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Holmen School District to cap open enrollment for some special-education services amid staffing limits
Summary
Student services staff told the board the district will cap open enrollment for students who need speech-language, occupational therapy, physical therapy or one-to-one aide services because current caseloads and staff shortages exceed recommended levels.
Holmen School District’s executive director of student services, Jill Mason, told the board on Jan. 13 that the district will cap open-enrollment requests for several categories of special-education services because current student counts exceed recommended caseloads and the district lacks staffing capacity.
Mason said the district uses a Department of Public Instruction (DPI) caseload benchmark and that, while that benchmark suggests a speech-and-language caseload of roughly 220, the district currently serves about 351 students who require speech and language services. For occupational therapy (OT) and physical therapy (PT), Mason said staffing is also below recommended levels: the district currently has one OT plus three certified OT assistants and a 1.0 PT shared with Onalaska, which creates limits on how many additional open-enrollment students the district can accept for those services.
Mason outlined the categories the district would cap for open enrollment: students with speech-and-language IEP needs, students needing occupational or physical therapy, students who require one-on-one educational-assistant support (because hiring is constrained), and students whose IEPs indicate frequent crisis response needs (including use of seclusion or restraint). She said general cross-categorical placements at building level would have limited spaces at some schools; Viking would have no cross-categorical open-enrollment spaces next year, while Evergreen had about four and Sand Lake about three available spaces in the current projections.
Mason said placement decisions for open-enrollment students would be made at the building level (for example, if Prairie View is full at a grade, a student could be placed at Evergreen). She emphasized the figures are preliminary in January and that final placements will consider boundary-study adjustments and staffing changes through the spring and summer.
Board discussion included a question about class-size guidelines and a clarification that the district generally does not plan to exceed those guidelines except in rare circumstances.
No additional formal action was taken at the meeting; Mason said the open-enrollment allocations and any caps will appear on the Jan. 27 consent agenda for board action.
