Chomp, Chomp, Chomp

Teddy's been in the school system for 7 years now, and this is the first year that he has a child who bites in his classroom. Given that Teddy's in a self-contained classroom, which means he's in a classroom with other high-need students who aren't in mainstream classrooms, it's not surprising that his classroom looks a bit different than other classrooms. It's not uncommon to have different behaviors (like Teddy's flop and drop or food stealing) like yelling, occasional hitting, clothes that leave the body and more. But most of those, aside from the hitting, don't actually cause harm to others. 

Teddy's been bitten 4 times in the first 3 weeks of school. He's become the main target because he has no personal space boundaries and doesn't realize other people have boundaries. The worst was getting the call last week Monday that he was bit again while he still had a giant bruise on his other arm from Friday's bite. So I spent much of my time during his therapy and at night laying with him while he fell asleep e-mailing and trying to advocate for additional resources. 

One of the latest bite marks.

Believe me when I say I'm fully supportive of his teacher and the small team that works in his classroom daily. In addition to trying to educate our children, they're also spending all their time redirecting and modeling appropriate social behaviors, not to mention trying to curb negative behaviors and ensure safety. It's almost laughable some of the suggestions that others in administration suggest for solutions. OK, I'll be honest, I might have chuckled and asked if they've actually spent time in Teddy's classroom. I was kidding, but I also realize that what might work well for many kids likely may not be the best interventions for kindergarten students with significant behavioral challenges. 

After e-mailing quite a few folks, and several discussions with his teacher, it sounds like they are pulling in a variety of resources to hopefully resolve the behaviors quickly to ensure safety in the classroom.

But I also firmly believe the underlying issue is inadequate staffing. I reached out to the Director of Special Education at the start of the school year when I realized there were 7 students in Teddy's classroom with only one teacher and 2 paraprofessionals. (We've advocated since early on to have 1:1 staffing for Teddy due to safety reasons, not to mention to meet his learning needs, and we've never made any headway with that.) To compensate for being short staffed with high-need kids, the best solution at the start of school was to place a practicum student in the classroom who's there about 50% of the time to be an extra body. At the start of school, the district was short 20 para-professionals, with at least one of those open roles in Teddy's classroom.

I don't know how many para roles are still open, but the one in Teddy's classroom still is, along with others in his school I believe. These roles are critical to students' success and safety. Right now it's next to impossible to hire people for roles like paras because there is such low unemployment in Wisconsin that gas stations and other entry-level roles can pay as much or more as caregiving roles and paraprofessional roles. Everywhere you go, you see now hiring signs. Seriously, I just did a search on career postings, and a gas station is starting at $15/hour and the Oshkosh School District paraprofessional role is posted at $15.48. 

So I've been advocating and reaching out to others in the district to see what is being done beyond the standard recruitment for these roles. I truly believe that unless they make changes to overall compensation that they will not fill these roles that are so critical in keeping our students safe and helping our students learn. Thus far I've learned that a comprehensive review of each paraprofessional job description is being done starting next month to evaluate roles, responsibilities and compensation. That's a starting point, but we need to do better as a community. We're failing all of our students when we can't fill these and other critical roles.