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Re: Ask about New York thread!

[(Anonymous)]

holy shit
anon i just saw this and i am the person who needs so much information about american schooling and blind student accessibility.

(if you are comfortable with exchanging emails or some form of contact that would be gr9 btw)
but holy shit this is so useful ohmygodddd. you are an angel in human form and I am blessed by this bountiful information.

Okay so with the IDEA act for education of disabled students I'm wondering what sort of funding goes along with that, in terms of providing the student with reasonable accessibility tools. Would the school be able to purchase a braille printer or screenreaders for their computers or not for example?
How involved is the parent in the process and is there a lot of paperwork and just general admin stuff that they have to deal with. (im assuming so lol)
I guess you might not know but I saw that O&M training was included in the 1996(??) IDEA act and if you have some idea of how that would be incorporated into schools or school education programs (from what ive seen there's usually an independent source/clinic involved in O&M training and that would be done at the clinic or in home but im wondering how that intersects with school education.

The information about the magnet schools is really useful. What's usually involved in an application process?

In terms of your experience what accommodations have you been making to prepare for the blind student you mentioned? In terms of technology and communication with the student & family. Do you have involvement with preparing the material for the student or is it mostly passed on to the Special Education teacher you mentioned (such as formatting braille text properly and so forth)

thank you for offering to take more questions because i have so many. so many questions (like ive said looking it up is way way different to getting someone's actual experiances)

Re: Ask about New York thread!

[(Anonymous)]

I'm glad this answer helped you so far! I hope you don't mind, but I'd rather keep our discussion here on the kink meme so it's accessible to anyone who needs it (and also, I'm terrible at remembering to check my fannish email since I don't use it very often). I've bookmarked this thread so I can check back.

Every state/city/school district sets up its funding a little differently, but in general, each state sets aside a portion of its education budget for special services (aka students with physical or learning disabilities). That money is then distributed to districts according to how many special needs students they have. Large urban districts would usually have a central office that maintains resources and supplies for students with disabilities. Individual schools can then check out the equipment they need for particular students. On the one hand, being in a large district like NYC public schools would probably be to Matt's advantage because he's definitely not the only blind student, so there are probably things like Braille printers floating around. On the other hand, most students with disabilities have learning disabilities, so that's where the school budget goes. I'd guess Matt's teachers probably could have laid hands on a Braille printer...but whether it worked is a separate question, which is pretty much the case with all school technology ever. A lot of magnet schools have their own separate funding, both from the district and private sources, that could have been used to get the tech Matt needed. Stuff like screen reading software is not super expensive, so I don't think that would have been a problem. Matt and/or his teachers probably could have gotten a lot of help (and Braille books) from the NY Public Library Program and the National Federation for the Blind.

I can't tell you the exact system required under the IDEA Act because it was superceded by the No Child Left Behind Act around 2005. Under that system, any student with physical or learning disabilities is entitled to an Individual Education Plan. Those plans are formulated by the school's special services coordinator and principals, and they stipulate exactly what accommodations are required for each student. I'd guess Matt's plan would have included being allowed to make audio recordings of lectures, help getting stuff in Braille or in audio book form, and possibly extra time to complete assignments since reading in Braille or listening to audio recordings can take a lot longer than skimming through a textbook. He would probably also have been entilted to a seat near the front of the room (to hear lectures) and unlimited library passes to have a quiet workspace (if other students talking really bothered him).

Private schools each have their own systems for handling these things. "Reasonable" accommodations is the key word -- if Matt won a scholarship to some really swanky private school like the Dalton School, they would have been legally required to use some of their multi-million dollar endowment to buy whatever the fuck Matt needed (and they would probaly do so happily, because why recruit a kid you don't plan to serve?) On the other hand, if Matt were at a small Catholic school targeted at the kind of families who can barely afford a private education, "reasonable" probably would have meant "do your best to find some Braille books and make sure the teachers describe stuff they write on the board."

Since Matt is obviously blind, he wouldn't have needed to prove he had a disability that requires accommodation, so that takes a lot of paperwork out of the system. He and his father probably filed a form after his accident, and the rest of the paperwork is on the school side. Paperwork and parents get involved when a student feels that they are not receiving the accmmodations they deserve, and parents sometimes have to get really pushy about this. Since Matt's a really good student, I'm guessing that most of his teachers would be happy to accommodate him. It's just a question of what happened when he inevitably ran up against that one ableist asshole who didn't want to help him.

As an English teacher in the smart phone era, I don't have to do that much to accommodate a blind student. There are apps to read printed text, so it doesn't matter too much if Braille documents are available. The main accommodation are to make sure I narrate anything I put on the board, to give him extra time to complete assignments, and to be understanding of spelling mistakes (Braille uses a lot of contractions that don't translate well to written English). For math and science classes that depend on intricate diagrams, the challenge can be bigger.

As for magnet applications, I don't know exactly what is required in NYC. For my district, there is a required exam, a couple recommendation letters, and an attendance/discipline report.

Hope this helps!