What would you do for your kid?
For most parents, the immediate answer is as simple as it is cliched: anything.
Often doing “anything” for one’s child has consequences for other children. Moving to a wealthier school district leaves another district one family poorer. Testing into a magnet school deprives the neighborhood school of a talented youngster. Shelling out for those piano lessons gives your kid a leg up in the college admissions process, but also puts the child who didn’t get lessons at a disadvantage.
Usually these consequences are indirect — or at least indirect enough to avoid real intellectual scrutiny.
That wasn’t the case this year for the parents at James Dobson Elementary, a quiet school of 300 tucked into the hills of Northwest Philadelphia’s Manayunk neighborhood.
In the spring, the parents at Dobson discovered — or thought they discovered — a school district plan to increase the number of special-education students in their building. At first they bristled. Then they raged.
Taking on more special-ed kids would imperil their own children, the parents said. They said it would ruin Dobson’s reputation and drive young families out of the neighborhood.
Once mobilized, the parents made a bold request. They asked the School District of Philadelphia to restrict the number of special-education students at Dobson; they asked, essentially, for special treatment.
And in the end, they may just have gotten it.
This is a story of impossible choices, the kind parents and administrators confront daily in a large, poor school district.
Should a group of parents slam the door on vulnerable, but troubled students? Or should they welcome all comers, even if it might harm their own children?
Should a school district scrapping to keep parents in the city bend to the demands of those parents? Or should it ignore their complaints, perpetuating every stereotype of the disconnected bureaucrat?
What would do you for your kid? What should you do?
A school budget, an extra teacher, and a theory
Our story begins in April at one of those sleepy school-community meetings attended only by a handful of the most committed parents. This particular gathering, held inside Dobson’s library, was on the subject of the 2016-17 school budget.
While scanning the budget document, Lauren Perez, then head of Dobson’s Home and School Association, noticed an aberration. There was an extra special-education teacher in the budget. Specifically, there was an extra instructor assigned to teach “emotional support” students.
School districts must provide emotional support — or ES services — to students classified as emotionally disturbed. This isn’t a clinical designation, but rather one of 13 categories of disability as defined by the federal law governing special-education services.
To qualify as emotionally disturbed, a student must exhibit behavior problems severe enough to hinder his or her ability to learn. This can include students so introverted and socially disengaged it hurts their schoolwork.
But it typically doesn’t, says Daniel Cooper, an attorney who represents special-education students and their families in the Philadelphia area.
Instead, said Cooper, most students labeled emotionally disturbed receive that designation because they act out. Emotionally disturbed students are, Cooper said, “kids that will tear up classrooms, be physically aggressive, hit other students, hit their teachers, [and be] verbally aggressive to the point where they’re cursing out other kids, cursing out other teachers.”
One mother of an emotionally disturbed student at Dobson described her daughter as bright but volatile. The mother, who would not allow WHYY to use her name, said her daughter loses control of her emotions at school 18 to 20 times a month. The episodes range from verbal dust-ups to flipped desks and pencil stabbings. After the outbursts are over. She said her daughter often feels remorse, going so far as to write letters of apology. But still the behavior problems persist.
“She’s not bad,” the mother said. “She’s very sweet. Some kids know how to deal with their emotions. Some kids don’t. Not everybody is the same.”
For families of emotional support students, finding a good academic fit can be an arduous process. The mother of the Dobson student said her daughter had been through four district schools by sixth grade. Another family in Kensington described a similar carousel of schools, all in pursuit of the most supportive environment. It is painful, the mother of the Dobson parent said, to feel her child’s future slipping away because of recurring behavioral issues.
“I worry about her not being able to go to college because she’s not getting the proper education,” she said. “It takes a toll on her and her teachers, as well.”
Emotional disturbance is a rare disability. Only 1,557 students in Philly’s public schools require emotional support. District practice mandates that emotionally disturbed students go to the closest local school that has a dedicated emotional support program. Dobson, one of those schools, is a hub for students from the neighborhood and beyond who need those services.
In 2015-16, Dobson had 305 students in grades kindergarten through eight. Twelve of them were classified emotionally disturbed. These students receive some pull-out time in a separate class where they work on social skills and set goals, but spend much of their school day alongside general-education peers.
In prior years, Dobson’s emotional support program covered only students in grades three through five. Perez noticed, however, that the 2016-17 school year budget included an emotional support teacher for grades six through eight.
What would have looked like a good thing to most — hooray, another teacher — looked like a threat to Perez. It meant emotionally disturbed students that would have had to leave Dobson after fifth grade could now stay through the eighth. That, in turn, meant Dobson would take on more emotionally disturbed students, Perez figured.
And this, to her, was a major problem.
‘I am NOT saying I don’t want ANY of these special-education students’
Throughout the year, parents complained that the current crop of emotionally disturbed students at Dobson were causing trouble. They described fights, wild outbursts, assaults on teachers — in essence a school on the brink of breakdown. (Dobson teachers and administrators contacted for this story either redirected questions to the school district’s central office or didn’t reply to requests for interviews.)
In a May letter to Sonya Berry, special-education director for the region, parent Denisa Bratina said “potentially violent” students at Dobson were “being protected from reasonable consequences” and that the school was suffering as a result. The pleading in her letter captured much of the mood among the most upset parents.
“I am NOT saying I don’t want ANY of these Special Education students,” Bratina wrote. “Of course, everyone deserves an education. What I AM saying is that overloading one school with a % exceeding double that of successful schools, and subsequently not providing basic supports like STAFF, DOES NOT SERVE THE STUDENTS. Being set up to fail is UNACCEPTABLE.”
Bratina, the mother of a special-education student, is a longtime Manayunk resident whose grandmother attended Dobson almost a century ago. She and others felt their beloved school was under siege. Adding more emotionally disturbed students, they argued, would tip Dobson into full-fledged chaos.
“I feel like this is the most important thing that we’ll ever do for our school,” said Perez in mid-May. ” And if we don’t stand together and stick together on it, then we’re giving up our school. It’s out of our hands. It’s no longer our school. It’s their school — because the district decided they could put in our school whoever they wanted.”
A typical middle-income school, with one exception
James Dobson Elementary belongs to the narrow set of city schools that have reasonably high test scores, aren’t special admission, and aren’t located in the priciest enclaves of Center City. It sits in a census tract where the median family income is double the city average. The average owner-occupied home in Dobson’s backyard goes for $228,000 — pricey by Philadelphia standards, but within reach for a middle-class family.
The school demographics offer a balanced mix of black and white, privileged and poor. It’s small. It’s homey. It is, as the members of the Home and School Association would later describe it in an online petition, a “community gem.”
“I know your kids. Your kids know my kids. It’s really tight-knit. It’s like a really small town inside of a big city,” said parent Melissa Copeland.
Dobson profiles like a typical middle-class city school in almost every way except one: its special-education population.
At Dobson, 4.1 percent of students are emotionally disturbed. That may not seem like much, but it’s well above the school district average of 1.2 percent. Out of 220 district schools, Dobson has the 20th highest percentage of emotionally disturbed children.
Other schools with student bodies similar to Dobson don’t have anywhere near this number of emotionally disturbed students.
To make this point, Dobson parents circulated statistics showing that their school had a higher-than-average proportion of special-education students. The same document showed that the city’s highest performing elementary schools — mostly located in Philadelphia’s ritziest neighborhoods — have a lower-than-average proportion of special-education educations. Why, they wondered, couldn’t their school have those types of demographics?
The Dobson parents didn’t have access to a school-by-school breakdown of emotional support students. But those numbers tell a similar story.
There are only 18 schools in Philadelphia that serve a lower percentage of economically disadvantaged students than Dobson. Together those 18 schools enroll 14,220 students, just 28 of whom are emotionally disturbed. That’s a minuscule 0.2 percent.
Dobson has 12 such students in a school of 290.
| SCHOOL | % ES STUDENTS | % ECONOMICALLY DISADVANTAGED |
| William Meredith | 0.00% | 17.41% |
| Albert Greenfield | 0.00% | 17.93% |
| Joseph Greenberg | 0.00% | 23.85% |
| Penn Alexander | 0.00% | 24.46% |
| Julia R. Masterman | 0.17% | 24.6% |
| Science Leadership Academy | 0.20% | 27.86% |
| GAMP | 0.17% | 31.76% |
| J.S. Jenks | 0.21% | 34.74% |
| Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush | 0.33% | 34.91% |
| Central High School | 0.00% | 39.80% |
| Stephen Decatur | 0.10% | 41.63% |
| Watson Comly | 0.00% | 42.06% |
| CAPA HS | 0.28% | 43.02% |
| SLA at Beeber | 0.84% | 43.53% |
| Shawmont | 0.00% | 44.25% |
| High School of Engineering and Science | 0.11% | 44.74% |
| Baldi MS | 0.94% | 45.13% |
| Fox Chase School | 0.00% | 46.84% |
| James Dobson | 4.14% | 47.40% |
| C.W. Henry | 0.21% | 47.50% |
In other words, emotionally disturbed students are nearly impossible to find at middle-income schools — with the one exception of Dobson.
(By the way, the reverse is also true. Of the 20 schools with the highest percentage of emotionally disturbed students, 16 serve a higher than average proportion of students in poverty.)
That’s not a coincidence, said Daniel Cooper, the special-education attorney. Research shows that students with emotional disabilities disproportionately come from poor families. Students in the child welfare and foster care systems are also more likely to need emotional support services.
“Emotional disturbance has significant, significant environmental factors,” said Cooper. “I’ve had kids who have witnessed all sorts of horrific, horrific violence. That is going to lead to mental health issues.”
Emotionally disturbed students don’t behave poorly out of malice, but there is a growing and uncomfortable body of evidence that suggests students with emotional issues can negatively affect the mental well-being and academic achievement of their classmates.
Recent studies suggest that when general-education students share a room with special-education students, test scores drop and absenteeism rises, said Michael Gottfried, associate professor of education at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
There are a number of possible explanations, said Gottfried. Special-education students may disrupt classroom flow or they may just take up more of the teacher’s time, leaving other students to languish. What’s clear, he said, is that the “spillover effect” is particularly pronounced when students share a class with children who are emotionally disturbed.
“Research shows that students with emotional disabilities are actually the hardest to incorporate in the general classroom,” he said.
The parents at Dobson intuited much of this. They sensed the unusually high number of emotional support students would make things more difficult for their children. Adding more of these troubled students would only make matters worse.
In essence, Dobson was a middle-income school dealing with a poorer school’s problem.
“These kids are coming from such traumatized backgrounds. Our kids are not used to that level of trauma. They’re just not.” said Perez. “Diversity, does it have to mean that?”
‘My kid comes first’
Soon after Perez noticed the new special-education teacher in the budget, she and other parents mobilized. The Home and School Association drafted an online petition calling on school district leaders to address the “inequitable” number of special-education students at Dobson. It quickly attracted 180 signatures.
In early May, about 75 parents met with a group of high-level district administrators, but left disappointed. They described the officials as a row of nodding heads, conveniently unable to answer their questions or explain why Dobson was in its current predicament.
Frustration peaked at an unusually well-attended meeting of the Home and School Association later that month. After hurdling through reports on the usual items — bake sales, fundraisers, and the like — Perez opened the floor to concerns about special education.
Like a match striking gasoline, grievances spread quickly around the circle of parents.
Parents called the emotionally disturbed students dangerous and uncontrollable. One accused them of using foul language her kids weren’t used to hearing, while another made a vague reference to bad “influences on the playground.” Perez accused the district of converting Dobson into a citywide hub for special-education students.
Dad William Copeland talked about Charles Drew, the school in West Philadelphia he attended as a kid. The school was chaotic. He couldn’t learn. Eventually his parents pulled him out.
“Any school in Philadelphia, in my opinion, can turn into that,” he said.
Even Dobson?
“If you put bad kids in there, yeah,” he said. “Can’t do nothing ’bout that, if you’re forced to take horrible children from anywhere.”
The logic here is simple and cold. Emotionally disturbed kids are problem kids. Too many problem kids and your school becomes a “bad” school. And no one sends their kids to a bad school — so long as they have the money and resources to avoid it.
Dobson parent Denise Bratina punctuated this point by pointing her finger west toward the city border.
“Montgomery County is literally right there,” she said. “I have dozens of friends who have moved to the suburbs because they don’t wanna send their children to Philadelphia public schools. Philadelphia public schools have a bad rap.”
Manayunk, said Perez, was the only neighborhood where she could afford a house with a front-yard vegetable garden, send her kids to the local public school, and still bike to work downtown. In a city and a school system like Philadelphia, those kind of specs are hard to find.
“Everyone keeps saying, ‘I’m going to move out,’” said another parent, Dena Stefenak. “I’m going to put up a really good fight.”
Asked whether any of this felt callous — whether slamming the door on special-needs students might trigger some guilt — Stefenak responded softly, but firmly.
“My kid comes first,” she said. “I’m sorry. I care about everyone’s kid. But mine’s first.”
