Less Services for Special Needs Students, More Work for School Psychologists
There is much to do about something in DCPS. The word is changes are afoot in the Office of Special Education. It’s clear special education coordinators are being pushed aside. Their work responsibilities are being pushed to school psychologists and special education teachers are destined to be data entry clerks.
Good morning OSE-
School budgets for SY12-13 went live this morning. I wanted to update everyone that we shifted the requirement of Special Education Coordinators to School Psychologists for SY12-13. This was a difficult decision, but one that is the best long-term solution for our special education students. We believe that the special education designee in each building should have standardized credentials that allow for decision-making regarding instruction for our students. This increases our capacity for coordination of interventions for students who require multiple supports to succeed.
Using school psychologists as the foundation of service delivery coordination is a national model identified to coordinate supports and services for students. OSE will provide current staff the necessary supports to close-out this school year with minimal disruption to our students. OSE will partner with the Office of Human Capital to prepare for next school year and will ensure you are informed of the process.
As always, please let me or your Director know if you have any questions or concerns.
Thank you,
DonnaDonna Anthony
Chief of Staff
Office of Special Education
A rebellion is spreading across the school district. It’s not about jobs, but about special education delivery to students. All of the above players, plus speech and language pathologists, school counselors and social workers are mad as hell.
A consensus is developing that DCPS does not know what it is doing. Special needs students are not getting the education they deserve including access to resources. Where are the resources going?
The Washington Examiner says away from children and education and into niche political programs such as Mayor’s Gray “One City Summit” and a “special economic development” staffer. What do you think?
From the Washington Examiner:
Following the money. How $2.03 million of $16 million saved in special-education funding has been spent:
• $1.5 million to the Department of Disabilities to offset the loss of a federal grant
• $200,000 for a full-time employee focused on Ward 7′s economic development
• $155,000 for Southwest Waterfront development
• $100,000 to cover transition and personnel costs of the Lincoln Theatre
• $76,000 to the One City Summit
Source: D.C. Office of Budget and Finance
Forecast the workload in your school with these changes. Should we have confidence in the Mayor’s ability to get the job done?
Can you believe this? How do they expect student achievement to increase when the special educators are so busy doing paperwork
This is the biggest bunch of “BS” DCPS and OSSE has ever agreed to! If they think we have a large amount of HOD cases now then what do they expect to happen now! If I was an attorney I would be waiting to get PAID cause that is exactly what is going to happen. School psychologists are not trained to deal with attorneys and meetings the way that the coordinator is able to handle them. DCPS is going backwards and these decisions continue to not be in the best interest of children.
Keeping you up to date…..
Related Service Providers and Special Education Coordinators have emailed Dr. Beers requesting a face to face meeting with him and he is yet to respond.
If this is his bright idea…why won’t he put his face behind this?
Fed Up with DCPS!
Yeah to the post above…
And, how does Chancellor Henderson think that this is in the best interest of children when DCPS will be asking Psychologists to be the coordinator, the evaluator, the data entry technician, the counselor and social worker (since they are trying to get rid of them as well by allowing principals to option out of hiring social workers via the petition process)
Blackmon Jones……here we go again! That really will be a cost savings on the budget….
[...] Related Service providers including school psychologists, SAM coordinators, social workers, speech and language pathologist and school counselors are invited to join WTU President Nathan A. Saunders on Tuesday, march 27 at 4:30 p.m. at THEARC for a city-wide meeting to discuss major education changes to special education by DCPS. [...]
Now we are finding that principals are able to remove social workers and psychologists from their budgets just by petitioning for the removal of the position. This is very dangerous as most administrators, especially principals, do not know what social workers and principals even do!
This is a trainwreck!
[...] are concerns about the D.C. Public Schools FY 2013 School Budget that will reduce special education services, increase class sizes and seriously undermine the academic achievements of D.C. public school [...]