SpEdWatch, Inc.
June 4, 2006 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Autism mother Ellen Chambers of Pepperell, Massachusetts, formed SpEdWatch, Inc. in January. The watchdog group is the state’s first to focus on special education curricula throughout Massachusetts. According to an article in June 4th’s Boston Globe:
Advocacy for individual special education students is not a new concept, but the idea of a proactive organization tackling systemic issues within special education is, said Chambers.
The group, which now has 66 members, all disgruntled parents from across the commonwealth, uses hard line publicity tactics, such as waging media campaigns and talking to local realtors, in an effort to warn incoming residents about school districts that have allegedly violated special education laws.
Four years ago, Chambers’ daughter, Sarah, was struggling so much in Varnum Brook Middle School that she “used to scrawl notes on little pieces of paper and leave them in corners around the house, pleading with her parents for help.” Chambers was able to find her daughter a placement in Murphy & Dwyer Academy, a private school in Chelmsford for students with disabilities; Sarah was able to catch up 18 months academically. While Chambers thinks herself fortunate, she
….. hasn’t stopped combating a statewide system that, she claims, pulled her daughter into a downward spiral.
Read Group monitors special education system: Holding schools to accountability.
Hello,
We are an organization that provides advocacy to parents of children with disabilities. We are able to go all the way to BSEA. This year we have successfully secured placements day and/or residentials for approximately 5-6 of our clients. Most recently the Randolph Public School system is funding the Cardinal Cushing Placement for an autistic little boy, we are in the process of securing the same placement (day) for a 14 year old girl from Brockton. Additionally, we have secured F. L. Chamberlain and South Shore Collaborative.
Also, our agency provides a service for parents to secure services in their home. We have worked collaboratively other agencies such as BAMSI, ComCare, New Bedford Child and Family, and DSS to obtain recreational, financial experts, parent aides and transportation to support groups.
Our agency is new and we have tripled our clientele in less than six months. Our goal is to change the day to day operations of school districts by forcing them to implement state and federal regulations one child at a time, if necessary.
We offer a parent’s manual describing 10 crucial steps to securing services, Workshops, and Advocacy Training. Our programs are not state funded and therefore we are free to provide any and all information without fear of losing our funding source. Our parent’s are the funding source, we work for the child and family.
For more information we have a website or I can be reached at 508-844-3132. We go anywhere in the state. We are currently trying to obtain reimbursement for a family who placed their child in a private placement. If they don’t agree we will go to BSEA and secure it there and if that doesn’t work we have an attorney who is willing to work “pro-bono” on cases for our agency.
Thanks for listening and good luck to your parents.
This is a speech I recently memorized and gave at our State Department of Education regarding the uneccessary segregation of students with disabilties here in South Carolina. This covers my current opinion regarding our society’s views towards students with disabilities. It was my hope to change peoples’ mind set and start to realize that these issues are Civil Rights issues. Feel free to respond.
Superintendent Rex, Chair, members of the South Carolina State Board of Education and audience, my name is Ellen Maulding. I am a parent of four children, two of which are in the public school system and one who has a disability. First of all, I would like to take this opportunity for encouraging the OEC to hold state wide regional meetings. I do not plan on giving comprehensive in put regarding the IDEIA 2004 regulations for I have given in put in a prior meeting with Mrs. DuRant and Mrs. Drayton as well as some in put at one of the regional hearings. I also snail mailed each one of you a letter which contained my in put in entirety. I would like to take this opportunity however to provide a dialogue of in put which will further enable you to understand my prior in put.
I do have a few rhetorical questions for you. I am hoping that these questions may set a foundation that may provide insight and understanding concerning my prior in put regarding the IDEIA 2004 regulations.
Did you know that nearly 20% of South Carolinians have a disability? Did you also know that approximately 15% of South Carolina’s school children have disabilities? (U.S. Census Bureau, Quick facts).
In light of this prevalence, how many students with significant disabilities sat by you in your core classes, rode the school bus with you and sat next or across from you during school lunch? When you entered the competitive work force, how many fellow workers that you worked along side of have disabilities? How many people do you recreate with weekly have disabilities? How many people with disabilities worship along side of you in your place of worship? How many people do you live next door to have disabilities? How many children with disabilities do your children sit by in class, eat lunch along side of and play or hang out with? If you are like me, my children and most other citizens of South Carolina, your answer to these questions would most likely be “nil” or close to it. You might be asking, why this is when 20% of our state’s population and 11% of our state’s school children have disabilities.
You see, there is a reason for this. From the moment we enter South Carolina’s public school system, we start to form ideas of who we are and who others are, where we belong in society and where others belong in society. And currently, our South Carolina public school system operates as a dual system of regular education and special education, with these two entities occupying the same school building yet segregated from each other. So naturally, after these two segments of South Carolina’s public school population spend approximately 168,000 hours segregated from each other, from kindergarten through high school, they produce a segregated societal mindset and eventually a segregated society. This society, our South Carolina society, is one which provides integrated, limitless equal opportunity to the able and one that provides segregated, limited and unequal opportunity to the disabled. This is because South Carolina public schools on the one hand take pride in offering, as most public schools mission statements attest, “to educate all students to their maximum potential” and yet on the other hand offer students with disabilities, a “ceiling of educational opportunity” of no greater than a 4th grade level. We can test a child’s intelligence, we can test a child’s achievement level, but science has yet to produce a test that tests a child’s potential. So how are our policies and regulations setting limits on the potential of students with disabilities and creating a society which is segregated and offers unequal opportunities?
According to the South Carolina State’s Performance Plan 2005 (SPP), South Carolina schools do not seriously consider the first placement option as being the regular education classroom with supports and services for students with disabilities. Putting prejudice and fear aside, the reasons for this, according to our SPP, is that our funding mechanism encourages segregated placements, opportunities for professional development which equips regular education teachers to provide supports and services to students with disabilities in their regular education classrooms go unutilized and regulations under the Defined Program restrict the use of school wide models which include integrated service models. As a result, students with disabilities are systematically unnecessarily placed into segregated learning environments such as the self contained class room. And as our Supreme Court has declared, “Separate is Inherently Unequal.” These segregated learning environments offer an unequal educational opportunity in that there is a ceiling to the content knowledge that is permitted to be taught.
These classes are plagued with low expectation therefore only offering low educational opportunity. Many of these students are not permitted to eat, recreate or even use the same restroom, hall lockers and P.E. lockers as do all other students. At best, South Carolina schools are offering “reversed inclusion” where the non disabled population is permitted to go into the segregated learning environment during “leisure” time. This method only serves to foster the idea that students with disabilities are objects of charity and are incapable of contributing socially or intellectually to society. Many schools are even giving awards to the non disabled population for sacrificing their time to charitably entertain and “care for” students with disabilities in these reversed inclusion segregated environments. Another option that our South Carolina schools are implementing as a “token” effort to be in compliance with Part B of IDEIA 2004 is the existence of “inclusion classrooms”. This is where up to ten or more students with disabilities are placed in regular education class rooms with minimal supports. This does not reflect the natural ratios of our South Carolina society nor is it considered best practice. Many times these types of classrooms are dumping grounds for “at risk” populations. The unnatural ratio combination of at risk and disabled students results in a too demanding learning environment both academically and socially. These types of classrooms are not in the children’s best interest.
Even though IDEIA 2004 provision for the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) (which legally means that government should act in a manner that least restricts the rights and liberties of individuals) (Turnbull, 1981), and NCLB as well as other laws, encourage schools to provide a supported, fully integrated equal educational opportunity to students with disabilities, South Carolina schools are not providing this as reported in South Carolina’s current State Performance Plan. And what has been the result for South Carolina citizens with disabilities who have gone through our public school system?
I have heard first hand from many young and older adults who have disabilities, who have gone through the South Carolina public school system and who currently live in South Carolina. They have told me what their lives are like. I have to say, it is not a pretty picture. It is a picture of those living isolated, or rather segregated lives, living well below the line of poverty, dependent on state funded programs, so called “tax payer’s burdens” (Partners in Policymaking Class of 2005, self-advocates). Social and economic researches believe this is a direct result of the lack of educational opportunity that is afforded to those with disabilities in our South Carolina public schools. You can change this with the decisions you make regarding South Carolina’s policies and regulations. You can enable our laws to provide our students with disabilities, a supported, fully integrated, equal educational opportunity.
The following statement is certainly tried and true for black and white, rich and poor and finally non disabled and disabled.
“We cannot give separate training to two segments of society and then expect that some magic will merge the individuals from these segments into equal citizens having equal opportunities.” (From the Amicus Brief submitted by the American Federation of Teachers to the U.S. Supreme court in Brown v. Board of Education)
Your response, your decisions regarding what our South Carolina State regulations will encompass, will most likely determine whether or not South Carolina’s 111,000 children with disabilities will have a future to look forward to.
Let me also leave you with this thoughtful quote;
“You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harm it would cause if improperly administered.”
Lyndon B. Johnson
Today my 5 yr old with autis, who can do the school work academically got suspended for a day. the school is doing small things to make me put him in this slef contained job, if they keep it up il lose my job, so the fear of losing my job i am suppose to scarfice my son, no.
the school have not given him one assessment or test or any services.
the teacher is untrained and cluesles as well as the administration staff.
the principal dont want to write or email parents , she wants to talk on the phone so there is no paper trail..pls read some of the things i am going through…
now the school is wanting to have an IEP meeting every week?
————– Original message ———————-
From: JonesAlphaNicole@aol.com
>
>
> I need some advise and guidelines.
>
> I have a 5 yr old with autism. he is mild/moderate.
> he have completed a yr and a half in a regular school setting in Florida.
> we recently move to Columbia, sc
> school just started on 08/20/2008.
> I have been calls from the school about his behavior, they don’t know how to
> redirect him, there are 22-25 students and only 2 teachers, they say he
> kicked a teacher, he states she was stretching his arms and pulling them out.
> this has been an everyday thing since the second day of school. the teachers
> have all met and we have an iep for sept 9, but they want to do a parent teacher
> conference on Tuesday at 1pm. tell me what you think..I think they are trying
> to push in a self contained class, which he doesn’t need to be in.
> the conversations on the phone are totally different the emails…that
> concerns me as well.i have found a lack of training, trained professional who
> really understand what autism its….I am trying to find out all his rights for
> public school educations as well as wrightslaw and whatever else can help. his
> ABA therapist who have worked with him for a yr in Florida didn’t have any
> of these concerns, his current ABA therapist which is outside of the school
> system as well, don’t agree with the school and teachers… academically his is
> smart and above on a lot of things.. they put him a self contained class
> when we moved and he regressed, the was the psychologist, a different one within
> same district in sc that did this. she didn’t listen nothing I said she heard
> autism and put him in a self contained class. the self contained teacher
> thought as I did he dint need to be put in a self contained class. I have them
> last year 1 wk to get him out of this class…he is in a regular class setting
> this year and this is where all this coming from.. another note can I tape
> record parent conference and iep meetings when I advise them of it, what is
> the procedure..?.please advise..
>
>
> this is a letter form the principal that I received today:
> Good Evening,
> I am sorry I keep missing you on the phone, I am not a big fan of emailing
> parents. I like to talk, rather than write.
> Anyway, we are going to try other interventions tomorrow with Miah(son), and
> I wanted to discuss them with you and get your thoughts and comments.
> Please call me at 739-3148. We have had many parent concerns regarding the
> safety of the other children in Mrs. Brant’s class. We need to work together
> as a team to meet the needs of all our children, and I think we can
> accomplish it.
> Thank you for your support, and it was nice meeting you the other day.
> Sincerely,
> Principal
>
>
> here is email from his ST therapist at his current school,I feel this is a
> set up:
> Mrs. Jones,
> I spoke with Dr. Lipscomb,(psychologist) Mrs. Brant(teacher), Mrs.
> Dilliard(resource person), and Mrs. Snyder (asst principal) and they can all
> attend
> the parent teacher conference on Tuesday, Sept 2 at 1:00 at School. I am sorry
> we got disconnected today, but it was very good to talk to you. Please feel
> free to contact me anytime! I look forward to seeing you on Sept 2!
> Thanks,
> Beth
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> **************It’s only a deal if it’s where you want to go. Find your travel
> deal here.
> (http://information.travel.aol.com/deals?ncid=aoltrv00050000000047)
From: JonesAlphaNicole@aol.com
To: marinkirks@comcast.net
Subject: public schools
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2008 23:32:31 +0
@brandi, not a great way for you or your son to start the school year, to put it mildly.
What kinds of evaluations have been done in regard to your son’s placement?
Have you gotten any evaluations or assessments on your own?
Tell them that you wish to meet in person and that meetings be documented. You can record IEP meetings—-I do this—–you need to send them a letter (an email should also be all right; in my school district it is) giving them a week’s notice about this. The school district then has the right to record too, but recording meetings is important to show that you are very serious about what is going on.
Is there any way for you to bring someone else, perhaps another parent of a special needs child who has been through the process? Just having someone else at the meetings can make a big difference, as far as the other person taking notes and noting things.
The district should also provide a rationale for weekly meetings. And is anyone thinking of how to address the reasons/behaviors that led to the suspension?
Lots of us have been through similar situations. We’re with you!