Do Not Cut The Hours of Paraprofessionals!

Paraprofessionals work with many students who have special needs. Most of the students that they work with need them in the building all day long; they may not need to be by their side all day long, but they need to be in the building!

Different Paraprofessionals are trained to work with different people that have different needs; some might work with autistic children, some might work with visually impaired children, etc.

There was a meeting at the board of education, and they voted to cut the hours of paraprofessionals; for example, if they work 6 hours, they want them to work 5 hours. This would mean that a Paraprofessional would not be available for the student that they assist for one hour or more out of a school day, but the board would not take the time to hear this, and they even said that they do not have the time to hear what a paraprofessional does for a student on a daily basis.

According to Autismspeaks.org, autism currently is affecting 1 in 88 children, and those numbers are only expected to grow. This would mean that if anything, more Paraprofessionals would have to be hired to support all the autistic people in the near future!

There are many autistic people that yes, there maturity level might not be equivalent to everyone else’s, but they are very smart students. The programs for autistic kids, such as the Core 2 program and the LCCE program, wouldn’t be as affective without the help of paraprofessionals!

The roles of paraprofessionals are also crucial to the education of visually impaired students! The MISD gives them the exact training that they need to work with that student, and it takes years to have completed all of the training! The main part of their job is to prepare assignments for visually impaired students, and put them into an accessible format: Braille, word, etc. If they want to cut the hours of Paraprofessionals, how would they have all the time that they would need to prepare all of the assignments needed in a day? Also, where would they be when a teacher needs them to prepare a last minute assignment for a student?

Being that it takes years to go through all of the training for working with visually impaired people, you cannot replace that person! If this is done, this will definitely lead to the student falling behind!