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District highlights special-education expansion, BCBA hire and CarePlus mental-health partnership
Summary
Mountainside's supervisor of special services reported the district serves 103 special-education students with expanded LLD programming, a newly hired BCBA providing five-day behavioral support and an on-site CarePlus mental-health clinician twice weekly; staff pledged data follow-up and continued CPAC collaboration.
The Mountainside Board of Education heard an extended report from the district's supervisor of special services on the growth of in-district special-education programming, behavioral supports and family collaboration.
The supervisor said 103 students in the district receive special-education services and that the district employs 16 special-education teaching staff, 18 paraprofessionals and five related-services providers. Over the past several years the district expanded from pull-out and in-class resources to a self-contained language-learning-disabilities (LLD) program that now exists at Deerfield in addition to Beechwood; seven students currently participate in the LLD classroom districtwide.
A newly hired board-certified behavior analyst (BCBA) was described as expanding direct and consultative support from roughly two days per week to a five-day presence (about four hours daily), which the supervisor said has contributed to behavioral improvement for about 80 percent of students receiving behavioral supports. The district also reported partnerships to provide onsite mental-health services through CarePlus (clinician on-site twice weekly for risk assessment and student clearances) and monthly parent workshops.
The supervisor described regular data review practices (benchmarking with i-Ready and three annual data dives) and said the district conducts over 200 IEP meetings a year, with approximately 95 percent producing collaborative implementation of services. She said the district continues regular collaboration with a regional partner referred to as GL (including articulation meetings for rising 9th graders) and with the CPAC parent advisory group, and that staff will share more outcome data with the board following the meeting.
Board members asked for follow-up information on results from consultative-model meetings with GL; the supervisor said data exists and she would provide it.
