Our superintendent and the board members who are elected to “administer and supervise” the educational process of the system are actively and deliberately ignoring the public that they serve.
Yesterday I argued that Dr. Wardynski was hoping to divide the city of Huntsville over the issue of Special Education funding. He seems to be hoping that he could silence me and others of his critics by showing that special education costs more than regular education.
As I have seen with the special education community, I am hopeful that the general community will not succumb to his appeal to fear of the unknown, uncertainty about the true nature of the disabled, and doubt that something like autism is an actual illness warranting additional expenditures. But fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) are powerful weapons in the hands of a politician skilled in handling them.
And Dr. Wardynski is skillful indeed.
He’s benefited from the FUD that Dr. Richardson created when he endorsed a laughably pathetic demographer’s report that recommended the closing of nine schools in the system. Now many of those schools are afraid to ask questions about future plans of the superintendent for fear that “the state will close us down.”
He’s benefited from the FUD that he created when he immediately moved to fire teachers and principals, move principals around, or simply close schools on his own.
He’s used FUD as cover to hide his true plans as when he removed the letters from Lee High School the day before the board meeting in which the board voted to spend at least $1.7 million dollars to hire teachers who aren’t qualified to teach.
And he’s used it to attempt to divide the community over the issue of special education funding.
So let’s handle the disclaimers right up front. Yes, my son is one of the 2,445 students in Huntsville City Schools with an IEP. Yes, these cuts directly impact the quality of the education my son is receiving, and so I have a vested interest in this issue. I benefit from your interest in this issue. It’s true.
But it’s also true that your child is hurt by the cuts to Special Education as well.
Here are a few reasons why you should care about Special Education funding:
All kids have special needs. No kid is truly non-exceptional. There are areas where some children excel and where other children lag. A good educational system makes every effort to meet the kids where they are and help them get to where they need to be. Wouldn’t it be a better system if Dr. Wardynski looked for ways to meet the needs of the children rather than for ways to divide the community? Wouldn’t your child benefit from a system that sought to meet his or her needs? If it becomes acceptable to refuse to meet the needs of exceptional kids, it will become acceptable to refuse to meet the needs of all kids.
If Wardynski can cut SPED funding by $7 million with all the protections afforded to SPED by federal law, no program is actually safe. What makes you think that he won’t cut funding that directly impacts your child next? Music, art, and laboratories all cost money that could quickly and far more easily be cut than SPED funding. If you believe having a friendly relationship with the man will help, if you think that having a PTA president who meets with him regularly makes a difference, you should reconsider. If the superintendent isn’t concerned about violating state code and federal law, there’s no reason to think that having a friendly relationship will matter to him.
It could happen to you. The third point is a harsh one. You should know that in so far as my wife and I are aware, we did nothing to cause the boy’s autism. The national autism rates are 1 in 110 children. Last year in Huntsville the rate was 1 in 60 and those are just the numbers in Huntsville City Schools. They don’t count the hundreds of SPED parents who have long since given up on the school system actually doing their job of educating all of our children. We have good to great insurance, but autism is not covered in the state of Alabama. For the first two years after the boy’s diagnosis, we spent, on average $23,000 a year on private therapies.
As amazing as the gift of life is, it is also amazingly fragile. All it takes for any one of us to require extensive support and additional services is a single slip, a wrong turn, or standing up too quickly. I hope and pray none of you have to experience something like that, but I am certain that many will. In fact, I find it hard to believe that most of you don’t already know someone with a special needs child. When this happens to you or someone you know, how will you cope? Will having an underfunded special education program make much sense to you then?
Special Education is the last best hope for correcting the pattern of teaching to the test. Many of you may believe that it’s pointless to try and educate a special needs child. You may believe that they cannot be educated. Frankly, I know this isn’t true because I’ve seen the vast leaps my boy has made. But I am convinced that this is what Dr. Wardynski believes. He believes that we are wasting money on educating special needs kids. This is why he submitted a budget that cut $7 million dollars from SPED in a single year.
This is what hiring someone with no educational experience buys you: a leader unconcerned with teaching anyone who needs a little extra help to learn.
Do you think your child might occasionally need a little extra help to learn? In the system that we’re rapidly becoming, you won’t receive that help from Wardynski’s schools. His focus is entirely on testing. It’s on testing because people who don’t understand education assume that passing the test is all that matters. Special Education is the last bastion of education where the process is designed to meet the needs of the child rather than to meet the needs of the test. You should care about this because if Wardynski has his way, our system will be reduced to doing nothing in a classroom that can’t be done by a test proctor. This is his goal.
But finally, if these reasons aren’t persuasive enough, you should care about the cuts to special education funding because it’s the right thing to do. Plain and simple, it’s the right thing to do.
I hope you’ll join me in asking about the special education cuts. I hope you’ll join me is holding the superintendent and the board accountable for the education of all our kids.
Life is an amazing gift. Being up before the sun, looking at the night as it fades away helps to put this into perspective (although, honestly, I’m not a morning person.) The beginning of each new day is like Christmas morn: it’s hard to contain the excitement and potentiality that the day will bring.
Sorry for a rambling start. It was another wakeful night with the boy, but it ended with us walking together into school this morning, bouncing together, and saying bye. Nothing special there. Except the miracle of my boy actually telling me bye and adding three simple, beautiful words to the end.
“I Looove ooo.”
Life is an amazing gift: precious, wonderful and miraculous.
And it arises from treating each other the way we wish to be treated.
This is one simple idea that we spend a lifetime learning to follow. It’s crucial. Without it life loses excitement and potentiality. It becomes the gift that we put in the back of the closet and forget about.
Come Together
I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit of late when I think about our schools. I wrote once that when resources tighten, it is natural to want to look after the needs of those dearest to you first. Even if doing so means that others suffer.
There was a time when I thought that we as a city would overcome this maxim. When it was announced back in June that nine schools were going to be closed, there was the beginning of a coming together that I hadn’t often experienced in this town except when the power was out. It seemed that having a state mandated superintendent sent in with orders to close schools on the basis of a flawed demographic report was doing quite a bit to get all of the schools (or at least those who were on the list) working together. There was no division between us. At least for a moment.
Too often our community is pitted against each other. We’re divided along racial lines. Those in the south are often callously unconcerned about the quality of the schools in the north. There are seemingly ancient divisions between Butler, Lee, and Johnson as well as between Grissom and Huntsville. (Or often times between Huntsville and the entire rest of the system.)
We are divided along financial lines. Wealthier schools often seem to receive preferential attention and support from the Superintendent than those schools in other parts of the community despite his claim to be primarily concerned about “closing the achievement gap.” It would be quite interesting to see if all of the schools PTA presidents, just as a single point of reference, received the same level of access to the superintendent. Somehow, I’m betting that there are those who are more equal than others.
Divide and Conquer
Now the Superintendent is attempting to divide the city along the lines of ability and the cost of services. In other words, Wardynski has offered a response to my questions about the seven million dollars in cuts. He believes that all students should receive exactly the same amount of funding, and since exceptional (the state’s legal terminology) students cost more than non-exceptional students, he is convinced that cutting funding from exceptional students is completely justifiable. He’s simply aware that it’s both politically dangerous and illegal for him to say so. So he keeps his mouth shut when I ask questions. Or he finds technical loopholes that he can wiggle through to avoid answering questions.
I suppose he’s never read Harrison Bergeron on the horror of a life where everyone was finally equal.
He wants to be the U. S. Handicapper General. He said as much in a discussion with Mr. Spinelli back during the budget hearings on September 8th. You can watch it here: http://www.ihigh.com/huntsvillecityschools/broadcast_176461.html?silverlight=1 but the volume is bad. The discussion starts at about the 3:50 mark.
Spinelli: 4.9 million is for ah special education. Approximately we spend $20 million to date on ah. Or we budgeted $20 million in Special Education for the fiscal year 2012.Wardynski: So we’re um about 5 million in federal funding, the rest will come mostly from local funding.S: Yes.W: Total expenditures are pretty close to $20 million dollars. So that about $15 million will be coming from local funding. So of our local funding, which is about $95 million, about 18-19 percent of that will go to special education. And when we lay that down across the children, we’re still completing the analysis, there’s about 2300 children that we track in sets. We’re still waiting for iNow to surface some more for budget purposes. An of those 2300, they represent just about 10% of our students. We’re spending about half of our special education funds on about 400 of those students. So about 50% of our special education funding is going to about 400 of those 2300 students. And that sorta lays down in a way that’s sorta exponential in nature that um the local funding is in some cases is up to $30,000, $40,000 per student. So we’re keeping an eye on that one. We’re implementing the IEPs. By making sure as we’re looking at IEPs and resource allocation, that we’re doing it in a way where with the real sources we have we can meet all of the students’ needs.S: Right. There’s some students that um we’re spending much more than the $30 or $40 thousand on.W: Right. There’s a few outliers.S: Yes.W: We’re taking a good look at how services are rendered to make sure we’re being efficient.S: RightW: And yet meeting the needs of the children.S: And the other 90% of your students, we’re spending about $8,000 or $9,000 a student for the education. [He is talking about non-exceptional kids here.]
So what is he attempting to accomplish here? First, he is attempting to divide the special education community. By arguing that “half of our special education funds” are being spent on about “400 of those students,” he’s attempting to say to the special education community that there are some special education students who are receiving far more services than the vast majority of the entire community.
Dividing Special Education
He’s attempting to defend his actions of cutting $7 million in special education funding by saying first to the special education (SPED) community that there are those who are getting more than your child.
I’m grateful to the SPED community for a world of things, but I think the main thing I appreciate them for is this: communication. We talk to each other, we listen to each other, and for the most part, we do our level best to treat each other the way we want to be treated.
You see, we’re used to getting those looks from strangers who don’t understand why our son is flapping his arms. We understand how it feels. And so rather than staring, we smile, or maybe we walk up and talk. In short, we would appreciate the gift of understanding from others, so when we are able, we offer it.
Dr. Wardynski’s blatantly political attempts to divide the SPED community failed because we talk with each other, and we understand that our child might soon require additional assistance.
Divide Special Education From Everyone Else
Whether or not this same blatantly political attempt to isolate the exceptional students from the non-exceptional students will work, frankly, remains to be seen.
When funding is tight, there is a sense of urgency to get what we can for ourselves and our families and let others worry about themselves. Wardynski is clearly hoping that he can make that case that spending more on a few students will be deemed unfair to the other 89% of the community who are non-exceptional. He’s clearly hoping that Huntsville gives into our baser selves rather than rising to our better angels.
The question is, is he right? Will he succeed in splitting the community into factions? A system is much easier to control when the people refuse to work together, when we only look out for ourselves and our own. A community that stands together cannot be abused.
Wardynski was sold to us as a numbers guy. That’s all well and good, but to be an effective leader you must care about more than just the bottom line. Doing the right thing for the right reason at the right time is also required. The rule of gold shouldn’t outweigh the golden rule.
Sadly, Wardynski, Spinelli, and King seem to have forgotten this. If we stand together, we can remind them.
Tomorrow, there will be a follow up with a list of reasons why you should care about the funding for special education programs. Please check back for that one.
So, once again, the hoop that I was asked to jump through has been pulled away. Do you ever feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick a football that Lucy is holding? Cause I do.
I have no issue with jumping through hoops to protect my son’s education. I only wish that my board member had bothered to inform me of the existence of these hoops earlier in this process.
Dr. Wardynski, why have you cut Special Education by seven million dollars?
Dr. Kovacs is committed to seeking the truth. His use of the Socratic method of asking questions is evidence of this, and I for one greatly appreciate his willingness to question those in power.
Where is the extra $1.9 million was coming from to pay for the TFA’ers? It came out of the $7 million that was cut from Special Education.
Click to view / hide
Categories
Click to view / hide
