Teachers, administrators are tired - so what?

It's the end of the school year, and teachers and administrators are tired. My response to that is, "So what?" They are getting paid, and paid well. They need to buck up and teach and administer with the same enthusiasm and energy as they did last September. After all, they are still getting paid, aren't they?

Many of the kids for whom I advocate are in Special Education or have other challenges that make them "special"; i.e., they get special consideration in their academic planning. And they should.

When an administrator tells a mom that her son is just too much to handle and he suspends the student for the last week of school, the administrator is taking a callous and, probably, unlawful action. You can't just say, "I'm fed up. You're outa here." A student deserves the support to finish out the year and to be able to chalk up Success.

IEP Teams in schools are supposed to create and implement Behavior Improvement Plans. I have yet to see a good one, and I've looked at a lot of them. "Student will do better, or else" is not a Behavior Improvement Plan (BIP)! What I've found is that the "Team" really doesn't know how to write a BIP.that will actually bring about an improvement in behavior.

Today a mom got the bad news from the kid's teacher. I told her to call the Principal, then the Superintendent. The Superintendent told her to call the teacher and try to work it out. When I got involved, the teacher quickly told me he is out of the loop now, since the Principal is the one who kicked the kid out of school for the last week. A meeting is set up for Tuesday, after school. Too late for the kid to be back in school on Tuesday.

Where does Due Process come into this? I mean the opportunity to challenge the discipline before it is imposed. Why should schools have the right to kick a kid out and then let him appeal it and maybe get a hearing a month later? Suppose the discipline is overridden by the School Board. It's obviously too late, because the discipline has already been served.

Of course, there is always DUE PROCESS (those fear-instilling words to a school district). That's where a parent gets the Illinois State Board of Education involved. School districts don't always win, and they know it's going to cost them $25,000 or more by the time it's over. That would buy a lot of classroom assistance in a Special Ed Department!