With just weeks left for the start of the school year, parents and teachers are feeling anxious about what’s next, especially parents who have kids with disabilities have even more to worry about.
It would be an understatement to say that planning this upcoming school year has been challenging for all school officials; a local lawyer was quoted as saying in media.
“I’ve been a teacher, a principal, a superintendent for 30 years, and I’ve never seen a more polarizing issue than the current debate regarding how to re-open,” Dr. Mike Leichliter, Penn Manor School District Superintendent, said.
“It changes almost every hour what we need to do,” Carrie Fowler, Board Director of the Harrisburg School District, said.
And that’s just for the most basic of operations, and for students who have no restrictions, disabilities, or special education needs.
“That’s really tragic because, how do you get a child with autism who needs one on one attention or needs somebody with them to help them?” Daniel Fennick, an attorney with Anderson, Converse, & Fennick in York County, said. “You can’t do that right now. How do you get them to look at a computer screen?”
Right now, Fennick is working with a number of families who are concerned their kids won’t get the proper education they are entitled to under FAPE. It stands for Free Appropriate Public Education. It’s an educational entitlement of all students in the United States, guaranteed by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
