Story of the Day 8/17/2011

Today was Sarah’s first day back to school- the first day of the fall semester.
She is now a junior, an eleventh grader, and some of her classes are a bit more complicated and advanced and sophisticated, and I suspect that may be part of why she came home, today, and told me about a rather confusing thing she was taught in one of her classes.

The topic was “Lesbian corruption”.
When she told me that, I thought, “Do they mean what/who is corrupting lesbians or what are lesbians corrupting or...” and I really had to wonder for a moment.
And then Sarah explained to me that she learned this phrase because of the new speech to text system the school has put in place.


You see, not only was today the first day that Sarah had the benefit of the wonderful new interpreter, it is also Sarah’s first day benefiting from a wonderful new technology called speech to text.
If you have never been exposed to it, it is having what is spoken in the classroom by the teacher and the students- the lectures, the discussions, the questions and answers- typed up and displayed on a monitor (usually a television monitor or a computer screen) for the deaf student to read what is being said. It is a lot like closed captioning on the television. It makes the words that are spoken accessible to people who cannot hear them.

This is a wonderful technology. It is helpful for students like Sarah, who are Deaf and use ASL, but it is even more helpful to students who are deaf or hard or hearing and do not know sign language, or are learning it, but are not yet fluent enough to follow an interpreter.

Now Sarah has an interpreter, and she is fluent in sign language, so why would she need this?

Well, in case you have not been reading the stories of the past 18 months, Sarah has had a series of truly unskilled interpreters. For three semesters and two summer sessions, she has spent the vast majority of the time at the mercy of interpreters who didn’t know enough ASL to know the numbers or how to sign “triangle” or even how to introduce themselves and give their own names.

There have been intervals, some lasting half a day, some lasting a bit longer, when Sarah had good interpreters, and there have even been a few occasions when she had incredibly good interpreters, but for the bulk of the time, she has sat in class and had almost no idea what was being said- what the teacher was teaching, what the class was discussing, and who was making drug deals.

Hopefully that last bit didn’t happen, but how would she know?

As the months dragged on, Sarah’s obnoxious mother (me) started requesting in meeting after meeting and case conference after case conference that the school provide speech to text services. And month after month at each and every meeting and case conference at which Sarah’s obnoxious mother kept requesting the service be considered, the school’s administrator, Mrs. BH, refused to discuss it. Of course, she didn’t exactly refuse, she would determine the agenda, and place it towards the end, and then end the meeting by saying, “Well, we are out of time, we will have to discuss this, next time.” I am not joking. And since Sarah’s obnoxious mother and her very wonderful RPR (special education advocate) had no authority to alter the agenda or force BH to stay in the room for 5 more minutes, the months dragged on with Sarah having no access to the classroom education.

Eventually, Sarah’s obnoxious mother utilized the brains of a very intelligent friend and was advised to present a signed and dated request to BH. So, at the next case conference in January of 2011, I did just that, well, not during the case conference, because, once again, I had requested the speech to text services be put on the agenda, and BH played the old. “Oh gee, sorry, we ran out of time.” At which point I handed the signed request to her.

She was not thrilled.

She was also not especially thrilled when I notified her that I was requesting to have the results of the assessment reviewed with me prior to the case conference. You are now allowed to say, “Huh?” Well, when I put in the signed request, the school had 60 school calendar days to do the assessment and have a conference to review the findings/recommendations of the assessment. Of course, my requesting that the results be reviewed with me prior to the case conference meant they had a few less days to get this done. Of course, since the 60 days would be up on April 14th or April 15th or maybe April 18th (it became bit hard to figure out because of a combination of snow days and make up for snow days) that meant they really only had and entire 2 ½ months to set this up.

And as that hard to determine deadline approached, I had to email the school several times to try to get a case conference date set up…and, even with my nagging the best the school seemed to be able to do was to slightly miss the deadline.

And when I asked about when they were actually going to meet with me to review the assessment (which, as far as I knew had not yet taken place and this was already the first week of April), I was finally given the option of meeting with them on April 14th- a very lovely Thursday morning.

I will admit that when they finally emailed me and gave me a date to have the assessment reviewed, I was thrilled. I wasn’t sure exactly how they had managed to get it done, since it is rather hard to do an assessment of the educational needs without anyone ever visiting Sarah’s classroom (which as far as Sarah and I knew, had not occurred, at least not while Sarah was in the classroom), I figured that progress was finally being made.

But I was wrong.

I showed up at North Central High School a few minutes early and was taken into the conference room by BH. She handed me a copy of the report and then she said, “I’d like to review the recommendations with you.”
I stopped her and said that I would prefer to read the report, first. Since it seemed to be all of two pages, and fronts only, no backs, I figured that this would not be an issue. I was wrong. BH said that there was no need to read it, since we could just got right to the recommendations.
I insisted that I wanted to read the report, first. BH expressed her displeasure, but I started to read it, anyhow.

After reading the first three paragraphs and quickly scanning the rest, I looked up at he rand I said, “This isn’t an assessment.”

BH told me I was wrong and that it was an assessment.

I said, that it wasn’t. And she again insisted that it was.
I then read the paragraph to her, where it stated that no assessment was done.
I suspected that this particular detail was why she was so insistent that I not read the report. I could be wrong, but…


By then we had been joined by Sarah’s TOR (Teacher of Record) - who is her resource teacher- the teacher who is responsible for her special education needs being met.

Since she was the person who had sent me the email to attend this review of an assessment that she must have known had never been done, my estimation of her ethics, her credibility and her interest in providing my daughter’s need be met went down. Very far down.

That did not happen with my estimation of any of BH’s character traits, since this was simply the most blatant in a series of rather unprofessional things that she had been involved in regarding my daughter.

Needless to say, she was also totally unfazed by this minor blip- the blip being that I was now aware that she had decided to try to not do the assessment she was required to have done (federal special education legislation, not some simple minor thing like the local public school’s policy) and that I should accept that. I say this because her next statement was, that we should now look at the recommendations of the “assessment”.

So, BH and EP (the TOR) started discussing how to do that.

What is that? I mean what were the recommendations? That an assessment be done. The same assessment I had requested be done that we were supposedly currently reviewing and having a case conference regarding. Next week.

Needless to say, that case conference was now cancelled.

I had read the “assessment” that wasn’t, and I saw that it had been written by Crossroads, I asked BH, “When did you request this assessment be done?”
Somehow, I had this odd idea that maybe the reason no assessment had been done was that Brenda had managed to wait until April 1st to request it, Crossroads told her they couldn’t and she hadn’t enough time to get a real assessment done.

BH replied to me that she had contacted Crossroads at the start of February. Then she revised her remark and said that it might have been the second week of February.

I thought a moment, and then I asked, “And when did they inform you that they couldn’t do the assessment?”

Brenda turns to the second page of the report and tells me that the date was right there “April 13th” and that is when Crossroads informed her that they could not do the assessment.

It was April 14th and she said she had contacted Crossroads the second week of February and they were only letting her know YESTERDAY that they couldn’t do the assessment? I have used Crossroads for a variety of services and referred people to it for a variety of things for more than 17 years and I have never know them to be anything less than professional, and responsible and timely. Something smelled…bad.

As BH and EP jabbered on about how they were going to set up to do an assessment, I told them that I was not going to sit there and have my time wasted, and I left.

That afternoon, I called Crossroads and left a message for the man who had written the report. He called me back, less than half an hour later and answered several questions for me in a very friendly and open way, which was consistent with my previous experiences with that agency.
BH had contacted him, at the earliest, at the end of March. He explained that he had to do some research and find out what speech to text services were and what would be involved in doing an assessment and it was a while until he got back to her- an entire 2 or possibly 3 days. No, not any longer than that. And he was apologetic about how long that had taken him!

I asked him, “Why then did you wait until yesterday to write a report about it?”

He explained to me that the report had nothing to do with BH asking him about doing the assessment and that he would never have written that in response to her request.
At this point I was confused and I asked him, “then why did you write this report?”

He explained that BH had contacted him on Monday- on April 11th. She frantically requested to meet with him as soon as possible to generate some kind of report- and the report was not a result of her asking him to do an assessment, it was simply a result of the meeting they had on Wednesday where the topic was “how could an assessment be done”– which is why it was written on Wednesday, so that Brenda had some sort of “fake” assessment to give to me, the next day.

And I had left BH and EP discussing how (from this report) the two of them could now set up and do this assessment all by themselves. Isn’t that reassuring?

So, I called Dr. F. Dr. F is the director of Special Education for our local school system. That means she is BH’s boss. Dr. F is not always easy to work with, but unlike Brenda, she is ethical and professional. I had a suspicion she was not going to be terribly happy to find out that this had been done by her “system”.
I had to leave three phone messages. That is because the time limit on the messages and my “I forgot to mention that” way of doing things turned it into a sequence of lovely calls. Oh yes, and I had asked the gentleman at Crossroads if he would mind speaking with Dr. F and explaining to her what he had explained to me.

Incidentally, I keep asking myself what in the heck I did in a previous life to deserve to have to deal with some of these people.

Which after Dr. F investigated this and was, in fact, not thrilled, I do not need to do, anymore. Well, I did for a short period of time, but since it was going to literally be impossible for the school to reestablish any credibility, if they expected me to deal with BH as the administrator, she was, at least for us, history. I do wish to express sympathy, however, for the myriad of other students and parents who still need to deal with her.

As for EP, we are still stuck dealing with her. And, to be honest, Sarah and I both feel conflicted about this, although for somewhat different reasons.

On the one hand, I used to believe that EP really cared about her students and about doing a good job, but the fact that she would participate in this fabrication that prevented Sarah from receiving a service that would be beneficial to her in a timely way, that EP would actively lie to a parent, and that she has, over the 18 months that Sarah has been at this high school, mostly not been supportive of Sarah and her needs makes me wonder who I the heck EP is. Was she too scared of BH (her boss) to do anything other than go along with this? Why didn’t she go over BH’s head and let Dr. F know that this dishonesty was being perpetrated?

At what point did this weird game become more important than her student?

And Sarah has sat through meetings where she has been accused of lying when she has said that she couldn’t understand the interpreter- and EP has not only not backed her up, but has done the opposite. And when Sarah has needed supports, Elisa was on the front lines of denying them. And when Sarah said she was struggling and not getting information in the classroom, information the other kids were getting from the lectures, and said how hard she had to work to try to figure it out, after getting home, EP backed up BH when BH said Sarah was lying. So Sarah is hurting from that.

I think we are both having a hard time understanding EP. I know I feel a mixture of distrust and confusion.

At any rate, so there it was, mid April and there was no assessment and BH was now ready to do it by herself- or her and EP as the dynamic duo.

Oddly, Dr. F had a feeling that I would not find this reassuring and that it most certainly, at this point, could not be considered a credible evaluation if either of them were involved in doing it, so, at that late date, the school actually did contact an outside agency to do a real assessment.


So, when the assessment for this service was finally completed, and the evaluator determined that this would be a good service for her for most of her classes, we rejoiced.

Sarah and I rejoiced.

BH (and this was towards the end of her regency over Sarah), however, tried to figure out, how she could provide less of this service than was recommended, delay providing it, even though it was determined in the case conference that it should start as soon as possible and even tried to say that Sarah should not have the interpreter, if she was getting this service. As for the last item, even though the interpreter, at that time, was basically worthless (or worse), the school found it was stuck having to provide both services since the reason for the speech-to-text was to supplement the information from the interpreter- not to replace it.

The reality, though, was that Sarah and I both looked at it as the rescue from Sarah having to figure out what the interpreter was mangling.

Time passed, and the school decided that they were not going to simply provide the old standard CART service they had provided in previous years to a different student (CART being a system where a typist sat in the classroom and typed up what was said)- but rather they were purchasing a system where the teacher would speak into a microphone and a fancy computer program would then render what was said into text.

Of course, in case you hadn’t guessed, although there was an initial outlay of money for this system, the reason the school was interested in it was that they figured they would not need to pay someone to sit and type hour after hour. Buy the program, buy the equipment, spend a few thousand dollars, and that was it.

The person who made this decision was none other than the very wise administrator who happens to have some serious ethics issues. Yep, BH.

Of course, BH failed to do any research regarding this wonderful system the school purchased. All she seemed to see was a relatively small outlay at the beginning and then no additional outlay for an extra body to sit and type hour after hour, day after day, for two more years. I know this because when the school described this great system BH had ordered, it was explained to me that each teacher would train using it for a short period during the time right before school started, and then they would each be ready to forge ahead and use it from the very first day, this fall semester. This was, of course, one of the justifications for why they were not providing it immediately or even in time for the review for final exams, as the case conference committee had determined would have been beneficial for Sarah. How could they? They ordered system wouldn’t even have arrived yet.


So how did I know that BH had failed to research this program that she ordered?
I know this because I spent about 1 week emailing the company that makes the program and asking a couple of people who have used it about the program, and after my little bit of spare time research, I had grave misgivings about this working in the classroom.

First of all, at it’s best it is 90% accurate. And that 90% is with no typos or other “human” errors. It is straight vocabulary errors. So, instead of “dissecting a fetal pig”, you could be “dicing a fetid prick” - which, of course, is no more crude than measuring the surface area of a vagina… And that is not an exaggeration, because the 90% is in general conversation with no specialized or academic vocabulary. And “dissecting fetal pigs” is entirely specialized academic vocabulary. Of course, you can up the specialized academic vocabulary recognition by purchasing an additional program for each class. One for Biology 1, one for Algebra 2…and then you MIGHT get back up past 60% accuracy. Might. That is because it is made for one user. One user at a time, that is. So, the teacher can use the microphone- but not the students.

So to get back up to that sterling 90% accuracy, the teacher has to be the only one using it.

This means that the teacher has now become responsible for re-stating every single thing each student says, not just during questions and answers give and take, but also during group discussions- in other words, the teacher is now tethered to Sarah as a parrot fort anyone with whom she is working on a lab, a discussion group, a ….you get the idea.
And if you have a sub teacher or a cold, you can completely forget about accuracy.

All of the sudden, (although well after the system had been paid for and had arrived) the school realized they had to hire someone to speak into the microphone- a live body. Oh, and to type. Type? Wasn’t the idea to avoid a typist? Yes, but, you see, the inaccuracy rate renders large sections of the lecture and discussion incomprehensible, so someone has to either sit down and correct it all later (and they had better have a good idea what was said) which means that Sarah would not have benefit from this service during class, or they can have the person who is speaking into the microphone sit and correct it as the computer program spits out the mistakes- I mean the text.

Which is what happened.

The school, now realizing that this was going to require live bodies who were trained to use the equipment and the programs, hired and trained three different people, this summer. Which was an additional expense. And they had it working somewhat well, until today.

Today being the first day back to school.
Hey, isn’t this where the story started?


During pre-calculus class, the young man who was doing this practically had a nervous breakdown. Instead of the 90% accuracy he had been working towards, it was probably at 20-30%. He became so frustrated that he ended up pushing away the microphone, and just typing up what was said. He survived two classes, and aged several years.

Later in the day, he was replaced by a woman who is about my age (I haven’t met them, the descriptions of them are from Sarah- so the poor woman must be a haggard old bat, if Sarah compared her to me)- who started correcting, and correcting, and correcting, and at one point when (and only God knows what was actually said by the teacher) the program spit out “Lesbian corruption”, the woman quickly shifted in her seat to block the screen with her body so the other students (not Sarah who had already read it) wouldn’t be exposed to that particular lesson.

When Sarah came home and told me how she’d been taught about Lesbian corruption, all I could respond was….“Gee, it certainly goes with what some of the previous interpreters have been teaching you!”

Fortunately, also starting today was the good interpreter (just in case you had forgotten that detail) so Sarah didn’t spend an entire day or even an entire class learning about whatever that topic was, or about how to measure the surface area of any body parts. And, as for the poor woman who had to body block that lesson, she was supposed to also provide the speech to text service for Sarah’s last class (Physics), but Sarah told her it was okay to not do that today. She didn’t want the poor woman to have a nervous breakdown.


Of course, since I had actually reached the conclusion after my “research”, months ago, that this system might work exactly as it worked today I put in a request that the service be evaluated for how it was working, 3 weeks after school started, which is now three weeks from today…Evaluated and discussed at another case conference.

Okay, I lied, slightly. Even after my research, I thought it would work quite a bit better than it did, today.

Hey, but tomorrow is another day!