The Bristol, CT school district is being sued for the way they handled a nine year old boy's placement.
Suit Filed After Bristol Special Ed Placement
By DON STACOM | Courant Staff Writer July 11, 2008
BRISTOL — - The family of a special-education student is suing the city, claiming it is entitled to legal fees after hiring a lawyer to challenge a decision about where the boy should attend class.
The school system this week filed court documents to contest the family's claim, indicating it intends to fight the case.
Details about the issues are scarce. The federal lawsuit was filed in April under the name "Mr. and Mrs. T" to keep the boy's identity secret, and schools Superintendent Philip Streifer on Thursday evening said that the matter had been turned over to city attorneys and that he would not comment on it.
The suit says the boy, a 9-year-old at Stafford Elementary School, was suspended from school last fall because of "a number of behavioral incidents." The suit says the boy suffers from hyperactivity, but did not describe the incidents or say whether they involved violence or threats. The schools provided two hours a day of home education for the boy.
The boy's parents took the school system to hearings before the state education department last winter, accusing the schools of violating the boy's right to attend classes in the least possible restrictive setting. According to the suit, a hearing officer sided with the parents, and ordered Bristol to hire an aide, train staff to work with the boy, provide psychological counseling and pay for a home-school, behavioral training program.
The family is suing for reimbursement of an unspecified amount in legal fees.
In a response filed Thursday, the city denied many of the claims and said the suit was premature because it is appealing the hearing officer's decision.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Simply Left Behind
Take a look at Simply Left Behind. It's quite an interesting read. The tag line makes you think: "Democrats Work For Solutions; Republicans Pray The Problem Will Go Away"
We have a LOT of Republicans in Morrisville. When it comes to the school system and the survival of the borough, "pray the problem will go away" seems to be the mantra.
Full Disclosure: Simply Left Behind is an unabashedly left wing liberal leaning website. The right-wing whackos and left-wing liberal weenies both have good idea as well as bad ideas. You need to be smart enough to choose the best and forget the rest
A Paradigm Is More Than Two Bits was a pretty good look at rights and responsibilities.
When considering the state of the American political and governing system, it is probably a good idea to think about the flip side of the coin: the governed.
I've always believed that it is important to stress to Americans that there is no free lunch. For too long, politicians on both sides of the fence have strived hard to come up with painless solutions to thorny problems, not trusting the American people to be a rational, intelligent and reasonable community of people.
That's probably an accurate impulse. I can't really blame Republicans for offering tax cuts to ignore or Democrats for offering grandiose schemes to solve intractable problems. The sense I get is that Americans of all stripes would prefer someone else handle the problem.
We're spoiled, in other words. This sense of "it's somebody else's responsibility" plays out in so many facets of life, it's not even funny.
You get hit by a car. You sue the other driver. He hires a lawyer and sues you back to try to prove that, indeed, it was your fault for stepping in front of his car.
Voter turnout in elections has been abysmal, even in 2004 when people took up voting arms against a sea of trouble and likely again this year, despite Barack Obama's encouraging and energizing candidacy.
You see a woman in an emergency room collapse. She lays there for 24 hours and dies. No one does a thing. Why? Because someone else should have handled it.
You walk down a street and a piece of newspaper blows across and wraps around your ankle. You stand next to a garbage can, yet rather than reach down, pluck the paper and toss it in the bin, you shake your foot and off it flies to litter again. Serial litter, I like to call this.
We fight a war in a far-off land, and the only sacrifice we're asked to make is to load up on debt and shop some more. Arguably, given what has happened, this might turn into the ultimate sacrifice for many of us, but that's a different story.
We ask so much of our country. We give so little in return. Perhaps in addition to a Bill of Rights, we should look into establishing a Bill or Responsibilities.
A Google search turns up roughly 300,000 hits on that term. Some of these "bills" are simply outrageously idiotic: really, the best someone could come up with was "you have the responsibility to be a loyal citizen of the United States of America"?
Memo to the Roses: WE ARE! (I won't embarrass them with a link)
I did find a rather intriguing Bill, and I wanted to share it with you:
Freedom and responsibility are mutual and inseparable; we can ensure enjoyment of the one only by exercising the other. Freedom for all of us depends on responsibility by each of us.
To secure and expand our liberties, therefore, we accept these responsibilities as individual members of a free society:
1. To be fully responsible for our own actions and for the consequences of those actions. Freedom to choose carries with it the responsibility for our choices.
2. To respect the rights and beliefs of others. In a free society, diversity flourishes. Courtesy and consideration toward others are measures of a civilized society.
3. To give sympathy, understanding and help to others. As we hope others will help us when we are in need, we should help others when they are in need.
4. To do our best to meet our own and our families' needs. There is no personal freedom without economic freedom. By helping ourselves and those closest to us to become productive members of society, we contribute to the strength of the nation.
5. To respect and obey the laws. Laws are mutually accepted rules by which, together, we maintain a free society. Liberty itself is built on a foundation of law. That foundation provides an orderly process for changing laws. It also depends on our obeying laws once they have been freely adopted.
6. To respect the property of others, both private and public. No one has a right to what is not his or hers. The right to enjoy what is ours depends on our respecting the right of others to enjoy what is theirs.
7. To share with others our appreciation of the benefits and obligations of freedom. Freedom shared is freedom strengthened.
8. To participate constructively in the nation's political life. Democracy depends on an active citizenry. It depends equally on an informed citizenry.
9. To help freedom survive by assuming personal responsibility for its defense. Our nation cannot survive unless we defend it. Its security rests on the individual determination of each of us to help preserve it.
10. To respect the rights and to meet the responsibilities on which our liberty rests and our democracy depends. This is the essence of freedom. Maintaining it requires our common effort, all together and each individually.
Freedom is a balance of rights and responsibilities. If one only assumes the rights of freedom without taking responsibility to see those rights are secured and maintained, one loses the rights.
If one only secures the rights of freedom for oneself, without ensuring those rights for everyone, one loses freedoms.
If one abuses, distorts, or otherwise diminishes the rights of freedom, abrogating one's responsibilities for that freedom, then one loses one's freedom anyway. Karma's a bitch.
If only enjoys the freedom to enjoy one's property, one's life, one's liberty, one's pursuit of happiness while even one other person is unjustly deprived of his or hers, then one loses his freedom too.
We've seen that. We've seen that in this administration and in administrations throughout at least my lifetime. And one could make the argument, indeed, that because Americans have never had the responsibilities inherent in freedom, Americans were never truly free.
Oh, we could fake it, to be sure. When this land was wilderness and a man or woman could ride an entire day without seeing another person, you have the illusion of freedom.
Oddly enough, those same people took it upon themselves to ensure their own freedom by standing up for themselves when that freedom was threatened.
A community, you see, is a balance between the rights of the individual and the needs of the population. We are the most important unit in our own lives, but we are not the most important individual in anyone else's life. We can't be. As I like to say, I don't care what anyone else thinks because no one else is going to climb into my coffin with me when I die.
That statement, however, implies that I can live with myself well enough that even I get into my coffin when I die!
Vigilance, involvement, activism: community.
I would quibble with some of these statements from the Freedoms Foundation. I'm drawn to article 9 as one that could use some fleshing out and tuning up, because it allows for all sorts of bizarre interpretations ("Why, I own this Abrams tank because you never can tell when Osama and his minions will come strolling down Cherry Lane, bent on taking out the Gas-N-Gulp!")
We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.
Right there in the Preamble to the Constitution is our mandate: to create community. A nation. A secure foundation to build our hopes and dreams on. To prevent tyranny and injustice, in whatever form it may take. To raise our families. To be free, all of us, not only those of us with money who can buy a home in a gated community (an oxymoron, that..."gated community"), but you, me, your children, my children, her children, his children.
As we ponder how to fix the things that are broken in America, we might want to pause a moment and see if as we point fingers, we aren't pointing many more back at ourselves.
We have a LOT of Republicans in Morrisville. When it comes to the school system and the survival of the borough, "pray the problem will go away" seems to be the mantra.
Full Disclosure: Simply Left Behind is an unabashedly left wing liberal leaning website. The right-wing whackos and left-wing liberal weenies both have good idea as well as bad ideas. You need to be smart enough to choose the best and forget the rest
A Paradigm Is More Than Two Bits was a pretty good look at rights and responsibilities.
When considering the state of the American political and governing system, it is probably a good idea to think about the flip side of the coin: the governed.
I've always believed that it is important to stress to Americans that there is no free lunch. For too long, politicians on both sides of the fence have strived hard to come up with painless solutions to thorny problems, not trusting the American people to be a rational, intelligent and reasonable community of people.
That's probably an accurate impulse. I can't really blame Republicans for offering tax cuts to ignore or Democrats for offering grandiose schemes to solve intractable problems. The sense I get is that Americans of all stripes would prefer someone else handle the problem.
We're spoiled, in other words. This sense of "it's somebody else's responsibility" plays out in so many facets of life, it's not even funny.
You get hit by a car. You sue the other driver. He hires a lawyer and sues you back to try to prove that, indeed, it was your fault for stepping in front of his car.
Voter turnout in elections has been abysmal, even in 2004 when people took up voting arms against a sea of trouble and likely again this year, despite Barack Obama's encouraging and energizing candidacy.
You see a woman in an emergency room collapse. She lays there for 24 hours and dies. No one does a thing. Why? Because someone else should have handled it.
You walk down a street and a piece of newspaper blows across and wraps around your ankle. You stand next to a garbage can, yet rather than reach down, pluck the paper and toss it in the bin, you shake your foot and off it flies to litter again. Serial litter, I like to call this.
We fight a war in a far-off land, and the only sacrifice we're asked to make is to load up on debt and shop some more. Arguably, given what has happened, this might turn into the ultimate sacrifice for many of us, but that's a different story.
We ask so much of our country. We give so little in return. Perhaps in addition to a Bill of Rights, we should look into establishing a Bill or Responsibilities.
A Google search turns up roughly 300,000 hits on that term. Some of these "bills" are simply outrageously idiotic: really, the best someone could come up with was "you have the responsibility to be a loyal citizen of the United States of America"?
Memo to the Roses: WE ARE! (I won't embarrass them with a link)
I did find a rather intriguing Bill, and I wanted to share it with you:
Freedom and responsibility are mutual and inseparable; we can ensure enjoyment of the one only by exercising the other. Freedom for all of us depends on responsibility by each of us.
To secure and expand our liberties, therefore, we accept these responsibilities as individual members of a free society:
1. To be fully responsible for our own actions and for the consequences of those actions. Freedom to choose carries with it the responsibility for our choices.
2. To respect the rights and beliefs of others. In a free society, diversity flourishes. Courtesy and consideration toward others are measures of a civilized society.
3. To give sympathy, understanding and help to others. As we hope others will help us when we are in need, we should help others when they are in need.
4. To do our best to meet our own and our families' needs. There is no personal freedom without economic freedom. By helping ourselves and those closest to us to become productive members of society, we contribute to the strength of the nation.
5. To respect and obey the laws. Laws are mutually accepted rules by which, together, we maintain a free society. Liberty itself is built on a foundation of law. That foundation provides an orderly process for changing laws. It also depends on our obeying laws once they have been freely adopted.
6. To respect the property of others, both private and public. No one has a right to what is not his or hers. The right to enjoy what is ours depends on our respecting the right of others to enjoy what is theirs.
7. To share with others our appreciation of the benefits and obligations of freedom. Freedom shared is freedom strengthened.
8. To participate constructively in the nation's political life. Democracy depends on an active citizenry. It depends equally on an informed citizenry.
9. To help freedom survive by assuming personal responsibility for its defense. Our nation cannot survive unless we defend it. Its security rests on the individual determination of each of us to help preserve it.
10. To respect the rights and to meet the responsibilities on which our liberty rests and our democracy depends. This is the essence of freedom. Maintaining it requires our common effort, all together and each individually.
Freedom is a balance of rights and responsibilities. If one only assumes the rights of freedom without taking responsibility to see those rights are secured and maintained, one loses the rights.
If one only secures the rights of freedom for oneself, without ensuring those rights for everyone, one loses freedoms.
If one abuses, distorts, or otherwise diminishes the rights of freedom, abrogating one's responsibilities for that freedom, then one loses one's freedom anyway. Karma's a bitch.
If only enjoys the freedom to enjoy one's property, one's life, one's liberty, one's pursuit of happiness while even one other person is unjustly deprived of his or hers, then one loses his freedom too.
We've seen that. We've seen that in this administration and in administrations throughout at least my lifetime. And one could make the argument, indeed, that because Americans have never had the responsibilities inherent in freedom, Americans were never truly free.
Oh, we could fake it, to be sure. When this land was wilderness and a man or woman could ride an entire day without seeing another person, you have the illusion of freedom.
Oddly enough, those same people took it upon themselves to ensure their own freedom by standing up for themselves when that freedom was threatened.
A community, you see, is a balance between the rights of the individual and the needs of the population. We are the most important unit in our own lives, but we are not the most important individual in anyone else's life. We can't be. As I like to say, I don't care what anyone else thinks because no one else is going to climb into my coffin with me when I die.
That statement, however, implies that I can live with myself well enough that even I get into my coffin when I die!
Vigilance, involvement, activism: community.
I would quibble with some of these statements from the Freedoms Foundation. I'm drawn to article 9 as one that could use some fleshing out and tuning up, because it allows for all sorts of bizarre interpretations ("Why, I own this Abrams tank because you never can tell when Osama and his minions will come strolling down Cherry Lane, bent on taking out the Gas-N-Gulp!")
We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.
Right there in the Preamble to the Constitution is our mandate: to create community. A nation. A secure foundation to build our hopes and dreams on. To prevent tyranny and injustice, in whatever form it may take. To raise our families. To be free, all of us, not only those of us with money who can buy a home in a gated community (an oxymoron, that..."gated community"), but you, me, your children, my children, her children, his children.
As we ponder how to fix the things that are broken in America, we might want to pause a moment and see if as we point fingers, we aren't pointing many more back at ourselves.
Bensalem Board and Council Work Together
It may have taken two years to negotiations, but it's nice to see that a borough council and a school board from the same town can work together.
Deal will help district save money
The agreement involves fee waivers and drainage easements.
By JOAN HELLYER
The Bensalem School District will save “hundreds of thousands of dollars” from a deal recently reached between the school system and Bensalem’s municipal government, the school board solicitor said.
The township has agreed to help the district save money by waiving permit and application fees and other charges in connection with pending renovation and construction projects, solicitor Thomas Profy III said.
The projects include renovations at Cecelia Snyder Middle School off Hulmeville Road and the transportation center off Byberry Road and the planned construction of a physical education facility behind Bensalem High School, he said.
In exchange, the school district granted some easements at no cost to the township in connection with a road improvement project along Galloway Road, Profy said. The easements allowed the municipality to install drainage systems along the roadway where it borders district property, as required by the state, he said.
The one easement involves almost 100,000 square-feet of land at Galloway and Hulmeville roads at the southwest corner of the high school’s property, the solicitor said. The other involves about 7,000 square- feet of a 4.2-acre piece of undeveloped district property at Galloway and Richlieu roads, he said.
Profy said he started working on the deal with township solicitor Barbara Kirk in early 2007. They recently came to terms.
The Courier Times was unsuccessful in reaching Kirk for comment, after calls to her office at Rudolph, Pizzo and Clarke in Bensalem. District officials referred questions about specific amounts that would be saved to director of business administration Jack Myers, who could not be reached this week for comment.
The Bensalem school board approved the deal in June, and efforts are under way to finalize the agreement with township officials, the school board solicitor said.
Also as part of the agreement, the township officially transferred ownership of Samuel K. Faust Elementary School to the district. A township authority, which has since been dissolved, built the school in the mid-1950s, Profy said. The township held onto the property’s title until the district finished paying the loans that were taken out to cover its construction and various expansions, he said.
Deal will help district save money
The agreement involves fee waivers and drainage easements.
By JOAN HELLYER
The Bensalem School District will save “hundreds of thousands of dollars” from a deal recently reached between the school system and Bensalem’s municipal government, the school board solicitor said.
The township has agreed to help the district save money by waiving permit and application fees and other charges in connection with pending renovation and construction projects, solicitor Thomas Profy III said.
The projects include renovations at Cecelia Snyder Middle School off Hulmeville Road and the transportation center off Byberry Road and the planned construction of a physical education facility behind Bensalem High School, he said.
In exchange, the school district granted some easements at no cost to the township in connection with a road improvement project along Galloway Road, Profy said. The easements allowed the municipality to install drainage systems along the roadway where it borders district property, as required by the state, he said.
The one easement involves almost 100,000 square-feet of land at Galloway and Hulmeville roads at the southwest corner of the high school’s property, the solicitor said. The other involves about 7,000 square- feet of a 4.2-acre piece of undeveloped district property at Galloway and Richlieu roads, he said.
Profy said he started working on the deal with township solicitor Barbara Kirk in early 2007. They recently came to terms.
The Courier Times was unsuccessful in reaching Kirk for comment, after calls to her office at Rudolph, Pizzo and Clarke in Bensalem. District officials referred questions about specific amounts that would be saved to director of business administration Jack Myers, who could not be reached this week for comment.
The Bensalem school board approved the deal in June, and efforts are under way to finalize the agreement with township officials, the school board solicitor said.
Also as part of the agreement, the township officially transferred ownership of Samuel K. Faust Elementary School to the district. A township authority, which has since been dissolved, built the school in the mid-1950s, Profy said. The township held onto the property’s title until the district finished paying the loans that were taken out to cover its construction and various expansions, he said.
Schools News Around the Blogosphere
Learning from the best schools, whatever we call them
St. Paul Pioneer Press
Joe Nathan
All kinds of students - eager, indifferent, bright and bored, suburban, urban and rural, will benefit from careful, nondefensive use of several recent reports about Minnesota's district and charter public schools. The reports came from Minnesota's Legislative Auditor, the University of Minnesota/Minnesota State College/University System and the Center for School Change.
Is algebra useless? Not to these folks
Sacramento Bee
Thursday morning, Johnnie Powell, a longtime National Weather Service forecaster, heard the news that all of California's eighth-grade students would have to take Algebra 1 within three years.
Professor: Don't leave gifted, talented behind
Des Moines Register
Sally Beisser has watched educational programs for Iowa's most talented students improve and expand over 30 years, but the Drake University professor is concerned that those efforts have been hurt by a federal push to bring lower-achieving classmates up to speed.
289 Math & Science Employment and Employment Projections by Required Education and Training Levels in the United States 2006-2016
Columnist EducationNews.org
This is the first of a series of Center reports that will be prepared from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) U. S. Employment Projections 2006-2016 published in the Monthly Labor Review November 2007. The ten-year projections of United States employment are prepared every two years and are conveniently ignored by the popular media and the supporters and critics of public education in the United States.
Performance-based bonuses cropping up across Maryland
Baltimore Sun
From rural Washington County to suburban Prince George's County, school systems around the state are beginning to wade into a promising but controversial topic in education: pay for performance.
Autistic students get help navigating college life
USA Today
By Melissa Kossler Dutton, Associated Press
When Dan Hackett started college, he didn't make the grades he knew he could. Hackett, who has Asperger's syndrome, found at the Community College of Allegheny County in Pittsburgh that some of his symptoms were holding him back. He had difficulty organizing his time and managing assignments.
Pennsylvania Tells Autism Speaks to Stop Talking
In a historical and unprecedented move, the Pennsylvania legislature voted nearly unanimously in the affirmative for House Bill 1150 to mandate commercial insurance companies to cover some services for children with autism. The bill, introduced by House Speaker Dennis M. O'Brien, requires insurance companies to cover up to $36,000 of autism-related treatment for individuals less than 21 years old.
Could Four-Day Weeks Work for You?
Some school districts looking to save time and money have switched to four-day school weeks, either leaving the fifth day free or available for tutoring and parent conferences. Although some superintendents favor the concentrated class time, some say the wear and tear from a longer day has not been worth it for staff or students.
Student Gains in Privately Managed Philadelphia Schools - Nearly Double Those in District Schools
State Tests Show Increases in Student Achievement at EdisonLearning Schools in both Reading & Math
School test scores recently released by the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment reveal that schools partnering with private education management organizations (EMO's) - including EdisonLearning - showed greater gains in student achievement than the schools operated by the Philadelphia School District.
St. Paul Pioneer Press
Joe Nathan
All kinds of students - eager, indifferent, bright and bored, suburban, urban and rural, will benefit from careful, nondefensive use of several recent reports about Minnesota's district and charter public schools. The reports came from Minnesota's Legislative Auditor, the University of Minnesota/Minnesota State College/University System and the Center for School Change.
Is algebra useless? Not to these folks
Sacramento Bee
Thursday morning, Johnnie Powell, a longtime National Weather Service forecaster, heard the news that all of California's eighth-grade students would have to take Algebra 1 within three years.
Professor: Don't leave gifted, talented behind
Des Moines Register
Sally Beisser has watched educational programs for Iowa's most talented students improve and expand over 30 years, but the Drake University professor is concerned that those efforts have been hurt by a federal push to bring lower-achieving classmates up to speed.
289 Math & Science Employment and Employment Projections by Required Education and Training Levels in the United States 2006-2016
Columnist EducationNews.org
This is the first of a series of Center reports that will be prepared from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) U. S. Employment Projections 2006-2016 published in the Monthly Labor Review November 2007. The ten-year projections of United States employment are prepared every two years and are conveniently ignored by the popular media and the supporters and critics of public education in the United States.
Performance-based bonuses cropping up across Maryland
Baltimore Sun
From rural Washington County to suburban Prince George's County, school systems around the state are beginning to wade into a promising but controversial topic in education: pay for performance.
Autistic students get help navigating college life
USA Today
By Melissa Kossler Dutton, Associated Press
When Dan Hackett started college, he didn't make the grades he knew he could. Hackett, who has Asperger's syndrome, found at the Community College of Allegheny County in Pittsburgh that some of his symptoms were holding him back. He had difficulty organizing his time and managing assignments.
Pennsylvania Tells Autism Speaks to Stop Talking
In a historical and unprecedented move, the Pennsylvania legislature voted nearly unanimously in the affirmative for House Bill 1150 to mandate commercial insurance companies to cover some services for children with autism. The bill, introduced by House Speaker Dennis M. O'Brien, requires insurance companies to cover up to $36,000 of autism-related treatment for individuals less than 21 years old.
Could Four-Day Weeks Work for You?
Some school districts looking to save time and money have switched to four-day school weeks, either leaving the fifth day free or available for tutoring and parent conferences. Although some superintendents favor the concentrated class time, some say the wear and tear from a longer day has not been worth it for staff or students.
Student Gains in Privately Managed Philadelphia Schools - Nearly Double Those in District Schools
State Tests Show Increases in Student Achievement at EdisonLearning Schools in both Reading & Math
School test scores recently released by the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment reveal that schools partnering with private education management organizations (EMO's) - including EdisonLearning - showed greater gains in student achievement than the schools operated by the Philadelphia School District.
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