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Deer Creek teacher warns board funding cut will end full‑time dyslexia intervention position
Summary
At a Deer Creek board meeting, Valerie Daniels, the district's certified academic language therapist, told trustees district funding no longer supports a full‑time intervention position and urged restoration, citing student needs, training costs and state guidance.
Valerie Daniels, Deer Creek Public Schools' first full‑time certified academic language therapist, told the board on Tuesday that the district recently removed funding for her full‑time position and urged trustees to restore the role so students diagnosed with dyslexia can finish intensive remediation.
Daniels said she trained in the Take Flight structured‑literacy program at a personal cost of more than $7,000, completed 200 seminar hours and 700 practicum hours, and passed a national certification exam before serving third‑ through fifth‑grade students. "Recently, I was notified that there's no longer funding for this full time [certified academic language therapist] position," she told trustees.
The teacher described the daily work needed for students with dyslexia: "He can be a behavior disruption in his class, yelling or hiding in his hoodie. The behavior paraprofessional may be called to work with him. He has dyslexia, and he can learn to read, but it requires intensive remediation, 45 minutes per day, 5 days per week for approximately 2 years." Daniels warned that without that sustained intervention, students could finish the year with incomplete remediation and that untreated reading difficulty often leads to anxiety and school absences.
Daniels said the district posted a job for a behavior paraprofessional after the full‑time CALT position lost funding and asked the board to consider how that change would affect students who require structured literacy rather than behavioral management. She cited prevalence estimates for dyslexia of about 15 to 20 percent of the population and said the state department website provides guidance and funding avenues for full‑time dyslexia services.
Why it matters: Daniels framed the issue as one of both academic and behavioral outcomes. She gave detailed examples of student experiences — for instance, a student who mastered some skills but accrued 42 absences in a year because of anxiety — and argued those outcomes could be prevented if intensive, certified intervention continued.
The board did not take immediate action on staffing during the public‑comment period. Daniels' remarks came during the "public to be heard" portion of the meeting, where speakers are limited to five minutes each. The superintendent's report and subsequent business items proceeded after the comment period.
Speakers quoted or referenced in this article came from the meeting record and include Valerie Daniels (certified academic language therapist). The transcript also records district staff discussing curriculum, budgets and personnel in later agenda items that could affect program decisions.
Ending: Daniels requested that the board consider funding and scheduling options so students could receive the 45‑minute daily structured literacy interventions she described; she also pointed to state resources that, she said, could support district implementation.
