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Thursday 4 April 2013

Anybody Care About Their Education? - Special Needs Students Being Told to Stay Home

Spoke to a couple principals and a school board member regarding this issue and received some great feedback.

Kids are sent home when the school doesn't have the ability to properly take care of them or they are a major disruption to classes. This is NOT done lightly and only after consultation with the parents.  My concern would be this consultation process.  There is no set standard. I have heard of no formal District best practices either. It is up to each school to handle as they see is appropriate. I'm not sure I trust this method.  I'd like to see a set of provincial Best Practices. Parents come in a variety of forms and not all with the same social abilities as others.  This can be very problematic to fairness.

The parents I've spoken to, with 1 exception, were unaware they had any choices or input into how it's handled.  They thought they really had no choice so simply accepted what was being offered.  This is not totally the fault of the teacher or the administrative staff. Parents need to step up and ask questions. Complaining to a 3rd or 4th party isn't productive.  Parents need to be educated.

The other challenge I'm finding is the impact on families when kids need to stay home all or part of a day.  It can be a great financial hardship to arrange for this care. A parent or caregiver, who is not a teacher, is now required to pick up the slack.  I wonder if this extra cost is fair to the parents.  And more important, are these kids being denied a proper education because of a disability? That's the big question really here.  Budgets are not there to adequately educate these kids.  And families are not given extra money to help educate the kids.  So, who is advocating for their education?

Serious question here folks.. who is advocating for their education?

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