New laws are pretty queer

 New laws are pretty queer

 

In 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution failed to receive the required number of state ratifications for inclusion into the Constitution.  One of the major concerns about it was that it would require same sex bathrooms.   It didn’t, but  any lie told often enough and loud enough will gain traction and so it did.

Now we are engaged, it seems, in a great fear of homosexuality.  The American Psychological Association agreed long ago that homosexuality is not a mental disorder but a born condition.   Never mind that.   Every year more states are working to pass laws that will leave LBGTQ kids open to bullying and torment.  It is anticipated that these laws will dramatically increase the negative experiences of these kids AND significantly create an environment that is conducive to suicide.

Twenty-one states have legislatures that have introduced statutes ranging from prohibiting gender affirming treatment, using bathrooms based on the gender decided at birth, limiting discussion of homosexuality in curriculum, allowing for exemptions or discrimination based on religious reasons.  These religious reasons are exclusive rather than exclusive.   So evidently God allows for the separation and exclusion of some of his creations who do not conform to the majority of his creations.  

It is never clear exactly what the objective is in these proposed statutes.   Do people think that homosexuality is catching and these kids are going to “give” it to other kids?  Are they afraid that the homosexual lifestyle sounds so wonderful that heterosexual kids are going to want to “convert”?  Or is this a question of people wanting to impose their religious beliefs on others. 

Probably it is none of the above.  Probably it is more politicians pandering to the lowest common denominator among their constituency.  Trolling the bottom for votes.

These kids are who they are because of anything they have done.  It is how they were born just as they were born with brown hair or blue eyes.  They have enough issues to manage without being piled on by politicians who are working in their own self-interests rather than that of their constituency which happens to include LBGTQ people.  Perhaps we need to worry less about what pronouns are being used and worry more about some of these queer laws that are being passed that risk destroying innocent kids' lives.

Collateral Damage to Virtual Learning

 Collateral damage to virtual learning

 

Kids are frightened about going to school.   Some with good reason, some with no reason.  The Maryland's public schools were among the last to reopen during the coronavirus pandemic and they are paying the price now. When kids returned to school last school year they brought with them emotional troubles that led to behavioral issues for many students.   Lots of folks will tell you that social emotional learning is a waste of time and money.   But one of the major things kids learn in school is getting along with others, particularly others who are not like you and may have different life experiences.

The media amplifies gun violence in schools and there is quite a bit of violence for it to amplify.   Some students are making posturing threats on social media.  But who can tell a posture from a foreshadow of the real thing?

In Maryland, the issues are more pronounced in Baltimore City where the availability of guns in the general community cannot help but spill over into the schools.  Afterall, the teens with guns in the community do attend school.  City schools are spending anywhere from $250,000 to up to a million dollars to add metal detectors, alarm systems and closed-circuit TV to school security.

Baltimore County is supplementing its school resource officers with school safety assistants, adding as many as 3-5 assistants in both middle and high schools.   They are trained in de-escalation strategies with the hope they can prevent more aggravated violence. 

While the increase in school security hardware seems to show the public that schools are doing something, the one variable that keeps being linked to school violence and violence in general is a feeling of alienation by the shooter or fighter.  Too many SRO’s make kids feel more like suspects than students.  Rallies to increase staff salary won’t do it.  There needs to be a clear code of behavioral expectations that will be explained and agreed to by parents and students.  Then it needs to be enforced by school administrators.  If certain behaviors are unacceptable in school then the precursors of those behaviors need to be unacceptable as well.  We know the gateway behaviors and we need to stop them before they become the unacceptable violence.  Teachers and clinical staff need to get involved with kids.  Make sure every student is “seen” and known by at least one staff member.  We can spend a million dollars on security hardware, but not on staff to connect with kids. In fact, staff are even discouraged from developing relationships with kids.  There is collateral damage to only connecting via technology and that issue has come to school to fight.

Back to the future

 Back to the Future

 

About a hundred years ago, John Scopes, a young high school science teacher was accused of teaching evolution in violation of a Tennessee state law.  Scopes was defended by the star attorney of the day, Clarence Darrow.  The law made it a misdemeanor punishable by a fine to “teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man descended from a lower order of animals”.  Williams Jennings Bryan, a fundamentalist hero volunteered to assist in the prosecution.   Within days the courtroom was surrounded by spectators and reporters.  The judge worked to destroy the defense by insisting that Scopes was on trial not the theory he was teaching.  In the end, Scopes pleaded guilty and the case was appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court that overturned the verdict.   In 1968, the U.S Supreme Court overturned  a similar Arkansas law on the grounds that it violated the free speech requirement of the First Amendment.

Fast forward about 100 years.   Now we are engaged in another fight over the right to teach and free speech.   Tennessee and Arkansas are at it again.  They are among the currently nine states that have forbidden the teaching of critical race theory (CRT).   Of course, CRT is neither a curriculum nor an identifiable set of topics or facts.   But it is being banned none-the-less.  CRT asks us to teach American history in a 360 mode.  The good news, the bad news and the in between news.  It asks that we do not deny the ugly; it does not ask that we ignore the good.  

Let’s suppose good old Jack Social Studies is teaching in Tennessee. Might not be the best idea since Tennessee seems to have a habit of restricting what is taught in schools.   In the course of teaching US history, he teaches about the terrible legacies of slavery, Jim Crow laws, immigration restrictions, and real estate red lining.  Under current Tennessee law, Good Old Jack could lose his job.  The laws in some states forbid teachers from teaching about historical instances that would make students feel bad.  Does that mean we don’t teach about WWII because students of German ethnicity might feel bad?  What will happen if Jack Social Studies gets punished for teaching what informants think is CRT?   Will these state laws be overturned as a violation of Mr. Social Studies First Amendment rights?   Or will the Supreme Court, which seems to be suffering from memory loss, also forget its 1968 decision.  Everything old is new again. 

 

When is an IEP NOT a contract for service?

 When is an IEP not a contract for service?

 

And IEP is a legal contract for service according to both state and federal law.  But what exactly does that contract mean in real time terms. Sometimes not much.

The law stipulates that a member of the IEP team must include someone with the authority to commit the resources of the school system.  Much of the time that person is not in attendance at the meeting.  Consequently, commitments are made on the IEP but there is no commitment of resources to deliver.    

Speech therapy services are routinely not delivered as specified on the IEP.  Lack of staff is generally given as the reason.

Transportation is a related service on an IEP.  Many families do not know this fact so they just assume that transportation will be delivered.   Transportation was made a related service since it was determined early on that offering a program but without a system to get the child to the program was an empty promise.   This situation is particularly true because it is not unusual for the special education services to be offered in a school other that the child’s home school.  Transportation, as other related services, must be added to the IEP as a related service.  Otherwise, the child falls into the general transportation pool.

Since the pandemic school systems have struggled mightily to maintain a sufficient number of bus drivers.  When they can’t, the system cancels transportation and/or offers families reimbursement of a mileage fee if they transport.

Here’s the rub, many families do not have the vehicle or the people to pick up and deliver children to school particularly if those schools are a good distance from the child’s home.

The situation is different for plain kids.  First and foremost, plain kids do not have a legal right to transportation.    It is a service provided by the school district.  Secondly, almost all plain kids go to a neighborhood school.  Children with disabilities are supposed to have a binding contract for that service if the parents were smart enough to include it in the IEP.  So what happens when the school district unilaterally decides there will be no transportation on any given day.   Unfortunately, usually not much.   Sure, parents jump and shout and complain.   But they seldom file a formal complaint with the State Department of Education and the local school system for a violation of the child’s IEP.   Families struggle to try to get their kids to school some kind of way.   But the children lose out.   And the legal contract for a service as written in the IEP is a contract written in disappearing ink.