georgethethirteenth t1_j11dsb1 wrote on December 20, 2022 at 11:23 PM

Reply to comment by [deleted] in Medford school stabbing Monday injures student, leads to police presence by _Hack_The_Planet_

> I think the paras are very underpaid and often leave to take positions in Somerville, Arlington and Winchester. Medford HS is in dire need of a rebuild/new school.

A new contract with their union came early this school year and I don't know how it's changed, but at the beginning of this school year my Medford school had classroom para-professionals who were bringing home a whole $16/hr.

Think about that for a minute. No, these aren't licensed teachers, but they are in mainstream classrooms every day, often dealing one-on-one or in small groups with the most vulnerable students in a building. These days, they're absolutely essential parts of a well-run school district.

How the hell do you keep quality personnel in your classrooms when you're paying them less than the line cook pressing your burgers at Five Guys?

potentpotables t1_j14s1jz wrote on December 21, 2022 at 5:44 PM

> These days, they're absolutely essential parts of a well-run school district.

Why is this? I'm in my late 30s and never ever had paras in my classrooms as a kid and it was fine. I know they're not paid much, but has this contributed to the rise in education costs?

I know special needs are a huge drain financially, so my guess is that the paras are just a drop in the bucket. I'm looking at this completely as an outsider with no knowledge of how school systems work.

georgethethirteenth t1_j15g3zo wrote on December 21, 2022 at 8:21 PM

Chances are that if you are in your late 30s then your school wasn't implementing an "inclusion" program - I'm similar in age and I know my school didn't.

Currently schools are instructed to place students in the "least restrictive" environment possible. What this means is that students with disabilities, that in my day would have received pull-out services, are now spending their days in mainstream academic classrooms. This has proven to be beneficial to those students (in my opinion, the literature hasn't yet proven that it doesn't impede "mainstream" students) but in practice it means that instructors are now scaffolding and modifying material to meet the needs of ESL students, learning disabled students, behaviorally challenged students, autistic students, and more all in the same classroom.

It's challenging for a single instructor to handle the multiple different needs, paces, and abilities in a classroom on their own - quite frankly it can be extraordinarily challenging for an instructor, a para, and the occasional special ed teacher to handle a classroom of twenty-five to thirty students even with three adults in the room.

This is only one small piece of the puzzle, but Inclusion programs are where the current pedagogy is and there is plenty of literature to support it (and as someone in a classroom on the daily I'll admit that I'm not sure where I fall on the topic).