What to do when they cut funding for special needs kids?

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I am freaking out. My son is in pre-school so I have a little time, but still, not a lot of time. I was speaking to my brother's girlfriend and she was telling me what it is really like in the school system. She is a OT and does pull outs for kids with special needs, including ASD. She works in a grade A school which is supposed to be a "good school".

She says the kids don't really get to learn anything when they are mainstreamed. She says that while the teacher is teaching, that child is away at OT, PT, ST, etc. When the child gets back to class, the teacher has moved on and of course the child cannot catch up. She says that they decided to mainstream all special needs kids (except for the severly disabled) to save money but it is a great disservice to the child.

She also says for the child to get a para (who isn't a trained professional) there has to be some safety reason. She tells me about all the parents who come to her so overwhelmed because their children are not getting the service they need. She said they have cut sooo many services in the schools and special needs children are being left behind.

I started searching the web and I found a lot of parents have the same complaint. I feel so overwhelmed and helpless. How do I fight the system to gurantee funding for special needs kids? My DH and I have to work so homeschool is not an option. Plus, I need professionals, a special ed teacher and all his therapist, not a para.

What can I do?

Edit: I posted this by accident to the General forum and moved it to Parent.

Try voting for the ballot initiatives that provide funding to public schools.

There's not much you can do but organize and petition the policy makers. Everybody is slow to even acknowledge protestors presence anymore, but special needs parents are a large bloc that can draw attention if they organize. There may be legal options as well.

Get a good advocate and fight for what your child needs. In tough times, the school district will give more to parents who show they are prepared to go to due process when necessary. An advocate can also help you get the best placement, whether that is general Ed, a special day class, or a non-public school.

^^This!
The one thing we parents of special needs kids have is the IDEA. It is a federal law and MANY a school district has been successfully sued when they fail to live up to the requirements of that law. Not saying that you have to single-handedly sue your school district however, if you get an advocate who knows the system and is known by the people in the system, the school district is very likely to take you more seriously. We've been struggling with getting and then implementing my son's IEP for over a year now. I decided I am not going to watch the incompetence or listen to the complaints of "I don't have time to do that" anymore. I called an IEP meeting and contacted an advocate who is well known in our school district and do you know what? DS now has a para working with him throughout the day. BTW, don't discount the usefulness of a para outright, while you also deserve to receive the services of professionals, a para can be a great addition to the team!

This is a tough one--who wants to pay higher taxes? But, how can you pay for special needs when you need to cut programs to reduce the size of government?

I am going to add that it depends on who the aide is. I have seen really good ones, and I have seen really bad ones. If you have only had experience with the bad ones I can see why you would think they are worthless. The right aide can sense when your child is going to meltdown and get him calm. Depending on her particular training she may know a lot about spectrum disorders and know how to communicate with him the most effective way.

Thanks for all the input. However, if your child is mainstreamed in a class of 30 kids (and you child functions better in a small class) how do you get the school to create a small class, just for your child?

Also, my child will need a special ed teacher, but the conbined classes are only regular teachers, how do I get the district to pay for a special ed teacher, just for my child?

Then, there is the big issue of, how do I get them to do "basically nothing" while my child is being pulled out for his therapies? Or, even, get them to provide a teacher to teach him things he missed while at therapies?

Is there anyone who is currently going throuh this, where their child is being pulled out during the school day for other therapies? How does your child keep up?

Every state is different and I have a feeling your situation is much different from mine but FWIW... my son spends a set amount of hours per week, as per his IEP, in the SPED classroom in the school. Otherwise he is in the mainstream classroom or being pulled out for OT and other therapies. The SPED teacher is the one who keeps him up on anything he might be missing while getting pulled out. The school OT actually would rather work with him in the class however her attempts at that were unsuccessful so she is back to pulling him out. For us, missing the academics is not a big issue right now as DS is well ahead of his peers in everything pretty much except maybe handwriting. But I can see this changing down the road.

My DS9 is pulled out for set periods of time each week per his IEP for various reasons. I just agreed to more pull-outs for writing (not OT), but small group work on just writing skills. It has not been a problem so far (maybe it will be when he is older). He is in 3rd grade at public school (23 kids in his class; next year it will be 30). He has been able to keep up, it really has not been an issue. He is around a B+ for most subjects except writing. Right now I feel he is getting more out of his pull-outs than he does in the general ed classroom.

Get the book From Emotions to Advocacy. It explains how you build a case to get your child what he or she needs.

In our district, even kids with severe language deficits don't get much more than half an hour each of speech and OT per week, so it's not a huge loss of class time.

When I volunteered in the morning in K and 1st grade, the kids generally were given an assignment to work on independently, and meanwhile called into small groups. For instance, a typical K assignment might be to create a book based on "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you See" -- cutting and pasting animal pictures and writing the color on each page -- and the teacher calls groups of 5 to work on reading for 10-15 minutes at a time, and I'm in the small room on the side with 4-6 kids doing letter bingo. If they finish the Brown Bear book, they draw a picture and write in their journals. The kid who is pulled out for speech either just has less time to finish the Brown Bear book, and it comes home incomplete, or misses letter bingo. Missing a little class time wasn't a big deal for my son. All the kids moving back and forth and having to start and stop his activites multiple times was bigger problem.

Thanks for your input. What happens when the child is older (4th grade and beyond) when they have to start preparing for the state exams? How exactly does that work? Does the SPED teacher helps to prepare the child for the exams? Have you found the need to get a tutor for your older child?

My son is only in 1st grade, so we haven't gotten to standardized testing yet...we're having problems with the district not wanting to provide an aide that he needs, so we are considering a due process fight, potentially ending up at a non-public school or homeschooling.

My DS9 had his first standardized tests last year (2nd grade). They don't effect his grades and he did fine (really well in math). I recall the IEP team asking his general ed teacher if DS would be able to take the tests, and she said "yes" without hesitation. Which surprised me a bit. My DS has had a tutor since he started developmental kindergarten. I work full time (and am not a good teacher for my son), so I got him a tutor, well before I even suspected he may have a learning disability. He meets with the tutor twice a week. I anticipate I will have to increase that amount when he gets older.

ETA: I'm in CA, and I am referring to the STAR testing which all students (starting in 2nd) take at the end of the school year. I did nothing to prepare him for the testing (other than make sure he had a good night sleep and good breakfast each morning).

I've worked in education, the money is often there, it's just often horribly misappropriated.

It sure is, because somehow, the football team always gets new uniforms.

I was going to suggest to move, but I see its New York City and I don't know if another school district in Jersey would be any better and would be pretty far away.

I was in a suburban school district that gave my parents trouble and if I had kids they would never go there. Maybe I don't know, but I often wondered why parents living in bad school districts did not move heaven and Earth to move out of them to a better one. But that would apply to all kids not just AS. Yet they still live there.

Back in the late 60's early 70's I was pulled out a lot because I had a speech problem. Yes, I did fall behind so much I had to graduate with my younger sister in high school. She was not happy about that at all.