John O'Connor is the Miami-based education reporter for StateImpact Florida. John previously covered politics, the budget and taxes for The (Columbia, S.C) State. He is a graduate of Allegheny College and the University of Maryland.
Here's six bills to watch in the upcoming legislative session.
The week between Christmas and New Year’s is something of a slow news week for education reporters.
But lawmakers return to Tallahassee next month, so we’ll spend a few days getting you up to speed on what to expect this legislative session and who the key players are.
Here’s six bills that could set the tone on education for the Legislative session.
Zabala said she’s most concerned that portions of federal disability law intended to provide access to students with disabilities are instead being used to keep those students out of the school of their choice.
It’s worth reading her comments in full, so here they are after the jump:
Most facilities at UCP’s Bailes campus are designed to be accessible for students with disabilities, including this playground.Charter schools are supposed to give students an alternative to their neighborhood schools.
As our investigation found earlier this month, most charter schools in Florida serve no severely-disabled students.
But during our research, we found one county where charter schools were serving LOTS of kids with disabilities: Orange County in the Orlando area.
UCP (formerly United Cerebral Palsy of Central Florida) runs several schools where the philosophy is students with and without disabilities learn more together.
How do they do it when other charter schools say they can’t afford to serve kids with severe disabilities?
You can hear more from the parents, teachers and other supporters of UCP in the audio story below.
To read the full online version of this story, click here.
UCP's Bailes campus in East Orlando serves students as young as six weeks up through 3rd grade. About half of the school's students have a disability.
When her three-year-old granddaughter moved to Orlando, the dean of education at the University of Central Florida knew exactly where she should go — a school founded for children with disabilities.
“She would have the opportunities to work with these very skilled teachers,” Robinson said, “but also in such a diverse classroom so that from her very early years Ellie would understand differences in people.”
It’s one of seven charter schools run by the non-profit UCP, affiliated with the central Florida chapter of United Cerebral Palsy. And it’s unique in several ways.
Julie Causton-Theoharis has researched the effects of inclusion on students with disabilities and those without. Research shows both benefit from being in the classroom toghether, she said.
More than 86 percent of charter schools do not enroll a single student with severe disabilities, according to a StateImpact Florida investigation.
School district data shows that students with disabilities are often clustered into a small number of specialty charter schools. Meanwhile, most charter schools enroll very few students with profound disabilities — if any at all.
Charter school advocates note that schools specializing in disabilities are opening across the state. Many readers responded with a shrug: “So what?,” they asked.
Researchers say those enrollment patterns matter because evidence shows both students with disabilities and students without disabilities learn more when placed in the classroom together.
Miami-Dade school board member Raquel Regalado wrote that she was inspired to run for school board after trying to find a school for her daughter with autism.
Our recent story on the difficulties students with severe disabilities have found trying to enroll in charter schools has drawn plenty of reaction from parents in similar situations.
Just 14 percent of Florida charter schools enroll students with profound disabilities. More than half of district schools enroll similar students.
We heard from parents, such as “Randy” in Pasco County, who called in to a special one-hour live radio show last Thursday.
We’ve also heard privately from parents in e-mails.
Tres Whitlock has cerebral palsy, and he said school officials told him they did not have the staff to meet his needs.
Whitlock’s mother, Tonya, said she still doesn’t understand the law’s ambiguity after months of dealing with school officials.
Tres was at the center of our investigation of charter schools. StateImpact Florida discovered that 86 percent of state charter schools did not serve a single child with a severe disability — compared to about half of public schools.
When we published and aired our investigation featuring Tres, one of the biggest questions was, “Doesn’t the law require charter schools to accommodate students like Tres?”
The answer, as you will see below, is complicated. Here are five questions about what the law requires for students with disabilities.
Three months ago we sought to put some hard numbers on how many students with disabilities are enrolled in Florida charter schools.
We had no idea how elusive that data is.
First, we’ll skip to the end and tell you what our investigation uncovered: More than 86 percent of Florida charter schools have no students with severe disabilities. By comparison, more than half of traditional public schools have severely disabled students.
And students with disabilities in charter schools are often limited to schools that specialize in disabilities, creating a system that separates students with disabilities from their peers.
But getting to those numbers was a lot harder than it looks.
Tres Whitlock types on the DynaVox tablet that serves as his voice. Whitlock, 17, has cerebral palsy and can’t speak on his own. Whitlock is trying to enroll in a Hillsborough County charter school, but has yet to enroll because of concerns about the therapy and services he needs.
Tres Whitlock is stuck in a public school where he feels ignored. He wants out.
The 17-year-old would-be video game designer researched his options online and found his perfect match – Pivot Charter School.
“It’s computer-based and I think I will do better,” he says.
But when Whitlock tried to enroll in the school he found a series of barriers in his way.
The reason? He has cerebral palsy, and the Whitlocks say school officials told them they don’t have anyone to take Whitlock to the bathroom.
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