The lie told to Representative Laura Fine.

-By Bev Johns

In a hearing in the Illinois House of Representatives on May 10, supporters of House Bill 2808 were asked by State Representative Laura Fine how the bill would affect the $9,000 in State funds now received by school districts to pay part of the salary of each special education teacher.

Mike Jacoby, Executive Director of the Illinois Association of School Business Officials, replied that under House Bill 2808 school districts would be “receiving 100% of that resource.”

He failed to say that the bill would ELIMINATE the $9,000 for each special education teacher, and allow local schools to spend that money on anything they call special education.

Jacoby also stated that it is the Individualized Education Program (the IEP), NOT funding that is important.

“The IEP determines spending…the IEP drives services…the IEP is required regardless of what funding comes to the district.” (If only special education were that simple.)

It is hard to believe that Jacoby knows so little about what is actually happening in too many school districts in Illinois.

Funding is not only important: Funding is critical (as Jacoby argues about all the rest of school funding).

Where parents know the Federal special education law and regulations, the Illinois law and regulations, AND have the resources to enforce (1) getting a good IEP for their child, and (2) making certain that IEP is implemented; then YES the IEP is most important.

But for all other parents, and for special education teachers it is critical to have direct and dedicated funding (Special Education Personnel Reimbursement) of $9,000 per year for each special education teacher.

Senate Bill 1 and House Bill 2808 would ELIMINATE Special Education Personnel Reimbursement, eliminate direct and dedicated funding for the one school person most important to the education of a child with disabilities: the specially trained special education teacher.

My plug for the Fall convention of the Illinois Council for Exceptional Children.

3 days with over 70 sessions, Friday Table Talk Luncheon and Saturday Lunch (included in your registration fee) plus Friday Night Poster Sessions.

Theme: Special Education: Exceptional Students Need Exceptional Teachers

Location: Chicago Marriott in Naperville, Illinois

Dates: Thursday thru Saturday, November 5 to 7, 2015

Registration fee for Thursday, Nov. 5, $75 ($50 if a CEC member);

Friday OR Saturday, $100 including Lunch ($75 for CEC members);

Friday AND Saturday, $175 including 2 lunches ($125 for CEC)

(fees as low as $20 if you are a Student or are Retired)

We have a large number of great prizes we will award at 3:30 P.M. on Saturday, November 7, only to people who fill our their convention evaluation and are actually present at the prize drawing.

Thursday we will have 2 strands: (1) Latest special ed legal issues,

Writing Compliant IEPs, What General Ed Teachers Need to Know about the IEP,

ELA Common Core Standards OR (2) Profile of a Crisis: Assault, Property Destruction,

Need for Restraint and Seclusion; It’s Time to Resuscitate Our Schools;

Moving Away from Zero Tolerance: Pathways for Diverse Students with Challenging Behaviors

 You can Register for the Illinois Council for Exceptional Children (ICEC) fall convention online using your credit card AND reserve your hotel room online. [or use the attached PREREGISTRATION FORM to pay by check]

To Register for the Thursday – Saturday, November 5 – 7, 2015, event go to www.illinoiscec.org  

You can Register for 1, 2, or all 3 days.

We expect our exceptionally low hotel room rate of $89 at the Marriott to be sold out soon. Please immediately book your room for our Fall Convention using the link below. The $89 rate is good for 1, 2, 3, or 4 people in one room.

Bev Johns, Chair

ICEC Convention Committee

—————————————————————–

Illinois Council for Exceptional Children 2015 Annual Meeting

Start date: 11/4/15

End date: 11/8/15

Last day to book: 10/22/15

Marriott hotel(s) offering your special group rate:

• Chicago Marriott Naperville  for 89.00  per night 

Book your group rate for Illinois Council for Exceptional Children 2015 Annual Meeting

 

Learning Disabilities Association (LDA) of Illinois opposes SB16.

For immediate release
For more information:
Bev Johns-217-473-1790

LDA OF ILLINOIS OPPOSES SENATE BILL 16

Senate Bill 16 would completely change how Illinois funds local schools. The bill has passed the Illinois State Senate, and is now being considered in closed meetings by the top Democratic members of the Illinois House of Representatives.

The Board of the Learning Disabilities Association (LDA) of Illinois on Saturday, September 13th, voted unanimously to OPPOSE Senate Bill 16 as now written.
Bev Johns, president of LDA of Illinois, states, “Senate Bill 16 would directly harm students with disabilities and their parents. Illinois has a proud history in special education. Senate Bill 16 would tarnish all we have done in the past.”

The members of LDA are largely parents of students with learning disabilities (LD), dyslexia and related disabilities. Membership also includes college professors, and special ed teachers.

LDA of Illinois opposes Senate Bill 16 because it would completely eliminate special ed Personnel Reimbursement which provides local school districts $9,000 for each special ed teacher, each school psychologist, each school social worker, etc. that works directly with students with Individualized Education Plans (IEPs).

SB 16 would replace special ed Personnel Reimbursement, and certain other special education funding, with a block grant limited to 13.8 percent of a local school districts’ students.

If a school district identifies more than 13.8 percent of its students as needing special education because of high poverty and/or because of a school district’s sincere attempt to identify every child with a disability, the school district would receive zero State dollars for each student in special education that exceeds 13.8 percent of its student population.

LDA of Illinois opposes this 13.8 percent limit because it is arbitrary and will actively discourage local school districts from identifying students for special education.

Some claim that the 13.8 percent limit will prevent local school districts from over-identifying students. It has been the experience of LDA of Illinois all over the State that local school districts do not identify more students so they can receive $9,000 (1/3 to 1/10 of a special ed teacher’s salary) as identifying students gives parents and students all the legal rights in Illinois law and in the federal law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

Arne’s proof. Marcy’s proof.

This morning NPR reports, “Under the new guidelines, Duncan says he’ll require proof that these (Special Needs) kids aren’t just being served but are actually making academic progress.”

During the 2011-2012 school year – my final year of teaching – I was on evaluation. In our district tenured teachers were formally evaluated by the principal every two years.

The process would usually involve several meetings and a classroom observation.

For many years my school had a large number of Special Needs students – particularly students with autism – and we struggled to successfully apply best practices, including inclusive classroom settings for every student.

It was always my belief that even those students who were identified on the far end of the autism spectrum should be included with typical students in the art room. With the help and support of great paraprofessionals, that is what we did.

The idea of being evaluated by the principal in the final year of my teaching seemed silly. It was a fluke of the calendar.

But as union president I had witnessed awful principals give poor evaluations to retiring veteran teachers just so they could claim they were not giving every teacher a high rating. And I had also seen the devastated look on many of these teachers’ faces who took this stuff seriously, believing that after a life-time of teaching, they were now considered less than adequate.

I, on the other hand, was more skeptical of the process. So when Marcy, my principal, asked me to fill out a sheet on what my professional goals for the year were, I told her that I had none. “I’m a good teacher. I will be a good teacher this year. I am retiring at the end of this year.” 

She asked me to tell her what my goal for the lesson was that she was going to observe.

I told her, “Why don’t we meet afterwards, and you see if you can tell me what my goal was?”

At the appointed time, Marcy walked into my room with pen and a legal-sized note pad and sat on a stool in the corner.

It was a class of fifth graders and we were exploring perspective. I was demonstrating the tricks of using one-point perspective to create the illusion of depth on a two-dimensional surface.

This class – like most of my classes – had a student with autism. In this case Jimmy was on the extreme end of the autism spectrum. He was not verbal and would often appear inattentive, shaking his hands or staring out the window. But we – the paraprofessional and I – knew that Jimmy was hearing me, understood at some level and with problematic motor skills, Jimmy would attempt to do the work. Or some work.

Marcy missed all that.

Worse, Marcy was unaware that she was missing it.

In her post-observation write-up she said that Jimmy was not engaged.

I was appalled. I refused to sign the write-up and wrote a response which I insisted be placed in my personnel file.

“You cannot tell whether Jimmy is engaged or not engaged simply by a one-time observation,” I wrote. “You clearly have very little knowledge of autism, although you were a special education administrator for many years.”

I also pointed out that whether a child has autism or is a typical student, engagement is not binary. A student is not in or out. There are degrees of engagement with a project. This is no less true for Special Needs students.

The Obama administration said Tuesday that the vast majority of the 6.5 million students with disabilities in U.S. schools today are not receiving a quality education, and that it will hold states accountable for demonstrating that those students are making progress.

A major shift in Special Needs accountability.

It must be demonstrated that the students are making progress.

One can only shudder at what Arne has in mind.

All hell breaks loose when Illinois charters are told to stop discriminating.

Republican Jim Oberweiss fought hard for the right of charters to discriminate. That’s what he means by providing “choice” for parents.

The language in the bill was simple enough.

” … all federal and State laws and rules applicable to public schools that pertain to special education and the instruction of English language learners, referred to in this Code as “children of limited English-speaking ability ….”

Those were the words that will be added to the school code in HB 4527.

In even plainer English, Illinois would require charter schools to stop discriminating against Special Needs students and against those who speak another language than English.

Charter schools have a record of doing both of those things.

Public schools are required by law to admit all students.

And let me add a personal note, that I taught for many years in a public school with large numbers of children with Special Needs. We worked for full inclusion and I strongly believe that this was a benefit to every teacher and child in the school.

HB4527 passed by a wide margin.

Bu not before the bias of the charter vultures was exposed for all to see.

Republican Sen. David Luechtefeld (R-Okawville) spoke up.  “One reason charter schools were set up in the first place was to give them that flexibility because a lot of things were not happening that needed to happen in the public school system.”

Flexibility to turn away students with Special Needs and non-English speakers.

Luechtefeld added, that if we take away the right of charters to turn away Special Needs students than charters would be “no different than the public school system and therefore … obsolete.”

Republican Sen. Jim Oberweis (R-North Aurora) used another favorite word of the charter vultures. He opposed HB 4527 because it would give parents “less choice” in their children’s education.

The choice to discriminate against children who speak another language at home. Children with autism. Children with Down Syndrome. Children in wheel chairs.

It would take away the right to make hateful choices.

In the end, HB 4527 passed the Senate 34-15.

It had already passed the Illinois House 77-32

This was one more on a list of bills diminishing the power of charter schools in Illinois.

HB 3754, which would abolish the Charter Schools Commission awaits a vote by the House to concur with the Senate vote.

HB 3937 extends a moratorium on “virtual” charter schools outside the City of Chicago passed the Senate and needs a concurrence vote in the House.

Thanks to Jim Broadway’s report for providing much of the information included here.

Bev Johns. Illinois’ SB 16 threatens Special Ed funding. And a deal with the devil.

– Beverley Holden Johns is a special education advocate and activist.

In a desperate attempt to get votes for Senate Bill 16, the Illinois Senate Education Committee voted to allow school districts to STOP teaching the following for 3 years: drivers’ education; daily physical education;  avoiding abduction; internet safety; the Holocaust and genocides; black history; women’s history;  United States’ history; disability history; the disability rights movement; charter school education; consumer education; natural resources; steroid use and prevention; requirements applicable to sex education courses; patriotism and representative government; and violence prevention and conflict resolution.

SB 16 seems to say that education funding is only about which school districts receive money.

SB 16 ignores the fact that State funds are now tied to actually doing something, to encouraging or requiring that those funds be spent for certain students or for certain activities.

As amended, except for high cost students, Illinois State Senate Bill 16 would allow special ed funds to be spent for almost anything a local school district wants to spend them on, move the funding from students with IEPs to a guess “representative of the statewide average population of students with disabilities,” and almost eliminate special ed funding for some school districts.

As this would violate Federal law, Amendment 5 to Senate Bill 16 has now been proposed to say that Federal IDEA (but NOT State) funds must be spent on special ed.

Illinois now provides State education funds tied to services to students. SB 16 would pretend that every school district serves exactly the same percentage of special ed students.

SB 16 would disconnect State funding from actual services to students.

Amendment 4 to Senate Bill 16 would remove some State mandates unless those mandates are fully funded by the State of Illinois.

Amendment 3 to Senate Bill 16 would eliminate the $9,000 Illinois pays for each special ed teacher, and instead fund Illinois special ed with one flat percentage of students no matter how few or how many students a local school district identifies as needing special education.

This would punish some school districts appropriately serving students, while rewarding other school districts NOT identifying students as needing special education.

The current special ed Personnel Reimbursement formula directly provides $9,000 for each special education teacher,and all other specialized personnel “providing services in accordance with an individualized education program (IEP).”

This direct funding is essential to the provision of specialized and individualized instruction.

Amendment 3 would spend State money NOT on students with IEPs, but instead on a”weighting percentage” established by the State Board of Education “representative” of a guess as to the number of students with disabilities in Illinois.

It can NOT say based on the number of students with disabilities because no one knows what that is. So it says “representative”of that number.

To eliminate special ed Personnel Reimbursement is to invite all of the problems that have resulted from the Chicago Block Grant.

 

Beverly Johns. Rewarding schools for not identifying students with special needs.

– Beverly Holden Johns is an Illinois special education advocate and activist.

Amendment 1 to Senate Bill 16 would eliminate the $9,000 Illinois pays for each special ed teacher, and instead fund Illinois special ed with a flat block grant no matter how few or how many students a local school district identifies as needing special education.

This would punish some school districts appropriately serving students, while rewarding other school districts NOT identifying students as needing special education.

The current special ed Personnel Reimbursement formula directly provides $9,000 for each special education teacher, and all other specialized personnel “providing services in accordance with an individualized education program (IEP).”

This direct funding is essential to the provision of specialized and individualized instruction.

To eliminate special ed Personnel Reimbursement is to invite all of the problems that have resulted from the Chicago Block Grant.

Please urge your State Senator in Springfield to OPPOSE Amendment 1 to Senate Bill 16.

Bev Johns. ISBE class size rules are dead. For now. But Koch is still spreading lies.

– Bev Johns frequently contributes information on special education issues. She is an education activist and advocate.

ISBE now says the special ed class size rule is dead, but is stillspreading the absolutely false idea that the current rules somehow restrict “access to the most rigorous classes.”

ISBE told the Chicago Sun-Times, “The rule process is such that these proposed rules will expire and at this point in time, we don’t expect to move forward with an entire set of new rules but will try to work on giving districts flexibility so that all students can have access to the most rigorous classes.”

State Supt. Chris Koch just told local school superintendents:
“The Board will not be taking action on rules governing special education class size and composition (Part 226). I still believe our current rules are overreaching and do not always allow for optimal placements, however, at this time we will focus on providing
districts with the flexibility available through existing processes and procedures to ensure all students have access to challenging curriculum so they’re prepared for college and careers.”

Due to the vast opposition of parents and teachers, the ISBE Board required its staff to kill the proposed elimination of State special class size limits.

When will the State Superintendent admit he is wrong? Why have public comment if the overwhelming comment of parents and teachers on an important public issue affecting every student and every teacher is ignored by the State Superintendent of Education?

Breaking: ISBE pulls class size limits off their agenda again. Good work.

The Chicago Teachers Union’s Kristine Mayle is reporting that the proposal to remove special education class size limits has once again been pulled from the agenda of the Illinois State Board of Educatiion. They were planning to address the issue tomorrow.

But a huge mobilization of emails and phone calls by parents, teachers and special education advocates across the state appears to have had impact.

And this just in from Bev Johns:

ISBE postpones special ed class size discussion.

Will ISBE hold a special meeting to discuss/act
on it later this month or early in February
or is the proposal dead as the rule must be
FINAL (go through JCAR without a JCAR prohibition)
and be published in the Illinois Register by March 8.

Just posted on the ISBE website:

NOTE: Part 226 (Special Education) (class size/composition) WILL NOT be discussed at the January Board Meeting.

THANK YOU for all the contacts you made.

YOU made the difference.

Bev Johns, Chair
Governmental Relations
Illinois Council for Exceptional Children (ICEC)