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I understand what you mean...but I don't think the kid belongs in a regular classroom. THe judges are wrong if it was their decision to make. It would be better to send him to a school where all the kids need special attention and then one 'babysitter' could watch several children. More cost effective.

I think teachers have it made! Summers and all holidays off, extra pay for any extra curriculum activity, teach about 3 maybe 4 classes a day....do not have to stay at 'work' for 9 hours.....NICE!
Some say they have to work out of class to prepare. Hopefully there is not that much preparing and the teacher knows what he's teaching already! Especially year after year of teaching the same thing.... and kids will help grade exam (exchange papers, etc.) The only extra time I see is where they have to grade term papers and that is usually done when they babysit during those study hall classes at work. I mean most of us don't have that study hall luxury of doing nothing but staring at kids for an hour or two every day....we work all day long. But I can see where teachers would say this was extra work.
They have it made.

It would be better to send him to a school where all the kids need special attention and then one 'babysitter' could watch several children. More cost effective.

Aides for autistic children are not "babysitters." If they're doing their job, they are supposed to continually engage the child, to prevent him from withdrawing into his own self-stimulating world; to continually reinforce his use of language, eye contact, appropriate social behavior, and all the things autistic children find very difficult.

This kind of intense interaction can be exhausting for the aide, as well as challenging. To call it "babysitting" doesn't even come close to what aides are *supposed* to do.

...but I don't think the kid belongs in a regular classroom.

You and I agree, and my wife, a teacher, agrees with both of us.

Unfortunately, the judges don't agree, so there you go.

My wife loves teaching. And she DOES enjoy some of the "perks" that you mention. But she doesn't consider that she "has it made."

It is very hard work, and you have to deal with bureaucracy, with uncaring parents, petulant students (mostly the children of the afforementioned uncaring parents), scheduled bathroom breaks, lots of extra time spent after hours and at home grading papers, entering grades and (what most people don't realize) filling out the tons of meaningless PAPERWORK that is the stuff of our modern bureaucracy--reports for this and that, surveys, applications for student assistance, you name it.

So, like any other job you can name, it has its ups and downs. In the end, just like any other profession, you have to really love it in the "big picture" sense to put up with the annoyance.

You don't have enough information to determine if the kids should be in a mainstream class.

Maybe the teacher did something that the IEP plan says not to do.

You must be talking about high school. Elementary students cannot grade papers. My kids teachers are there from 7:30am-4pm every day with only 30 minutes of lunch. My husband went to the school this past Sunday to help install some computers, and he said there were lots of teachers at the school working.

Then you have the kindegarten and first grade teachers trying to teach 20 kids how to read and write!!!