Samantha Pierce

Late night last minute preparations for a CSE meeting for one of the children in the morning. I already know what I'm going to say and I already have information at hand to back me up. New York state education regulations as written and implemented tend to throw stumbling blocks in the paths of students with IEP/504 Plans. A student with an IEP/504 Plan that includes an extended time testing accommodation can end up enduring 12 hours of testing to complete Regents exams if they have two exams scheduled on the same day. New York doesn't reschedule these exams to accommodate students with IEP/504 Plans. One option is for student to take one of the exams months later during one of the other allowed testing period in January, June, and August. The other option is to not take one of the exams at all. I'm not a fan of any of those options for my children or anyone else's. So I've got my copy of the full text of IDEA, all 162 pages of it. Download your copy to...

Some big news around here the last few days is the story of a Syracuse City School District (SCSD) substitute teacher stabbed breaking up a fight between students in local high school. People are predictably outraged saying all manner of vile things about not only the students involved but all students in the district. Even Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick has weighed in on the matter declaring the school district must drop its current approach to discipline. The SCSD Code of Conduct has been a hot topic of late. It frustrates families, students, and staff. There is plenty of room for improvement. But people seem to have forgotten, or don’t care, how we got to this point. Families first recognized the problem with discipline in the schools. The Assurance of Discontinuance details just how bad the problem was. High rates of suspensions of students, minority students disproportionately suspended, failure to notify families about referrals and suspension...

A Michigan special education teacher has filed suit alleging that she was wrongfully terminated for bringing sexual harassment by her special education students to the attention of administrators at Bay City Western High School. Teacher: Special ed students sexually harassed me, then I got fired Melissa Sawicki, 36, filed a lawsuit in US District Court in Bay City in September, alleging sexual discrimination and retaliation for protected activity on behalf of Bay City Public Schools and the district’s board of education,  MLive.com reported  on Tuesday.   Sawicki claims special education students began making crude and lascivious comments to her — some even directing obscene gestures to her — shortly after she started her job in the district at Bay City Western High School in 2013. Two, no three, things went wrong if Sawicki’s allegations are proven to be true. First this teacher was not adequately prepared for what she would face in her classrooms during her teac...

Arresting children with disabilities and learning disorders when the adults around them fail to meet the children’s needs is a triumph of poor planning and mediocrity. The latest example of this, that we know about, occurred in a school in Dallas, Texas . April Obin says her son has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and tends to disrupt class at Gabe P. Allen Elementary School several times a week. But he has trained counselors that help him cope with the mood disorder.   On May 9, Obin says her son had an episode that turned violent and he began to bang his head against the wall.   Obin's attorney, Amar Dhillon, says the school was having standardized testing that day. The boy's counselor wasn't available, so they called his mother in for assistance. Now you might be wondering why there was no one else at the school able to help April Obin’s son without the situation allegedly deteriorating the way it did. I know I am. Did anyone think, hmm...