Trustees often are questioned on special education issues like the amount of monies that are spent, how students are designated or, how does a student receive help?
I thought I would provide a simple overview of how the special education process works in the Boundary school district (SD51).
It begins with a parent or teacher voicing a concern about a student’s progress.
A school-based team, comprised of the classroom teacher, a special education specialist, the school principal or vice-principal, a counsellor and/or child and youth counsellor, an aboriginal education specialist (if the student is identified as aboriginal), the parent and at times the student themselves, gathers an achievement picture of the student.
An achievement picture is made up of hard data such as test results, classroom marks, attendance records plus anecdotal data based on classroom observations.
Together, the school-based team prepares a plan to support the student, implement the plan, monitor for progress and meet to assess student progress, make any needed adjustments to the plan and resolve any remaining issues.
Issues of concern can be social, emotional or academic or any combination of the three. The process remains the same no matter the concern. The cycle can be short or long-term depending completely on how the students do.
The plan determines how frequently the team meets and the intensity of the intervention. Schools use this process to support the individual needs of their students.
This cyclical review process is intended to and does meet the needs of 98 per cent of students in the school district.
Psychological consultation is available at this level for any student at any time. The school-based team would put in a request to the district psychologist, there is no wait list or wait times; this is extra support that is available if needed.
Two to three per cent of our student population is not addressed by this support structure and the district’s school psychologist comes into play in a bigger way for these students. These students require additional assessment data to support intervention planning.
The district psychologist has provided schools with a template and framework on how to gather the additional information that is needed to provide a deeper and more fulsome achievement picture of the student.
Ultimately, the final determination on whether a student needs to be assessed by the school psychologist is made by the school-based team and the parent.
Of the approximately 171 employees that work in our schools with students, 33 (19.4 per cent) of them work directly with special education and learning assistance students.
The school district receives around $1,051,845 in revenue to support of special education. We spend $2,256,516 or 13.5 per cent of our total budget on special education.
The graduation rate for our special needs students has risen over the past six years from 51.2 per cent to 79.5 per cent.
The Board of Education of SD51 remain committed to ensuring that all of our students succeed and we are very proud of the work our staff and students do everyday in classrooms and schools across the district to make success a reality.
– Teresa Rezansoff is chair for the Board of Education for SD51