Aug 28, 2018, Religious News (Kansas City): Catholic schools struggle to accommodate disabilities https://religionnews.com/2018/08/28/catholic-schools-struggle-to-accommodate-disabilities/ … “In a Catholic school it’s true inclusion. Everybody is treated the same way,” Becky Winbinger said. “It’s not like that at a public school.” But this type of inclusion — the integration of students with special needs into the regular classroom — is new to many Catholic schools…. According to the National Catholic Educational Association, the number of students with disabilities in Catholic schools across the country has increased by almost 20,000 over the past three years. But because disability practices aren’t uniform across Catholic schools, families wanting a Catholic education for their disabled children often encounter tough choices. When Vincenza Spadafore was born with a rare genetic condition known as PURA syndrome, her parents, Christy and Dominic, faced a dilemma. The Catholic school their boys attended in Tulsa, Okla., was built in 1928, with lots of stairs and no elevator. The Spadafores knew it wouldn’t be suitable for their daughter. It wasn’t that the school didn’t want to help Vincenza, Christy Spadafore said, but there was no cost-effective way to do it. FIRE, which stands for Foundation for Inclusive Religious Education, was started in 1996 in Kansas City, Mo., after a group of parents were “heartbroken” they weren’t able to give their children with disabilities a Catholic education. They’ve since provided more than $4.8 million for inclusive Catholic education, investing $400,000 this past year, buying iPads, providing training and hiring special education teachers. … One of the biggest problems with serving students with disabilities in Catholic school is the lack of resources. The most common option is to partner with the child’s public school to receive certain therapy services. … CCSE has since awarded schools about 60 grants totaling nearly $1 million. It has worked with nearly 30 schools in Maryland, helping about 6,000 students, teachers and families. Its professional development program, called Believe in Me, is the most recent addition to its support services. The organization is using it as a way for more Catholic schools to get informed and start thinking about best ways to serve students with disabilities and to continue informing schools that have received CCSE grants in the past. On Monday (Aug. 27), more than 70 teachers and administrators attended….
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Childhood Lost
Children today are noticeably different from previous generations, and the proof is in the news coverage we see every day. This site shows you what’s happening in schools around the world. Children are increasingly disabled and chronically ill, and the education system has to accommodate them. Things we've long associated with autism, like sensory issues, repetitive behaviors, anxiety and lack of social skills, are now problems affecting mainstream students. Blame is predictably placed on bad parenting (otherwise known as trauma from home).
Addressing mental health needs is as important as academics for modern educators. This is an unrecognized disaster. The stories here are about children who can’t learn or behave like children have always been expected to. What childhood has become is a chilling portent for the future of mankind.
Anne Dachel, Media editor, Age of Autism
http://www.ageofautism.com/media/
(John Dachel, Tech. assist.)
What will happen in another 4 years? How can we go on like this? This is a national (and international) problem of monumental proportions. We have an entire new class of children who cannot be accommodated by the system: many are manifestly neurologically impaired. Meanwhile, the government and the medical profession sleep on regardless.
John Stone,
UK media editor, Age of Autism
The generation of American children born after 1990 are arguably the sickest generation in the history of our country.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
It seemed to me that with rising autism prevalence, you’d also see rising autism costs to society, and it turns out, the costs are catastrophic.
They calculated that in 2015 autism cost the United States $268 billion and they projected that if autism continues at its current rate, we’re looking at one trillion dollars a year in autism costs by 2025, so within five years.
Toby Rogers, PhD, Political economist
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