My first piece in this series was about how the City and other outside forces seem to be lining up to takeover the district, piece by piece.
This thread is about
legally mandated programs for students that have been an issue for the district for a very long time, namely, ELL, Special Education and Advanced Learning.
I'm not going to go into a dissection of each because I'm not qualified to speak fully on ELL or Sped. (And I'm not looking for another discussion on Advanced Learning. Please do not go off-topic on this point.)
The issue is that our district has consistently either failed to provide services, provided partial service or failed to provide services in a timely manner for all of these programs at one time or another. This has happened for many years.
The district has been under review for both Special Education services and ELL services by OSPI over the last year.
To be fair, I know that ELL and Special Education services are
expensive and it is a challenge for every single district to provide
these services. Perhaps there needs to be a review of what can be offered and for how long in order to curb costs. But this would likely need to come at a federal/state level and I don't know when/if that may be happening. (Please note: I am not saying these students should not be served but, for example, you could start phasing out some ELL service after a certain number of years depending on starting age of the student.)
There is also the issue of lack of substitutes (this has been in the news over this school year) and lack of certification by Gen Ed teachers for Special Education. I know this is on the wishlist for the district but I have no idea when/how they can make this happen. And again, even if GenEd teachers do have certification, large class sizes will still make this a challenge.
I do not believe there is bad intent in any of this. But it seems that when push comes to shove, the district leadership tends to believe that IEPs and Special Ed services are, by and large, provided.
I can say this as a parent of a former K-12 student - there is no panic like the panic you feel when you worry about the ability of your child to learn. As a former K-12 Special Ed parent,I know there is the panic when you know your child is capable of learning but needs help/structure to get there and you don't see those supports in place. And, as we ALL know, a school year is a lifetime for children and even losing a couple of months can have lasting effects.
Case Study
The case study here is
Stevens Elementary where some Special Education parents have done a very good job detailing how Special Education services at Stevens have failed over this school year. They filed a
Special Education Citizen Complaint (SECC) No. 15-10 with OSPI.