I am starting this to share my frustration in dealing with the Chicago Public Schools as a mother of a special education student.  My son was a preschool special ed student at a school called North River Elementary.  The school case manager, teachers, and therapists who worked with my son were, for the most part, wonderful.  However, the administration refused to give the program adequate support -- especially in providing qualified aides for the classroom.  Almost every special education early childhood student has a dedicated aide or a shared aide provided for them in their indiidualized education plans.  However, the school frequently provided no aide at all for the entire classroom or aides who were clearly not qualified.  The teachers complained and were terminated.  the principal refused to discuss this issue with me.  The Chief of Schools for the O'Hare Network is treating this as an employment issue.  No one seems to realize that disability laws are being broken. 

A perfect analogy of what is happening at North River is what happens in some foster homes.  Like a foster parent who receives DCFS money for having a foster child, North River gets funding for having special needs students.  Recall various stories about foster parents taking money and instead of using it for the children, the children end up neglected and hungry.  North River is taking money which is allocated to be spent on special education but not using it for the special education program.  The children are being neglected.

The interesting thing is that I am an educated woman, a lawyer, actually, and my voice as a parent is not being heard.  I can only think of those who have a high school education or do not speak English.  Of course, they love their children as much as I do, but they probably have no idea that their children have legal rights to receive all necessary services and support to put them on a leval playing field with general education students.  Why do I suspect that I am not alone and that North River is not the only Chicago Public school with this problem?  I know that there are many good special education programs at various schools in the city, but the point is that NO CHILD should be treated with this type of disregard. 

With autism on the increase and more and more children having individualized education plans (IEPs), the chances that IEP violations by schools are also on the rise.  Please share your stories with me.  I will be posting information about what has happened at this school as well as information about the applicable laws and other resources.  I hope that perhaps through joint effort, we can get someone's attention in the CPS administration and effectuate change.