Lee's Summit R-7 School District

St. Joseph School District Braces For Fallout In Wake Of Federal Investigation | KCUR If you wandered into the St. Joseph, Missouri School District convocation a couple of weeks ago you would probably think everything in the district is just fine. The 2,000 faculty and staff jammed into the Civic Center downtown were loud and seemed primed for the start of the 2014-2015 school year. But everyone in the arena that morning knew the district was in serious trouble. Since April the FBI, a federal grand jury in Kansas City and the Missouri State Auditor have all been investigating the district of 11,000 students. The district, at the direction of the school superintendent hired one year ago, secretly doled out $270,000 to 54 administrators, from associated superintendents down to assistant building principals. Not only did Superintendent Fred Czerwonka hand out the bonuses, he did so without approval from the Board of Education. Soon after administrators pocketed the bonuses, Czerwonk...

My notes:   I wanted to write a letter of understanding to make sure that we all agreed on the meeting of August 27th.  If you have any corrections please let me know within 10 days.   The Agenda was as follows:   AGENDA - JACOB TUCKER IEP - AUGUST 27, 2008, 2:45 TO 3:30   -Introductions -Parental request for changes to IEP -Transition to new classes -Schedule meeting to write reevaluation plan   Introductions were made.  I was not given a list of the participants and was only able to make a very crude listing of who was in attendance.  There was no written attendance list filled out.   I sent the following request to the district asking for changes to Jake's Present Level of Academic Achievement and Functional Performance   During the IEP meeting we discussed that Jake's short term memory was not just information that the parents shared from outside testing, but it was also very apparent from the dis...

There are many ways teachers can help children with learning and attention issues succeed in school. Here are some  common accommodations and modifications  to discuss with the school as possible options for your child. Presentation accommodations allow a student to: Listen to audio recordings instead of reading text. Learn content from  audiobooks , movies, videos and digital media instead of reading print versions. Work with fewer items per page or line and/or materials in a larger print size. Have a designated reader. Hear instructions orally. Record a lesson, instead of taking notes. Have another student share class notes with him. Be given an outline of a lesson. Use visual presentations of verbal material, such as word webs and  visual organizers . Be given a written list of instructions. Response accommodations allow a student to: Give responses in a form (oral or written) that’s easier for him. Dictate answers to a scribe. Capture respons...

Tanya Michaud and her 14-year-old autistic son, Skyler Michaud, look through some school books at their Durham Bridge home recently Tanya Michaud is struggling to keep her son in school for the second year in a row, but it's not because he doesn't want to go. "Skyler loves school, but right now he's at home doing nothing," Michaud said. "He's been taken out of yet another one." Skyler Michaud, 14, has Asperger's syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder. He's intelligent and high-functioning, Michaud said, but he likes structure and consistency. He can become aggressive if his daily schedule is changed. Because of this aggression, Michaud said, the school system doesn't want to deal with her son. "He does fine in class as long as he's given time to settle into a routine," she said. "I don't understand why he's being shuffled around. The constant changes are very hard on him." Elementary wasn't a good exp...

Speak Out! Your Story Retribution And Bullying By School District Administration And Staff Should Not Be Tolerated (By a Pennsylvania parent, name withheld) Retribution and bullying by school district administration and building personnel should not be tolerated. This is commonplace in our high school. It's dangerous, it's wrong and it should be illegal. "I want you to stop breathing my oxygen", the principal told my child this so many times that there isn't a student in that senior class that hasn't seen and heard this first hand. "These kids don't deserve to eat", the principal said this to the kitchen staff when they tried to serve drinks and snacks to the entire student body during a bomb scare. Every child in the building had nothing to eat that day simply because the principal didn't think they deserved it. There were children with health issues that did not get food or drinks. The district will say that students with medical needs were...