Re: The City of Weston taking over their public schools?

[Guest guest]

No surprise! Do you really think they want to help our kids as equals. They just pity them because we have used that as our weakness to get them to pay attention to us. And now what? You want them to treat our kids as equals. Why don't we stop making them pity us or our kids. I live in Weston and If this happens. Good! Any one wants to start a private school in the sunrise area.

Cuz I know if this happens there will be a quick enrollment of I don't know how many students since the 2 cluster schools alone have a great number of kids. From early intervention and in the high schools there are how autistic kids residing in Weston alone? Not including the ones that still come here to our schools for one reason or another.

-cat

Subject: The City of Weston taking over their public schools?To: sList Date: Monday, August 11, 2008, 10:56 AM

A fair amount of notice has been given to the City of Weston taking over their schools from the Broward County Board of Education. Now I understand this may be just posturing by the City, but the members of this list might want to consider the ramifications if this occurred for special education programs. If the way the City handles resources for public field space is any indication, our kids would probably get the short end of the stick.As has been mentioned previously, the City of Weston delegates the use of its public fields to an organization called the Weston Sports Alliance, Inc (WSA). The WSA is made up exclusively of the established youth sports organizations of the City. Neither the WSA nor its member organizations are required to create or maintain any recreational programming for special populations, and currently only two programs exist; 1) AYSO which groups 50 children of all

disabilities in a one and a half hour session in the middle of Sundays, 2) and a Little League program that has a similar structure with 13 children. To my knowledge, no child from any of these programs has graduated to any form inclusive enviroment to play with their peers, and very little training or development is attempted. The field time allocated is Sundays when no other groups want the space.Over the last three months, attempts have been made to secure field space for a baseball program to actually teach our kids the sport, and have them play in some form with their typical peers so that some point in the future they can actually play the game. Continually these efforts have been met with responses from the Mayor of the City, the President of the WSA, and the Presidents of the AYSO and the Little League that the current programming is sufficient, and various road blocks have been put in

place to stop putting these kids on the fields, so more programming can be added for typical kids.Now I don't think it is a stretch to imagine the ramifications for Weston's public schools. A city school system would have limited resources, as there are limited resources for recreational programs. Would a city appointed board determine that it was enough to put all special populations in one setting where they had no ability to interact with their typical peers? If class space was lacking, finding "seperate but equal" locations to warehouse these children? Fighting McKay so they could receive state dollars to maintain subpar programming?If the City of Weston cannot adaquately manage sports fields for our kids, what business do they have managing their schools?

[Guest guest]

I live in Weston too and have three children... two typical girls and one with autism who attends Baudhuin. I fear for her future in public schools like most of us do as Kindergarten looms...only one more year at Baudhuin for her.

I am told that Butterfly Effects is opening a school for prek and Kindergarten in Weston. The tuition $33,000. Maybe with this new "initiative in Weston" we can get them to pay the freight. Any thoughts, ideas. Count me in to help.

America's Most Wanted/Producer

Cell

Email: Det@...

Subject: The City of Weston taking over their public schools?To: sList Date: Monday, August 11, 2008, 10:56 AM

A fair amount of notice has been given to the City of Weston taking over their schools from the Broward County Board of Education. Now I understand this may be just posturing by the City, but the members of this list might want to consider the ramifications if this occurred for special education programs. If the way the City handles resources for public field space is any indication, our kids would probably get the short end of the stick.As has been mentioned previously, the City of Weston delegates the use of its public fields to an organization called the Weston Sports Alliance, Inc (WSA). The WSA is made up exclusively of the established youth sports organizations of the City. Neither the WSA nor its member organizations are required to create or maintain any recreational programming for special populations, and currently only two programs exist; 1) AYSO which groups 50 children of all

disabilities in a one and a half hour session in the middle of Sundays, 2) and a Little League program that has a similar structure with 13 children. To my knowledge, no child from any of these programs has graduated to any form inclusive enviroment to play with their peers, and very little training or development is attempted. The field time allocated is Sundays when no other groups want the space.Over the last three months, attempts have been made to secure field space for a baseball program to actually teach our kids the sport, and have them play in some form with their typical peers so that some point in the future they can actually play the game. Continually these efforts have been met with responses from the Mayor of the City, the President of the WSA, and the Presidents of the AYSO and the Little League that the current programming is sufficient, and various road blocks have been put in

place to stop putting these kids on the fields, so more programming can be added for typical kids.Now I don't think it is a stretch to imagine the ramifications for Weston's public schools. A city school system would have limited resources, as there are limited resources for recreational programs. Would a city appointed board determine that it was enough to put all special populations in one setting where they had no ability to interact with their typical peers? If class space was lacking, finding "seperate but equal" locations to warehouse these children? Fighting McKay so they could receive state dollars to maintain subpar programming?If the City of Weston cannot adaquately manage sports fields for our kids, what business do they have managing their schools?

[Guest guest]

Schwartz

President

Weston Sports Alliance

strikersoccer1@...

Mr Schwartz:

I wanted to follow up on your organizations commitment to our athletes

and the promises made by your constituent agencies. Now these were

promises your organizations made, as the parents and supporters of

these children are happy to provide them given fair access to public

facilities. As your the website for your own organization, AYSO 644,

states up to 10% of our youth population has special needs and those

children need inclusive programming. I think some of the actions

since then of some of your constituent agencies may jeopordize your

ability in providing those services.

One of the concerns brought up at the meeting was that most of these

children need to be residents of the City of Weston. Now as I have

brought to your, Skidmore, Weston's Assistant City Manager,

and Don Decker, Weston's Director of Parks & Recreation, attention

recently, a cursory cross referencing of 3 competitive travel

baseball teams web sites and Broward County Property Records would

seem to indicate that a good amount of the athletes on " Weston " teams

are actually from locations outside of Weston. Now I have not heard

back from the three of you after many attempts to see if I am correct

in these facts. My fear for you is that you and the City may be seen

as favoring gifted athletes from outside of Weston instead of your

stated commitment to the exceptional athletes we discussed at the

meeting. Given all of your passion around the subject, we know that

cannot be true.

I know we are all moved by the passion that the Weston Area Little

League's president had towards these children, and that given two

weeks more notice this year, he would reverse the 67% decline in the

program. Apparently, he failed to check that the man he had assigned

to run the Challenger program had moved to Atlanta over the summer.

Also, apparently there was a board election of the members of the

Weston Area Little League on Thursday August 21st, and although a

week has passed the results of the elections have not been released

to the members. I have it on fairly good authority that the past

president was voted off his board in what was described as a coup

d'etat, even after his attempts to change the election site 2 hours

beforehand to secure his reelection. This can not be confirmed

because as I mentioned the new Board has not released any results.

Obviously, I may have some of these details wrong, but I reiterate my

concerns about about the continued viability of this organization if

the above is true, and do feel we may need to find a better solution

for these great kids.

Now given the above issues,we have secured space within and outside

of Weston for our league, but we would be open to any releasing of

Weston public facilities to even better serve these kids and save the

City the embarassment of sending its children outside of the City for

their needs. Obviously, given the apparent turmoil of some of your

organizations, we are happy to release the Weston Sports Alliance

from any of its prior promises.

Since from various emails sent by your league I get a sense that you

are having some trouble getting commitment from the parents in your

league; so we can make sure our parents kept up to date and stay

committed, I am copying them into this letter.

>

> Schwartz

> President

> Weston Sports Alliance

> Dear Mr. Schwartz:

> Thank you for organization's time this evening. I was encouraged to

hear the enthusiasm both the Weston Area Little League and the West

Broward YMCA representatives had for expanding inclusive programming

for the great kids I brought to your organization's attention. It was

a great start, and if both of these organizations follow through on

what was promised, I can assure enthusiastic support from a great

group of parents and a lot of kids having fun. I thought Mr. Marika's

idea to force all typical kids to help develop this population was a

little radical, but his passion is appreciated. I look forward to

your organizations follow up on this matter, and with any luck we can

get some kids on Weston fields this fall.

> Best Regards,

> Gordon

>

>