Questions for those of you in the know. My stepdaughter and her stepbrother (not my son but her stepfather’s son) have been placed in the same classroom. This is 4th grade and there are 3 classes for each grade. This does not involve SpEd placement. We just we learned of this over the weekend, my husband called the principal this morning bright and early. She informed him that the district does not ahve a policy for or against placing siblings in the same classroom. We were advised to contact his ex and they should both write letters requesting a change in placement. Right now the mother is refusing because the stepson is a behavior problem and they are getting daily reports on him due to them being together, and them having the same homework is convenient.
This is outrageous. And then the principal gives us this song and dance about how there are 25-26 students in each class so changing her will mean her being in an “overcrowded” classroom. What do they call it now?? My children are in a district where we complain if a classroom hits 20 students, my son’s class has only 16…but I digress. Don’t even go into suing for custody, we have seen more lawyers in the last 5 years than I can count, DYFS was involved after the 2nd domestic violence incident, etc……
Does anyone have any specific proof, articles, etc. AGAINST placement of siblings in the same classrooms?? And names of district, especially in New Jersey that have policies against this type of thing. Help!!!! I am faxing a letter not only to the principal but to the Superintendant and the School Board members ASAP (yesterday if I could).
I attempted to get sme direction from my school district (my kids attend, I teach for) but unfortunately this was our first day of school due to construction delays and we have one school (that houses almost 500 students) that has not opened yet. In short, nobody is available to help right now, they are fighting fires of their own.
HELP!!! Advice please. She started school on the 5th so the faster we get this done, the better because I do not want to have her change classes after this week.
Re: Siblings in Classes
In this case we are dealing with a stepdaughter with NLD and her stepbrother who is a behavioral problem. She is being encouraged to “narc”on him. They are both the exact same age (9). The NLD has not been addressed with the school yet since the testing was just done this summer and it has not effected her schoolwork enough to qualify for services (other than possible an ineffective 504) so this cannot be used as grounds yet (I have not ruled out bringing it in).
In your case, your children were different ages and not in competition with each other so I am sure it worked well. In addition, apparently all the adults involved were mature judging by the conversations you had with the teacher and your children.
My degree is in Child Psychology not School Psych (yet) and I am not finding any specific studies even though everything I have ever been taught tells me this is WRONG.
For now I am just going with a letter faxed and mailed to the principal and the superintendant addressing our cincerns and why we have them. Thanks for your input.
Re: Siblings in Classes
I don’t think you are going to find anything to support your thoughts on this one. I understand your gut feeling here- but I also taught in a rural school for a long time before working as a diagnostician and we frequently had siblings (along with cousins and uncles:)) in class together. It is unavoidable in a small school. It seemed to work fine- better with some than others, but parents and the school had the option of moving one child to a different building if it was awful. I don’t ever recall making that decision.
Certainly it is probably preferable to have them in different rooms, but I don’t think there is any research based reason not to have them together.
RObin
Re: Siblings in Classes
Thanks for the response. This is not a rural school, there are 3 classes for this particular grade. If there hasn’t been any research done, there should be considering the increase in multiple births due to IVF, fertility drugs, and women giving birth in their later childbearing years. In our elementary school, we have 357 students and we have 10 sets of twins, and at 35 I am one of the youngest mothers in the school. Due to these demographics, our district instituted a policy against sibling placements several years ago.
Thanks for the input from everyone, and don’t stop. I even want the input from those of you that do not agree, it prepares me for the possibility of answering their arguments.
Looking at this, my son has ADHD, LD and is gifted while his sister (not the one we are dealing with here) is gifted without any LD. They were both tested for the gifted program for this school year after having remediated his visual processing deficit to a point where he could keep up. They were both accepted, however the program had been changed for this year. Prior to this year, all 3rd and 4th grade students in the program were bussed to one location and there was one class for 3rd and one for 4th. This year it was moved to the individual schools so both of my children would have been in the same class. The district met with me due to their policy, and they were willing to break it with written permission and a release from me. We went over scores very carefully, and my son had barely qualified while my daughter had scored a perfect score on her IQ test and her CAT scores were higher than his in every area but Math. We made the decision to keep my son out of the program due to the competition it would have inevitably caused, and the fact that he would have been at a disadvantage, but did leave him in his prior plcement in accelerated math since this is an area of great advancement for him.
Being an only child myself, some of my views are possibly (!) based on the fact that I never had to deal with any of the rivalry and competition issues that arise from being a sibling.
Re: Siblings in Classes
Just wanted to say that I think your feelings are very common. I have several friends with twins and all have gone out of their way to make sure they were not placed in class together. One even sent her children to a magnet school, as opposed to neighborhood school, because of class availability. Seems to me that it certainly was unnecessary since there were multiple classes.
Re: Siblings in Classes
Thank-you for your reply. Her school is in Northern New Jersey, not 10 miles from New York City so I don’t expect them to be moving on this today as the eyes of the nation are on their TV’s. Hopefully I will prevail.
Re: Siblings in Classes
Go ahead a write your letter requesting the kids be in separate classes, even if the other mother does not agree. Perhaps in a month or so, there will be changes in the classess for other reasons… people move, etc. I’d ask the school counselor to go observe the class and try to help with the situation. The teacher should not be enlisting one kid to tattle on the other.
Rosie
I think it depends on the kids, how they relate, and the classroom teacher. My kids (2 years apart in age) shared the same Montessori 6-9 classroom for a year when one was in 3rd grade and one was in first. This was our choice, and we discussed it with the kids and the teachers ahead of time. The teachers told us they had dealt with sibling pairs often in the past with no problems at all.
We laid down strict ground rules from day one… That we NEVER wanted to hear anything about stuff that went on at school with one from the other one. They really respected that rule, and there was never any tattling or competing between them.
It was fine, and did have some advantages. The younger one is shy, and having his brother there to break the ice socially for him was a good thing. There were times that they got on each other’s nerves, but the teacher handled these instances well, and I think overall, it was a positive experience.
I’m not saying it’s the right situation for these two kids, but it isn’t necessarily always a bad situation.
Karen