Fall Family Symposium - November 23
From Seattle Public Schools, Public Affairs:
The goal of the Family Symposium is to support our families as critical partners in their students' academic success. At this symposium, families and community partners will learn how to support student academic achievement at home and in the community.
Please join us!
Saturday, Nov. 23
10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Garfield HIgh School
400 - 23rd Ave.
Seattle, WA 98122
Directions & Map
Supervised child activities for ages 4 and up
Light breakfast and lunch will be provided
Community Resource Fair
Learn how to support your child with:
Math, Science, Reading/Writing, Early Learning, Community Arts, Understanding School and Student Data, College and Career Readiness, and much more.
More Information: Family Symposium Flyer
Comments
As Americans, we have a tendency to 'cherry pick' justice.
To often, Injustice, discrimination, inequality, inequity is something for us to observe, talk about, rationalize, agree with, quietly support, and even actively perpetuate as long as it is happening to some other kids; in some other community. Historically, we continue to fail to recognize "what we allow for one will eventually happen to all". This is the case of DISCIPLINE DISPROPORTIONALITY in SPS; if SPS can educationally abuse students with black, red and brown skin for decades than why can't SPS educationally abuse students with disabilities?
Many parents are outraged at the harsh discipline of white children with disabilities but many may not understand or feel any affinity to black parents fighting to save black children subjected to harsh discipline due to race and sometimes both race/disabilities. As we would love to see no child treated unfairly, we are UNAPOLEGETICALLY AFRICAN, and our focus is to demand justice for some of the most educationally abused children in the Seattle School District "the black child".
Below is except from a position paper on
Discipline and Disproportionality in Special Education by a Seattle School Advisory Committee
"...
"The application of school discipline to Special Education Students in Seattle Public Schools is perceived by the Special Education Community as an unjust and punitive practice which is disproportionately applied to Special Education Students. These practices include over-referrals to law enforcement as well as overuse of exclusionary discipline including long term and short term suspensions. Further, there is a large concern that current available data underreports the problem. Families report that students who are identified as receiving Special Education services are over-identified for discipline and receive harsher penalties, possibly due to bias on the part of administration when encoding incident data. Many parents are also concerned about the lack of documentation of students spending large portions of the day in “time-out” rooms or other non-educative spaces or parents being called to pick up their child during the school day for behavioral reasons. Parents who are called frequently to pick up their child from school for disciplinary reasons report that they lose hours at work and may also lose their jobs entirely due to having to respond to discipline issues at school. Parents also report increased stress at home and at work. Students report feelings of worthlessness, stress, insomnia, feelings of alienation, feelings of being “set up to fail,” and being misidentified as a “bad kid.”
No child should be subjected to this, and every community should stand against it AND WE SHALL!
Many parents are outraged at the harsh discipline of white children with disabilities but many may not understand or feel any affinity to black parents fighting to save black children subjected to harsh discipline due to race and sometimes both race/disabilities.
I categorically reject that "many parents" would only be outraged for white Sped kids and not "understand or feel any affinity to black parents" whose children are receiving the same discipline.
Sped parents (and many others) have stood up time and again for all kids. We as parents are not the problem; the problem is the system, the lack of training for alternative methods of discipline and support and cultural competency.
What am I missing? Surely any race-based criteria for caring is wrong. Isn't it? Surely it is natural for people to be more concerned for others whom they know personally or with whom they can identify. Is that wrong and bad in others but right and worthy in ourselves?
I must be misunderstanding, but I can't see how. Help, please.
Spedvocate
Know that, in any discussion at the Special Education Advisory and Advocacy Council, the matter of disproportionate discipline does not arise without maximal recognition that the vast majority are African-American students who are over-identified as suffering "emotional/behavioral disorder" (someone else's name for this). Same applies for Native-American students. Our outrage makes up for the lack of many others. We are in rectifying this civirl rights violation together.
SpEd parents will be manning a table at the symposium. Maybe we'll see you there...? : )