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News › Elementary School special ed teacher forced to move after 25 years
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Education: Elementary School special ed teacher forced to move after 25 years
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Posted by Sylvia on Monday, March 01, 2004 (22:35:36)
Billings Gazette 27/02/2004
By Diane Cochran
After almost 25 years of teaching special education at Alkali Creek Elementary School, Susan Asay is being forced to move to another Billings school.
Resource rooms in eight School District 2 elementary schools - including Alkali Creek - will probably get new teachers next year, said Kathy Olson, executive director of elementary education. At some schools, special education teachers are retiring and need to be replaced. At others, they have asked to be moved into different positions.
But, at Alkali Creek and at least two more elementary schools, the change reflects the district's decision to move any resource room teacher who has taught in one building for 12 or more years. It is the same policy in effect for regular teachers and similar to one applied to principals, who are reassigned after seven years.
Asay and some parents say the change will wreak havoc in the lives of special-needs children who cling to the stability of Asay's presence year after year.
"My daughter's learning disability affects her academically, emotionally, socially, and physically," Terri Moore said.
"It's bad enough she has to move to a different teacher (each year). It takes her half a year to be comfortable enough to look a new teacher in the eye. Being able to have the comfort level she's established with Ms. Asay is so important."
But district officials say that change is healthy, even for fragile students, and that training kids to rely on only one person for support can do more harm than good.
"Is it not healthy for all children to deal with change?" Olson asked. "I taught special ed. Did I think I was the only one for those kids? Absolutely. But, if I was the only one those kids could function for, I was not doing my job."
Olson said the decision to reassign special-education teachers was made after a meeting between district officials and the Billings Education Association. It was asked why special ed teachers are not moved, and district officials did not have an answer.
"They've never been moved before. No one really knows why," Olson said. "There's really no reason they can't be moved every 12 years."
Moore, whose fifth-grade daughter has worked with Asay since kindergarten, disagrees.
"A regular classroom teacher does not connect with a child like a resource-room teacher does," she said. "I don't understand how the school district can lump resource-room teachers into the same category as regular teachers."
Moore worries that a new resource-room teacher will result in a serious setback for her daughter, who functions more easily in a stable environment.
"She progresses every year so much. I see her taking a step back next year because of this. She won't progress to the level she needs to advance to junior high," she said.
Rene Flanagan fears her son, Liam, also a student at Alkali Creek, will simply not be able to adjust to a different teacher. Seven-year-old Liam has Asperger syndrome, a form of autism. People with Asperger syndrome often experience great difficulty with change.
"If that happens and he couldn't adjust, I would have to take him out of school," Flanagan said.
She would have to quit her job to care for him.
Liam is so sensitive that, when he started school last August, he spent most of his time hiding beneath a desk. But he has bonded with Asay and two resource-room aides, Vonnie Casey and Billie Riplett, and now performs many tasks on his own.
"All these kids have to keep their stability is their feeling of security," Flanagan said.
Although Asay is certain that Liam and other students could connect with a new teacher, she wonders if the benefit of a fresh face would outweigh the harm of disruption.
"I don't feel by any means that I am irreplaceable," Asay said. "Other teachers are wonderful. But, when you leave a program like this, you break bonds … and these bonds cannot be rebuilt overnight."
Asay's relationship with some students lasts well beyond their years at Alkali Creek. Rosemary Brister said her son, now a junior at Skyview High School, still regularly seeks advice from Asay.
"He'll go to her before he asks me," Brister said. "Anybody can build a bond, but it's nice to have somebody all these years straight. If they had moved her around, he wouldn't have had this opportunity to make this relationship."
Riplett said former students often stop by the resource room at Alkali Creek to visit Asay and Casey, who has been an aide there for 20 years.
"This is the first experience I've had as an assistant and seen students come back (so regularly)," Riplett said. "If you have a system that works, why do you need to change it?"
Olson said the district will decide in May where Asay and other teachers - including about 70 regular teachers on the reassignment list - will be placed. She understands concerns about how a new teacher might affect special education students, but she thinks that, in the end, the change will be a positive experience.
"Every time I put new teachers in a building, parents are worried," she said. "It is very hard. Do I worry about kids? Absolutely.
"I can't say (something negative) won't happen, but what I can tell you is we have wonderful special education teachers, and just because they love this one doesn't mean they won't love the next one," Olson said.
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Posted by Sylvia on Monday, March 01, 2004 (22:35:36) (1822 reads)
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