Action Alert & press release: Stop Special Needs Vouchers, 14 May 2015
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Stop Special Needs Vouchers
May 14, 2015, 9:11:00 AM5/14/15
to J Juhnke
Greetings from Stop Special Needs Vouchers -- please forward widely!
Milwaukee
School Takeover Plan: Serious Unanswered Questions for Families of Students with Disabilities
There have been objections raised by many groups to a plan that appeared in the Journal Sentinel earlier this week, which would allow charter or voucher schools to take over Milwaukee public schools if high-stakes test scores were deemed insufficiently high.
The outline of the plan has some potentially dire effects for students with disabilities at "takeover" schools, and nobody's discussing those aspects yet. Even more disturbing, a leaked outline is all we yet know of the plan -- but it could be inserted into the state budget by Joint Finance Committee vote as early as next week, without the public ever having had a chance to read the legislation!
The Journal Sentinel article is here:
Below is the Stop Special Needs Vouchers press release from today, raising the alarm for students with disabilities -- and below that, some action steps you can take!
One out of five students in the Milwaukee public schools has a disability, while only one in ten charter students fall into that category. Since voucher schools do not report disability data, parents cannot even make that comparison. The proposal outline does not answer the question of whether the new operators would be required to serve the same students as were previously in the school.
Even more troubling, the plan implies that the resulting schools might be set up as charter or private voucher schools. Since the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) does not apply to private voucher schools, it appears that twenty percent of students at a school that is turned into a private “choice” operation would suddenly lose the special education rights and protections that parents in a previous generation fought so long and hard to win.
Terri Hart-Ellis, parent from Whitefish Bay, is dismayed at the implications. “When do we get to talk about what this proposal means for students with disabilities?” she asked. “As written, this proposal turns public schools over to operators who either don’t serve students with disabilities in the same proportion, or aren’t even required to educate them at all. But we don’t have an actual bill to examine for details, and we might not even get to see it before it’s voted on.”
Lennise Vickers, parent from Milwaukee, has seen both sides of the voucher issue firsthand from a disability perspective. “At least when we were in the voucher school, nobody forced us to make that switch, and MPS was still there for me when I figured out that the vouchers were a mistake,” she said. “If a public school gets made into a voucher school, though, it looks like the families of kids like mine would lose their rights to an IEP and due process – maybe even the right to be there in the first place.”
The families of Stop Special Needs Vouchers have strongly objected to harmful special needs voucher proposals that have repeatedly been introduced and defeated in Wisconsin. One of the most deeply-held concerns is what voucher schools are NOT required to do: educate any given student with a disability, craft a legally-enforceable Individualized Education Plan with family at the table, or hire staff with special education expertise. The OSPP appears to echo all these failings, and may be rushed into the budget as early as next week. At the very least, the proposal should not be considered in the state budget but rather as a separate bill with its own public hearing, where questions can be answered and flaws can be fully exposed.
Even more troubling, the plan implies that the resulting schools might be set up as charter or private voucher schools. Since the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) does not apply to private voucher schools, it appears that twenty percent of students at a school that is turned into a private “choice” operation would suddenly lose the special education rights and protections that parents in a previous generation fought so long and hard to win.
Terri Hart-Ellis, parent from Whitefish Bay, is dismayed at the implications. “When do we get to talk about what this proposal means for students with disabilities?” she asked. “As written, this proposal turns public schools over to operators who either don’t serve students with disabilities in the same proportion, or aren’t even required to educate them at all. But we don’t have an actual bill to examine for details, and we might not even get to see it before it’s voted on.”
Lennise Vickers, parent from Milwaukee, has seen both sides of the voucher issue firsthand from a disability perspective. “At least when we were in the voucher school, nobody forced us to make that switch, and MPS was still there for me when I figured out that the vouchers were a mistake,” she said. “If a public school gets made into a voucher school, though, it looks like the families of kids like mine would lose their rights to an IEP and due process – maybe even the right to be there in the first place.”
The families of Stop Special Needs Vouchers have strongly objected to harmful special needs voucher proposals that have repeatedly been introduced and defeated in Wisconsin. One of the most deeply-held concerns is what voucher schools are NOT required to do: educate any given student with a disability, craft a legally-enforceable Individualized Education Plan with family at the table, or hire staff with special education expertise. The OSPP appears to echo all these failings, and may be rushed into the budget as early as next week. At the very least, the proposal should not be considered in the state budget but rather as a separate bill with its own public hearing, where questions can be answered and flaws can be fully exposed.
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Action Steps
Two important actions you can take:
1) Contact the Joint Finance Committee! Both authors of the plan (Darling and Kooyenga) sit on the Joint Finance Committee. Let them and their colleagues know: this plan has too many harmful implications and serious unanswered questions for students with disabilities to be handled in the state budget.
Contact information (even photos!) for all JFC members can be found at:
2) Sign the petition at https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/milwaukee-kids-are-not-for-sale-stop-the-takeover-of-mps
Below is the petition text (courtesy of MTEA) -- you can see that special education is an integral concern!
THANK YOU!Republicans Senator Alberta Darling and Rep. Dale Kooyenga have proposed legislation to take over many Milwaukee Public Schools that educate mainly African American and Latino children in high-poverty neighborhoods. Our communities reject this takeover of our schools. We want vibrant, public community schools that welcome and serve all children, offer special education services and bilingual education, and are locally controlled and accountable to parents.Cities around the country that have implemented school takeover zones have not improved student achievement, and have devastated their local economies. Schools run by third party operators enroll significantly fewer students with special needs, and do not offer bilingual education or other needed services. The dozens of taxpayer-funded, privately run charter and voucher schools that already exist in Milwaukee show no improvement in student achievement compared to public schools.Parents, students, and community members, please sign this petition to Stop the Takeover of Milwaukee Public Schools.
Please forward widely, and please contact Stop Special Needs Vouchers with any questions or concerns!
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For an introduction to Stop Special Needs Vouchers, visit our website at:
http://www.stopspecialneedsvouchers.org/about/
For a list of past SSNV press coverage, visit our In the News page at
http://www.stopspecialneedsvouchers.org/in-the-news/
To subscribe to these mailings, or to unsubscribe, send e-mail to
stopspecialneedsvouchers@gmail.com
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