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Special education review committee recommends staffing, route consolidation and in‑house nursing to reduce fund deficit
Summary
A six-month Special Education Fund Executive Review Committee recommended restructuring early‑childhood coordination, combining small vehicle bus routes, hiring SLP capacity and reducing vendor nursing reliance to address a projected special-education fund deficit and low fund balance.
The Special Education Fund Executive Review Committee presented recommendations after roughly six months of work aimed at reducing a projected fund deficit and restoring the district's special-education fund balance toward the board target.
The presenter said the committee met eight times and used district budget data and state Department of Education benchmarks to identify elevated cost areas. The committee reported the district had reduced an initial FY25 projected special-education deficit (about $500,000 in July) to an estimated $330,000 through fall decisions; that would leave an estimated FY25 year-end fund balance of about $700,000 (roughly 6% of the fund), below the board goal of 15%.
To address that shortfall, the committee recommended multiple operational and staffing changes: transfer an early-childhood coordinator position into the district’s SLP (speech-language pathologist) pool to create one additional SLP FTE with no net cost; increase the assistant special-education director to a 12-month contract to support birth‑to‑3 and early-childhood coordination; discontinue screenings not required of the district; and reassign SLP service locations to reduce therapist travel. "The preliminary information would lead me to believe that our new SLP FTE would best serve us if placed at Inspiration Elementary because that would greatly minimize other therapists' travel and allow us to be more efficient," the presenter said.
On transportation, the committee recommended consolidating small-vehicle routes into minibuses or standard buses and establishing a CDL/non-CDL route-pay differential (current CDL route pay cited as $66.62 per route; non‑CDL routes proposed at 90% of that, with bus supervision at 50% of route pay).
For student health services, the committee recommended reducing reliance on vendor-provided nursing and increasing district-operated med‑aid support — including hiring FTEs to combine multiple vendor nurse roles into a single district nurse where feasible. The committee also recommended modest increases in building secretarial support (0.5 FTE each for middle and intermediate schools) and a strategic, multi-year professional-development program for paraprofessionals to reduce future referrals and associated costs.
Committee members emphasized recommendations remain preliminary; administrators said formal staffing and wage recommendations will be included in the district’s March–April staffing and salary reports. Board members who served on the committee praised the process as thorough and noted the committee's work will inform upcoming personnel recommendations.
