Good bye Office of Special Ed

 The Prez decimates the Office of Special Ed

Fifty years ago, President Ford signed the Education of All Handicapped Children Act.   In 2004, that became the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) signed by George W. Bush.  Twenty-one years after that, Donald Trump gutted the office at the federal level that was set up to enforce that federal law.  For five decades, OSERS (Office of Special Education and Rehab Services) has protected the rights of kids with disabilities under the 50-year old law.   Now, no more.

There are 7.5 million kids in our country who have disabilities.   If you begin to chip away at their rights, if you begin to turn back the clock FIFTY YEARS, you are hurting all of us.  When you chip away our rights, you also chip away at our moral obligations to those children.  

The federal law is implemented by the individual states.  States voluntarily signed on to participating in the law.  Every state has.  In turn, they receive funds to implement the law.  It’s not a great deal of money, roughly 7% of the cost of educating a child with a disability.  The other major role of the OSERS is to monitor the implementation of the law by the states.  Each state is required to set up a due process system so that families who feel their local school district is not acting with fidelity in providing that free and appropriate education have a venue to appeal.  The role of the feds has been to make sure that the states are doing their job in an unbiased manner.  Now there is no one watching the hen house.  

We are told the money will still be distributed.  So far there has been no notice of how or when.  Who will monitor how that money is used after if it is  distributed?   And right now we don't know if or when.  Who will care about the 7.5 million kids whose President seems to have forgotten all about them?

Kids really don't count

 Kids don’t count

A few weeks ago, a teenaged girl who was in protective care with the Baltimore City department of Child Protective Services (CPS) was found dead in a hotel room.   She was in what has been called 1:1 foster care.  Supposedly there was a caregiver with her in the private hotel room.  The Coroner declared her death a suicide.   Her previous foster parents are suing the City for failure to provide care for her.  She was in this so-called specialized care because the foster parents couldn’t provide the care she needed.  Previous to going into foster care she lived with her mother and grandmother.  In discussing the child’s death, no mention was made of why she was taken from her mother and grandmother and placed in foster care.  There was also no mention of why the girl was taken away from the foster parents.  Who now seek to profit financially from her death.

There is a great deal we do not know.  What we can easily surmise is that this child had significant problems that led her to being taken from her family members, placed in foster care and then taken from those people and housed in a hotel room all alone.  Basic psychology tells us that every child needs someone to give them unconditional love.  One cannot help but wonder, did this child ever have any love at all.

As a society we treat children very poorly.  We talk a good game about how important children are and how we need to protect them.  But when it comes right down to it – we just don’t!   Teachers are among the people who are mandated reporters under the law.  What that means is that if a teacher hears of a child’s mistreatment in any way, that teacher is required by law to report the issue to CPS.  Anyone who has ever tried to make a report knows what a farce this is.  Routinely, when  reports are made the person taking the call does not even ask for the basic information required to make a further inquiry.   At our school, this happens so frequently that staff are now expected to take the name of the person receiving the call and the time the call was made.  There have been repeated instances of staff having to threaten to call a newspaper if there is not some investigation into what is happening to this child.

As a society we don’t even compensate people who deliver professional services to children.  We all know that teachers are not particularly well paid. And child care workers are the least well paid, even as we entrust our most vulnerable little people to them.  Physicians are generally a well-paid profession, but pediatricians are the least well-paid of all physicians.  Ditto child psychologists and child psychiatrists.  If you serve kids even in a generally lucrative profession, your income will be lower.   

The sound bites are great when we talk about children but actions make it clear, kids count for very little.