I am aware of how broad a question that is. But that question is at the basis of some tension i'm feeling after attending an accessibility seminar this afternoon at my school board.

They touched on everything. Vision, mobility, even mental health issues. But it all costs money. The computer system guy from the board was there talking about all the great computer programs that exist for kids that will read to the kids, close caption for the hearing impaired, increase print size, etc...

Our kids don't have access to individual computers. we don't even have a full lab. we have one maybe two devices in each classroom.

There is this great device, called FM that a teacher can speak into (a head set) that will project straight into a hearing aid of a hearing impaired child. But..it only does one kid. there is no way to set it up so that more than one kid gets the direct feed. and it's HUGELY expensive.

it's all great stuff. but we can't afford basketballs and pencils. but, some kids can't learn without some of this stuff--from technology to educational one on one support, to i pads to ....

how much of a school's budget should go to the special needs kid? given the fact that it takes funds out of the general herd?

or do we just have to convince people that education is worth fully funding?

In NS, special needs kids get extra funding. Of course, that doesn't mean it's being used as intended.

We have been given dates when different stuff MUST be implemented. FM hearing systems. Formats for vision impaired children. But there was no money allocated to it. There are some funds that parents can individually apply for. Schools can also apply to the school board for different things, but well over half of those requests are turned down.

And you're right. sometimes the funding gets spread around to other kids who have needs but aren't identified, or who's parents resist identification.

Argh. I came away from the seminar feeling really really torn about it all.

IMO, the entire system is run backwards.
I'm beginning to think that thr biggest chunk out of education budgets is allotted to PCness.

greeny, that's the exact reason our "No Child Left Behind" legislation is such a failure ~ filled with great ideas and big mandates ... the vast majority of which were never funded ~

I don't know how school funding works in Canada ~ I'm not sure of everywhere in Illinois but here in Chicago, schools are funded via local property taxes with additional limited funds from the state and/or feds ~ most, if not all, of the funds are allocated on a per-student basis ~ that means schools like ours [in a very poor ward] get less funding because there are far less homeowners and far less businesses [with virtually no big businesses] paying property taxes ~ one of the advantages we have as a charter is that we can raise $$$ to supplement the official funding ~ we are an enviable position because our school founder and major benefactor is a successful big international law firm ... but there is a finite limit to what we can raise, too ~

One of the biggest hits to public education here is that virtually no public school [with the possible exception of surrounding suburbs] offers full-time spec ed now ~ there are a very few spec ed schools that require very hefty tuitions, which obviously is not do-able in the poorer areas ~ it's a very serious problem ~

I'm not sure how to tackle the problem ~ I need to think about this more ~

Sooz

oskar, are you suggesting that accommodating students with spec ed needs is "PCness"?

Sooz

Not PCness, but bureaucracy. School boards, school board buildings and such. I don't know how it is in Canada, since I've never had children in the school system here, but in the US the BOE sucks a huge amount of $$$ from their total budget and the funds provided by the city/state/feds. Superfluous staffing is just one of the problems.

Cut the fat from the top first, then see how many $$ are freed.

Most of our funding is on a per student basis but comes from the Provincial government. There is a formula that exists to balance out the disparities between rural and urban schools. A small portion is from local property taxes.

Nope. I'm saying that the appearance of accommodating is more important than the actually meeting their needs, if such is even possible without affecting the other students.

i get the bureaucracy issues. they keep hiring more and more consultants. board psychologists, speech and language therapists, behavioural interventionists...but these people do not work in the classroom. they do not work with the kids directly--other than an assessment or two a year. on the other hand, they have cut back on educational assistants who WERE hands on in the classrooms, and who were paid a great deal less than all these experts that we seem to be multiplying jobs for. I've spent more time in meetings for my little volcano this year than he has spent with a spec. ed teacher. In my opinion, that is terrible allocation of funds.

But even if we did get all that straightened out, i'm not sure it would cover the shortfall.

and then there is the whole issue of labelling kids. they have to be so thoroughly labeled and tested before they can get access to this stuff--then we throw huge amounts of money at an individual kid, when there might be ten that are only a little less needy, and they get NOTHING. sometimes the difference between a kid that gets intervention and a kid that doesn't is the number of chairs he throws at staff.

I wish they would just give us the stuff, train us how to use it, and then let us use it for any kid that would benefit--without having to stamp the kids with every label we can think of first.

i think that education should be valued above all other things in a free society.

Touchy subject. We don't spend enough on education in the first place, IMO. I can only describe what I see here in our little pre-k-8 district.

I've remarked more than once on the amount of staff, $$$, space, etc. our district dedicates to special ed. Once upon a time, all SE students in this area went to one central school that was designed to accommodate whatever the kids needed. But then came the "mainstream" movement-which I generally agree with-to keep kids in their neighborhood schools, with support, to the extent that it's possible.

Along with that comes the entire "special ed support services staff". Paperwork and red tape. Not much fun for parents of SE kids either, who often feel like they're in a constant battle for resources. The whole process seems to stress everybody and every part of the budget. Let's not forget the fight just to pass a school budget every year.

Most glaring here is such a simple thing-the amount of space. The number of regular students has been fairly constant, but we had to take away regular classrooms to create dedicated special ed rooms. So now 29+ kids crammed in a regular classroom is the norm. We had to fire general classroom assistants in order to hire enough aides for SE, etc. etc.

Some of it has been great. But some....<sigh>.

I keep thinking about this thread ~ most of you know that I have a very difficult assignment at school this year ~ a 4th grader with profound learning disabilities ~ those disabilities are being sorted out and a new IEP is being written that includes a request a full-time spec ed teacher and a full-time paraprofessional to help this child ~ she really does need the full-time individualized help and I'm hoping the requests are approved ~ but is that "equity of access to education"? ~ I'm the last one to care about budgets, but I know budgets are finite and are already stretched ~ is it justifiable or equitable to allot this one child a full-time teacher plus a full-time paraprofessional?

Sooz

I don't know. but i would rather they hired educational assistants and spec ed teachers that work one on one with kids, than consultants who sit around in meetings and give advice you don't have the resources to act on, and who make three times the money that the front line workers make.

That is definitely my preference as well, greeny ~ but that's not a problem we share ~ this is an isolated problem for us, one we've never faced before ~ and it will definitely impact other students, tho I'm not sure how yet ~

I'm questioning if it is "fair" to require a public school to use such a big share of finite resources for one child [out of 500+] ~ and at what point, or if there even is a point, when the parents should have to contribute to the cost of educating profoundly learning-disabled children ~

Sooz

Is it fair for one student to have a full time teacher and a full time aide?

I think it's fair but I also think she'll hate it. I think every effort will have to be made to make her feel like a part of a class with friends and social contacts. I think working with your old 2nd grade reading group with special instructions to the group to help make Jalisa feel valued and included would help.

greeny - Doesn't your school have a child study team? They don't make more than the teachers and work with the special ed kids. My trans math class (15 11th grade students) had both me from regular and the special ed teacher in the classroom.

Child study team--we don't have anything called that. We do have different support people. We have a spec. ed teacher, we have (very few) educational assistants. The spec ed teacher is stretched so thin that she no longer works in the classrooms. she pulls learning groups that come from various classrooms but that are working on specific goals that are common. we have speech therapists that work one on one with kids once a week, if they are on their lists.

You know, what we have in place are the dinosauric remains of programs that have been initiated and then had funding cut. So they all still exist, but are so badly funded that each program gives trace amounts of help for each child. A little bit here, a little bit there. it's like the archeological history of spec. ed. and no one program is deep enough, funded well enough, or works with a child long enough to do any real good. It's really frustrating.