District special-education lead urges full-time SPED director, points to software that could recover Medicaid funds

Miss Olson, the district's special-education lead and a school principal, told the Mobridge-Pollock School Board she wants the district to create a full-time special-education director post to handle increasing caseloads and the program's compliance and mentoring demands. Olson said the district's special-education roll has grown from 89 students in 2010 to 143 now and could reach 145'–146 by the end of May.

Olson said the current combined principal/director arrangement limits on-site support and compliance oversight. "You are principal first," she said, describing how principal duties crowd out the time needed for IEP meetings, staff mentoring and the detailed reporting required for special-education funding and child-count accuracy.

As part of the proposal, Olson recommended adopting Medley (an IEP-management platform) with a Relay component to automate Medicaid billing. She said vendor estimates put the first-year implementation cost for the IEP side at roughly $5,750 and the Medicaid component at about $7,500, "a little over $13,000" in year one, with lower recurring costs in later years. Olson cautioned the board those were vendor figures and that reimbursements depend on accurate coding, parent consent and state payment formulas: "I don't want to promise you any dollar amount," she said, but suggested the district could recoup previously unclaimed reimbursements and that she was "hoping for, like, $60,000 for the year, for the first year."

Board members pressed Olson on time commitments, whether an administrative assistant could handle billing, and whether the IEP and Medicaid components could be adopted separately. Olson said billing without the IEP-management component would be "hard" because Relay pulls details from the IEP system and because accurate claims require someone with special-education expertise to code services and verify sessions. She also said the new director would spend substantial upfront time training staff and setting processes, then less time as systems mature.

The board did not vote on creating the position or purchasing software. Chair (speaker 3) and other members said they were sympathetic to the need but wanted the finance committee and central administration to model how a full-time director would fit into the district's administrative staffing and budget. The board asked administration and the business manager to provide cost scenarios and to bring recommendations back for discussion at a future meeting.

Why it matters: The district is seeing higher demand for special-education services, including increased numbers of students with autism and other health-impacted needs; those shifts affect staffing, classroom supports and compliance-driven reporting that can influence state funding. Olson argued a dedicated director plus better IEP software would improve student supports and might allow the district to claim Medicaid reimbursements it has not previously sought.

Next steps: The board directed administration and the business/finance committee to analyze budget implications and return with proposals; no hiring or contract decision was made at the meeting.