I recently became a “retired educator” after 30 plus total years with 27 years as a public school administrator. Most of those years were spent with a focus on special education with my teaching career spent as a teacher of students with behavior disabilities. Many articulate, passionate, and caring public school advocates have spoken on the voucher legislation being proposed in Iowa and I admire and support the positions they have taken on this issue.
I’m going to focus on the underlying issue that is a bedrock of the voucher movement, although it is seldom clarified as such by those who favor the use of public funds to send Iowa students to private schools. To be clear, I abhor this legislation and find it wrong on every level. But, let’s not forget for one moment that this is about “my child not going to school with those kids”. “Those kids” include students with disabilities and private schools have no obligation to enroll students who do not meet their criteria, whatever that criteria entails.
What is particularly frustrating about this is that, deep within this perspective, is a shred of truth that is becoming harder and harder to ignore. That truth is that we have students in public schools that need more support than can be offered in the public school setting. This is where the story we are hearing over and over again comes into play; the story about the explosive child in the regular education classroom who assaults the teacher, destroys the classroom, etc. leaving other children traumatized.
I say this with great trepidation because I firmly believe that this is a small, small minority of students and I believe with appropriately trained staff who implement individual student plans and believe all students can be successful, the vast majority of students in Iowa can be, and will be, successful in the public school setting.
Unfortunately, what has happened is that public schools have become THE answer to any student behavior situation, regardless of how complex. And, don’t kid yourself, the very people who are pushing the voucher legislation are the same people who are leaving public schools high and dry with inadequate resources and a lack of alternatives to serve these students with very challenging needs. And, then, they have the audacity to tell us we aren’t getting the job done and families need an option so their child can go to a school that is safe knowing this option allows for the decimation of funds that will negatively impact the very resources we are barely hanging onto now in order to serve students who struggle with behavior in a proactive manner.
And, don’t even get me started on the mixed messages and competing expectations and rules that are required of public schools in Iowa. I have been a Director of Special Education at an AEA and one of the largest school districts in Iowa in the last 10 years. During that time I was told we could not put our hands on students unless they were a danger to themselves or others (makes sense), suspend students for more than 10 days for behaviors related to their disability (critical in order to not deny an education to a student with disabilities), restrain/seclude students with disabilities at a higher rate than students without disabilities (makes little sense since students who require this kind of intervention have significant behavior disabilities most of the time), follow extremely prescriptive behavior plans for individual students (very difficult to accomplish when plans go above and beyond what can reasonably be offered in a public school setting), employ highly qualified and experienced staff to work with a myriad of students with complex behavior issues (I have never experienced the dearth of qualified staff that we are facing right now), and use of alternative educational settings can be used only as a last resort (this would require us to have access to settings such as this in the first place when many districts have no access to alternative settings). And just to make it even more confusing, we had Senate File 2360 that allows us to put our hands on students even without the threshold of being a danger to themselves or others (you can see my thoughts on this silly law at https://rapaciouslearning.org/the-racist-union-of-iowas-room-clear-bill/).
The coup de grace was a complaint filed with the Department of Justice resulting in an agreement between the district I worked for and the DOJ where we were not allowed to block egress to maintain a student who was disruptive to remain in a classroom, seclude a student in a space when the student was causing a disruption, remove a student from the learning environment if the behavior is related to the student’s disability, and an incredible amount of paperwork and meetings that are required each time a student needs a restraint to keep the student or others safe. Seclusion is not allowed at all under any circumstances (Seclusion is the involuntary confinement of a student alone in any room or area. An adult blocking a student’s way to leave a room or area, blocking the student’s escape route, or holding the door shut is considered seclusion). This agreement was required after the district reduced the use of restraint and seclusion by over 70% and the use of alternative placements went from over 300 students to less than 100 in five years. The amount of hours I have spent with individual due process cases, state complaints, OCR complaints, and the DOJ complaint around these issues is mind boggling and counterintuitive to where our efforts need to be focused so we can actually do the work to help our students, families, and staff.
In the meantime, the state has given us very little assistance beyond token measures such as a grant that will pay for behavior classrooms (funding is 1.5 times what we normally receive for a student and adequate funding for classrooms like this would be closer to 10 to 15 times the normal daily reimbursement for a student). Mental health services are basically non-existent with incredibly long waits to receive adequate services and inpatient beds essentially unavailable. Placements for students who engage in criminal behavior happen so infrequently we have no idea what it takes for the juvenile justice system to determine a student is a safety threat. It is unbelievably common for middle school aged students who commit a crime with a GUN (think armed robbery) to be back at school with little to no consequence or support. Lack of qualified staff is at a critical stage while the state just keeps upping the expectation for what we are required to do for students.
I have spent countless hours in the last 10 years making every attempt to listen to staff and determine how we can continue down a road that is so filled with barriers that I truly don’t know if any more alternative routes exist. Teachers and administrators who would have never imagined themselves saying “I’m afraid for other students’ safety”, I’m afraid for my co-worker’s safety” and “I’m afraid for my own safety” are saying those words and it appears that no one is listening and no one cares. And, most important of all, the students who are exhibiting these behaviors are not in a learning environment. We are deluding ourselves when we think the public schools are the appropriate setting for a student to engage in learning who is aggressively acting out for hours on end, day after day.
For public schools this is another prime example of being forced to play a game you cannot possibly win; it would be like playing a basketball game where one team never gets to touch the ball. Listening to legislators blame us for providing an unsafe environment for students when they refuse to adequately fund COMMUNITY resources (this is not a public school responsibility by itself) in even the most rudimentary form while upping the requirements for us to serve these students who face so many behavior challenges is, at best, malpractice and, at worst, an avenue to segregate and inadequately serve students who need the most supports while simultaneously pulling the rug out from underneath the incredible public school staff who make valiant efforts every day to serve this challenging population of students.