Walworth County committee approves reclassification to add speech-language support at Lakeland School

The Walworth County Children with Disabilities Education Committee on May 21 authorized reclassifying an existing special-education teacher position at Lakeland School to a speech-language pathologist, a move officials said is budget-neutral for the current year and intended to reduce therapy caseloads and allow the school to accept additional tuition students.

Committee members heard school staff describe long-term enrollment trends and therapy capacity constraints. Staff said Lakeland’s on-site enrollment peaked at about 251 (February 2007), fell to about 99 (February 2016) and has held roughly between 133 and 140 since 2022, with a current projection of about 127 students for the 2025–26 school year. School administrators and finance staff said therapy caseloads — particularly speech and language — limit the school’s ability to accept tuition students despite classroom space.

“If we can bring in another speech and language pathologist, we’d be able to decrease their workload some, and then… bring in a few more tuition based students as well, which then will offset our student numbers, and hopefully that would also enable us to bring in a little bit more revenue as well,” Matt, a staff member, told the committee.

Officials described the reclassification as budget neutral for this fiscal year because the district plans to convert an existing funded special-education teacher slot to a speech-language position rather than add new recurrent staff this year. The committee was told that if the reclassification results in additional tuition students, the administration would propose adding a second speech-language position in the 2026 budget; that hire would be contingent on demonstrating new tuition revenue and on budget approvals.

Committee discussion covered three related policy points: (1) who decides placement (parents, sending districts and the evaluating IEP team must agree), (2) limits on which students Lakeland can safely serve (the school’s current population includes students with severe, profound and medically fragile needs and is not configured to accept full behavior-based EBD placements), and (3) the school’s pricing and tuition policy, which finance staff will review to ensure out‑of‑county tuition covers marginal or total costs before expanding admissions. Staff estimated the district turns away roughly 10–20 tuition requests per year because of therapy capacity, not classroom space.

During the meeting, staff and board members flagged recruitment risk for specialized therapists. The committee was told recruiting SLPs and other therapists has been “historically difficult,” and the district is evaluating compensation scales (including a pending pay study) and other retention measures to improve hiring prospects.

A motion to authorize the reclassification was made and seconded; the committee approved the resolution without recorded roll-call votes noted in the meeting transcript.

The administration said it will return with specific cost, tuition-rate and staffing proposals as part of the 2026 budget process and with more detailed capacity figures by grade level from the district’s recent space-availability study.