<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Run BJM @ May 28 2008, 07:41 PM)
<{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>Somehow I knew this was in Florida right when I heard about it. Seems like a ton of crazy ass news stories on the internet and on the radio come out of Florida for whatever reason.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>I didn't watch the video, but I do think that special needs kids should have special needs schools. It's ridiculous to have the extra cost of dealing with these kids at every school; the quality of education for all suffers. With special needs schools, the kids at regular schools would have budget for the arts, and special needs schools would be tailored to deal with the needs of those kids.</div>
There are special needs schools for special needs kids and even in many public schools there are multiple classes that are only special needs classes. I'm assuming that most of the U.S.'s public education system (Florida included) is in shambles much like the California one is and if its anything like California then the special needs only schools are few and far between. A lot of people don't have the time to drive their kids that far out of their way every morning and the school buses can't get that far out there because they have to get the rest of the kids to class on time. Then what do you do with the kid when he gets out at 12, 1, or 2 every day? Are there special needs daycares available? Plus you have to consider a lot of these kids' parents are low income or single parents (this particular lady I'm guessing is a single parent since she had no husband with her and made no indication of having a husband) which limits their ability to take hours off work to take care of the kid. Obviously when situations like that occur they have to put the kid somewhere and one option is to put him in regular education, maybe that was the only option.
Also a lot of high functioning mentally handicapped people are allowed to be in regular education. Sure they're "different" but they can learn as well as a "regular" kid. Its especially sketchy at younger ages because doctors can't accurately diagnose young kids with mental illnesses. Is there really that much of a difference between a mildly autistic 5 year old and a "normal" 5 year old? It gets more obvious as they get older because the normal kids are going to mature while the mentally ill kids will obviously struggle with school work, maturity, or behavior. Where else can you put kids like these though? If they're capable of getting a regular level education, they probably should be getting one. At the same time though the teachers don't really know how to handle them and they often have maturity issues, especially when they're young and this isn't even mentioning how they deal socially with being in a class full of regular kids. The classes are already being slowed down by kids with learning disabilities, if these kids can keep up with the rest IMO they should be educated as highly as possible.
I know a lot about this crap because my dad was the head supervisor of a special needs only public school that dealt with K-12 kids for like 30 years. My aunt has been teaching mentally handicapped elementary school kids for as long as I can remember. The whole public education system is a big time cluster f*ck, my dad was ecstatic when he got the hell out of there. My aunt was telling me how she runs into kids fairly often who aren't mentally handicapped at all but they were diagnosed with some kind of mental illness as infants and no one really re-examined them after that, obviously she can spot most of the ones who are "normal" because shes been working with handicapped kids for so long. But she says shes also heard of a lot of people who go the first 10, 12, 14, 16+ years of their life being told their retarded, being in classes for special needs kids, but end up being normal or just having some minor learning impediment. Sorry for the random aside but yeah if you have any kids that are diagnosed with mental illness when they're babies make sure to keep getting them checked because doctors can't diagnose mental illness very accurately (no matter what they tell you) when the kids are very young.
</div>
I came really close to running for the school board in Mountain View back in the late '80s, exactly because the school districts are in a real bind as to how and what they can spend money.
While it may seem "nice" to mix in the special needs kids with the rest of the kids, the burden and inefficiencies put on the schools hurts all the kids. If you have three schools in a district and have to spend 3x the money to make those schools outfitted for the special needs kids, the schools end up cutting programs like the arts, computer labs and music. A fourth school that is customized for the special needs kids makes the most sense. There's no reason the school for special needs kids can't have the same hours as a regular school.
Another issue for Mountain View was "english as a second language" kids. The population there was 2/3 hispanic. 2 of the 3 schools should have taught in spanish while the third in english. You CAN learn to be a rocket scientist or brain surgeon in spanish or chinese, ya know. Yet mixing the kids together held them all back - the school went too slow so the non-english speakers could keep up, and the non-english speakers suffered at the same time. English as a 2nd language is fine, but it should be more like what I had in high school - french as a 2nd language - only that class was taught in french, the rest of the curriculum was taught in the students' native language.
As for the teacher and school being discussed, it's way over the line.
