfully, will the district take him back?”

His response was, “I can’t say that we would.”

I have a huge problem with that. Alarms are going off in my head, my wife is steaming mad. So we told them that we weren’t going to put our son there. So until the school comes to an agreement with us about our son’s education we are home schooling him. My wife is a special education teacher in another district and more than qualified to be our supervising teacher.

Today when I was at the high school the superintendent wanted to talk to me about an email my wife had sent to the elementary school principal telling her how unprofessional she was for trying to schedule an IEP meeting without first contacting either parent, our advocate, or the facility that he was discharged from to determine which dates would work.

The prior written notice (pwn) was delivered via fax and email. A day later I received a copy in the mail. It was handwritten, which in itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but have your ever tried to read a handwritten fax? Next to impossible. Only half of the IEP team was included in the notice. So my wife sent a note talking about professionalism, and how we had other obligations the morning in question and wouldn’t be able to make it.

There are a number of options on the pwn that can be chosen from. The one that we received was marked for “permanent placement in a home school setting.”

The only reason we are home schooling him at all is because the district refuses to educate him.

So we are requesting a facilitated IEP.

I apologise for the length of my post tonight. I am just a little angry. This spirited discussion, this polarised communication between us the district, has been going on for over 3 years. It is beyond time for it to end.

I should post a copy of the email my wife sent. 🙂 it was well written.