Our Dirty Little Secret
I want to share with all of you an example of what parents of children with disabilities go through in New Jersey. Sadly, this is not new, nor is it likely to change anytime in the near future. There needs to be a fundamental shift in how NJDOE/OSEP view these students, how individual districts view them, and how communities value them (or don’t).
This happened in my home K-8 district in Bergen County. This is a beautiful, close knit community. We take care of each other, we have very active civic organizations, and we even have two small, well-embraced, adult disability housing facilities. What we don’t have is that kind of support for the families who happen to have children with disabilities. It’s our dirty little secret.
Parents struggle to get evaluations. Scratch that, they struggle to get anyone to take their concerns seriously. Their teachers generally do, but are afraid to speak up. Parents struggle to get classifications and appropriate services. The district is adept at dragging the process out as long as possible (sometimes years), many times by simply not explaining the process to parents who have no idea how any of this works.
As you read this statement, made by a father, please remember that as parents, part of our job is to raise children who can make their way in the world as independently as possible and to become functioning members of society. I am absolutely sick of districts getting in the way.
It’s difficult to stand here and speak about the state of and the attitude towards Special Services in this district knowing it falls on deaf ears and has no apparent effect on the continuance of the treatment of the families in this town. The fact is that [Sparkly District] has an awful reputation with regard to their treatment and programming for special needs children and their families and it is evident that this works just fine for you all -- if it didn’t, things would be changing.
Maybe you are blinded by your personal feelings towards specific members of the community who fight for this population’s rights. Maybe you have grown too familiar with one another and cannot separate or comfortably voice your own personal opinions, experience, or agendas if they differ. You are professionals and our children are counting on you. To continuously ignore, deliberately avoid, and create a divide within the educational Education Lessons From A Sparkly District:
