Thursday, August 27, 2009

Robbing Peter to pay Paul-Day 7

We have a severe needs program in our building which is our Level III Special Education program. Students in this program have severe cognitive or physical disabilities. Many of these students require one-on-one paraprofessional support for their entire day. When I came on board this year I asked my Level III Special Ed teacher to add up the required minutes of contact on the IEPs and the total number of minutes of support to see if we were in compliance. Of course, we were short 40 hours which meant we needed another paraprofessional to break even.

We took the hard numbers to the district before school started and have had to wait until today for an answer. We got our needed person. I do not blame the district. We are all in such tight vacuums when it comes to necessary resources. There is never enough money just to do what needs to be done, just to break even. The dance begins...bodies get shifted to other buildings, bodies get split between two or three buildings. In public education we feel like we are always playing catch up. Even with this constant road block, our teachers do amazing things. Robbing Peter to pay Paul...

...why can't we have enough money to pay Paul what he's due?

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