ADMINISTRATION ACCUSED OF DISCRIMINATING AGAINST SPECIAL NEEDS STUDENTS
The U.S. Department of Education (USDOE)’s office for civil rights is investigating discrimination allegations against a government-run South Carolina school district.
According to our sources, the office is currently probing Lexington-Richland School District 5 in an effort to determine whether its administration discriminates against students with disabilities.
The investigation began last week – and centers around whether exceptional needs students who have therapeutic appointments during the school day should be excused for these treatment-related absences.
Parents say “yes,” the district says “no.”
A week earlier, the S.C. Department of Education (SCDOE) refused to investigate the district’s policies related to these absences – which in retrospect appears to have been a very poor decision.
While we await the outcome of the federal probe, this episode provides a teachable contrast to South Carolina’s new exceptional needs tax credit program – which last month awarded its first-ever scholarship.
As we’ve said from the beginning … expanding choice in the education marketplace is essential to elevating academic achievement across the board. It’s also essential if we ever want to release the stranglehold of a failing, non-responsive government-run monopoly that is especially inflexible when it comes to dealing with students with special needs.
61 comments
the feds are (or should be) investigating whether the district is interpreting the federal law correctly. the district is most likely trying to stay within the law by requiring that special needs students attend school. if the district said ‘yeah sure take all the time you need at therapy, don’t worry about school’ – that could well be a violation of federal law. but you already know this cause you aren’t stupid even if you’re full of shit.
You sound like an Obama (in)Justice Dept. charlatan. You are trying to Dictate to Free people, because you think your lord-god Obama gives you that right…
Quit making excuses for Greedy, Corrupt people…
charlatan
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hey! That’s *my* word – don’t wear it out!
The power of reason compels thee! The power of reason compels thee!
It’s no use, I can’t rid GrandTango of the demons of stupidity that plague his pea-sized brain.
You have to get water that’s blessed by Rastafarian libertarians, and sprinkle it on his forehead with each incantation.
See TBG rule #3
link?
DD it it, see his post.
DD it it
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I’m sorry, I don’t read South Carolinan, please translate for me – I live in Texas.
lol…+1 for the exorcist reference towards Big T…kudos on that one.
As much as I love one government cannibalize another, let us all not forgot that this is to some degree what Common Core is about…centralized power.
Pardon me while I go throw myself out a window now.
edit: “watching one government cannibalize”
Mark Twain said something that really is spot on for Grand Tango…..Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.
Dist 5…these are the leftwing Dirtbags that trumped up a Kangaroo Court scheme to throw Kim Murphy off their board because she was exposing their dubious financial dealings….
You don’t mess w/ Special Ed and get away with it…And the Greedy, liberal Education Industry Bullies DO NOT own your kids..or the dollars we graciously GIVE them to do their job….
are you saying they bought off a judge?
http://ftpcontent4.worldnow.com/wistv/pdf/COOPERMURPHY.pdf
He was a retired leftwing activist. DAs like him, are part of the reason public education costs so much, for so little return now.
He overturned the will of the voters, because she was standing up for the people…not corrupt thieves….
Is the Budget and Control Board in on it too? After all they were the ones that determined that Kim Murphy did not live in Richland County.
What do you think? Any connection here? The stooge from Budget and Control Board – Bobby Bowers – was chairman of the Lexington One school district and was president of the SC School Board Assoc – an organization that protects what’s wrong with public education and does it using our tax dollars. District 5’s chairman Robert Gantt is now president-elect of the SCSBA.
So what you are suggesting is that the B&CB falsified the survey results that placed Ms. Murphy’s home in Lexington County?
Seems pretty far fetched given that the survey would need to include coordinates which are verifiable and can be duplicated.
What’s a little backscratching among friends :)
Hey FITS! Where do you git those nifty pictures? Do you have to pay for them, or do you have a staff guy that makes them from scratch?
It’s probably the AP image library.
He, respectfully, steals them from Google like everyone else.
I’m thinking that pic of the toilet was from his own house.
Ok
Do they make you pay for it?
Yes, AP image bank is a paid service.
got any idea how much? I’d look it up, but they’d probably want me to give them my credit card number.
Not really, I used it back in the 90s while employed as a broadcast graphic designer working for an ABC affiliate.
woo hoo!
what kind of hardware do you get for that? Is it a pc with cool cards in it, or dedicated hardware streamlined for that kind of work? I worked for a company that was building graphic engines for the special effects industry out of PCs back in the 90’s, and that was supposed to replace the dedicated equipment.
We had a dedicated PC for that service. I built over the shoulders and lower 3rds on a Grass Valley Graphics suite, running on DOS. For any real creative work (NLE, After Effects, 3D, interactive or print) we relied on Apple systems.
Wow. I’ll bet that rocked! [I hate apple more than Brussels sprout, but that’s not pertinent to this]
Where did you go from there? It sounds like an ideal platform to move on to gaming or special effects… don’t tell me you went on to web design.
I do web design, but it’s probably only about 15% of my current workload. Late 90s had me designing interfaces and programming for promotional cdroms, editing long format projects on Avid Media Composer and doing effects work. Early 2000’s saw a shift to promotional DVD design and programming, editing long format on Final Cut Pro and doing effects work. I also do loads of identity work and branding design.
I’m an embedded software engineer…. I love it, but it’s getting harder to find work in America – they’re actually sending it out to India and China. I didn’t think it would work, but it is… kinda.. and there are shitloads of Indians that have come here on H1 visas to compete.. their math is a little better, and they work cheap… and they stay in groups so that if one gets a management position they only hire Indians.
Your job sounds interesting. I never got into it because I despise Java, and I don’t need some dickhead looking over my shoulder telling me that I chose the “wrong” color of beige for this little widget thing, and this window should pop up from the bottom instead of the top because “the mind’s eye expects drop down, and dropping up makes it seem quicker.”
The packages you mentioned… since there’s such a small community using them (say in comparison to Visual Studio), I’d expect them to be using you guys as guinea pigs, releasing bugs so that you’re always paying upgrade fees without getting new features. Is that true?
Are you getting competition from foreign markets? Are you contract? What’s the rate?
I’m on Adobe CS 5.5 and Final Cut Pro 7, which are both around 3 years old. I’ve found that the upgrades are only good for a few bells and whistles and if you find something that works for you there’s no reason to spend the extra coin to upgrade. As far as competition from foreign markets, I do get a load of solicitations from Indian companies that want me to farm out web dev and SEO work to them. Because I am a “creative” it’s a little harder for them to compete. You either have the ability to design visually appealing presentations or you don’t. Probably the most detrimental element to effect the creative marketplace recently is Craigslist. There are any number of clowns with pirated software and a cheap pc out there marketing themselves as “designers”. You get what you pay for, and if you’re paying someone $50 to do a logo you’ll likely “pay for” that decision in the long run when you find out it’s been done at 72dpi in photoshop.
I hear you. Good for you. Creativity is hard to duplicate within a different zeitgeist. You can be as creative as you wish, but if you aren’t steeped in American culture, your website won’t look “right.”
Why in the world would a helpful comment like this get a down vote? People are retarded.
some people here apparently hold grudges.
Is guaranteeing disabled kids education a “core governmental task?”
Carried to the logical conclusion per FITS’ prior comments on education, one would have to say no.
However, playing this emotion tugging story for all the hits it can get would demand yes.
Exactly. If the feds sued a county government for failing to give out free lunches to poor people, Fits would be leading with the headline “Feds sue government-run school for failing to give out free lunches.” Meanwhile, another article would be lambasting providing the free lunches in the first place and be demanding that the government get out of the schooling business altogether.
Is guaranteeing disabled kids education a “core governmental task?”
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how do you feel about it?
It is absolutely in the interest of the gubamint to have an educated citizenry.
1787 December 20. ( T. Jefferson to J. Madison) “Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to ; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty.”
1789 January 8. (T. Jefferson to R. Price) “…wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government…”
That last one ought to make you a little worried about any “one size fits all” scheme for education – like Common Core
On second thought – we’re screwed
South Carolina? Absolutely!
Yep!
Nah. I’m for national standards.
“It is absolutely in the interest of the gubamint to have an educated citizenry.”
The problem is that gubamint just can’t get the job done well. Just like most of the other things is tries to do. If it didn’t have more money than God it’d probably succeed at nothing.
I’m not, nor was Jefferson, advocating for “gubamint run public education schemes”. I’m advocating for education. Local rule, local schools – it worked great for 165 years – our education system was the envy of the world and then gubamint got involved. the more they got involved, the worse it got…
“I’m not, nor was Jefferson, advocating for “gubamint run public education schemes”.”
It seemed like you were when you responded to ” Is guaranteeing disabled kids education a “core governmental task?”
So just curious, when you say “local rule” do you see a place for local government in education do you think that privately run would be better? (like religious, or privately run/funded schooling)
Local rule generally refers to county or lower level government. I advocate a county board with a state position to serve only as a force multiplier. The state should advocate for block purchases of books, technology and services as well as distribute whatever state level funds the citizens of the state allow the state government to procure on their behalf. Sin taxes should be earmarked for education. Unions should not be permitted to organize beyond the county level if they are allowed at all.
That sure does sound like a lot of rules. But I suppose the bureaucrats are at least within strangling distance…not that that seems to matter most of the time.
“As we’ve said from the beginning … expanding choice in the education marketplace is essential to elevating academic achievement across the board.”
and I have a bridge to sell you in New York, as it happens the real estate agent for said bridge is Howie Rich.
http://buyingsc.blogspot.com/
This situation could be fixed in half an hour by decent leadership in the SC Education Dept. If the Feds are wasting time on this very fixable incident and NOT investigating Jean Toal and Bobby Harrell, they can kiss my ass.
Bill Nettles, DO SOMETHING RIGHT FOR SOUTH CAROLINA !!!!!
This situation could be fixed by voting attorney Ed White off the board during this year’s school board election and Gantt at the next one. Gold-digger (ask her x) Beth Burn Watson’s gunning for the the director of PR at D5. – pays twice as much as her university job. Despite her being the all-around biggest bitch (ask her x) on the board, she’ll probably get the job to “keep it in the family.”
The Penus Williams Academy gladly accepts your tax deductible scholarship dollars for the exceptional needs students with theraputic appointments and we will mark them present EVERYDAY.
got to meet even common core minimums for skule credits, so maybe someone needs to be on home bound education protocol for part of their education, despite USDOE hurdles of what shall be paid by whom…
I’m reminded of the Malcolm-in-the-Middle episode where the bully picking on Malcolm knocks over Stevie’s wheelchair. The mean bully was forever condemned as the kid that beat up a kid in a wheelchair.
Looks like Dist. 5 is in some pretty infamous company. They have been caught as that ugly monster picking on Special Ed. kids…Could not happen to a better class of Nazis.
Sounds to me like some parents were abusing the system, got caught and cried foul.
YEAH!!!! Fed’s finally have the balls to look into that school district!!!! Every other government agency is scared to touch them. And they are SLICK AS TEFLON. There are all kinds of things the feds will find if they stick to it.
And, having read that crazy mother’s piece a while back, I would be willing to bet that those ‘therapists’ aren’t licensed in any discipline that is remotely connected to medical care or the ‘helping professions’.
Education/Leadership in South Carolina, you jest of course? For example, Grand Tango, (born and educated in SC) doesn’t even know he is a Nazi. Keep ’em stupid and Republican. Why is South Carolina last/one of the worst states in the US?