The Odyssey of Special Ed Schools

I’m halfway through my two-week quest to find an appropriate middle school for Ian. It’s an extremely important quest, since this school could be Ian’s home through high school. Last week, I visited three schools – The Success School, our local public school, and the Behavior School. (Names changed, of course.)

The public middle school with the special ed classroom is the same school that Jonah attended for two years. Ian, however, would be tucked away in an entirely different corner of the school and couldn’t do 99.9% of the things that the school does well. The other two schools were about 25-30 minutes away.

I visited the Success School on Tuesday. It was about 25 minutes south of here, off a busy road with a Popeye’s and a Jamaican hair braiding salon. It looked like a regular school with a baseball field, a playground, and solid brick facade. There wasn’t a guard at the front door to keep the runners inside. My mom lives in the next town over, so she joined me on the tour.

The rather severe school director explained that the Success School is for smart kids with learning disabilities. She explained the lengthy application and admission process. She handed us a sample school schedule with two daily sessions of reading and language arts, one math, one social studies, and one gym. She explained, “there is no music, chorus, drama, or woodshop. We only offer one art and one computer class per week. There are no other specials. There is no cafeteria. There are no after-school clubs or sports.  There are no class trips, school plays, science fairs, or group activities.” There is Occupational Therapy, she said, but only for handwriting help — none that new-age, sensory integration crap there.

Then we walked around the building. She showed us tidy, little rooms of serious children making posters about the Middle Ages and getting drilled on the multiplication tables. It was very quiet. Even the kids in the gym class sat patiently on the mats.

She pointed to the lockers and said that all the children learn the combinations by September, though we should probably start working on it now.

Thursday, I went to the local middle school library for a presentation to parents on special education. Some special ed kids, like Ian, are placed in a hermetically sealed special-ed room; others mostly blend into the regular population but need to be pulled out for academic subjects. I helped myself to a plate of pastries and some Dunkin Donuts coffee in the corner.

The director of special education for the school placed her cards neatly on a podium and started the talk with a lovely tale.

“Once upon a time”, she said, “there was a little butterfly struggling to get out of the coccoon. The man watched the butterfly struggle and struggle, until it grew too tired and stopped. The man became concerned and got a little pair of scissors. He cut an hole in the cocoon and the butterfly crawled out. The man was very happy. The butterfly lived for a long time. However, the butterfly was terribly deformed with shrunken wings and a large, mishapen body. The man told his story to a scientist, who explained that the process of fitting through a small hole in a cocoon was essential. It forces the blood from the body of the catepillar into the wings.”

“I hope you understand the metaphor in this story,” she added. “It is only through struggle that we grow!”

I turned to the woman next to me and asked her if we were supposed to be the man, and did it mean that we permanently deformed our children. The other parent nervously giggled.

I don’t recall any parent presentation for my typical child beginning with tales of deformed catepillars, well-meaning but abusive parents, and struggle.

She introduced us to the teachers, who seemed very nice. But there didn’t seem to be a philosophy or approach for educating kids with differences. There weren’t any activities or clubs aimed at this population. It’s basically the same huge school with the loud bells and crowded hallways with only slight alterations. All those big kids bumping into Ian in the hallway and the lunchroom that goes up to eleven on the volume meter would stress out Ian so badly that he would start shredding t-shirts again.

The kids master the combination locks by December, she said.

On Friday, I visited the Behavior School. The Behavior School was 30 minutes north of here, behind a big mountain that separates suburban New Jersey with lots of city commuters from hillbilly New Jersey with pick up trucks and shotguns. Hillbilly New Jersey is gerrymandered in the same distract as City Commuter New Jersey, which means that I have one of the most conservative representatives in the House of Representatives. I have been forced to talk the staffers for this Representative several times due to the Representative’s stupidity. I am probably on a CIA Watchlist.

The Behavior School was located in a decaying downtown area of a town that was the former home of an automotive paint factory. Painted bright blue, the school tried to look like one unit and not like former department stores that were stitched together. A woman sat at a desk directly in front of the door. She buzzed me, and I waited for the Director.

The Behavior School specializes in kids who cannot be in a public school because they have loud, violent meltdowns. Public schools will do their damnest to accommodate every special ed kid in order to save money, but behavior kids are another story. Behavior kids cause parent revolts and law suits, so they are always sent out of district. Ian doesn’t have any behaviors, but my case worker told me to check out this school because they had small classes and lots of support.

The Director was in a double breasted navy blue suit with a cobalt blue silk handkerchief in the front pocket. He showed me a ten minute video montage of happy children playing with puppies and playing drums. Then he explained the program. The kids do some academic work for a couple of hours in the morning and then they move onto their activities — Minecraft, Animal Care, Therapeutic Horseback Riding, Instrument Lessons, Basketball, and so on. It all looked fun, fun, fun.

He was very proud of their behavior point system. The kids start each day with 100 points. They lose points for having public meltdowns. Each day, a final score is calculated by dividing total points by 3, adding 12, and subtracting 24 (or something like that). Then if a student maintains a two week average of 89.9%, they qualify as a Level 3. All Level 3 students get a bagel breakfast every second Tuesday and pizza every third Friday. They get their faces on a big poster in the hallway. Students can cash in points at a school stores for gift cards and toys. But, Ian doesn’t have a behavior problem, I explained for the tenth time.

We walked around the rabbit warren of a school with ramps going in and out of the pieced-together buildings. We poked our head in a math class where the kids were playing video games on laptops. An aide smiled at me and explained that it was Friday.

Locker combinations were mastered by most kids by February; the kids who couldn’t do it could throw their things in a box in a classroom.

My case worker signed Ian up for an interview in two weeks. The Director told me that he would explain to Ian that if he was a good boy, he could go back to district. I don’t think so.

Next week, I will visit a school that is an hour away near Newark. It specializes in autistic kids with severe anxiety disorders — again, not a great fit. I wonder what month those kids achieve master a combination locker.