School Board Notes 9.26.06

School Board Notes
9.26.06
By Nicole Achs Freeling
GreatSchools.net Correspondent

• CAC Reports Ways to Improve Special Education
• A Family Shares a Personal Story
• Concern Raised Over Emergency Hires

CAC Reports Ways to Improve Special Education

After months of brainstorming and gathering public input, the Community Advisory Committee for Special Education presented to the Board a list of 12 recommendations for ways the district could improve services for students with disabilities.

The recommendations concerned parent outreach and assistance, program availability and placement and curriculum improvements. Board members praised the report and said they would work toward implementing them. The recommendations will now be forwarded to the Curriculum Committee .

The recommendations were as follows: Parent Outreach and Assistance:

• Work with the CAC to distribute a newsletter three times a year in English, Spanish and Chinese.
• Inform the CAC as early as possible in the budget cycle about proposed budget cuts to Special Education.
• Create a Special Education Transition Guide to inform parents of the process for transitions between education levels such as elementary to middle and middle to high.
• Post an up-to-date version of the Local Plan for Special Education on the district web site.

Program Availability and Placement:

• Track children transitioning from elementary to middle school or middle to high school to ensure that there is program availability at the next school level. Assist families with these transitions.
• Create additional full inclusion programs for all students in accordance with Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) requirements. Students in elementary, middle and high school seeking inclusion placements are denied the same enrollment choices offered to students without disabilities, according to the report.
• Create Special Day classrooms that provide the coursework for admission to the California Public University systems for students who are capable of grade-level or higher work. Currently, no special day classrooms provide coursework to fulfill the foreign language requirement, for example.
• Create small class size options for students who are capable of grade-level or higher work but whose disabilities require small class sizes.
• Ensure that all Special Education Classes and Programs do not exceed their student capacity or staffing allocation ratios.
• Ensure that teachers hold the appropriate credential for the students they are teaching.

Curriculum:

• Bring innovative and effective teaching approaches into schools. Some examples cited in the report included Lindamood-Bell reading materials, Making Math Real and On Cloud Nine math materials, and Michelle Garcia-Winner's Social Thinking curriculum for students with autism and nonverbal learning disorders.
• Increase the length of the school day for preschoolers in special education from four to five hours a day. Research has found longer school programs more effective for children with autism.

The Board voted in new members to the CAC to replace outgoing members. The new members are Robin Hansen, Amy Ottinger, Katy Franklin and Rachel Norton.

Family Shares a Personal Story

At the start of the meeting, Amy Vaile, the mother of Jackson, a special education student at Harvey Milk Elementary in the Castro, told the Board how her family had moved from Colorado after school board authorities there said her son was not equipped to attend a regular school. Recently, Jackson took the STAR test and reached proficiency in English and was 10 points away from advanced in math. "If we hadn't moved here, if we hadn't had an environment that accepted and welcomed him, I wouldn't have been able to see my son thrive as he has," Vaile said, presenting an audio essay her son had made of how he feels when people stare.

Concern Raised Over Emergency Hires

Later in the meeting, during consent calendar discussion, teachers' union president Dennis Kelly told the board that, of the many individuals being sought for probationary appointments, temporary appointments and emergency credentialing – appointments made when hires have not completed the required training -- 60 were special education hires. He called for more training for district staff so they could take on these positions without having to call in emergency staff and questioned whether people in the process of completing their credentials had an adequate level of expertise.

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