It has come to my attention that a decision was made to abruptly remove the para-educator AmazingParaEducator from Stephenson Elementary school. My child, StudentM, fifth grade, is one of the students she assisted daily. I find this decision to be ill-made and to the strong detriment to my child, and I urge you to reconsider. His IEP will not be satisfied without her presence and interventions; I do not believe that my child can receive an appropriate education as protected by law without her aid.
Additionally, it is also emotionally harmful; StudentM has a bond with Miss AmazingParaEducator, as this is the fourth year that she has been assisting him. AmazingParaEducator has developed an amazing rapport with StudentM, and while AmazingParaEducator maintains a professional demeanor, she obviously cares about him, and their relationship is one of very few that he can maintain without the stress that comes with most social interaction for my child.
I do not understand how a few hours of observation, wherein you see Miss AmazingParaEducator’s students actually functioning well, leads to “What a waste of money, we need to move her” instead of “Wow, Miss AmazingParaEducator is clearly doing an amazing job; look how well these students with diverse special needs and complicated IEPs are doing with her assistance! We clearly got a steal when we hired her!”
StudentM is on the Autism spectrum, diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome (ASD), and Sensory Integration Disorder. I hope that you are aware of the primary “deficits” associated with Asperger’s, which include Executive Dysfunction and Theory of Mind.
Executive Dysfunction. StudentM does not have the ability to easily master executive function tasks which includes skills such as organizing, planning, sequencing, sustaining attention, making mid-course corrections, keeping track of time or multiple activities at once, knowing when to seek help or additional information and inhibiting inappropriate responses.
In time, the Asperger’s brain may learn to handle these tasks, but it comes much later than the neurotypical child. StudentM is in NO WAY developmentally ready to master these skills. AmazingParaEducator has been functioning as StudentM’s executive function. Her schedule permits her to assist StudentM at *critical* times during the day to set him up for success. She helps him insure that he has the necessary materials to complete a lesson, confirms that he understands the instruction, and then steps back to let him work independently as much as possible, but is available to step in if StudentM is struggling beyond what is typical of his fellow students. AmazingParaEducator aids StudentM, too, at the end of each day, again bridging the executive function gap, reminding him of the steps that he needs to take – recording the day’s homework, packing his backpack with the correct materials that correspond with that homework, making note of documents that we need to print at home (We supply a laptop for his use at school as writing is a stressor), and so on.
Nor can AmazingParaEducator just teach him the steps to prepare and then expect that StudentM can continue to operate independently. He is unable to generalize – unable to apply knowledge learned in one setting to another similar, but not exactly the same, situation. Without her guidance, he will spend half the lesson time finding a pencil, ruler, the correct spiral notebook, and so on. Considering that Asperger’s already = half the work in twice the time, it is unreasonable to expect he will be able to complete the work or learn the concepts expected of him.
Please note that these are not motherly vaporings; these facts are supported by the BRIEF exam administered by PPS Psychologist NL in the Spring of 2014.
Communication. (Theory of Mind) StudentM demonstrates typical issues with communication that you would expect to see with ASD. He has difficulty “reading between the lines,” figurative language, understanding abstract concepts like sarcasm, or interpreting facial expressions. He has trouble explaining his behavior, and understanding how his behavior impacts how others think and feel.
His inability to communicate effectively is especially challenging because of his further diagnoses – Sensory Integration Disorder. StudentM is unable to process sensory input in an expected manner. Auditory stimuli are the most obviously a challenge for him, and the most omnipresent in the school setting, but he also has difficulty with visually “noisy” environments (such as a classroom, walls covered in anchor charts, resources and student work), as well as tactile issues (both avoidance and seeking).
Just being in the school setting is painful. Imagine sitting on a cushion on sandpaper, wearing the tightest, uncomfortable, itchiest wool sweater while someone behind you is incessantly humming “It’s a Small World” and you might come close to understanding how he feels in the room with the ambient noise of 30 students, the walls “shouting” multiplication tables at him. This is a stress that builds and builds, and if he does not receive a break from the sensory input, he will have a meltdown that hurts not only his day but the days of the children around him. And he has very little skill in communicating that feeling to those around him. Pre-diagnosis, pre-accommodations, and pre-AmazingParaEducator, StudentM was violently aggressive nearly every afternoon.
AmazingParaEducator is able to cut through all of that. She has a remarkable understanding of his unique way of expressing himself, interpreting his body language, hearing his words, and synthesizing that into what he is actually trying to say. Her ability to truly hear him has deepened his trust and AmazingParaEducator is able to guide StudentM into performing tasks that no one else has been able to do, including myself. She is expert at reading StudentM and negotiating him into his quiet space as provided in his IEP in order to decompress and relieve some of the sensory stress. After three years of AmazingParaEducator implementing a five point scale system with StudentM, he has improved his ability to communicate this distress, but is still unlikely to approach anyone with that information unless he knows the person well.
AmazingParaEducator is also the vehicle through which regularly scheduled breaks from noise are implemented. StudentM does not have lunch in the cafeteria. Because AmazingParaEducator is available to supervise, even when our special education teacher, PF, is unavailable due to other duties, the resource room has been opened to StudentM at lunch time so that he can eat in a low light, quiet setting. The immediate difference once this accommodation was made was beyond belief. It provides enough time for StudentM to “re-set” and he is able to make it through the remainder of the day without daily aggressive outbursts. This accommodation is provided through his IEP. Stephenson is a small school; there are simply not enough warm bodies without AmazingParaEducator to allow for lunch supervision outside the cafeteria on a daily basis.
Because of his sensory processing disorder, StudentM is excused (via his IEP) from other activities, such as music, that will do more harm than good. Currently AmazingParaEducator is scheduled to spend that time with StudentM. This not only provides the relief from the noise, but gives the opportunity for AmazingParaEducator to assist him with unfinished class work, or to help him understand a concept which has eluded his mastery. In the absence of any of those things, they use the time to work on uncompleted homework, inspiring my everlasting gratitude. It is next to impossible to complete homework at home, as his black and white thinking has relegated that type of work to the school environment; homework time is a battle because you simply can not force an individual with Asperger’s to do something that they don’t want to do.
I would like to add that even if none of these things were true, and my child were suddenly able to operate completely independently, receiving an appropriate and acceptable education without a 1:1 para-educator, removing such an important part of his support structure at school with such abruptness alone is likely to cause challenges. As per the report from PPS Psychologist NL after testing last spring, his profile indicates “significant rigidity combined with emotional dysregulation. Children with this profile have a tendency to lose emotional control when their routines […] are challenged and/or flexibility is required”. I have worked with Ms. Fahey in creating a plan to prepare StudentM for sixth grade next year, including accepting his loss of Miss AmazingParaEducator, starting in November, allowing NINE MONTHS for him to adapt to that inevitability. The decision to remove AmazingParaEducator’s services from Stephenson doesn’t even allow for 9 DAYS, much less nine months!
Finally, I would also like to remind you that this decision does not just affect StudentM. Any attempt to make up the deficits in support currently provided by AmazingParaEducator by other staff, including the classroom teacher, reduces the time other staff has to spend with the children not on an IEP. I have a younger daughter (neurotypical) in Kindergarten. She has a classmate who has been receiving 1:1 time with Miss AmazingParaEducator. I volunteered on Tuesday and was present during writer’s workshop, a time which ordinarily Miss AmazingParaEducator would be there to aid him (she was ill today, an excellent opportunity to see the future as defined by this misguided decision). I ended up sitting with that child 1:1 during the entire worktime, and he still only managed to get 5 letters on the paper. Despite my personal familiarity with special needs children, he completed a fraction of the work with me that he manages to complete with Miss AmazingParaEducator. Had I not been there? (And I won’t be there most days; the classroom teacher doesn’t have volunteers available every hour of every day!) Either the classroom teacher would have to provide this intensive support (impossible!) instead of assisting the other 23 students (NOT acceptable as a parent of one of those 23 students!), or given the special needs child only as much assistance as any other child, in which case, that child is not receiving his IDEA protected appropriate education. I will be sharing these observations with that student’s family.
Stephenson is a small community; the 60 students in fifth grade are, for the most part, the same students that started their journey together in kindergarten. I really do not want to be placed in the position of feeling obligated to send letters of apology to each family with student’s in my son’s class, letting them know that I am deeply sorry that the special education department’s decision has left his classroom teacher less time to work with their children since she will not only have to provide additional educational support to my son, but will have to deal with increasingly challenging and violent behaviors from my child as time passes without the full support that he needs to be successful. If you need more specific information regarding the effects on my child, and how his IEP will not be satisfied without 1:1 support, unavailable without para-educator hours in general, and Miss AmazingParaEducator para-educator hours in specific, at Stephenson, I will be more than happy to break down my son’s IEP, goal by goal, and explain the consequences to each. Again, I urge you to reconsider this decision; hopefully before Miss AmazingParaEducator is officially no longer employed at Stephenson Elementary. I do understand that budgetary concerns sometimes lead to unpleasant decisions, but I think if you examine this situation closely you will agree that it will be more expensive in the long run to deny my child the support that he needs to be successful.
Thank You, Kristen R* *email removed* *phone removed*
Special Education Woes @ Portland Public Schools 