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Parajr · Mar 13, 2007, 09:44 AM

I'm a special education teacher at an alternative school. When regular schools deem students to be too violent, too bad, or just much of a problem they are sent to the altrenative school. The problem is that students in special education can only be suspended a certain amount of days (not sure of the number). The problem is that there are four students all gang members that happen to have their maxium number of suspension days exhusted before they arrived at the alternative school. One of the students that is six foot two 275 threatned to beat another student because he said the word slob. The giant gang member said this word is desrespectful to his gang affiliation and if anyone says it he must fight them. All four of the students are doing things that would get the regular studetns expelled, but we can't suspend them because their days have been exhausted. If anyone has bright ideas about how to solve this problem please let me know.

ScottGem · Mar 13, 2007, 11:01 AM

Report this to the police.

asterisk_man · Mar 13, 2007, 11:34 AM

I agree. I was going to suggest the same but I wasn't sure how it might be taken. Threatening others with bodily harm is a crime.

*not a lawyer nor able to provide legal advice*

shygrneyzs · Mar 13, 2007, 01:37 PM

Let me get this straight. You teach special education and there are gang members in this special education class? And these gang members are sent there because of their behavior? I guess I am thinking of special education in the terms of learning disabilities, mental retardation, etc. So how do these gang members fit in with this? Isn't that putting the other children at risk? My youngest son is in a transition program (for ages 18-21) fir special education. In that same building there is also an alternative high school plus an adult education unit. But they are all separated.

If I understand you right, as a parent, I would be outraged and be at my son's attorney's office. So please explain this a bit further.

Parajr · Mar 13, 2007, 02:15 PM

[QUOTE=shygrneyzs]Let me get this straight. You teach special education and there are gang members in this special education class? And these gang members are sent there because of their behavior? I guess I am thinking of special education in the terms of learning disabilities, mental retardation, etc. So how do these gang members fit in with this? Isn't that putting the other children at risk? My youngest son is in a transition program (for ages 18-21) fir special education. In that same building there is also an alternative high school plus an adult education unit. But they are all separated.

If I understand you right, as a parent, I would be outraged and be at my son's attorney's office. So please explain this a bit further.[/QUOT\
Yes, yes, and yes. Gangs are made up of a lot of special education students. The emmotional disabled students are a perfect fit because of their behavior, and violent nature. The learning diabled students want to it in, or are intimidated. The mental retarted kids are grouped as educatable, or trainable. The educatable are in gangs and will do just about anything to fit in. The trainable are usually not mentally capable of being in a gang. More intelligent people or students lable them as foot soldiers and use them to do their will. What is your son's classification and disability LD, ED, EMD, TMD?

Fr_Chuck · Mar 13, 2007, 02:52 PM

Not sure if it is the same as he is talking about butnot a special ed, like people think of, but there are many special schools in a lot of school districts, I did sub teaching at one in Georgia.
They did kids who were speical special needs. Parents who would not wake them up, or fix their breakfest or help them have clean clothes, the bus driver ( we had a special bus for our school) would have to often knock and wait for them to get dressed. We feed breakfest at the school.
Many were just so bad or so much trouble the normal school could not do anything with them, but because of state and federal law have to educate them or be subject to federal law suits for not providing education.

So you have gang members, lazy kids, kids that have some learning disabilities, those with ADD and other problems. Often you had to give breaks every 10 to 20 mintues, let them run around the building or do something to break up study.

It was tough and I would never want to work there all day every day.
And many of the "kids" were scary. You are basically told to teach them, you can't do anything to them, because you are not allowed to