Hillsborough County Public Schools and Special Ed Teachers Misusing Funds to "Adjust (students) Attitude" ?

Bullying seems to be the topic du jour. Recent media reports repeatedly quoted District personnel making the point that the kids and parents involved in the alleged recent ongoing rape sequence at Walker Middle school never told any of the district employees what was going on.

Now there is an apparent display of concern by the Board and the administrators that there will be increased training and awareness and focus on bullying. What puts my bull in the wool about behavior is that there are, and have been, standard policies and procedures that are supposed to be in effect and acted on when it comes to behavior.

Here is a public comment found on The Gradebook, a local education blog. I don't care who the individual teacher is; it is the mindset and display of ignorance by the system, and therefore the teachers, that is what should be a concern for all.

If the system can't respect current Federal laws that have been in effect, why should the public trust that the system will respect any other laws or policies.


Florida & Tampa Bay schools blog - The Gradebook:

"getsmart, my wife is a special ed teacher in Hillsborough. Her trick for this was to track the disruptive students through all of their classes and get all of their teachers to start writing referrals on them (documenting said students' bad behaviors and estimating how much time was wasted dealing with those behaviors and regaining control of the classroom). It's awfully hard for even the most spineless or clueless administrator to ignore five or more teachers writing referrals on the same students. When confronted with that much documentation, even the most defensive parent will get a wakeup call. As for the students, once their running buddies see that there actually *are* consequences then they may get a severe attitude adjustment.
Posted by: MenckenJr | June 12, 2009 at 04:06 PM"

Compare that statement to what is found in the Federal law:

IDEA - Building The Legacy of IDEA 2004: "Statute: TITLE I / D / 654

Sec. 654 USE OF FUNDS."

(a) Professional Development Activities.--A State educational agency that receives a grant under this subpart shall use the grant funds to support activities in accordance with the State's plan described in section 653, including 1 or more of the following:

(B) improve the knowledge of special education and regular education teachers and principals and, in appropriate cases, paraprofessionals, concerning effective instructional practices, and that--

(iii) provide training in methods of--

(I) positive behavioral interventions and supports to improve student behavior in the classroom;

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I posted all of that to now address specifically how the above public comment displays blatant disregard for federal law:

IDEA - Building The Legacy of IDEA 2004:

"(3) Development of iep.--
(A) In general.--In developing each child's IEP, the IEP Team, subject to subparagraph (C), shall consider--

(B) Consideration of special factors.--The IEP Team shall--

(i) in the case of a child whose behavior impedes the child's learning or that of others, consider the use of positive behavioral interventions and supports, and other strategies, to address that behavior;"

In other words, a special education student, whose behavior impedes their learning, or impedes the learning of others, is supposed to receive specialized instruction for their behavior from professional education systems and their professional employees. What is not supposed to happen is an orchestrated attempt, by a professional education system, to punish the kid instead of teaching the kid.

The parsing of the word "consider" in "B"(1) is used by clever thinking District personnel to obfuscate their acting on carrying out positive efforts to address behaviors.

As we can see by the comment, these teachers have time to "(documenting said students' bad behaviors and estimating how much time was wasted dealing with those behaviors and regaining control of the classroom)", but we can assume they do not have time, and more importantly, nor the training, to document "said students' bad behavior" to conduct a functional behavioral assessment and the resulting positive behavioral support plan.

Richard L. Hancock