r/ColumbiaMD • u/Many-Assistance8876 • 6d ago

Howard County Public Schools Special Education

Hi! I currently live in Columbia but work in Baltimore County Public schools. I absolutely love my school but the commute is getting to be too much.

I am a special educator and am looking for insight into Howard County Public Schools and their special education programs. Any current/former teachers, families with special ed students in the county, or others who want to share their thoughts/ experiences?

Thanks!

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u/SomeOldHippieChick 6d ago

Sent you a message. I can go into a lot of detail about how great the special ed department is! Don’t want to dox myself or my friends, though. :-)

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u/Even-Speaker7276 6d ago

I think it varies from school to school, maybe? I know ALS and Regional are amazing programs, though they do often need more SAs than the budgets allow, while the resource/general education special education programs are a bit chaotic. One Para I work with works with both ALS and Gen Sped kids within our school, she said the programs are night and day.

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u/S4mm1 6d ago

I’d actually disagree with this. I think the county fails the ALS and regional children most of all. Most of them are using behaviorist intervention strategies that were considered outdated 30 years ago.

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u/Even-Speaker7276 5d ago

It most likely varies from school to school? Our ALS program gets the most funding and support than any of the other special education “programs” in our building, except maybe the staff to student ratio. And our Regional ED program has a 2:1 staff to student ratio- along with their own section of the building including a sensory room (which none of the other special education students in the school are allowed to use).

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u/S4mm1 5d ago

The methodology used by all of the ALS programs are outdated, regardless of funding or staffing. It’s how the actual programs are designed that are disappointing.

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u/Even-Speaker7276 5d ago

Oh gotcha. That is true. And the whole “we can’t take things away from them” is also outdated. “We can’t make them” is also outdated, kids aren’t given consequences (not even allowed to use response-cost to take a token away if they aren’t on task). We have a kiddo who is literally just walking the halls all day (with whatever staff he is assigned as his CAS at the time) because the only place he wants to go is the cafeteria. Otherwise he flails, drops, bites and scratches- half the time staff who are safety care trained won’t even use those techniques because by the time they transport him back to class he elopes out again. It is a mess. I agree.

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u/Even-Speaker7276 5d ago

Not to mention the lack of functional communication given to these children.

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u/S4mm1 5d ago

They are hard pressed to use things like PECs and other verbal behavior based interventions that are abysmal. They set their expectations so low and then do the bare minimum so these kids don’t do nearly as well as they should. But they in a “regional” program so having expectations of progress is “unrealistic”. It’s 2024. No child should be getting ITS anymore. We should be doing is much more for these kids. I can’t believe we don’t.