These students were already more likely to struggle in school than their peers, and they’ve taken the
Kim said the school brought in a psychologist to support Raynardo and made numerous other efforts to help him before deciding to send him home for virtual classes.“Covid fear was palpable in the air, everywhere,” Kim said. “We couldn't get school-based Covid testing for our teachers, and there was no vaccine on the horizon so everything was just a big unknown.”
“I think my son is entitled to the education that they give there,” Irizarry said. “He shouldn't be pushed out because they probably don’t want to deal with him.”Advocates say what happened to Raynardo amounts to an informal removal: A school takes a child out of a classroom for what administrators see as bad behavior but doesn’t give the family a chance to contest the punishment — and doesn’t trigger a report to the state, the way a suspension or expulsion would.
Virtual instruction “is a very restrictive placement,” Zirkel said. “The kid is now at home and likely not getting the same level of services, and now he’s being excluded from school and from interaction with other kids.” As Smith Howard sees it, federal law is clear that students with special needs should be given support to succeed in the classroom — and a meeting of teachers and parents should be convened before they’re formally moved out.
She’s working with two students whose schools threatened expulsion before moving them to virtual instruction. Wakelin believes both students’ schools are using the pandemic, and the fact that “virtual instruction has been so normalized” this year, as a way to sidestep the legal process and avoid the extra scrutiny and oversight that can come to schools that expel too many students.
“They said expelling is going to be bad for the school and bad for Winston,” Mcleish said, adding that the school told her that if Winston had an expulsion on his record, he would have difficulty finding another school.
My kid was on mixed schooling because of dyslexia. He was in school a full day but took classes he struggled with at home with our supervision. There were other things he did at school like debate and running chores for ESE teachers that bridged the gap. It was a good solution
Gimme a break. Get over it already. Come this fall most if not all kids will be back in the classroom.
How about not opening schools at all.......
Oooh soo scary. Punishment lmao.
'You have to sleep in and do your classwork in your pajamas instead of waking up and coming to school.' Oh no, the children will be scarred for life!