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District to install school psychologists in most buildings as it replaces cooperative services, Mr. Smith says
Summary
At the May 4 Concord School Board meeting, Mr. Smith presented a plan to replace services previously provided by a cooperative, saying the district will place at least one school psychologist in every K–4 building next year and restore deaf and hard-of-hearing services. Funding is primarily from the IDEA Part B grant, though the district says it is about $80,000 short of grant spending targets.
Mr. Smith told the Concord School Board on May 4 that the district has largely completed work to replace services that had been provided through a cooperative and expects to place an individual school psychologist in each K–4 building next year and "almost a school psych in every one of our buildings." He said the district also has restored deaf and hard-of-hearing services, contracted occupational and physical therapy through Beacon, created a young-adult program and is preparing to start a preschool that will support students with disabilities.
The presentation, delivered by Mr. Smith, outlined staffing and programmatic steps taken since the district moved away from cooperative-based service delivery. "We've covered pretty much all of these bases," he said, and acknowledged the work is only step one: the district still must ensure services are provided to students "in the right way" after hires are in place.
On funding, Mr. Smith said the bulk of the hiring has been supported by the federal IDEA Part B grant. He told trustees the district is "about $80,000 short of fulfilling the $1,500,000 that we have to spend in that grant" and emphasized the need to maintain the district's maintenance-of-effort (MOE) level for special education spending year to year.
Trustees asked about recruitment and sustainability. Mr. Smith said school psychologists and speech-language pathologists are hard to find but that the district has hired a mix of candidates, including some who previously worked with the cooperative and others new to the area. He credited administrative support for accelerating hiring and said July 1 is the target start date for the district-managed services.
Board members praised the pace of hiring and the scale of the work. One trustee noted the effort amounts to "building a whole brand new department in less than a year," while Mr. Smith described the effort as a team accomplishment.
Next steps include bringing some hires to the board for formal approval in upcoming meetings and continuing to work with the business office to align grant spending and staffing costs. The district did not provide a complete list of all hires during the presentation; the board was told that a few appointments would be presented either at this meeting or at the next meeting.
