Melanie Thomas is one of many St. Cloud parents who are unhappy with the proposed changes to exceptional and special needs education in the School District of Osceola County, after district leaders rolled those changes at the March 11 School Board meeting.
“There was never any previous communication about any changes to the ESE,” Thomas said. “My son has been in the program now for two years, and they said that these changes started to roll out the plan for it in 2023.”
Thomas said they rolled out the plan without even notifying parents of the changes. She said she created a petition to combat these changes by coming together as a community.
Thomas has created a petition with more than 3,000 signatures to uphold the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Title VI to continue essential ESE services as they have for exceptional education students, both ensuring that children with disabilities, race, color, or national origin are not discriminated against.
Thomas said her 4-yearold son is autistic and requires additional care that a typical teacher might find challenging.
The SDOC stated that the district is aiming to provide more inclusive educational opportunities, ensuring that students with disabilities are fully integrated into general education environments when appropriate, with the necessary supports in place.
“I’m just a parent that’s thinking about the last two years for my son,” Thomas said. “Like, ‘What if I didn’t have the ability to have him in this classroom that he’s currently in?’ he probably wouldn’t be talking.”
Thomas said the ESE program helped her son.
“Having him in this program has been amazing because it gives him an opportunity to be around his peers, the extra resources, and support services he needed to overcome his inability to speak,” Thomas said.
Her son’s VPK program is currently at Narcoossee Elementary, and will be integrated with general education. She said she has not been informed as to which school he will be attending.
These concerns over the latest ESE changes are shared by St. Cloud mother Joy Byerly.
“The only people in this situation that are winning are the school district and their wallets,” Byerly said.
She said her 5-year-old daughter Samantha also attends Narcoossee Elementary for half of the day, then comes home for in-home therapy for four hours a day.
“Now with this change we’ll have to choose either school or therapy because we’ll not be able to give her both,” she said, noting she would rather homeschool her daughter than let her be moved to a school in another part of the county.
Thomas said she’s concerned about the integration of ESE students into basic classes.
“I think it isn’t fair to the teachers,” Thomas said. “A lot of these teachers didn’t sign up to deal with this, they didn’t become certified in special education or trained in special education.
The Osceola County Education Association said in a Facebook post that the changes their educators will be facing will be “hard and create more frustration than ever.”
“Just because it’s good for everybody else doesn’t mean that it’s good for us here in Osceola County,” Thomas said. “And the way that they’re going about this has been absolutely horrendous.”
A non-attorney special education advocate, who requested anonymity because of their close involvement, said the district lacks enough certified ESE teachers. She said, according to her sources, they are going to see an exiting of general education teachers.
“They have not been trained to work with ESE students, they have not been trained to write IEPs, they have not been trained to interpret IEPs, and there’s going to be just a genuine disconnect,” said the advocate.
The advocate said ESE teachers do far more work than necessary, and they don’t have the support or pay they need.
“There’s no way that they can take the amount of training between now and August to truly be educated or trained in the delivery of services for these kids,” the advocate said. “No way that has any fidelity, because it takes maybe a semester in college, just preliminarily, to get your arms around ESE.”
The advocate said this should have been a gradual transition, starting with our incoming kindergarteners and then processing it through all grades. “I truly believe in inclusion. This just has not been done the correct way.”
According to the District, students who requiring services within the separate class setting full-time will be relocated to schools centrally located within four district “hubs”.
“They are being grouped by ability, and we have seen with research that grouping them by ability doesn’t give them the modeling that is necessary to see other students performing both above and below their levels,” said the advocate. “It’s been proven that our kiddos with significant cognitive impairment do much better in a gen-ed class with neurotypical kids.”
The advocate said this is discrimination against parents, the special needs kids, the teachers, and the general education kids that are going to be in the integration classrooms and the hub schools.
“It just isn’t feasible, and the teachers know it’s not feasible. I’ve heard comments like, ‘I didn’t sign up for this,’ and that hurts my heart, because I never want to hear that coming out of any teacher’s mouth, but at the same time, I understand what they’re saying.”
The School District has set up a webpage with links to information about the changes, including an FAQ page, at https://www.osceolaschools.net/domain/135.
