by Kathleen Kosobud, PhD, ABD
Disclaimer: This is a personal reflection and may not represent the position of LDA of Michigan as an organization.
I'm an advocate for children with special educational needs. I
represent children in foster care, probably one of the least empowered
groups attending public schools. Current Michigan school code already
allows districts and charters to discriminate against children in
special education by limiting their choices. Their "home" district must
agree to pay for them to attend a school in a different Intermediate
School District (essentially a different county or LEA) even if the
receiving school is part of a "school of choice" district. The
rationale is that it costs more to educate a child with special
educational needs. No such restriction exists for children who are
considered "gifted" or "athletes" or "talented", although their needs
may also cost a district more. This restriction is "enhanced" in the
302 page long Oxford proposal for Michigan School Finance Reform--districts will have the right to accept or refuse
students who apply to attend their schools.
I am sick at
heart when I think about the children whom I represent. Many have been
removed from their homes after severe abuse or neglect. Already
hurting, they deserve the very best of care, and the most particularly
attentive of educations to help them to recover from their physical and
psychological wounds. When a district is given the right of refusal to
serve these children, we condemn them to bleak futures. While other,
more privileged children may cross boundaries, selling their assets to
the highest bidder, these children are left to attend whatever public
schools their district assigns them to. For them, there is no choice.
I think of two children I am representing right now: one a traumatized
first grader who has already been in five different foster homes, and
two different school districts in his short career as a consumer of
public education, and the other a teenager approaching his exit from
foster care in an institutional setting because no home could be found
for him. This older student, discouraged and angry at the lack of
concern he has experienced in a bricks and mortar school, is currently
taking online classes, isolated from the social milieu of other teens.
His special educational needs, learning disabilities in language and
literacy, are not being met in this virtual environment, and the virtual
charter is not prepared to devote the resources to customize his
education in a way that will enable him to access the courses. I despair
for both of them. For the first grader, I see a future of rejection by
schools unwilling to meet his his greater needs for stability and
special care because his coping mechanisms are so fragile. For the
older student, I see a loss of any interest in learning, and decreasing
hope for any future outside of the institutional setting. He is the
face of the "school to prison pipeline", even though the caring adults
around him recognize that he is not intrinsically a bad kid.
For these two children, the proposal for "choice" is a sick, sad joke.
