I've noticed that it's becoming an insult to call people SpEd and I'm looking for ways to handle it.

This is my first year and I work in the SpEd department. Today one of my groups of kiddos (6th grade) came into class and complained "so and so keeps saying that we're sped!" So and so speaks up and says "we're literally in a SpEd room right now.. you're SpEd." They got into a little tiff about it going back and forth with "no I'm not" and "yes you are" I came in with "Being part of Special education is absolutely not a bad thing at all. And she replied "okay but I'm not /sped/ like other kids in here" I said we're all here for different reasons and I talked to the girl privately about why she's part of SpEd specifically and what that means for her. I'm really not positive the message got through because the bell rang while we were talking. Is there a better way of handling this in the future?