Good news/bad news

Good news: ESY seems to be OK
Bad news: ESY started two weeks after school is out and my kid can't stand a two week break.

We started ESY this week, and though I was very skeptical about it being appropriate I think my special kid (let's use msk since I don't feel comfortable with names on this blog) is joyful at being in a setting with academic challenges and kids with social and verbal skills that are higher and so draw out more social and verbal activities.

During our two week gap, after school and before ESY, we had placed msk in a camp for kids with autism that qualified as respite care under Maryland's Autism Waiver program. We didn't need a break, but msk needed a daily structure that is impossible for us to provide. It seemed like a setting with people with a lot of training in autism and where msk would be in the middle or high end of verbal/social/behavioral issues would be a relief after nine months of being the only autistic kid in an entire school. That turned out not to be the case. This ESY setting with no other autistic kids (though everyone does have an IEP, so I don't think you could call it an inclusion setting) brings great joy, while the respite camp was merely tolerated. Who would have guessed that worksheets and sitting at a desk would win hands down over crafts and swimming?

I've been noticing that at this level of social development, msk needs to be around happy social situations, but is not able (yet?) to be in the middle of these interactions. There's a need to see, hear and occasionally have peers verbally engage, while still being able to move away to "turn down the volume" on the interaction if it gets too intense.

Here's hoping that I haven't spoken too soon and that we keep msk happy and engaged for the rest of the summer, or at least until ESY ends.

More bad news: ESY ends five weeks before school starts, and if two weeks off in June is bad, 5 weeks off in July/Aug is even worse.
Positive spin: Adding structure to my break from work (by which I mean early and often exercise excursions) helps me lose weight and keeps me from being a self-absorbed slug.

Private and home school options

I've been a proponent of public school since about 7th grade. I remember the condescending comments from kids on the other side of the Gilman/Roland Park Public fence in the mid 70's. Then there were clueless questions from private school Girl Scout troop members about race. No n-words were used, but there were clearly bigoted attitudes abounding at Baltimore's more elite private schools (i.e. Gilman, RPCS, Bryn Mawr). At that point a swore I'd never send a kid to a private school, and honestly I've always been very proud of my Baltimore City Public School System education.

This article though makes me wonder a bit. In impoverished neighborhoods in India, private schools provide decent caring education for $1 - $2 / month per child. These are parents who want a good education for their children now and who aren't willing to wait for some monster bureaucracy to figure out how to create a functioning public education system. This isn't just a phenomenon in India - around the globe in developing nations, where there are public school systems lacking discipline, with complacent teachers and classes in which students sit and chat instead of learning (sound familiar?) these type of private schools flourish. And, the students do nearly twice as well as students in public schools.

I think we know that involved and caring parents who value education are a big part of successful educational outcomes. While the idea of using money as a way to make sure your kids don't have to go to school with those kids is abhorrent, what about making sure there is an atmosphere that values education by asking parents to financially support the school? In a way, isn't that what Baltimore's charter schools are doing? The kids a charter schools have parents who care enough about education to look into charter schools. They need to have a some thoughts about education so they can find a school who's philosophy they agree with. They need to sign on to helping out at the school (even if they don't actually put in the hours). In other words, they are required to value and support their child's education - very different from what traditional public schools often get from their parents.

And the same things can be said about homeschooling parents. Clearly they care about education and as they come up with curriculum and lesson plans they are vested in their child's education. Sure, this is not an option for many parents and also for many kids. My special one, for instance must have typical peers in his class for him to flourish. But there are parents and kids that can choose this path.

This all sounds good, but how do we make sure the bar that tries to ensure involved parents doesn't block out kids that we need to be educated. How do we help parents who want better for their kids, but don't know how to accomplish that? Certainly having momentum in the community can pull people along. Does the occasional scholarship to needy kids to Baltimore's private schools help the community, or is it only about the individual child? If it is about the individual child, certainly a parent should make educational choices based on what their kid needs, but should we (as in society) put resources into helping those few children or do we need to find a way to pull in more?

Hard questions, but I think they are helpful to ponder as I try to figure out my own kids different educational paths and I look at the paths that other parents choose.

Grief

I'm not sure it's dead, but something I cared for, InsideEd, is not what it once was when I felt passionately about it. In looking back I've seen the stages of me coming to terms:

Denial - the Sun will see how bad this is and hire Sara back.

Anger - the people who are now posting don't care about City Schools

Depression - that's it, I'm never commenting again, no decent conversations...sad

Bargaining - if I ask nicely maybe they'll at least put some decent post up

Acceptance - whatever, I'll look at the blog, but the odds of me thinking out, composing and posting some of my better writing there on a near constant basis? not going to happen

Perhaps the better analogy is overcoming an addiction. Regardless, I feel I'm ready to move on.

Take action

So, I seem to get some amount of traffic on this blog. I'm not sure who comes to this site or if they actually read what I post, but in a sense of optimism I've added a widget in the top right corner that lets anyone who is interested follow a link to a petition on Change.org

As actions come and go I'll change the widget, but for now it has to do with restoring fairness to IDEA funding. If a parent is in conflict with a school system and has to go all the way to court there are a lot of expenses that they will incur. One is the cost of expert witnesses - for example speech assessments followed by testimony on the results. The bill in question specifies that the school system is responsible for these costs.

We've never had to go to court to get the special one a Free Appropriate Public Education, but we have had some disagreements and we have paid out of pocket for some tests and reports to back our argument. I'm happy that we could manage the finances of doing this, but it seems unfair to make having this amount of money a requirement for getting your child a decent education.

Question

With school out it's ESY time for those of us with special needs kids in school systems. Looking around the aut-rent blogs on the web I can see that I'm not alone in feeling that ESY services are a little thin and that it's up to creative parenting, finding money and juggling to make something that will keep my special one together (i.e. "not regressing" as they say in IEP lingo) over the break.

My question is this - why are the rights and services and accommodations that were worked for over the school year, suddenly up for renegotiation (or actually thrown out the window) when it's the month of June?

I realize there are different teachers involved, but it is the same school system. If over the school year the definition of least restrictive placement is full inclusion with typical peers you would think the same thing would be true in the summer. If the team thinks that more than a week without structured activities would be a problem, you'd hopethat the idea of only four weeks out of ten for ESY would not be an option.

I know that across the US that poor ESY is the norm and honestly I haven't found anyone talking about a school system supporting a kid in the summer in the same way they do in the school year. All the blog posts (here, here and here for example) are about figuring out how to fight for ESY or how to manage on your own with creative solutions and they are inspiring. My question is more about why are we left so on our own over the summer and why is the law, that really doesn't differentiate between school year and summer, being so totally ignored.

I'd love to tell you in detail about the faceless bureaucrat at school headquarters who explained to me that he/she could figure out what's appropriate for my kid without ever talking to anyone on our IEP team (much less me), based unilaterally on what the system has done in the past and the funding they now have and an unstated feeling that IEP kids can't be included with "normal" kids over the summer. As cleansing as that story would be for me, I understand that names and details are things I don't put up on this blog. Let me just say that I couldn't tell the story without nasty words and anger to the point of tears on my part.

These were problems we didn't face when we were in a much more restrictive (and costly to the system by the way) full year program. If we didn't have the resources to manage our creative summer plans I'm not sure that it wouldn't be a better idea to switch back to that setting. Regardless, we have the resources and we'll manage, but that doesn't make it any less messed up as far as I'm concerned.

Calendar review = panic attack

Agenda output from Google Calendar:

Wed:
Meet #2 at school #2 @ 4:50 (leave work early)
Awards ceremony @ 5:00
Take #2 home for dinner with #1 & #3
Meet hubbie at school #3 for volunteer award dinner @ 6:30

Thurs:
Hubbie picks up child #2 and take to school #1
Hubbie @ school #1 for SFC meeting @3:30
Rush home to clean @ 5:00 (leave work on time)
Meet #3 and autism workers and hubbie @ 5:30 for monthly meeting
Go shopping for 3x birthday presents
Take #2 to Urgent care clinic for “surprise” earache
Pack #3’s bag for camping trip

Fri:
Training session for 3 new hires @ work 10:00 – 2:00
Hubbie on field trip then camping trip with #3
Rush home to take #1 to movie theatre B-day party @ 4:00 (leave work early)
Go to grocery store for supplies for bake sale items
Dinner with still sick #2
Bake brownies etc for bake sale
Pick up #1 at B-day party @ 9:00

Sat:
Take #1 to SAT II @ 7:30
Take #1 home to pick up bake sale goods & go to carwash bake sale @ 10:00
Go home to pick up now recovering #2 to take to D&D @ 1:00 - 3:30
#1 & #2 go to sleepover B-day party @ 3:30
Meet #3 and get bathing suits on @ 5:30
Go to Swimming B-day party with #3 @ 6:00 - 8:30

Please tell me school is almost over...

A small change in course

As per my last post, you can see I'm missing the information and conversation on the City School front. Typically I only post here about thing that I have a strong opinion about, but I'm going to try to just bring up a topic and see if that might spark some discussion.

Last week, at a meeting I couldn't attend, Dr. Alonso spoke about City Schools. I'm sure he spoke on many topics, but the one that was reported on in The Messenger (on-line here) was the issue of "different constituencies" in schools that have magnet programs as well as in zone students. I'll try to restate the discussion reported on in The Messenger:

Roland Park Elementary Middle School (RPEMS) has moved from having very little in-zone attendance to having above 90% in-zone in the elementary school. The middle school is the only large-scale magnet program for middle school students in the city and as such is larger than the elementary school and is predominated by out-of-zone students. Judging by test scores both the elementary and middle schools are very successful and there is pressure to expand both programs, resulting in class sizes getting larger. At the meeting Claudia Diamond (a former PTA president at RPEMS) asked if Dr. Alonso would consider splitting apart RPEMS (the article didn't detail how this split would be made, elementary/middle or in-zone/magnet come to mind). Dr. Alonso's reported response was not too enthusiastic (and a little obscure) "I'm not a blueprint guy." But the general idea was that there were other more pressing problems on his agenda.

There's another online article from New York magazine here discussing how once racially and economically diverse schools that become successful, start having too many local students that want to attend and end up losing their diversity ("density trumps diversity"). Judging from some of the comments, the idea of transporting kids to achieve diversity is not any better received now then it was 40 years ago when Pimlico students were bused into Roland Park.

Having been a parent in magnet programs (and not attending our zoned school) for the last six years I can say I have often felt the schism that Claudia Diamond was alluding to. And honestly there is often an under-current of racial and/or economic segregation involved.

So - there's the topic for discussion. I think it's a continuation of the Brown vs Board of Education discussion from Inside Ed that had a lot of interesting comments.

RIP Inside Ed

A letter sent to The Baltimore Sun:

I am writing to express my anger and sadness at the demise of the Baltimoresun.com Inside Ed blog. It is clear that the personnel shifts have de-emphasized coverage of Baltimore City Schools and cut back on the feeding and caring required by this blog.

As your print edition has become smaller, the web edition of the Sun needs to become more engaging and vibrant, but Inside Ed is becoming smaller and less interesting every day. I would like to say that I am a subscriber to wield some amount of clout, but honestly after subscribing for more than 20 years you lost my subscription several years ago with one of the massive and unpleasant redesigns (aka dumbing down). Until I started reading and posting to Inside Ed about a year and a half ago you had totally lost my attention - I had moved to the web and Slate was much more satisfying than what was then called sunspot.net. Then because of reading the Inside Ed blog I started reading Sun stories again, starting with the Ed beat and moving on to other local coverage. I was checking the website several times a day, reading and putting a lot of time and effort into contributing to the conversation.

The future path of Inside Ed is fairly obvious (and depressing) at this point - fewer City School posts, slow approval and posting of comments, attention shifting away, summer break with even less posting followed by death by lack of interest. This is a shame because I think Inside Ed as a forum really did help City Schools which used to be a cause that the Sun cared a great deal about. There will also be a lot less educated and thoughtful people looking at your site when Inside Ed stops being relevant.

I am fairly sure that this comment will not change Inside Ed's path, but since I'm not commenting on the blog anymore I've got some spare time right now.

__________________________________________________________________

I received the following response from the Sun (maybe because I sent my letter directly to monty.cook@baltsun.com as well as to feedback@baltimoresun.com, so perhaps others should contact him directly)

Thank you for your note and your concern.

We have not, in fact, de-emphasized our coverage of Baltimore City Schools and remain committed to the same high-quality coverage we have provided in the past. With Sara Neufeld's departure we are working quickly to identify the best person who will bring expert reporting skills to that beat.

Additionally, our Inside Ed blog will continue. We expect that it should remain a vital and vibrant home for our coverage of city schools.

We appreciate your patience. We believe your patience will be rewarded with the same type of news and information you came to expect from The Baltimore Sun with relation to its coverage of city schools.

Please don't hesitate to contact me with suggestions or complaints.

Best, Monty

MONTY COOK Senior VP/EditorThe Baltimore Sun 501 N. Calvert St.Baltimore, Md., 21202 (410)-332-6469

What have I done to deserve this?

Image from - www.nataliedee.com

Puberty - God's way of telling you that he hates parents.

OK - so having gone through this once with the oldest one I had thought (I admit to being in a delusional state) that child number two had made it through the middle school puberty thing fairly painlessly. I was wrong. Oh, how wrong. It's hit and it's much worse this time around. I know there are teachers who are thinking "What a lousy parent! Why are all these homeworks missing? Why is this notebook such a disaster? Why does this child, who had been on the honor role, now not listen to a word I say? Clearly its the fault of BAD PARENTING!"

You know what? I am not in control of this child at this point - tears and lies have replaced all communication. I am told nothing about what's happening, even on total disaster days. You want to blame it all on me? Fine, but I'm blaming it on hormones sucking all the grey matter out of my kid's cranium.

And the totally sad thing? This is just child 2 - one more to go. There's a clear logarithmic trend in the pain of my living through their puberty. You know what that means? I pretty sure that kid #3's puberty will lead to my institutionalization.

At least I won't have to do laundry if I'm in a padded cell.

BAD (That's Blogging Against Disablism)

I really thought that after this post I was done talking about Alex Barton and Morningside Elementary. I had read some rather nasty comments on this news site (there are some particularly nasty comments here if you really want to see them) on the issue, accusing Alex's mom of being self-serving and questioning the concept of inclusive education. It took this post and this one to get me to realize all this attention in a crappy school in a state that clearly has issues with education was going to lead to reprocussions. It's hard to believe how vindictive people can be. Just in case you don't feel like reading the link here's a quick summary: While Alex has been pulled out of Morningside where he was clearly unwanted and unsupported, his 10 y.o. older brother Kyle continues to go to school there. This is the only school with a Gifted program in their zone. A letter from the principal told them to find a different school. The vice principal pushed Kyle. A group of parents picketed the school to show their support for an abusive teacher while yelling at Kyle and driving him to tears. There's a stalking parent and a billigerent teacher. Basically this family's abuse goes on and on.

I might be a little late, but I blog against disablism. This needs to stop. Our schools need to lead the way.

And on a positive note, I know of charter schools in Baltimore that could give lessons on how to be welcoming and inclusive.