Last week, the students and staff of SDSA were lucky enough to be featured as part of a story pertaining to the Empowerment Scholarship Accounts. If you missed the story, you can read more about it and see the video here.
I was disappointed by the response from Don Peters, Attorney for the AZ School Board. Mr. Peters expressed his disapproval with the program, and questioned why it is fair for the state to pay for private school for a child with disabilities but not for "any other kid." What Mr. Peters fails to realize is that "fair" in education does not mean everyone gets equal. "Fair" means everyone gets what they need. The students at St. Dominic Savio Academy are there because they need a specialized program in order to make progress and be successful. Any parent at SDSA would happily inform Mr. Peters that their child attends SDSA not out of luxury, but rather out of necessity.
Mr. Peters went on to question why we don't use the model that works at private schools and employ that very model in public programs. Unfortunately, the parents of the students at SDSA don't have time to wait for public programs to utilize the research based and proven methods of applied behavior analysis, hire teachers with autism and ABA experience, provide the necessary student to staff ratios for success, keep classroom sizes small, support staff and teachers, or the multitude other supports and strategies that private programs have been utilizing for years. They simply aren't willing to waste their child's precious time in programs that aren't demonstrating success. If the members of the Arizona School Board and the Teacher's Union want to know how to better serve students in their classrooms, they are welcome to visit my classroom any time.
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