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Special‑education staff and parents warn cuts to TAs and ICT consolidations will harm services
Summary
Teachers, a special‑education facilitator and the teachers’ union told the board that proposed reductions in special‑education staff, teacher assistants and the plan to offer ICT at fewer elementary schools risked undermining legally mandated services and tier‑one instructional fidelity.
Administrators told the board they intend to keep legally mandated special‑education services intact and that Individualized Educational Program (CSE) determinations will drive placement. Still, union leaders, special‑education staff and multiple parents pressed the board for clearer assurances and more transparency about the programmatic effects of proposed staffing cuts.
"Cutting 25 positions and half of the TAs impacts students," Leslie Denino, president of the Rockville Center Teacher Association, said during public comment. She and others argued the proposed reductions go beyond a small fiscal trimming and would meaningfully reduce small‑group instruction, testing‑center staffing and co‑teaching capacity.
Christina Ferrara, special‑education academic facilitator at Southside High School, outlined classroom realities: many ICT teachers carry multiple course preps and some ICT sections already contain higher counts of students receiving services than the budget slides indicated. "Teaching assistants are an unbelievably critical part of our special‑education program," Ferrara said, adding that several widely used accommodations and testing arrangements rely on multiple TAs to staff testing centers and pull‑out supports.
Administrators (Miss Rehack and Mr. Gavin) said special‑education programming will be guided by CSE determinations, the district will maintain required services, and some changes for incoming kindergarten ICT sections would be driven by enrollment and CSE needs. They described a proposed districtwide configuration of teacher‑assistant allocations — 19 special‑education TAs and 16 general‑education TAs — and said proposals include retirements and some reductions through attrition.
Staff and parent speakers urged the board to delay or refine reductions that would reduce tier‑one instructional fidelity (station teaching and Keys to Literacy models require multiple adults in the room) and to provide a detailed line‑by‑line budget for special education and for projected out‑of‑district tuitions so the public can evaluate assumptions.
The administration said it uses a zero‑based budgeting approach for tuitions and for most placements and that most out‑of‑district tuition lines have named student projections; it also noted three contingencies remain in the draft budget to absorb emergent placements.
This article quotes speakers who appear in the board transcript; attributions use names and roles as given in the record.
