Parents, teachers and social workers urge board to keep RTI pullout program and preserve district social-work roles

At the March 11 Tehachapi Unified School District board meeting, more than a dozen teachers, social workers and parents told trustees that proposed changes to district student-support staffing would harm students who rely on focused, small-group interventions and established counseling relationships.

Speakers described two separate but related staffing issues: 1) a district plan to eliminate teacher-led RTI pullout positions and replace them with a learning-director/aid “push-in” model paid from Title I funds, and 2) a personnel directive requiring several current school-based mental-health staff to obtain a Pupil Personnel Services (PPS) credential in social work or be terminated.

The RTI speakers said the pullout model — a credentialed teacher plus instructional aides running nine 30-minute focused groups per day — delivers measurable gains for students well below grade level and cannot be replicated by occasional push-in support. “Nothing in education is more important than making sure every single student can read,” said Becky Sasha, RTI teacher at Tompkins, who described grouping and…