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Original post made on Feb 10, 2023
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Special Education increases its power by consolidating classrooms at fewer schools. They have also created their own Special Education school at Cubberley where students with Autism and Mental Health needs are segregated into separate campuses. By removing students from neighborhood schools, Special Education grows its power and control while reducing enrollment at neighborhood schools.
Be assured the district consulted their attorney to ensure they could make changes with no parent input. Lots of meaningless quotes from the district. Ms. Boyce never taught Special Education. Her dismissive remarks about everybody loving their neighborhood school, aside from being false, are an effort to distract and demeaning to parents.
Removing students from neighborhood schools violates the District’s policies that all Special Education students attend neighborhood schools and “full inclusion from Day 1”. Did the Board of Education vote to reverse its own policy? Of course teachers were not consulted. Special Education is saying they completely failed at implementing Federal law and district policies.
The Board provided no oversight of Special Education for 4 years. It granted budget increases and blindly told them bring 100% of students into district schools. Programs were “created”, some of which were really old programs that already existed, some with name changes, others were “new” and segregated kids into separate classrooms and schools with standards far below A-G.
Special Education claims to have created therapeutic schools and replaced hospital programs because they offer coaching to parents, with mental health “workers” replacing hospitals and doctors. Except not all the “workers” were hired. We’ve watched 4 years of never-ending Special Education “reorganization” with huge increases in budgets and the number of Special Education employees, but close to zero reporting to the Board and public. Disabled students in PAUSD do not have access to the same education.
I read this article substituting “students with moderate to severe disabilities” with “Black students” and “special education” with “Black education”. Try it yourself and see if it seems that PAUSD is segregating their schools.
This is a bummer for the current cohort of SPED kids at these schools, but is ultimately a practical and reasonable decision given significant staffing demands and better ability to target grade-level curriculum when K-5 aren’t all grouped in a single classroom.
Ohlone and Escondido both have special programs that are not duplicated at other elementary campuses, and which disabled students have a right to as much as any other student in the district. Ohlone especially can create positive experiences for special needs students that are not possible on other PAUSD campuses.
The district needs more time to think this out, to get input from parents–it’s not just about wanting to remain in the community, although that is a legitimate concern–these students should not be moved until this is much better considered.
This is how 25 Churchill plays. A lot of noises about ad hoc committees, and openness – when it comes down to it, it’s always these crude bureaucratic tactics. And the children always lose. Whenever there’s something that might be unpopular, the lower level admins are trotted out. Their mission: protect the leader, Supt. Don. The decision must be presented as “already done”, and irreversible. It’s telling that the affected groups were sort of, but not really, informed about this. Nowhere in the reporting in this article is there anything about consulting with or working with the interested parties. Parents were out of the loop until this was a fait accompli. Teachers, the actual professionals, were never consulted – just informed after the fact. Is it possible that maybe, just maybe, this administrative team doesn’t actually know everything? This style of management – insular, and arrogant – leads to unsound decision-making. Sadly, this is an unsound decision. The children are harmed by this. I fear that all of us who are taxpayers in this district will also pay – in increased litigation costs.
If you expect transparency or honesty from Don Austin or any of his minions at 25 Churchill, then you are living on the wrong planet. Site principals are not assessed on their effectiveness, but rather their loyalty to him. Teachers who question any of this are targeted for harassment, plain and simple.
PAUSD Board, with each passing day, our Superintendent demonstrates disregard for democratic process, and a proclivity for treating the most vulnerable in our school community harmfully.
When are you going to act to move our district toward a new admin leader who understands that public schools are for every child? Every child on this planet has different learning needs. Singling out kids with a specific set of special needs and requiring their families to separate siblings and to cart their kids around town to school is burdensome and unfair. Further, it is interesting that only choice schools are the ones that are losing special needs programming. Appalling.
Any Board member who votes for this will lose my vote in the next election. It is shocking that this is being proposed.
It’s beyond insulting that Ms. Boyce’s comment was, “I’ll tell you truth …. had we gone out to those different schools, we would have heard how much every family loves their community.” Essentially, we didn’t want or take community input, because we already knew that no one wants this plan. And we’re going to do what we want to do anyway, so why bother?
It really has me speechless. I guess this is what you get if Austin is your mentor.
The thing is, 25 Churchill has done the best, most job-saving thing: they made the decision on their own. The Board is not voting on this (25 Churchill knows that their REAL bosses are the Board – not you). It’s on the agenda for tomorrow as an information-only item. Any of you hoping to object somehow should know that the decision has been made, and the Board does not need to make any embarrassing votes. The plan is to wait this out. You as a stakeholder have been effectively cut out of the decision. In fact, all stakeholders have been cut out – even our elected Board!
[Portion removed.]
Stepping out of line for the benefit of students means [teachers] will have a contract out on your head no matter how effective you are in the classroom. Punishments include, but are not limited to reassignments, impossible schedules, “anonymous complaints”, and intimidation from site administrators. Most teachers don’t want to pay that price, hence dissent is squelched and the Don can impose his will unfettered. Good for him, not so good for your children.
Both Don Austin, Amanda Boyce, and the BOE have demonstrated, once again ,that they are not in touch with the community they claim to represent.
Who would ever think making a change like this without the input of the actual teachers and parents was the best way to go about making a decision like this. Do either of them have experience in Special Education?
School board please support us in pausing this change until you have input from those that do – teachers and parents.
Top down Don will simply laugh all of this off since he’s safe through 2024. If the current board is anything like the old one, expect the Don to be around for a while. Better fall in line teachers, there’s a head count and a hit list.
I don’t get it. This is a straight up act of discrimination due to disabilities, which violates state and federal laws. It’s not up to us as a community to fix this. Unfortunately. The parents of those kids who are being forced to go to school elsewhere are the ones who need to file a complaint with the OCR and CDR (formerly known as DFEH, but changed because they are tasked with ALL discrimination complaints — not just housing). It can take years to undo the PAUSD process via discrimination lawsuit but it’s the only way to reverse this madness permanently. It’s not about money, it’s about policy. I’m on everybody’s iggy list but for dog’s sake …Are there NO attorneys who read this paper who can enlighten us about what remedies are available to cure this nonsense?
From the article, it seems these families are mostly upset by the poor communication as opposed to the decision itself. I would hope with the class split, this means a better experience for the students and not just a cost cutting exercise. I’ve never been a big fan of the district having these choice schools (Hoover, Ohlone, Escondido) to start with, but that is different problem. Uprooting students who are likely to be more impacted by relocation and routine change should require more communication. Hard decision or not, changing schools is a massive impact to families: commute, after school care, after school activities, social networks, etc.
It’s odd to me that the board, apparently, doesn’t get a decision here. What is the board’s function if not this sort of oversight?
Maybe consolidating programs so that there’s a K-2 and a Grade 3 – 5 is the right call for these kids. But when the parents *of* the kids are objecting to this change, perhaps we should listen.
Segal and Dharap both made excellent points. These are kids with autism; abrupt changes are very hard on these kids. Why can’t we phase in the change? And the district just… didn’t talk to parents about this change? What?!
Any business leader knows that communication is key. Making sweeping changes like this without any conversation — and then saying, “it’s for your own good” [even though we didn’t talk to you and don’t care about your perspective] — is not going to be healthy for the community.
We need more board members who are willing to object to bad district decisions (or decision making process).
If there is a legal issue, it is not the poor treatment of parents by both Special Education and insulting remarks by the Board members at this meeting, but the fact the Board and Special Education stated it knew for 10 years the children in theses K-5 Special Educaiton “Learning Centers” received a bad education, and it did nothing. They could have added an additional classroom at any times.
Special Education mislead the Board by insisting a classroom requires 10 students. Smaller classrooms of 4-8 students can be just as effective, if not more so. Certainly, they provide a better eductaion than K-5 in one room.
If the Board believed for 10 years they offered these disabled children a bad education in a single K-5 classroom, they should have fixed it.
Special Education spent the last 4+ years “re-organizing” under 2 “Co-Directors”. The number of employees in the department (Adminstrators, not teachers) has grown immensely. They never tried to fix this?
This is about money and consolidating control. The result it segregating disabled into “Learning Centers” (classrooms) at a few less accessible campuses.
Not sure what is more distateful here: Special Education misleaidng of the Board or their acknowledgement they knew they were hurting disabled children as their salaries and employees grew. But none of that growth went to teaching or students.
Special Education knew they controlled the narrative. By speaking last and answering Board questions, they left the Board with false impressions. Audience members had to shout out corrections when Board Members made many false statements as truth. They are clearly prepared and under the control of Special Education.
Special Education families are accomsted to being treated badly, and internalize it. It is very unusual for parents to organize and speak to the Board. The Board should take notice they need to exercise more control over this department.
This is not the first episode of weak transparency. It’s hard to tell whether this move was done at the behest of the Board of Trustees. Presumably, they prefer that hard decisions and unpopular policies be undertaken by 25 Churchill. They’re more than happy to pass the buck, wait out the unhappy news coverage and parent comms and then move on. It’s hard to know how this sits with the Supt.. He’s obsessed with shaping the message and always being the strong decider who is always right. More importantly, is this how we want our democratic institutions to be run? Elected officials not taking responsiblity, a laughable level of transparancy (“we said some things that were not specific at a CAC meeting, and so everyone was informed.”). Transparency means talking AND listening. Many of you who are reading this are paying well into the 5 figures for property taxes which fund this institution. Is this how it should be run?
And, the crazy thing is, the policy decision is probably a sound one. Why the vicious power play on the part of 25 Churchill? It seems unnecessarily aggressive. They needlessly burn what little goodwill is left in the community. This could have been a win/win/win, but instead it’s another needless demonstration of power – over YOU, children, the Board, teachers, everyone. If no one is accountable, how will this institution operate in a just, equitable fashion? Dark times, indeed.
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