In 2022, District 308 officials made the decision to move special education students to a new program called Cross-Categorical. They separated Kindergarteners through third graders from their already established general education peer groups and moved them to a new school, while moving already established fourth and fifth graders to a separate school. This decision was made without the input and feedback from the Board of Education, parents, and teachers. The district's idea is to keep Kindergarten through 3rd grade at one school and then move them to a new school for 4th and 5th grade. This means that friendships and bonds formed with staff and general education students will be lost and routines will be disrupted. Moving schools and making new friendships is hard for typical children. Moving schools and having to reestablish friendships with children who have already formed friend groups is even harder for special education children. The district moves special education students to schools where there is "room" for them, doing so by only looking at general education enrollment numbers per year for each school, excluding the special education children from that total number. Special education children are not counted in the enrollment numbers when they should be included. This act is discriminatory against special education children and is in violation of the IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Act).

Recently, the same district officials have made the decision to eliminate contractual special education TA's (Teacher’s Assistants), eliminate all elementary library TA positions (thus eliminating library services for all Kindergarteners), deny more 1:1 support TA's for individuals with Individualized Education Plans and involuntarily reallocating general education TA's to try and cover those gaps. This decision was also made without the input and feedback of the Board of Education, parents, school staff, and teachers. This means that many general education TA’s are being forced to resign from their positions due to the inability to work at a different location, many special education students with 1:1 support services in their IEP’s are left without those support individuals, and special education classrooms are left with only 1 Teacher’s Assistant per several classrooms instead of several TA’s in each classroom, again leaving special education students without the adequate support they need to be successful. District officials also made this decision despite the Union contract stating, “If the District determines that the need can be met by any qualified employee, volunteers will be considered first.” The district failed to ask for volunteers first before involuntarily reallocating these TA’s and their positions.

Moving special education students around to different schools every couple of years based on where there is “room for them,” and denying adequate support services by eliminating multiple TA positions is discriminatory and against the IDEA. Both decisions were made by the district without individualized assessments regarding whether such placement and less educational support would be harmful to specific students and have been vehemently objected by District 308 staff members, and many parents, (those of both special education students and general education students) who are concerned about the detrimental effect on their students and their children. Please join the parents of these children, and District 308 staff members, in demanding that these policies be reconsidered so that these children can remain in their rightful place with their general education peers and that ALL students continue to have the adequate support services of Teacher’s Assistants to aid in their educational success.

By signing this petition, you are making the following statement:

I am against District 308 segregating special education students from their already formed friendships and bonds with their general education peers by repeatedly moving them to different schools based on general education enrollment numbers and I am against the involuntary reallocation of Teacher’s Assistants, which is ultimately leaving the district even more short staffed with support personnel and less 1:1 aids.

Note: I am both a previous TA who was involuntarily reallocated, forcing me to resign from my position, and a special needs mom to a 7-year-old daughter. She originally started at Fox Chase Elementary and then was moved to Churchill without input or feedback from her father or I. The district has failed to look at numbers district wide since pre-COVID and made the decision to move my daughter and other special education children to a location where there was "room for her" regardless of the negative effects this change could make.

Recently, our daughter had a choking incident where she managed to lodge an object in her throat, cutting off her air supply, despite there being several TA’s and her teacher in her classroom. Had there not been as many TA’s in her room to help with the incident and the other special education children in the room, the outcome could have been fatal. My daughter’s class is just one of hundreds throughout the district that need more aids, not less.