11/7/2024 Meeting Notes with Mr. Pritchett, Director of Special Education Services

Adressing Parental Concerns in Special Education

Paraprofessional shortages

• Currently 9 vacancies listed on website

• Mr. Pritchett is working with HR. They added a para to the benefits & compensation team to get para’s perspective.

  • Hoping to come up with solutions to hire and retain more paras.

  • Many great paras eventually become great teachers.

Staffing of Service Providers

• They follow state guidelines for how large of a caseload for each service provider - try to keep it below. Sometimes, they need to add an additional school to keep the caseload even.

• 3 Behavior Specialists district wide for SPED (specifically). Some schools have their own behavioral specialist. He didn’t have on-hand how many schools or which schools.

• Speech Language Pathologists and Assistants

  • Need more SLPs.

    • Working with AU - SLP program starting next year. District will benefit from interns in that program as well.

  • 7 SLPAs (assistants) across district

    • Need to work with an SLP and there are oversight restrictions.

ASD Self-Contained Classrooms

• Parents are concerned shortages are affecting staffing levels in ASD self-contained classrooms

  • If parents have concerns about staffing levels, please reach out to administrator at their student’s school, so these concerns can be elevated  to Mr. Pritchett and HR staff. If the school admin knows of concerns, they can keep it on their radar as well.

  • Elevating allows the district to consolidate concerns from parents. Is it one or two parents in one class? Is it all self-contained classes?

• Parents expressed concern that there seem to be less self-contained classrooms.

  • Actually there’s been an increase in self-contained classes and SPED teachers.

  • Added 3 or 4 classrooms this past year.

• District has discretion on placement of classrooms and they try to place them to minimize travel time for students, while keeping in mind support staff and individual needs of students.

Parents are concerned, especially parents with nonverbal students, that there is no way to verify how a student is receiving minutes/services in IEP.

• He’s going to look at a streamlined easy way for ASD classes to communicate weekly with parents which services the student received. It might look like a log.

Communication in general

• He is working with a parent mentor to create monthly information sessions for SPED parents targeting specific items each month.

• Discussed more open communication with parents in ABA Classrooms specifically…. Perhaps have an open dialogue session with an administrator and parents. We also discussed difficulty advocating for SPED overall from a district/school level because each student’s needs and/or parent’s concerns are often individual.

• There will be a Resource Fair in the Spring.

Transitioning Students

• Mr. Pritchett is concerned that 25% of SPED students that transitioned out of the district (graduated, matriculated, etc.) were not engaged after graduation. (i.e. not working, higher ed, or engaged in a program of some sort). He is working on this to improve these outcomes.

• Transition fair in the fall (2025)

• Working with GVRA - “pathways to partnerships” for IEP and 504 plan students.

  • Only offered in a few other districts

  • Opportunity for students to explore different career opportunities

  • Piloting this year

  • 60 students participating