PL 94-142 Education for all Handicapped Children Law 1979
I graduated from college in 1984 as a Special Education Major. At 25 I had no idea how new my major was at the time. My first job was at a public school exclusively for children with physical and mental handicaps. It was brand new, state of the art. We had a swimming pool, gym, Christmas pays, proms and a staff of trained teachers, speech therapists, occupational therapists and social workers. We had weekly interdisciplinary meetings to discuss the needs of our students. Most of our students had cerebral palsy and other health related issues. The population of my county at the time was approximately 160,000. We had 3 classrooms of 4-5 autistic students each.
I work in the same county now in a title one elementary school as their K-2 resource teacher- I have 12 autistic children —just k-2. We have more in 3-5th. There’s no pool or proms just students with extraordinary needs placed in a regular classroom.