Community Corner
Guest Article: Update On San Bruno Park School District And Parents' Concerns About Special Education - posted 10/8/2017
Submitted by Shirley Fok
Article Source: Shirley Fok
Editor's Note: Shirley is and has been one of the parents who continues to be very concerned with what it seems to be changing in the way our San Bruno school age children are being educated. Shirley, and other parents have been attending the San Bruno Park School District Board of Trustees' meetings that were and continue to be open to residents. You can attend future meetings.
You can goto http://sbpsd.k12.ca.us/ to access the District meeting agendas and hopefully the minutes.
Find out what's happening in San Brunofor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Find out what's happening in San Brunofor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Stella Kemp, Superintendent, skemp@sbpsd.k12.ca.us
Last year the parents of the kids in the SBPSD special education program were invited to monthly meetings held at the district office by Leigh Schwartz. He outlined a plan that would bring all the children who for many years have been sent to other neighboring school districts for education/services. This cost the district a lot of money so in order to minimize the cost and decrease the special ed expenses he introduced the idea that they would all come back to new specialized programs that would be staffed with special ed teachers, aides, and other special ed specialty staff. As you can imagine some parents were very upset that their children would be pulled from the school they have gone to for many years and from teachers/staff that have provided their children with the support that this school district couldn't offer.
But Leigh made it seem that all would be taken care of and the school district is now prepared to take all the special ed children in house and there was no longer a need to contract other school districts for their education and other specialized services that these kids need.
I thought the idea sounded ok until I found out towards the end of the year that there were going to be a reorganizing of special ed staff in all the schools. Jeremy's aide who he really worked well with and spent almost the entire day with throughout the year came to me in tears. She said that Leigh decided to transfer her and she will no longer be with Jeremy when he returns back to Portola. She said that she will be working for another school but I didn't want that to happen so I emailed Leigh and he reassured me that Jeremy’s services would remain the same at Portola and Jeremy will be with an aide that will provide the needed support even if the one he has built a rapport with transfers to a different school. I accepted the answer but during the summer I reached out to Leigh again in hopes that he would allow Jeremy's original aide to come back and work with him again in the classroom. Once again Leigh said the same thing so I had to accept the fact that I was told that Jeremy would be getting a new aide.
So fast forward a year later, the children who were contracted out have now returned to the school district and the ones who are already attending a SBPSD school have returned for another school year. My son is a special ed kid that always attended a SBPSD school so I thought there would be very little change or no change at all would happen to him. Boy was I wrong!
So when he first started this academic school year, I took him to school and dropped him off in class. I was expecting an aide to introduce herself or himself to me since Jeremy, my son was a child who had been mainstreamed into the regular classroom with 980 minutes/week of support time (which most of those minutes were to be with an aide in the classroom with him). After three days of not meeting anyone when I dropped him off at the classroom, I decided to call an IEP (Individual education plan) meeting to figure out what was going on with the support Jeremy was supposed to get in the classroom.
On 9/6 my husband and I attended an IEP meeting and present was Leigh Schwartz, Portola School Principal, Portola Special Ed Case Manager, and all of Jeremy's special ed team (his OT, Speech Therapist, classroom teacher, and Learning Center teacher/Jeremy's previous Portola case manager). At the meeting I found out that Leigh didn't staff the new academic year with enough special ed teachers, aides, and other specialty staff that were needed to successfully serve and support all the special ed children who he brought back and the existing special ed children that were in the district to begin with. Jeremy didn't have any aide assigned to help him and the Portola Learning Center were short two aides to support all the special ed children who needed to be there throughout the day.
Leigh admitted that the SBPSD Special Ed Program was understaffed and his excuse was that it has been difficult to gets aides who want to work for $17/hour. He then said that Jeremy will be getting an aide by 9/15. I asked him where he would get this aide since he just said that the school district was short of the required aides to run the program, by my surprise and the surprise that I noticed on everyone's faces...he said he would get the aide from Allen. I then asked him how many special ed kids does Allen have and he said about 22 with 2 Full Time Aides and when I asked how many special ed kids does Portola have he said that there were about 9 kids. I then questioned him and asked why would he bring an aide from Allen when there are more kids there who need staff to provide support/services than Portola. From all the faces I observed, it didn't make any sense to all of us by taking away an aide from a school that had more kids who needed to be served. I voiced this at the meeting and told him that "maybe it's the social worker inside of me but I don't think what you are doing is right!" In my mind I knew that the only reason he would take an aide from Allen to give to Jeremy was because Allen has a higher population (compared to other SBPSD schools) of monolingual/ESL kids and parents who historically have been unwilling and unable to advocate for themselves and their kids so taking an aide from that school would be the easiest and fastest way to make a parent like me (who has no problem advocating for my kid) happy. In my mind, this is a complete injustice that I was witnessing and I told him as much as I want an aide for Jeremy I feel really bad if this should happen b/c it is not fair to take from someone who can't fight for their rights and for what they deserve. As a social worker, my life has always been to fight for social justice so this was everything that went against my core values/principals and the social work code of ethics that I stand firm on.
After our IEP meeting I felt very sad and needed to do something to help increase the voice that is needed to fight this injustice so I asked Portola Principal if I could start a special ed parent support group. She emailed back and said that would be ok so I created a blurb for her to send to all the parents in the school via email and 4 parents contacted me.
Also I attended the SBPSD Board meeting last month and I was the 2nd person to speak about what has been going on with our school district. Karen Byrne, Portola Kindergarten teacher went 1st and she said that after hearing so many parents and teachers complain about the lack of support and services given to this population, she decided to take a vacation day out of her own vacation hours to visit all the special ed programs in the school districts and she was shocked at what she saw. She said that she went to all the special ed programs but one that day since she ran out of time. In front of the School Board she had tears in her eyes and she said that the special ed program now is like a bucket that has many holes in it. Once one hole is covered another hole opens up so the bucket will never serve the purpose it was intended for b/c there are too many holes to plug. She said that after visiting the 1st special ed program, she went to her car and cried b/c these kids who are already having a lot of challenges are not getting the support they need in order for them to thrive. She said that she emailed the Board and most of them never replied back to acknowledge any effort on their end to help with the situation.
I then spoke in front of the Board and told them that I really think the program is understaffed and it will not be successful in any means if this continues. I told them to please look into the matter. I didn't mention anything about Leigh taking an aide from Allen to give to Portola but maybe I should have.
All in all I don't feel good with what is going on with the special ed program. Jeremy has not had the complete services/minutes that was stated in his IEP, but that goes for most if not all of the other special ed kids in our district. The execution of this new special ed program has been a complete disservice to all the kids who returned and those who have been attending the special ed program @ the SBPSD schools. Leigh should not have brought the kids who were happy and thriving in other school districts back since he knew that the school district did not hire enough staff to run a successful program. He should have staffed the program appropriately before the school year started since now the school district is not meeting the LEGALLY mandated minutes/services in most if not all the SBPSD special ed childrens’ IEPs. Instead of increasing the hourly wage that is necessary to hire the staff, he just tries to plug aides and other staff into the schools with the most complaints and take from schools that have very little voice. That is NOT right!!!
This is just a summary and I know you may have lots of questions. I did have our first special ed support meeting a couple of weeks ago and found out that one of the parents wrote to the superintendent and she said that she would forward me the letter she wrote so I can forward it to you so you can get a better idea of what is going on.
Thank you so much for all your time and patience. I really hope you can help us with spreading the word and hopefully it will get others who are not vested in this population involved b/c there is power in numbers and that is what we need. We need people who read or hears about this to feel the need to correct the wrong by helping us do the right thing.
I will forward the letter once I get it from the other parent. please feel free to contact me via email or phone at 415-519-9586 if you have any questions.
Thanks again for all your help, I really appreciate it!
Kind Regards,
My Posts: http://patch.com/users/robert-riechel
Photo Credit: San Bruno CA Patch Archives
Source Credit: Shirley Fok
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