As a retired special education teacher I vote ‘no’ to spend $36 million for a new special education program.

This resolution was posted 3 days ago breaking the Sunshine Act settlement. Parents have been left out of the dialogue and their children are most affected. As Maura McInerney stated, “We certainly believe that parents making decisions regarding the placement and programs for their children need to be fully informed and knowledgeable about what is being offered.” Anybody who has ever worked on designing a program for children with severe disabilities knows that this takes more planning. Yet you want to place 200 such children in a segregated program this September and no location has been decided? Recently, the Inquirer ran a story about the dearth of school bus drivers in Philadelphia. Won’t the establishment of this new school only exacerbate the bus driver problem?

Wasting money on outsourcing yet again. You chose another company to run this program instead of using experienced Phila. special education teachers and other experienced clinical specialists who should be consulted for designing such a program in Philadelphia. Catapault will come in with its own administration and employees. Now we’ll have another layer of bureaucracy. Don’t you think Catapault will also push for selling its own curriculum materials? Remember our other packaged worthless special ed. programs that we were all forced to use? Fast Forward? Corrective Reading? Success for All – learn a jingle and you’ll learn to read? These programs show poor pedagogy – One size fits all doesn’t work for special education students – which is why each student has an IEP.

Yet you expect parents to trust you despite all these unanswered questions?

SING TO “GOD BLESS AMERICA’ tune

We want our school board back

Control we now lack.

No transparency,

much outsourcing

is the way that our SRC reacts.

Resolutions are not posted

And our schools are shut down too.

We want our school board back

And fair funding too.

We want our school board back

We’ll fight for what’s our due.