At my first year at Nogales High School, I was tripped by someone, I did not see who did but I new it was on purpose, because the person who droped me his friend said “thats mest up”…he responded “SO”. I broke my two front teeth, I was so much in pain that I did not turn around to see who did it.

I went to the nurses office, I told her that someone triped me on purpose. She called the campus securtiy she had to call over three times intell one came in to use the restroom, I told him and the nurse told him it was on “purpose”. He naver made a police report.

I went back to him the campus securty officer, I told him why did he not make a police report, he responded “YOU SAID IT WAS ON ACCIDENT”.

I had a meeting with Assistant Superintendent Dr.Santorufo and Officer and the Nurse. The campus securty officer name Estrada said “Adam is a lie’er,lie’er” he was yelling this to me. So Dr.Santorufo calles the nurse in she say “ADAM TOLD HIM IT WAS ON PURPOSE”….he still called me a lie’er but then he said “O” “YEA I DO REMEBER YOU SAID IT WAS ON PURPOSE”. He did not get in trouble and Dr.Santoufo did nothing about it. My two front teeth are broken, and the school lied about it too.

If my school fails our California Standardize test againe, we will be taken over by the state. When I mention the name Nogales High School in my community they say “You go to that bad school”. If you live in my community everyone nows that Nogales High is a bad school to send your children to. There is gang cuffitting all over. Everytime
I go to the restroom it smells like smoking.

Everyone-as for SPED kids going from sped classes to normal classes, it could be simply lack of paperwork flowing between the two campuses OR the high school is an INCLUSION high school. My HS is all inclusive. We have resource rooms, but the kids are scheduled in regular classes and the sped aides must work to check on them and pull them out when necessary. We have 2500 students (with 100+ sped kids) and three aides.

Adam-There is no excuse for what you have dealt with. Get help. Get it now. Good luck.

Everyone-I wondered about the same issue (suing schools for failing to provide an education) but for normal students. I fear the day is soon coming if we continue to show statistics like the current NAEP versus grades issue. I shudder at the thought, but I myself would have issues if my daughter did not get the education she should! I, however, can advocate for her-but many parents don’t know how to-especially when AUTHORITY FIGURES are telling them what they want to hear or that they will make trouble for them.

I’m also a natural born skeptic. I have to wonder if you’re really a teacher. Every post you’ve made has had a grammar or spelling mistake in it.

>It seems a little bit far fetched that all of his teachers would give him “A’s” despite him failing every class,

>I believe that several people have offered to help “Adam”, if he is for real then I am sure that he will contact someone soon.

>aninomity

We all make the odd mistake and this is certainly not a formal place where correctness is absolutely required. Still, it’s odd that there would be something in every post. Are you who you say you are?

(for those who are humor challenged, this is sarcasm)

> What they were supposed to be doing was going to a
> job training program at the Marriott Hotel once a week.
> once a week

> Job training is critical for these kids. They MUST have it.
> They were sitting in the school basement instead.

This additional information is interesting, but not particularly helpful. Lots of questions—

What job training was going on at a Hotel? Was a room being rented for job training teacher to provide training to this group? What was so important about the hotel space? Could the teacher come to the high school where the kids were? If not, why not? Small buses are very inexpensive.. running from $35-$50 hour in some cases. Even if the cost was as much as $200/day, this would seem like a small amount to pay. Who had spending authority for decisions like this one?

The point about job training being critical I agree with. A fellow I know who teaches autistic kids says that most of them can be trained to perform minimal jobs by the time they are ready to enter the work force. He points out that without the more expensive SpEd training, they would never function effectively in later life.

http://www.vaccinationnews.com/dailynews/August2002/SmithKeeping28.htm

http://legalminds.lp.findlaw.com/list/edlaw/msg00005.html

What they were supposed to be doing was going to a job training program at the Marriott Hotel once a week.

once a week

Job training is critical for these kids. They MUST have it.

They were sitting in the school basement instead.

They would have sat there all year if we hadn’t hammered them. And it had to be hammering. contra Rory (Rory! What were you thinking! You should know better!) a phone call won’t do it.

EVER.

We finally got things done after:

a) seeing an attorney
b) sending a registered letter using the language he gave us and ccing the attorney
c) holding a face to face meeting in which we made clear we were unhappy with every conceivable activity going on in the district

This was in the wake of 6 weeks of emails and phone calls.

We’re talking about a town of 6500 residents.

All the special ed folks we met loved Valerie.

She’d come in to a meeting with us and folks would relax. They knew she’d get it done. They’d shoot the breeze, talk about their weight a little, then hammer out a plan.

Last fall the district left Jimmy’s class — these are all transition-age developmentally disabled students who are required by law to have “transition programs” — sitting in the basement of the high school for six weeks because they didn’t have a bus.

$19,000 per pupil spending and the disabled kids can sit in the basement.

We couldn’t get any of the other parents in the class to help; a couple of them had just come into the school from other districts that were so much worse than ours they didn’t want to rock the boat or cause offense.

So as usual, we were it.

We went to see an attorney; his consulting fee, if we’d hired him, was going to be $3000 to start.

He told us what to say and do, and of course I was writing about the situation on the blog and in postings to the Irvington Parents Forum.

Ed was ferocious.

In theory, BOCES (long story) was supposed to supply the bus, not our school. (No idea why. If BOCES doesn’t supply the bus, obviously our district has to supply the bus.)

So they were waiting.

Every time we’d contact them they’d say “We’re still waiting.”

Ed pushed things to the wall and we got the bus.

But we were the ONLY parents willing and able to get in their face and say “Do what the law requires you to do.”