School Admin - Who is who's boss

[Guest guest]

Hi all. I have not posted in a very long while. My question is probably kind of

unusual. At least, I have never heard it before on the lists I am on.

My 15yo AS son goes to a nationally-ranked high school. Very good school! But

the SPED Dept sucks. Honestly, you could read an advocating book, look at all

the lists of " bad practice " and go down the list. At least for autism. I'm in

Texas, where the entire spectrum is classified as autism.

Needless to say, I've been at this for 9 years, and I never been close in

agreement with the school district on my son's " program " . Constant,

time-consuming, draining battle. I know, what else is new.

This is a large suburban school district with multiple high schools and a

separate overall SPED department, as well as SPED depts within in each school.

We have a SPED director that has made it her business to dismantle a very good

autism program (happened several years ago) and keep it that way. The way

things are now, there really is no program. Each parent has to duke it out with

the schools and build an autism program for their individual child from scratch

with untrained teachers. Of course, most give up. From what I can tell, most

with AS kids in our area are homeschooling or doing private therapeutic school

if they are at all in a position to do so. Some parents with resources have

hired legal help and done lots of private evaluating to supplement the schools

to push through programs for their own child specifically. (As an aside, in

those cases, typically the SPED director shows up at their team meetings,

everyone is intimidated from talking much, and she does her best to keep that

budget down. I know parents trying to extricate her from their meetings.)

Unfortunately, I am not in a position to do any of these things.

It has occurred to me that it would be helpful to know who is who's hiring

manager, so I know who is going to listen to who, who I should push for what

KWIM? The building principals and special ed director are both hired by the

school board. I assume the school board hired this director specifically to do

things like she is doing since there has been no stop to her antics despite

public complaint, law suits and publicity over the several years she has been

here. Nothing has changed.

ANYWAY, I know building principals hire most of the people that work in their

buildings. But what about the special ed staff? SPED teachers, diagnosticians,

etc. Who picks the building SPED chair? The principal and the SPED director

have the same hiring manager, so they are sort of on the same level--do they

just have to kind of duke it out?

Anybody know? I am sure it may be different in different states, different

districts, but I think it would be helpful to get ideas from how other districts

are divvying up such hiring.

Thanks in advance!

Ruth