A common scenario for any public school parent is that there are years in which the quality of teaching is not great. Most parents have to work with their kids to make it through these years in the hopes that the next year’s teacher will be better. That’s just how it is. If you are the parent of a fourth grade student without disabilities, then you have little recourse if you think the school has not done its job. You can complain to the school administration and to the school board, but most often that is as far as it goes.
If your fourth grader happens to be in special education because of a disability, then the story is quite different. Federal law allows a parent of a child with a disability to sue a school district if that parent feels that the school has not served their child. What makes these children different? The law is mostly about access to the same curriculum that other children receive. It is a civil rights law. And certainly there have been many cases where students with disabilities have been excluded from the mainstream. The law has been logically and appropriately enacted.
Where trouble starts is in the cost to the school of legal action. Since a parent can sue any time that parent believes that the school has fallen down on the job, law suits in special education are fairly common. I have had four law suits filed this year against my district, and three of them asked us to pay for private residential placements for students whose parents could not contain their behavior at home. Now, I know a number of parents who have lost control of their children for many reasons, and they have either placed the child in a residential center at their own expense, if they could afford it, or found local ways to deal with the problem. Both options have been successful for these parents, or not, in equal measures. But if the child is in special education, the parent can ask the schools to pay for the placement.
The cost of the residential placements range from $50,000 to $150,000 per year. There are few guidelines on what these type of institutions charge. This year, we have had parents place their children and then come back and ask us to pay for it. The tragedy is, and this is what keeps me up at night, is that I know these families do not know what to do with their children. I know they are looking for solutions, and a variety of people, from doctors to educational advocates, recommend these residential placements. I am also obligated to defend the district from spending money it does not have, as for each placement we lose one teacher. The state does not give us extra money for these cases.
So why is this a problem? Shouldn’t we support these families who do not have the skill or support to care for their children? When you meet these families, there is no doubt that they need assistance. There is no doubt that some of these residential placements are very good. There is also no doubt that neither the state nor the federal government give school districts any extra money for these placements.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
The Long Road to Special Ed Administration Begins with Poop
I walked into the room ready to rock. I was the new teacher, fresh out of school, a Master’s degree in hand, about to take this dreadful room of rocking, spinning, flapping teenagers to a new level. It was my first day at the Sonoma Developmental Center, an institution for people with developmental disabilities. I was hired with a promise of resources for community training (e.g.- walking, shopping, vans, “primary reinforcers” (m & m’s) and a classroom of my own. None of that was “ready” yet, and as it would turn out, it would never be. So today, I was visiting one of the other classrooms, and the teacher who showed me around smelled of booze and cigarettes and gave sage advice, like keep your head down and don’t be noticed.
“By who? The kids?” I asked.
“By the staff,” he said. “I’ll show you.”
He was smiling in a mean sort of way, not meeting my eyes, distinctly not liking what I represented, which was either potential change in his comfortable routine, or an unwelcome break in his drinking schedule. He pushed me ahead of him into the room, where about twelve late-teen kids with autism were rocking back and forth. Two assistants were sitting with two of the kids, not doing anything but handing them plastic toys to fiddle with.
“Whatever you do,” said the teacher, “Don’t turn away from them.”
“What do you mean?” I said, turning away from them to look at him. At that moment I was hit in the back of the head by something soft and sticky. Instinctively, I reached up to see what it was as the assistants and the teacher broke into guffaws. My fingers came away with a brown substance with, interestingly, bits of what looked like corn. I was instantly disgusted and wretched as I realized that I had just been hit with a poop ball. In my hair. I could not think of anything more vile, and I ducked out of the classroom thinking of the teacher’s advice: keep your head down. He helped me to find the bathroom, laughing.
“I told you not to turn away!” he said, helpfully.
I wondered who did that. I had looked immediately at the group of kids and saw no one looking at me, no one giving any sign of having fired the offending missile.
“What the hell was that?” I asked him. “Who did that, and how?”
“I’ll show you in a minute,” he said. “Clean that stuff off your hair, though.”
I emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, feeling completely soiled and wanting nothing more than to go home and take a three-hour shower. I had hours to go on this first day, and everything was upside down, and I had no choice but to return to the classroom and see what was up there.
When I did, the teacher pointed to a kid standing and rocking by the window. He was short, not much more than five feet, and had his focus somewhere out the window.
“That’s Karl,” said the teacher. “He doesn’t like new people. Watch him this time, out of the corner of your eye.” He moved away from me then, and I did as he said, turning to one side but keeping my eye on him. Karl put his hand into the back of his pants for about twenty seconds. Then, amazingly quickly, he whipped his hand out, turned his body towards me, and fired what was in his hand. Since I saw it coming, I ducked, and the poop ball splattered against the door, where it stuck and stank like, well, like a piece of dung. He would have hit me again.
“He’s a good shot. Never misses,” said the teacher. The assistants giggled.
“How long until he trusts me?” I asked.
“Depends. You’ve got to spend some time with him.”
“Well, I think I’ve seen enough of your class for now. Thanks,” I said. All I wanted was to go home.
There is perhaps no worse feeling then when your head has been covered, even partially, with human feces, although other types of feces may be pretty bad too. I quickly found out that the Center had a shower, complete with feces-eliminating shampoo (at least I hope that’s what the pink stuff in the bottle was), where I spent approximately 47 minutes washing and rewashing my hair. Later, after my hair dried, my scalp was so dry that tiny Bedouins had taken up residence there…or at least it felt like it. Something tiny had…maybe it was lice. You never know what may have been in that li’l ball of flung dung.
The next day I was told that the teacher of that class was sick and I would have to take his class. I found out later that this guy was an alcoholic and was often “sick”. If this was going to be the situation, I better learn how to protect myself from my Ass-assin. Fortunately, I had a beanie in my car, one of those knit caps worn by skiers, longshoremen, and gangsters. Unfortunately, it was my wife’s, pink with some poorly-rendered fuzzy creatures romping in grass. But protection was protection, and I needed to be safe.
When I got to the class, the assistants greeted me warily, eyed my hat, and went on chatting, ignoring both the students and me. As a substitute, one learns that the teacher leaves a folder with plans for you, or at least a class schedule. I searched in vain for one on the desk, all the time keeping one eye on Karl. I asked the assistants where the plans were, and they just laughed, so I asked them what they typically did. They hung out in this room, of course, for two hours, then went back to the residence hall. Class over. What did they do for two hours?
“Well, we give them stuff from the trays over there,” one said. “They work on that until they’re done, then we give them other stuff.”
There were about six trays on some shelves at the end of the room. Six trays, twenty students. I quickly figured, thanks to expert training in my credentialing program, that there were not enough materials to go around. Rather than put the obvious in front of these two women, I got a tray and brought it over to Karl. The women stopped talking and watched me.
“Is this OK to do with him? Does he also fire at close range?” I asked.
They laughed. “He’s OK,” one of them said. “ He likes that tray.”
So I sat down in front of Karl, while he rocked, standing by the window, and watched me peripherally. I set up the trays, a sorting task involving bolts, nuts, and washers. I set up the three parts in order, and then assembled one and held it out to Karl.
“Come here, Karl. Let’s do some work,” I said. He watched me and stopped rocking. After about ten seconds, he came over and sat down. He picked up the bolt, took off the nut and washer, and replaced them in the correct trays. He then picked up the bolt again, and reattached the nut and washer. He then dropped it into the fourth tray, an empty one. I had brought a box of raisins with me, so I gave him a small handful after he completed this simple task. He took them and popped them into his mouth, not chewing them, just swallowing. All I wanted was for Karl to like me, though I figured the only way I’d know it was to turn my back and not get splattered with a whizzing turd.
I worked with Karl for about thirty minutes, giving him raisins for completing the bolt assembly. I figured that I better work with somebody else, as most of the kids just sat and rocked the whole time, so I moved to another student. I kept my eye on Karl though, until at one point I got sidetracked when a student threw a tray onto the floor and screamed. Naturally, I turned towards this student, and almost immediately felt a smack on the back of my pink hat, knowing instantly that I had been defiled again. Turning slowly towards Karl, I gingerly took off my hat and saw that the ball had stuck to it whole, as it was full of hair and thus very cohesive, which meant that it did not splatter. I asked the laughing assistants if there was any on my shirt, and they did me the small favor of coming over and assessing me for contamination, and announced me clean. I put my hat into a bag and finished the class with Karl squarely in front of me the whole time.
One of the things you learn in these kind of institutions is that a lot of the residents have feces on their hands, under their nails, and smeared on their bodies. I think it’s a reaction to being in such an unhealthy place. Karl was only unusual in that he could produce these balls at will, and fling them with alarming accuracy at any chosen target. It turned out that he was a legend at the Center, with stories told that made mine fairy tales. The best was when the Center Executive Director came to see the classroom, having decided to come down from the brick, ivy-covered administration building to inspect the troops. He walked into the class and no one dared tell him not to watch Karl, and as he opened his mouth to speak to the assembled teachers and administrators, a poop ball hit him square in the teeth. Now, I can think of about 200 reasons why that’s about the worst possible scenario, and from then on, until I finally made peace with Karl about a month later, I kept my mouth shut and my eyes on the prize.
The Sonoma Developmental Center is a large, archaic institution that boasts of both a long and glorious and sordid past. It has stood not far from Sonoma, California, for over 100 years, serving first any child or adult who didn’t fit into society and morphing into a center for children and adults with developmental disabilities. At one point, it was the largest center in the world for the practice of eugenics, taking the form of forced sterilizations of hundreds of people. It has retained an institutional air, as befits a large, bucolic town, which is what Eldridge is, removed from the mainstream. It is, on first inspection, quiet and quaint, with small groups of people walking slowly around the area or sitting and waving at the cars that do pass by. It is a pleasant and beautiful place, with stately buildings, mature trees and hills behind it covered in redwoods and dotted with trails and lakes. It’s a wonderful place to take a stroll and forget what your hair may harbor after a long day in the classroom. As a new teacher, fresh out of a University with a long history of cutting edge curriculum, imbued with moral purpose and a mission to improve the world for people with disabilities, I did not know what to make of Eldridge, or the Developmental Center, or Karl. I did learn to keep my head down, though, and found that outside of this place, no one believes that a person like that could be so accurate with so disgusting a projectile.
“By who? The kids?” I asked.
“By the staff,” he said. “I’ll show you.”
He was smiling in a mean sort of way, not meeting my eyes, distinctly not liking what I represented, which was either potential change in his comfortable routine, or an unwelcome break in his drinking schedule. He pushed me ahead of him into the room, where about twelve late-teen kids with autism were rocking back and forth. Two assistants were sitting with two of the kids, not doing anything but handing them plastic toys to fiddle with.
“Whatever you do,” said the teacher, “Don’t turn away from them.”
“What do you mean?” I said, turning away from them to look at him. At that moment I was hit in the back of the head by something soft and sticky. Instinctively, I reached up to see what it was as the assistants and the teacher broke into guffaws. My fingers came away with a brown substance with, interestingly, bits of what looked like corn. I was instantly disgusted and wretched as I realized that I had just been hit with a poop ball. In my hair. I could not think of anything more vile, and I ducked out of the classroom thinking of the teacher’s advice: keep your head down. He helped me to find the bathroom, laughing.
“I told you not to turn away!” he said, helpfully.
I wondered who did that. I had looked immediately at the group of kids and saw no one looking at me, no one giving any sign of having fired the offending missile.
“What the hell was that?” I asked him. “Who did that, and how?”
“I’ll show you in a minute,” he said. “Clean that stuff off your hair, though.”
I emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, feeling completely soiled and wanting nothing more than to go home and take a three-hour shower. I had hours to go on this first day, and everything was upside down, and I had no choice but to return to the classroom and see what was up there.
When I did, the teacher pointed to a kid standing and rocking by the window. He was short, not much more than five feet, and had his focus somewhere out the window.
“That’s Karl,” said the teacher. “He doesn’t like new people. Watch him this time, out of the corner of your eye.” He moved away from me then, and I did as he said, turning to one side but keeping my eye on him. Karl put his hand into the back of his pants for about twenty seconds. Then, amazingly quickly, he whipped his hand out, turned his body towards me, and fired what was in his hand. Since I saw it coming, I ducked, and the poop ball splattered against the door, where it stuck and stank like, well, like a piece of dung. He would have hit me again.
“He’s a good shot. Never misses,” said the teacher. The assistants giggled.
“How long until he trusts me?” I asked.
“Depends. You’ve got to spend some time with him.”
“Well, I think I’ve seen enough of your class for now. Thanks,” I said. All I wanted was to go home.
There is perhaps no worse feeling then when your head has been covered, even partially, with human feces, although other types of feces may be pretty bad too. I quickly found out that the Center had a shower, complete with feces-eliminating shampoo (at least I hope that’s what the pink stuff in the bottle was), where I spent approximately 47 minutes washing and rewashing my hair. Later, after my hair dried, my scalp was so dry that tiny Bedouins had taken up residence there…or at least it felt like it. Something tiny had…maybe it was lice. You never know what may have been in that li’l ball of flung dung.
The next day I was told that the teacher of that class was sick and I would have to take his class. I found out later that this guy was an alcoholic and was often “sick”. If this was going to be the situation, I better learn how to protect myself from my Ass-assin. Fortunately, I had a beanie in my car, one of those knit caps worn by skiers, longshoremen, and gangsters. Unfortunately, it was my wife’s, pink with some poorly-rendered fuzzy creatures romping in grass. But protection was protection, and I needed to be safe.
When I got to the class, the assistants greeted me warily, eyed my hat, and went on chatting, ignoring both the students and me. As a substitute, one learns that the teacher leaves a folder with plans for you, or at least a class schedule. I searched in vain for one on the desk, all the time keeping one eye on Karl. I asked the assistants where the plans were, and they just laughed, so I asked them what they typically did. They hung out in this room, of course, for two hours, then went back to the residence hall. Class over. What did they do for two hours?
“Well, we give them stuff from the trays over there,” one said. “They work on that until they’re done, then we give them other stuff.”
There were about six trays on some shelves at the end of the room. Six trays, twenty students. I quickly figured, thanks to expert training in my credentialing program, that there were not enough materials to go around. Rather than put the obvious in front of these two women, I got a tray and brought it over to Karl. The women stopped talking and watched me.
“Is this OK to do with him? Does he also fire at close range?” I asked.
They laughed. “He’s OK,” one of them said. “ He likes that tray.”
So I sat down in front of Karl, while he rocked, standing by the window, and watched me peripherally. I set up the trays, a sorting task involving bolts, nuts, and washers. I set up the three parts in order, and then assembled one and held it out to Karl.
“Come here, Karl. Let’s do some work,” I said. He watched me and stopped rocking. After about ten seconds, he came over and sat down. He picked up the bolt, took off the nut and washer, and replaced them in the correct trays. He then picked up the bolt again, and reattached the nut and washer. He then dropped it into the fourth tray, an empty one. I had brought a box of raisins with me, so I gave him a small handful after he completed this simple task. He took them and popped them into his mouth, not chewing them, just swallowing. All I wanted was for Karl to like me, though I figured the only way I’d know it was to turn my back and not get splattered with a whizzing turd.
I worked with Karl for about thirty minutes, giving him raisins for completing the bolt assembly. I figured that I better work with somebody else, as most of the kids just sat and rocked the whole time, so I moved to another student. I kept my eye on Karl though, until at one point I got sidetracked when a student threw a tray onto the floor and screamed. Naturally, I turned towards this student, and almost immediately felt a smack on the back of my pink hat, knowing instantly that I had been defiled again. Turning slowly towards Karl, I gingerly took off my hat and saw that the ball had stuck to it whole, as it was full of hair and thus very cohesive, which meant that it did not splatter. I asked the laughing assistants if there was any on my shirt, and they did me the small favor of coming over and assessing me for contamination, and announced me clean. I put my hat into a bag and finished the class with Karl squarely in front of me the whole time.
One of the things you learn in these kind of institutions is that a lot of the residents have feces on their hands, under their nails, and smeared on their bodies. I think it’s a reaction to being in such an unhealthy place. Karl was only unusual in that he could produce these balls at will, and fling them with alarming accuracy at any chosen target. It turned out that he was a legend at the Center, with stories told that made mine fairy tales. The best was when the Center Executive Director came to see the classroom, having decided to come down from the brick, ivy-covered administration building to inspect the troops. He walked into the class and no one dared tell him not to watch Karl, and as he opened his mouth to speak to the assembled teachers and administrators, a poop ball hit him square in the teeth. Now, I can think of about 200 reasons why that’s about the worst possible scenario, and from then on, until I finally made peace with Karl about a month later, I kept my mouth shut and my eyes on the prize.
The Sonoma Developmental Center is a large, archaic institution that boasts of both a long and glorious and sordid past. It has stood not far from Sonoma, California, for over 100 years, serving first any child or adult who didn’t fit into society and morphing into a center for children and adults with developmental disabilities. At one point, it was the largest center in the world for the practice of eugenics, taking the form of forced sterilizations of hundreds of people. It has retained an institutional air, as befits a large, bucolic town, which is what Eldridge is, removed from the mainstream. It is, on first inspection, quiet and quaint, with small groups of people walking slowly around the area or sitting and waving at the cars that do pass by. It is a pleasant and beautiful place, with stately buildings, mature trees and hills behind it covered in redwoods and dotted with trails and lakes. It’s a wonderful place to take a stroll and forget what your hair may harbor after a long day in the classroom. As a new teacher, fresh out of a University with a long history of cutting edge curriculum, imbued with moral purpose and a mission to improve the world for people with disabilities, I did not know what to make of Eldridge, or the Developmental Center, or Karl. I did learn to keep my head down, though, and found that outside of this place, no one believes that a person like that could be so accurate with so disgusting a projectile.
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