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Special education director reports 371 students with IEPs, seeks more psychologist time
Summary
Director Steve Wood told the board the district serves 371 students with IEPs (~12% of enrollment), up to date on services but needing more psychologist hours and potential post-high programming funding. He asked for continued board support to sustain and expand services.
Steve Wood, the district's director of special education, presented the annual special education report and asked the board to continue support for staff and contracted services.
"We currently, as of last week, had 371 students with an IEP," Wood said, adding that IEPs make up about 12% of the district's population (he noted a drop of about 10 students from the prior year). He described staffing as 16 special education FTEs plus over 40 part-time support staff, two full-time speech pathologists and several contracted speech pathologists and other contractors, including a contracted psychologist.
Wood said referrals are down at the elementary level because of intervention work, but that the district continues to rely on contracted providers for speech, OT/PT and psychological services and that more psychologist time (an additional ~4 hours per week) would allow more thorough evaluations and richer consultation with teachers and parents. He recommended exploring funding for a post-high program to serve older students who age out of K-12 services.
