Pros
Pros are GREAT professional development on Saturdays or after school. I work with some great people. I am from out of state and they were always available to guide me for California procedures etc.
Cons
The SPED dept is lacking in leadership and training of it's employees. Little to NO training, no interpreters when having an IEP. TERRIBLE admin in Desert Hot Springs. They run that school like it's their private campus. The have resource students self contained with Special Day Class students and that is out of compliance and ILLEGAL, general ed (except for band teacher) do not show up for IEP meetings, ADMIN does not show up for IEP meetings (even though you've sent Outlook calendar invite a week earlier), Micro-managing, no curriculum for middle school textbooks that are 20 years old and do not have current standards. Admin is not supportive in ANY way. They do nothing fun for the kids, kids can be continually tardy to class and they have no consequences, Middle school kids ALL go to lunch at the same time. There is not a week that goes by without fighting amongst students. It's just a matter of time before something terrible is on the national evening news. They (over 800 students) are basically unsupervised for 30 minutes except for 2 'security guards' and kids are all over the field, hanging out in the bathrooms doing God only knows what. I can not get out of here fast enough and feel sorry for the person that is coming behind me, In all my years of teaching I've never spent so much money on my classroom. Of all the money they get for the Sped kids they buy nothing. No copies on campus 1,400 ALL YEAR. No glue sticks, no pencils, no paper, no tape, nothing. These kids show up with nothing. I literally bought all school supplies for my 50+ students.