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District outlines special-education staffing, services and data; says 19% of students receive IEPs
Summary
District staff presented a special-education overview including staffing counts, contracted services, program highlights and performance indicators. The presenter said about 19% of students are currently served through IEPs and noted challenges with timely evaluations and the state’s graduation-counting rules for students with disabilities.
Matt Williams, the district’s special-education presenter, told the board the department currently lists 44 certified special-education teachers, 83 support staff (full- and part-time), about six to seven speech and language providers, two full-time psychologists, two interventionists (board-certified behavior analysts), occupational therapists and other contract providers.
Williams reviewed performance indicators from the 2023–24 reporting year: participation in statewide assessments, proficiency rates for grade bands, suspension/expulsion rates, least restrictive environment (LRE) placement percentages and post‑secondary outcomes for graduates. He said the district meets many state targets but identified two ongoing concerns: timely completion of required evaluations and how the state counts graduation and dropout status for students with IEPs.
On timely evaluations, Williams said the district missed a state target (the presenter described it as a percent threshold set by the state) and emphasized the need to meet specific evaluation deadlines so services can be started or continued without interruption.
On graduation counting, the presenter and another district official explained that Wyoming’s state reporting treats students who do not graduate with their cohort within the standard four‑year period as non‑completers even if the district continues to serve them into ages 19–21 under IDEA. The district called this discrepancy an additional accountability challenge and said it can depress reported graduation rates for students with disabilities.
Services and supports described: - Contract partners: audiology, behavior specialists, bilingual psychologists and outside consultants (named in the meeting as Bethany Scheidler and a psychologist, Dr. Henshark, among others). - Districtwide programs: teletherapy access for students, a summer elementary social-emotional learning program, consulting teachers and team-teaching supports, assistive technology, and a statewide navigation service called Care Solace that helps families find mental-health providers. - Transition services: special-education staff work on postsecondary transition planning; Williams said follow-up calls to graduates show most (he estimated in the 80s, in discussion) are employed; fewer are enrolled in postsecondary education.
Williams told the board that about 19% of the district’s students have IEPs — a figure he said is within a plausible national trend for increasing identification and usage of services. Board members asked clarifying questions about homeschooling, dropout definitions and evaluation timeliness; Williams and another administrator provided explanations and said the district will continue to focus on LRE, standards-based IEP goals and improving evaluation timelines.
Why it matters: Special-education staffing and timely evaluations directly affect student access to services, instructional placement and state accountability measures. The district described several in-district and contracted supports but identified ongoing policy and reporting challenges at the state level that complicate local work and the interpretation of outcome data.
