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News- Page 22
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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 (21:35:36)
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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Education : Autism fundraiser coming up at Clark Hall
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Posted by Sylvia on Monday, March 01, 2004 (21:17:45)
The Journal 27/02/2004
By Atlee Clark
A self-proclaimed man on a mission, Claude Dupuis is looking to Queen’s students to help him send his eight-year-old autistic son, Etienne, to camp.
On Mar. 1, Dupuis will be holding an event at Clark Hall Pub, which will include two bands and lots of prizes.
Kahki Snack and Starving Artists will both be donating their time to play at the event.
The highlight of the evening will be a silent auction for an eight-foot bar on wheels. It holds two kegs and will include bar accessories such as cork screws and glasses.
Raffle tickets will be sold for chances to win prizes throughout the night, including gift certificates for restaurants, the Boiler Room climbing gym, Radisson Hotel and AMS services. All students will receive one free raffle ticket just for attending and making a two-dollar donation at the door.
The camp is located in Toronto and costs $1,900 for two weeks. Dupuis said he estimates that camp actually costs the family $2,500. “$1,900 does not include transportation and it doesn’t include two days off my two jobs,†Dupuis said.
The camp provides benefits for his son in two ways, Dupuis said. It provides care and a social experience for Etienne. It also provides respite care for the rest of the family. While Etienne is at camp, it will allow his parents and his 12-year-old sister, Celine, to spend some time together.
“It gives us a break. It’s like recharging our batteries,†Dupuis said.
Dupuis said he believes the camp has been instrumental in Etienne’s development.
“Three years ago he couldn’t speak, he wasn’t toilet trained, he didn’t make eye contact. Now he can do all these things ... The camp is a big portion [of his development],†he said.
Dupuis said he is reaching out to the University community with the hope of informing them.
“In five years, some of those students might have a child with autism,†he said.
Etienne was diagnosed with autism at two and a half years of age. Over the past eight years, Dupuis has had to employ more than a dozen therapists, babysitters and educational assistants.
“We have to keep him in our world,†he said.
Autism was first recognized in 1942 and the cause remains unknown. The condition manifests itself differently in each person, but there are common characteristics of people with autism. Autistic children often experience delays in the development of linguistic, social and learning skills.
They tend to spend time alone and sometimes have difficulty making eye contact.
Treatment for autistic children currently involves constant interaction and stimulation of the senses. There is no cure for autism, but recent studies have suggested a possible vaccine. However, this discovery has been controversial.
Although autistic children are often reclusive, there are positive characteristics of autism.
They can often concentrate on one thing for long periods of time and have exceptional long-term memory. They can be extremely proficient in math, music, science and technologies. They can have very good memories and have average or above-average intelligence.
“These children do amazing things,†Dupuis said.
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Education : Marco boy commutes to Naples to attend Hoffman Learning Center
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Posted by Sylvia on Monday, March 01, 2004 (19:45:24)
Naples News 25/02/2004
By Tiffany St. Martin
While riding home from school in the afternoon, fifth-grader David Wheeler often will finish the majority of his homework in his father's truck.
The trip from Journeys: A Hoffman Learning Academy in North Naples, to Marco Island takes about 45 minutes, so there's plenty of time for David to complete his assignments.
And it's worth the commute, David's mom, Sandy Wheeler said. She and her husband, Duncan, decided to send David to Journeys in October because the school focuses on what's best for each individual student.
That's especially important for 11-year-old David, who has a mild form of autism called Asperger's syndrome, which makes social interaction difficult. He also has attention deficit disorder, or ADD.
When the Wheelers adopted David at 26 months old, doctors said he was developmentally delayed. When he was six, doctors diagnosed him with Asperger's syndrome. He has taken Adderall for the past three years, and most of the tics he had due to his ADD have disappeared, Sandy Wheeler said.
He works with a speech pathologist twice a week, which helps him tremendously. "She's really great with him," his mother said.
David, who attended Tommie Barfield Elementary before going to Journeys, said he likes his new school because he has more time to finish his homework during the week, and he doesn't have any homework on Friday.
Although he had a modified curriculum at TBE, it wasn't modified enough: There still was the distraction of other students, Sandy Wheeler said. When she looked into private schools in the area, she knew Journeys was the one for David.
"We always knew eventually he would need something different," Duncan Wheeler said.
The academy is part of the Hoffman Learning Center, which opened in September and provides children with whatever special resources they need. It primarily is a tutoring center, but it also assesses students for the Challenge program, said director of education Nora Ingersoll.
The school's student-to-teacher ratio is very small; David spends most of his day with only four other students. The class limit is eight, and the school limit is 50, Ingersoll said.
"I would say hands down we customize, individualize and personalize more than any school I know," she said. "We want to keep the integrity of that really small school where everyone's invested in the children."
With so few students in the class, David's teacher, Noelle Zaldivar, is aware of each child's strengths and weaknesses, and she has time to spend with each child, Sandy Wheeler said.
Although David's lessons are modified, Ingersoll said, they are not modified in a way that takes away from his learning. David is one of two students with Asperger's syndrome at the school.
Ingersoll said the school pays close attention to his emotional as well as intellectual intelligence because if the students are calm and happy, they perform better and accomplish more.
"Miss Noelle gets more out of him than public schools ever thought they could," she said.
He always has gotten A's and B's, but now his parents can see how he's developing intellectually.
David has a "factual brain," meaning once he understands something, he doesn't need it repeated. In the past, he sometimes couldn't grasp abstract concepts such as "ants in the pants" and "raining cats and dogs," Sandy Wheeler said, although he can rationalize them since he has grown older.
His favorite subjects are math, science and English. David said he especially likes math because he gets to add, subtract, multiply and divide numbers.
When he isn't in school or doing homework, he likes watching Cartoon Network, and "I love to go fishing," he said.
He also spends time playing with one of his birthday presents, a black kitten named Leah, or playing football, basketball and baseball games on the computer in his bedroom.
"It makes Dave's little room a happier place," Sandy Wheeler said.
Sandy Wheeler said she is grateful for Journeys and the John M. McKay Scholarship that David received. McKay Scholarships come from the state, and they are for children with disabilities who have spent the previous year in a public school with an individual education plan.
"Without it, financially it would be hard to send Dave to Journeys," she said.
David is one of only two island students who attend Journeys, but Ingersoll said she would like to open a Marco branch of the school in the next couple of years if enough people express interest.
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Education : Special ed student not entitled to private school
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Posted by Sylvia on Monday, March 01, 2004 (19:41:01)
The Union Leader 25/02/2004
By Katharine Webster
CONCORD — Special education students are not entitled to private schooling at taxpayer expense unless they first give the public schools a chance to create and implement a special education plan, a federal appeals court said.
The ruling by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston came Monday in the case of a Greenland girl, Katie C., whose parents moved her from public to private school before they — or her teachers — realized she needed special education.
Jeanne Kincaid, lawyer for the Greenland School District, said she believes the ruling is the first by a federal appeals court upholding Congress’s 1997 amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act.
“It actually is a sweeping ruling and will have a major ripple effect,†she said yesterday.
If the public schools fail to provide appropriate special education and the parents have notified them about their concerns, then they can enroll the child in private school and seek tuition reimbursement, she said.
But if parents enroll their children in private school first, “You can’t tap into us, the public, to pay for it,†she said.
Scott Johnson, who represented Katie’s parents, said the decision unfairly penalized them for enrolling her in private school when they knew “things just weren’t working,†but before they knew she was learning disabled.
“It’s just wrong,†he said. “What the court said is that when she left, she now forfeits all of her rights, no matter what the school did or failed to do.â€
Katie, diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder before second grade, got average or above-average grades in public elementary school with help from her teachers, homework help from her mother and a private tutor in fourth grade.
But she complained other children were harassing and teasing her. So for fifth grade, during the 2000-2001 school year, her parents enrolled her at Mont Blanc Academy, a private school.
When Mont Blanc asked her mother to stop helping Katie with her homework, Katie failed a math class. After her mother began helping her again, she got mostly A’s and B’s.
That winter, Katie switched to the Learning Skills Academy, a private school specializing in children with learning disabilities and ADHD. At the same time, Katie’s parents asked the Greenland School District to evaluate her for special education services.
The district decided Katie had ADHD and an anxiety disorder, but did not have a learning disability. Still, it offered help with organizing her schoolwork, a problem for ADHD sufferers.
In August 2001, a psychiatrist retained by her parents diagnosed her with Asperger’s syndrome, which can interfere with academic performance and make children overly sensitive to teasing. That fall, the district offered to provide her with a personal aide and other services.
However, her parents decided to keep her at the Learning Skills Academy because she no longer needed help with her homework, was making friends and was a “much more confident, happier child.â€
An administrative hearing officer found the district’s special education plan for Katie was inadequate and ordered the district to pay her private school tuition. The district paid $45,000 before a federal judge in Concord overturned the decision last March.
Judge Joseph DiClerico said Katie’s parents were not entitled to tuition reimbursement.
However, he agreed with the hearing officer that the district evaluation team should have diagnosed her as learning disabled right away, since the team knew she had needed extra help in first through fourth grades.
After she was diagnosed with ADHD, her public school teachers sat her up front to keep her attention focused, gave her checklists of tasks to complete and rewarded her with Garfield stickers.
Katie’s parents appealed, but the 1st Circuit said that because Katie was no longer in public school when her parents first asked for the special education evaluation, they were not entitled to tuition reimbursement.
The district cross-appealed, arguing it would set a dangerous precedent to determine Katie was learning disabled because her “regular ed†teachers helped her stay focused and motivated.
Under that rationale, virtually every child who got individual attention or Garfield stickers could be considered learning disabled, Kincaid said.
“So if your daughter needs glasses and they say, ‘Come on up here,’ then she’s a special ed student — that’s absurd,†Kincaid said.
Groups ranging from the Disabilities Rights Center to the New Hampshire School Boards Association jumped in on either side with “friend of the court†briefs.
On Katie’s behalf, they argued that districts could avoid identifying students needing special education by hiding “behind the veil that all students receive some individualized attention.â€
The 1st Circuit declined to decide that issue, saying it was moot.
“This is an extremely nuanced question of law that we leave for another day,†Circuit Judge Sandra Lynch wrote for the court.
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Education : New school for kids with learning difficulties
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Posted by Sylvia on Monday, March 01, 2004 (19:26:21)
Ireland Online 24/04//2004
Early Language Intervention Ltd. (ELI) has added a new pre-school in Bray to supplement its current locations in Stillorgan and Monkstown.
ELI is a special playgroup that offers a structured approach to language learning for children with language delay.
This expansion will enable ELI to provide Early Language Intervention to more than 60 children with Autism, Down syndrome and other developmental disorders.
Children in the playgroup are aged between two and six and have a language delay or disorder as diagnosed by a speech and language therapist, a doctor, a paediatrician, or other associated professional.
Each group has a ratio of 10 children to three teachers, all trained in the ELI Method of stimulating language in preschool children.
The results have been significant with over 50% of children who graduate able to attend main-stream educational settings after one year, the company said.
Established in 2001, ELI aimed to meet the growing demand for language therapy services in the Dublin area.
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