Sadly, this school is run under the De LaSalle Brothers — a parochial school that appears to receive some public funding for kids with severe disabilities. As someone said, there’s probably a lot more to the story. For details, go to http://www.mdp.org/
I don’t know. Something stinks about this story. There’s more here than meets the eye.
I just left a parochial school where I was teaching in the inner city. It was in the de LaSallian tradition, and every morning's prayer was completed with an appeal to St. John Baptist De LaSalle. This school may be a mission school, or something close to it. There is a strong tradition in the Catholic schools of serving the poor. Some of the Catholic schools in the inner cities are now in very rough areas. That was the situation with the school in which I taught. The system as a whole was struggling financially, and in some of these schools most of the kids were having their tuition paid by others in the diocese. It was basically an educational charity.
The students we were serving came mostly from the local public and charter schools when their parents gave up on them, or moved a troubled child in one of a long string of attempts to educate them. Some of the kids were good kids with poor academic backgrounds, and others were thugs who came for the sports and little else. If the school where this took place was serving kids with disabilities and taking public funds for it, I suspect they were on a very tight budget, just as we were. That means no extra help in the classroom, and an admin that won't permit enrollment to drop even if that means keeping a thug in a classroom. I repeatedly raised issues of unruly kids, bad language, disrespect, threats, and bullying with my admin. The worst actors received demerits and were called to the disciplinarian. None were ever expelled, and few were ever suspended, let alone suspended from sports.
Teachers can be placed in impossible situations, even in parochial schools. The Catholic school where everything was orderly and disciplined under the watchful eyes of nuns with rulers are not what I experienced. It's a tough world in those inner city schools, whether they are parochial or public. When I had the opportunity to leave there for a safer suburban school, I took it. No regrets. My safety and well being outweigh any good I could have done there. I worked with very dedicated and good people, but the financial pressures on the admin were intense. I didn't agree with some of their decisions because I think in the long run they doom the school to a downward spiral in which parents of good kids will withdraw them and the only kids left will be those whom nobody else will accept. It is a form of charity to do this, but it's one in which I don't feel safe enough to function.