84° F
Letters to the Editor
Say no to the EISD’s therapeutic day-use facility
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
|
|
4
Dear Editor:
Eanes Independent School District trustees are reviewing a 15-year master facilities plan. Included in it are plans for a therapeutic day-use facility. This is the latest politically correct label for a segregated facility envisioned to serve some students with special needs. EISD’s master facilities plan should not include facilities that further isolate children with special needs.
Children with special needs – those in the district today, and those to come in the future – need EISD trustees to say no to a master facilities plan that includes plans for any structure that would segregate some of them from their non-disabled peers. Special education services can, and should, be provided on a child’s home campus.
The concept of a segregated facility was first leaked by EISD last February. Back then, it was conceived as a $700,000 wing of a Valley View Elementary School administration building for students with behavioral issues. The reaction from the majority of parents of children with special needs was swift and sure – not my child and never without my written permission. The Arc of Texas spoke at a board meeting noting that nowadays most districts are working to close segregated facilities, not to build new ones. When they exist, segregated facilities have shown far more potential for harm than for good.
EISD administrators pressed ahead changing only what they called the building and modifying the target student. By May, when Superintendent Nola Wellman met with concerned parents, the TDU had grown in cost to $2.2 million. It remains a segregated facility. Such facilities have been widely discredited by special education experts; they are not consistent with best educational practices. In fact, Wellman noted at that May 4 meeting that “the cart was before the horse” confirming that no outside educational experts had been consulted and that the programs to be provided in the facility had yet to be conceived.
EISD does not need a segregated facility; instead trustees should require facilities to be built on each campus. That is the law of the land. That is the best practice. That is exemplary. And that is what every child with special needs deserves.
Carl G. Shepherd
Briarwood Trail
Back to the future was a great movie, but it is not a good educational policy. Children who are segregated simply do not develop to their potential. Our trustees need to step in and do what the administration is clearly incapable of doing: saying no to a facility that “serves” children by isolating them.
Is the administration serious? $2.2 million for a building to teach a handful of students? I’ve heard that this is only going to serve a group of profoundly disabled students–less than 10 is what the the Picayune has reported–so I can’t understand the discrepancy.
A building that cost more than $200,000 per student to build?
Trustees, if that’s true, this is a no brainer. We can’t afford this.
Whether it’s $750,00 or $2.2 million (and I don’t know of anyone who’s seen why the justification on the cost jump), the concept of the facility is very disturbing to most special needs parents. In May, at a special needs parent meeting, Dr. Wellman and the special ed director indicated about four students with extreme behavior would be located there.
It really doesn’t matter whether this institution is for 4 kids, or 20 kids. What is important is that EISD hold itself to the same standards of using best practices to teach all students. It is in no way an educational best practice to isolate a child in a standalone setting, no matter how “therapeutic” it may be intended to be.
We don’t teach children in AP classes to not use the internet, even though they did that 20 years ago. And we should never isolate a child with special needs just to make it more convenient for the EISD administration and teachers.
It is not a best practice: this center has no place in EISD.