<p>blucroo, Yes, I have heard these stories often. I am sure it occurs.</p>
<p>And despite the horror stories of these “high profile” parents, most special ed teacher, speech therapists, etc. give their heart and souls to the kids and love their work. We certainly aren’t in it for the $$$</p>
<p>Blucroo is completely correct. OTOH, climate has changed re suing schools. It used to be that the mere threat would bring the system to its knees, and capitulate to whatever the parents wanted. I can tell you, unequivocably, that this is no longer true.</p>
<p>The irony is that there is still enormous waste in special education. But I have been in litigation where the school system is 100% wrong in their diagnosis or treatment, and accepts no responsibility, while the child suffers. It is not at all unheard of for parents to spent $20K on a hearing, and have it not result for them favorably.</p>
<p>Just the other side.</p>
<p>And PS, I know of a principal who was terminated, once it was discovered that she accepted diamond tennis bracelets and spa weekends, etc. to ensure parents that their children would have the “right placement”.</p>
<p>there are rotten apples in every organization. Fortunately, most in education are well meaning, good people…</p>
<p>Without question. That’s why the story pushes my BS meter.</p>
<p>“xiggi: I totally agree with you about embezzlement. It ioccurs in lot of industries where huge amounts of money moves thru a variety of “budgets” and systems and somehow disappears without anyone noticing. However, this situation is different.”</p>
<p>Blucroo, I do not disagree that this situation is unique. While the accusations sound fantastic --to say the least-- the amount of details and the ease of finding corroborating evidence seem to eliminate the notion of a wild accusation. It shouldn’t require Hercule Poirot to check if the purchases were made and who cashed them in. The same for the apartment story. </p>
<p>My main point was about reports of REALLY egregious behavior being “believable.” In general, common sense would preclude anyone to believe that high-level administrators who make over $300,000 at a cushy job filled with extraordinary perks would have to steal or pad their expense reports … yet they do! A few years back, the superintendent in Dallas stole $18,000 in her FIRST week on the job. It did not make any sense, yet it happened!</p>
<p>Students in special ed have IEP meetings which must be attended by an adminstrator, teachers, case carrier, therapists, psychologist, paraprofessionals, and with autistic students, there is usually someone from an autism advocacy group present. Of course parents attend. Notes are taken and signed by parents. The educational plan, including specialized and individual therapies is documented and signed off by all present, including parents. Progress benchmarks are required. This is a legal document.</p>
<p>I agree that it is a legal document-
However- I have never had a principal present at an IEP meeting- usually the IEP is already written up & they just want me to sign it.
If I pressure them to make changes on it- they do so- however when I was given the final copy- my changes had been whited out and deleted.
Our district does not require parents to agree with document- they only need to know what it is in it.</p>
<p>Usually the only people at IEP meeting- was myself & her resource room teacher- sometimes another teacher would come- but only for a few minutes.
If I had , had an outside person come- I would have had to pay them.
I was able to get a district liason person come once, because there had been ongoing trouble- but that still didn’t get any meaningful change actually implemented.</p>
<p>My daughter had IEPs for 5 years- only one year were progress benchmarks measured at anytime beside the very end of the year( despite my protests)</p>
<p>benchmarks were also so low to be meaningless.( this is despite trying to get help from head of dept- principal- district administrators and state administrators- I did everything but hire a lawyer- )
I finally had her exited from SPED- because it was meaningless & it was a waste of her time.
The test that the district did to exit her- did not compare her to grade level benchmarks- it basically just said that her needs could be met in a regular classroom.
I can easily see how people not familiar with their rights- could get sucked in to thinking that if they just did a little more- these people would help their son.
Its obviously a ever increasing path. The teachers do mean well I agree, but that doesn’t mean they do their job.
I quit my job( which I couldn’t afford to do) when she was in elementary & was in the school everyday- to try and support the teachers so they would help her. All it did, was make them * expect* me to be there to help.</p>
<p>Now that she is in a different school- it is better- but even though I made clear to the school, that the only reason why she was removed from IEP was because the other school wasn’t doing it. It wasn’t that I thought she didn’t need help.</p>
<p>I tried to get her reassessed at the school- they refused. I paid $800 for a complete educational psych evaluation, that indicated she had fairly severe learning disabilities & the psych made recommendations for accomodations in the classroom.
The College Board accepted the reccommendations for SAT testing- however the school still says she doesn’t need them- apparently because she is passing her classes.</p>
<p>If I knew what it would take to get my child served- especially if they had an extreme disability like autism, I would do it. You just do what it takes- if you have no where else to go- you don’t have a lot of choice</p>
<p>It seems wild- but I believe the story- especially if the parents aren’t familar with how things are legally supposed to work</p>
<p>Ironically IMO?- the more involved you are with your child- the more the SPED staff will assume they will be OK
There are so many kids- whose parents don’t even come to IEP meetings, who have very severe problems, that that is where staff seems to spend their energy.
The kids who “just” have learning disabilities & who can do well- given a teacher who will give them accomodations- aren’t seen as needing much help- and so- they aren’t paid as much attention to</p>
<p>emeraldkitty: unfortunately for many parts of the country your experience is not unique; At least in my OC district, just down the road from Irvine, we are very in tune with parent rights and following the letter of the law…to prevent the lawsuits. We mail copies of the law and rights to the parents before setting up the meeting. We do write goals before the meeting to save time, but the parents can reject the goals and re write. I had one mom who met privately with the school psych and they wrote all the goals together before the meeting. For a kid like the one described in the original post…severe autism, rejected from schools, etc. this would be a very high profile case here in OC and would definitely get everyone’s attention. The squeeky wheel…</p>
<p>Besides working in spec ed, I am also a parent of a special needs kid, one who would fall thru the cracks if I did not insist upon my rights. I am not unreasonable, but if the district has the services my son needs, I won’t sign off on his IEP unless he gets the services. I remind the staff that I know my rights and after that the meetings become more collaborative. Having said that, I know that if the district did not have the services, it would be a lot harder to meet his needs. It’s all about $$$$$ in small school districts.</p>
<p>good grief xiggi - who performed the audits of that school district? </p>
<p>For theft to occur on that level, there had to be collusion across various departments. School districts receive federal funds and have to be subjected to yellow book audits which require a pretty decent system of internal controls…one which would not allow persons in a record keeping function to also have control of cash disbursement. Therefore, there is no way for theft of this nature to have been committed by just one person. That budget director had buddy or two helping him out.</p>
<p>btw…in my years of school district and nonprofit audits, I’ve seen theft committed in some of the most imaginative ways. I’ve seen $450K in USDA ‘free cheese’ somehow grow legs and jump into the trunks of program administrators headed for the commodities black market; I’ve seen journal entries wiping out hundreds of thousands of dollars of activity to hide the receipt and improper disbursement of federal grant monies; fraudulent time sheets/expense accounts; nonexistent employees, etc… The most troublesome theft occurs at banks. We caught bank employees skimming small amounts from thousands of accounts. Despite hundreds of thousands in losses, the bank refused to press charges and ate the loss to avoid publicity. VERY common practice at most lending institutions when faced with a breakdown in their system.</p>
<p>But, of course, I digress from the intent of this thread. Oops…sorry. :)</p>
<p>As amazing as these accusations are, I’d be even more surprised if this story was fabricated. The L.A. Times is usually very good at fact-checking. One or two details could be off or exaggerated but not the entire story. Really weird and certainly not the norm, for special ed or any other public school program. We get Starbucks cards, homemade cookies and Bed Bath Beyond soap around the holidays.</p>
<p>I think a very huge part of this is that the parents are from Taiwan where gift giving is part of the culture.
I have a friend from Taiwan, who is very much from that culture.
I quickly learned I could not express too much admiration for her home or things she had, because she would try to give them to me.
It was really uncomfortable for a while- because I was taught to be polite & make polite comments-and I really didn’t know what to do with the gift giving thing for a while.</p>
<p>I am surprised that they aren’t able to find better providers though- given that they apparently have the money.</p>
<p>EK, Why would they seek “better providers”? They were seeking an education and I guess remediation through their public school system. Perhaps they did have specialists coming to their home too. Apparently the boy is being homeschooled now. I don’t know if they were not satisfied with the child’s progress while they were giving the more lavish gifts.</p>
<p>What I mean by “better” an appropriate environment- where they perhaps spent money on tuition, but didn’t have to bribe the staff.</p>
<p>The article said that 15 private schools had rejected him-& it said that when the gift giving waned his care deterioated, and the employees became more aggressive specifying what they wanted. It sounds like she was almost being blackmailed- that if she wanted care for her son, she would have to pay.
The article doesn’t discuss academic progress-from what I have seen in classrooms of severely disabled kids- parents are happy, if they simply can have a break from taking care of their high needs kids- they have learned unfortunately not to expect a lot of progress, they just don’t want them to regress</p>
<p>Our schools have 8 high need kids per teacher- this is the highest need student- who often need help toileting and eating- there are aides- but the class size is too large to deal with all their diverse needs let alone help them make measurable progress ( this was an increase in the last teacher contract- previously class size was 6- however in order to increase teacher pay- they had to cut back somewhere- and special education teachers- didn’t seem to have a big say in negotiating contract)</p>
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<p>This is a waste of taxpayer money, and it serves no purpose. Schools are not babysitting services. They should be providing an education and working on goals set forth in their IEPs.</p>