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Parents urge more special-education support, raise concern about student access to inappropriate material on personal devices
Summary
Multiple public commenters told the board about special-education staffing gaps, class-section reductions, and instances of students accessing inappropriate videos on other students’ personal devices. Parents asked the district to restore TAs, provide administrative support, and reconsider school schedules around Regents exam days.
At the April 8 meeting the Board of Education heard extensive public comment from parents and community members raising concerns about special-education staffing, proposed cuts to teaching-assistant positions, and classroom section reductions at elementary schools.
Mrs. DePue, a parent, told the board her son had "a wonderful year" but said special-education teachers carry heavy extra administrative burdens and that the district is at risk of losing staff if supports are not provided. She said the third special-education teacher position at the high school “quit on the second day of school,” leaving major disruption for students. "We put a lot on them," she said, asking the district to consider providing administrative help so teachers do not leave.
DePue also said a student in a self-contained special-education classroom saw explicit videos on another student's personal electronic device during instructional time when staff supervision was limited. "Acts of violence with cartoon characters. It should not be happening," she said, and thanked district leaders for steps to restrict personal devices during instructional times.
Several written and emailed public comments read at the meeting addressed class-section reductions at Altima Elementary School (AES) and other elementary grades. Parents urged restoration of first-grade teaching assistance and objected to a plan that would reduce AES third-grade sections from three to two, which one parent described as a "50% larger class size." One commenter noted the community's prior budget-survey results that had listed class size as a top priority.
Another commenter, reading a longer statement, said that under the proposed reductions AES fourth grade would average 24.5 students per classroom and urged the board to reassign an unassigned FTE to preserve a section. Several parents thanked the board for restoring a librarian position at AES to four days a week while still urging further action on class sizes and TA assignments.
Parents also raised a scheduling issue: DePue noted that special-education students do not receive instruction during eight Regents-exam days at the end of the year and asked the district to consider options used by other local districts to provide instruction on those days.
The board did not take immediate policy action on these public comments during the meeting but heard them as part of the public-comment period.
The board's administrative team previously indicated the adopted budget restores about 70% of the proposed TA reductions; parents at this meeting said that restoration does not fully address their concerns about coverage and administrative burden for special-education staff.
