Special education children, especially those with autism really require one-on-one education, or no more than five people per teacher. Any more than that and it is pretty much a babysitting episode, rather than any meaningful education. Teachers aids can help, and volunteers in a special education classrooms are a good thing, but those teacher’s aids must also be trained to deal with special education kids, who must be handled differently, and appropriately.

Of course this causes conflict with the parents of regular kids in the regular classrooms, because it takes a tremendous amount of budget money in special ed programs. Right now, as you know the school districts around the nation are cutting as much as they can to save costs. Every school district must cut as much as possible, as many states are nearly bankrupt. Looking for the federal government to help out probably won’t work, even though the federal mandates for the no child left behind programs are part of the problem.

Those kids who have autism, or have learning disabilities in special ed can come a long way if they get the proper trained, taught, and have the proper teachers to make that happen. In the future they can in fact support themselves as adults. If we fail to teach them correctly now, they become wards of the state in later years. The reality of one-on-one education needs help, but also don’t forget that the kids in normal classes also need one-on-one attention when learning the more technical aspects in computer class.

It is unfortunate to see that the special-education classes and the regular classes are being pitted against each other, along with parents fighting each other over the budget at the school board meetings. The reality is that one-on-one education for special education is appropriate given the situation, but we must also understand that if we take all the money and throw it into special ed to provide the one-on-one support needed to properly teach these kids, then the rest of the school will suffer.

If our schools cannot teach our kids properly then our society as a whole will be in severe jeopardy in 20 years when these kids are then in charge of running the society and civilization. Perhaps you can see how important this issue is, and also understand why we are failing at it. If we don’t address these issues, and are too concerned with being politically correct, then neither side will win, and everyone loses. It’s time to take a realistic approach to the cost and actual funding available for our education system, or we won’t have one. Please consider all this.