I have a friend who, until relatively recently, used to teach Special Ed in a Western New York school district (not Rochester, but in an outlying district).
One of the things that appalled and horrified my friend was that on most (3/4?) of the Fridays the 9th-12th grade Special Ed students would, all in one room, watch violent, non-academic movies (many brought from the homes of the staff!) from 11 am to the end of the school day!
You might think that adults were absent, but in truth in the audience there were teachers, assistants, aides and academic coaches. My friend estimates it was about 10% of the students’ learning time for the week. In fact, in the last 3 days of any week before major school breaks it was, and still is, common practice to abandon any effort to teach the Special Ed students and just show junk movies.
There was no effort by the staff to hide this practice, and since this happened so consistently and for such long periods of time, it is hard to believe that the administration was unaware of this; certainly they looked the other way!
Isn’t there any parent or other responsible adult out there who is as outraged as I am? This is yet ANOTHER reason why we homeschool, but not all parents have that choice, and the children, their families and our society pay the price.