Posted on 11/29/2012 11:02:54 AM PST by Responsibility2nd
As the director of the Washington Autism Alliance, Arzu Forough hears a lot of bad stories about special needs students being mistreated in school.
When behavior becomes violent and a student is at risk of hurting themselves or others, Forough said, a teacher can put a child in what’s known as a quiet or isolation room if they have the parents’ permission.
“The rooms I’ve seen are either three-quarter doors or have large windows where the child is visible to the staff member,” Forough said. “There are either bean bags in there or something comfortable for the student to sit on.”
But Forough said the room is a lot different from the padded room being used at Mint Valley Elementary School in Longview. A concerned parent posted photos of the room after her son told her he saw teachers putting special needs students in the booth for simple things like crying and tapping on their desks.
The district insists the room isn’t used as punishment.
“It is not used as punishment,” said Sandy Catt, communications director for the Longview School District. “It is used as a treatment in lieu of a physical hold or accepted therapeutic restraint for a child.”
Forough feels many districts across the country are out of touch when it comes to working with special needs students. She said rural districts especially may lack the funding for staff and training.
Catt said the children put in the isolation room in Longview all come from a classroom of nine special needs student with a teacher and two aides. The parents of all nine children gave permission for their child to be put in this isolation room, Catt said, and none have complained about its use.
In light of this story, the district is checking in with each of those families to see if they have any concerns.
Seattle Public Schools does not have any isolation rules, but the Kent School District has 14 of them. In April, an elementary school in Olympia came under fire after a child was allegedly left in an isolation room for hours.
In order for a review of Mint Valley Elementary to happen, State Schools Superintendent Randy Dorn’s office said it would have to receive a formal complaint alleging the school violated state or federal special education laws.
And now there is Race to the Top to add on to NCLB, or as I like to call it Plummet to the Bottom.
prepping kids for prison.
can’t do common sense discipline. libtards are so stupid. well, the parents will sue us. yeah, well who taught their parents, morons?
They won't stay seated.
During the past ten years my wife has had a few of these headbangers in her Sunday school classes, and believe me, even just an hour with some of them can be extremely trying. I can't imagine how teachers who have to deal with them all day long can stay sane.
In our school district they now integrate the headbangers in with the regular kids, and of course that means a second teacher needs to be in the classroom. Even then, the disruptions are frequent. It's the typical "lowest common denominator" political correctness that has infected and destroyed the education system in America. Parents who love their children should do whatever they have to do to keep their kids away from the government schools.
The Emotionally Disturbed (ED) children need to be sent back to the loonie bin so they don’t have a chance of harming other children.
Sounds like they just set up a special loonie bin at the school. Three teachers for nine students isn't exactly a normal ratio.
They're way ahead of you in LA. I read a story the other day where they have about 300 teachers that work in "time-out" rooms because they're in varying stages of discipline for sexing up the students and can't be fired or on unpaid leave because of the Union. They just sit around websurfing and playing video games.
lol
It's a little disturbing to me how often I put up a tongue-in-cheek suggestion that's supposed to be outrageous only to find it's quite normal.
The entire situation is completely insane. You MUST educate them, but they don't want to be educated and throw chairs and books at you when you try.
I spent my days documenting the following:
Progress toward meeting goals (with evidence of work completed by students)
Behavior (with antecedents, detail, then writing down what could have been done differently in order to head off the behavior next time)
Parent contact (called all 15 phone numbers and still got no one)
District contact (put a happy face on and tell how well the little darlings are doing - a little difficult when the police just left. AGAIN).
Document contraband found (guns - seriously, knives, illegal drugs and substances, tobacco and lighters) and is your ass EVER chewed out if you miss one single thing!
Things I have personally dealt with: taking the gun away, taking knives away, taking illegal drugs away, broken windows, broken drinking fountains, broken hands, trashed classrooms, broken ceiling tiles, kids on the roof, kids leaving campus, kids smoking on campus, kids trying to burn down the building, kids setting the van on fire during transport, fights - of course, being stabbed with pencils, kicked in the face, legs, etc, hit, punched, scratched, bitten, books destroyed, cars egged and windows broken, bathrooms flooded and plumbing stopped up.
There is NO amount of money that can get someone to go back for this day after day.
Problem kids like that should not be in school with regular kids, we had something called EXPULSION not too long ago.
Exactly!!
The problem is, after they're expelled the district has to pay for the alternative placement and they don't like to do that.
Because they don't know what is going on.
As a grandmother of a Downs boy, there is not enough time or space to tell you all the unnecessary abuse that goes on.
Only way we know, is a neighbor who worked there told the parents.
The situation was: at lunch, my grandson wanted pizza, teacher MADE him take nuggets. He started crying, and the more he cried the more verbally abusive she got, finally made him leave, go sit in the hall. Without lunch. All that torment because he wanted Pizza.
They do this because THEY CAN. The parents ONCE more had to have YET another talk about abuse. It stops for awhile, then something else gets under their craw and take it out on the helpless.
These children can't/won't tell what happened, mostly because they feel it was their fault, they did something wrong.
It is an ever ongoing issue in most schools that have Special Needs children. Easy targets. Makes you want to go up and BEAT THE CHIT out of that teacher.
My Teacher Friend tells me she will refuse grades higher than 3rd, because the kids are big enough and violent enough to beat her senseless.
She’s worried about the fact that her elementary school does not have enough adult males in the building to handle more than one or two violent 4th, 5th or 6th graders at a time.
And that’s not an impossible scenario. It is entirely likely that someday, 4 kids get physically violent at the same time, and adults will be permanently disabled.
and they are unaccountable except in rare cases
Government schools should be abolished
The parents don't answer the phone, because literally, they sold their 0bamaphone for their next hit of coke.
The kid goes home to nobody, and comes back to school from time to time when there's nothing else to do.
My Teacher Friend has 2 violent 3rd grade kids. If they teamed up, she’d be toast.
My teacher friend has one kid who literally cannot sit down for more than one minute. He’s spent the entire year so far wandering around the classroom and halls, with no constraint whatsoever. You’d have to use ropes and a straightjacket to get him to just sit.
SO TRUE. My son in law is the RARE CASE, they don't want to mess with him. He knows their rights, and he is not afraid to demand them all the way up to a Senator or Congressman if need be. Usually it will be handled at the Principal or the School Board
Like I said, these parents DON'T know what is going on. Their child does not possess the ability to discuss it. When something is discovered and he feels safe, he will tell his side all the while still feeling like he did something wrong and is in trouble.
I personally want to go up and SLAP the CHIT out of her/them. All he is to them is a HEADcount$$$$$$, of which some of that money is not applied to their needs and applied to a principals pet project. that is a FACT.
They sold the kids' meds, too.
Parents need to GO to the school and spend a day in the classroom, unannounced. Take a pad of paper and take notes. Make the teachers/admin sweat!! If they're honestly doing their best, they'll welcome you in and explain that you must sit quietly and they'll be happy to talk to you when the children are at recess, etc.
Yup. I've heard that exact story.
The kids are sometimes actually functional when they are on their meds. But the parents sell the kids' meds on the street, and the kid goes to school out of control.
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