The cost of FAPE

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If you can read this, you done be learned.

Provided you can eyeball the above image, you should now know FAPE stands for Free and Appropriate Public Education. While not universal, this concept is global. The upper limit of this education varies by location.

My question to you is: Do you know how much a FAPE costs?

Chances are incredibly good you do not.

For the visually impaired. Doc would appreciate this.

I learned last night a county immediately south of mine was paying the airfare (and probably a lot more) to have a teacher fly here (here being Georgia) from Kalifornia on a regular basis to help with a visually-disabled child.

That was the closest person that board of education could find who was willing to do what's necessary to meet FAPE for the visually impaired child.

As the parent of a child with disabilities, I know far more than most people about FAPE and what lengths a school system in the US has to go to in order to provide FAPE to the disabled. I know so much I am an advocate and listed in at least one group and probably more as a consulting parent for people who need help in dealing with their board of education.

 

 

 

No. It's not.

At that, even I do not have a complete and fully accurate picture of how much is costs to educate a disabled person. That's largely because the cost varies by person. For instance it takes less money for my son, who can see, is ambulatory, speaks, can sign his name and able to do for himself that it takes for a visually impaired student.

But there is a misnomer in FAPE. Tain't free, despite what many people believe.

You pay for it. I pay for it. The guy hiding around the corner with the big knife looking at you when you're not looking pays for it.

FAPE is funded through taxes. We all pay taxes in one form or another. The only people who don't pay taxes are dead. Even homeless people pay taxes through the stuff they buy with panhandled cash.

Therein is part of my problem. You, me and the guy who just ducked out of sight again are being forced to pay for what amounts to a free day care service. I do not refer you hear to the severely disabled children, but rather the able children (teenagers mostly) who don't want to be educated.

Why do we force them to go to school? Why not turn them loose if they are so determined to avoid and education? Let them go.  BUT! Have them sign paperwork which states by leaving school early they forevermore forfeit their right to public assistance (the very idea of this drives liberals into a foaming-at-the-mouth fit which tells me it has GOT to be a GREAT idea). This idea is not original to me, I merely tweaked it a bit with the idea on public assistance.

On the flip side of this, a lot of people will look back and say "I am glad I was forced to go to school." I can point you to many dropouts who now say "I wish I had stayed in school."

Google Image search rocks!

Lemme smack you in the face with the Reality Trout.

Think back to when you were a teenager. If if you happen to be a teenager now, think back to when you were 9 or 10 years old.

Think of the decisions you made then.

Do you really want to be bound for the rest of the your life to decisions you made at that age?

Many of us are so bound to those kinds of decisions and we don't like it. But fortunately many decisions we made during those years stayed with those years.

Think about that. The person you are today is not the person you will be 10 years from now. How are the decisions you make today going to affect that person a decade away?