Why you should care about APS special ed...even if your child isn't in the program.

To my fellow intown parents:

How many new teachers could SPARK or MES hire with the $1 million-plus APS just spent on legal fees to defend itself in the beating and abuse of an autistic child?

(See front page article in today's AJC: http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/an-expensive-fight-over-1188082.html )

That $1M figure doesn't count the estimated $600,000 settlement paid to the family--a family we know well--to educate their child, Stefan, privately until he is an adult.

Here's what those of you who DON'T have children in the APS special-ed program need to know. (And I speak to you now as a parent of such a child, and as a parent who also decided to sue APS):

Special-ed kids routinely disrupt "mainstream" classrooms. In our case, we discovered (to our horror) that our child was disrupting his 2nd-grade class at SPARK every single day, making it impossible for the two truly heroic teachers who had that classroom (Melissa St. Joy and Jenny Lockwood) to do their jobs properly. (The parapro assigned to our child routinely "took his breaks" during these mainstreaming sessions, at the time when his presence was needed the most).

Did you know that your child's teacher faces significant administrative pressure NOT to talk to you about any disruptions caused by special-ed kids, even if you ask point-blank about it? Do you even know right now if your child's classroom has any IEP (Individual Education Program--AKA "special ed") kids in it?

If you don't know, find out. Don't talk to the teacher, go directly to Becky Pruitt or Yolonda Brown. Insist she confirm the number of IEP children participating at any point in time during the school day in your classroom (many children, like ours, only visited the mainstream classroom for a small portion of the day). You may be told there are no IEP children present in the classroom on a permanent basis. This is sleight-of-hand; they just don't want you to know about the 2, 3 or 4 periods a day when IEP children "drop in" for their mainstreaming sessions. You may be told that it's "confidential information" that cannot be shared with you.

Tell them you don't need to know the child's name or sex, but you have a right to know what, if any, IEP services are being provided during your child's classroom-day. Stick to your guns.

Many parents like us desperately want their children to be mainstreamed as much as possible. We want our child to be around "neurotypical" kids--it's good for him. But when he is, he consumes 100% of the teacher's attention. And that is not fair to the other kids. Even though it benefited our kid to be mainstreamed, we could not, in good conscience, continue to see all of the other kids denied the teacher's attention and skill.

So we stopped. But it's likely many other parents of IEP kids either don't know or won't care if their kids are causing a disruption. (And not all IEP children cause disruptions, but I stand firm in the belief that all IEP kids demand a disproportionate share of the teacher's attention, and when this happens, it is a disservice to the other kids, who are already in a classroom that is more crowded than it should be).

Here are the points I want to leave you with:

1. The APS special-ed program is a disaster of epic proportions. If you want to know more, read about it in detail elsewhere on this blog, where you will also find our lawsuit (the actual lawsuit) as well as the recent outside audit of the PEC (dense, heavy reading but quite damning).

If you thought the cheating scandal was the worst problem APS has, well, let me just say the meltdown of APS Spec Ed could well turn out to be the costliest, and the one that directly affects your family the most.

2. The people working special-ed for APS have neither the skill nor the will to mainstream special-ed kids into your kids' regular-ed classroom in a way that does not adversely impact your child's education. (Oh, they will tell you they do--in fact, they will SHOUT OUT LOUD that they do, but they don't).

3. (And this is the most important thing you should take away from today): Throw your support behind private special-ed schools. (Full disclosure: our son now attends a wonderful private special-ed school, the Orion School over on Ponce by the IHOP). Schools like Orion not only help these vulnerable children in a way APS never has (and never will), they also remove spec-ed children from your child's mainstream classroom and allow your child's teachers to do a better job.

If you don't believe me, ask any teacher you know (and who will talk to you off the record) how much better they could do every day if they didn't have to contend with the unfair demands placed on them by special-ed rules and requirements.