Long Term Absences — Another Proposal

Several years back, Linda Wernikoff discussed the problem that older students sometimes refuse to attend speech services but remained on caseloads. At that time, Chapter Leader Mindy Karten Bornemann and UFT Vice President Carmen Alvarez had enough trust in the DOE to try to substitute the students who were on waiting lists for those who did not attend services.

As a result of an ongoing dialogue, the DOE has instituted procedures about long-term absences for speech. Some of our input was accepted but other suggestions were not. Mindy supports removing students who no longer benefit from our services because they do not attend either speech services or school. We hope that supervisors will support our efforts to get parents and students involved and that this is done in a legal and appropriate manner.

Recently, our chapter found many of the DOE and region policies are less than desirable. The administration has to support our efforts to put students on LTAs, to make sure that everyone is involved collaboratively and the work is not only done by the speech teacher. We will watch to see how this unfolds.

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