Mon Oct 14 2013, 5:00pm
District Meeting Room Portable
Regular Meeting

REPORTS TO THE BOARD

Special Services Report

To:  Michael Green

From:  Deb Kernen

Date:  October 10, 2013

Re:  September Special Services Monthly Update

I can’t recall a September that has been as busy as this one in the 14 years in my director position for Special Services.  We have had so many new significantly, high need students transfer in this past month that has necessitated us to increase support staffing in a number of different programs.  Our October 1st count hit 234 students in special ed.  We haven’t seen numbers that high in 8 years.  Three of our programs have been impacted most significantly.  Both of our Life Skills programs have had 2-3 new significantly developmentally delayed students transfer in that require a high level of staff assistance, in some cases 1:1.  The resource room at the Intermediate school had 14 new IEP students transfer in which has also caused us to add additional staffing in order to provide the IEP services.  The other unforeseen significant impact has been the all-day kindergarten program and the necessary increase in staffing for the 4 high-need kindergarten students we have in our Center Based Learning Program which we hadn’t planned on during staffing projections.  I feel like I’ve done more interviewing these last few months than I’ve done in years!!! 

Just when I thought it was starting to calm down……..in the last 2 weeks I received two separate phone calls from families who will be moving into our district within the next month that have 2 Down Syndrome fourth grade students that will again have a significant impact on our scheduling and staffing in our Center Based Learning Program. 

As a result of all of this we will be submitting 3-4 of these students for safety net funding this year to re-coup some of the additional costs these students have on our district.