11.18.2025 School Committee - Special Ed, Alternative Ed & Early Childhood

to order the special ed alternative ed and early childhood subcommittee.

Can you call the role please?

Mr. Dragam here.

Mr. Cory here.

Mr. Pereira here.

Please salute to the flag of behind us.

To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

person to the open meeting law. Any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium.

Attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unpersceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible.

Do we have any citizen input time for this meeting?

We do not.

No citizen input time. We're going to move right on to item 301. Discussion and vote to refer related service staffing. Madam superintendent, so um over the course of this year and um few different um different things, excuse me, thank you our contract for service providers. We do have we see an increase in need and need to increase staff related to that. So, um it's a combination of enrollment in the level

of need of students um as well as compensatory services because at times where we have been understaffed um students are um not receiving services and we're looking at um the addition of um a number of staff. I'm looking for the totals here.

They are there. Okay.

Okay. So the need is for um one additional speech language pathologist, five SLPAS, two occupational therapists and three kodas.

Any questions?

Members I'll go just uh just briefly. So, um I think in summary, um is there a [clears throat] dollar figure related to the request as long as well as where the money is going to come from in budget?

Um we talked today about it looking to be about $500,000 um in staffing that needed to be added and I in terms of um do we have the money?

Yes, we do. Um we do have the money that we can um put out this year looking for moving forward and depending on what the budget looks like for next year. Um we may have to make some decisions around staffing in other areas to accommodate um the $500,000 increase here.

I would say that um for the full committee if this gets referred we need real information.

Yep. U and I'm just looking at this uh quickly but the [clears throat] is there any other reasons why this is coming up now other than I see the increase of enrollments um the needs um the contractual constraints is something that I was always opposed to but I guess that's you know coming up here but if you could just talk us through like what does that look like and any other

reasons why this is now coming up when we had a budget um approved six months ago So related services has always been an area that's been a priority as far as trying to really um get a handle on the structures that currently exist. At the end of last year, I asked one of my supervisors to work collaboratively with our lead OT and lead um SLP to really figure out what are the needs of our um

current services and then projecting what are we going to need for this upcoming budget season. During that time, we had a couple things happen that were not predicted. One was 199 94 new special education students, 79 of which are in a substantially separate program in our district. So, we [snorts] know with those high needs, all of those students are going to require additional related [snorts] services. We were

already very tight as far as staffing goes and meeting the needs of students.

So just that alone would make the need for more positions.

Not to mention the other students that need inclusion program, not to say that they don't have a need for related service. Some of them do, but um the other piece along with that was while this was all going on last year, we had changes to the contract language. What we were negotiating was we know that our high needs classrooms are ASD classrooms, our medically fragile classrooms, our early childhood

classrooms. They require intensive uh services, very different services than say a high school student might have who still requires speech or OT, but it's a different level of service. So, there's this conversation about workload versus case load. The existing contract language is already based upon case load.

We to the committee support. We actually got a Walker report that is going to help us tease out a little bit of the case load versus workload, but right now the contract language exists that it is case loads. Having said that, the negotiating um team agreed to lower the [clears throat] case load caps for those high needs areas. Our programs are called PREP, rise, and then early childhood.

It decreased the cap of those providers by 10 students per provider.

It impacted about 10 providers. So overall that's the difference of like a hundred students receiving services.

Hence the need between the new enrollments and the additional um cap language and the needs the high needs the the reason u Mr. are for your question as why I'm bringing this up now and it can't wait till our FY27 budget um is approved. I'm not saying we don't need more than that. I'm saying in order to meet the needs of our students and we have a 209 students on a speech

compensatory list, we have 127 students on an OT compensatory list. Some of this is carry over from last year when we had vacancies and again those students um you know add to additional services needed. Um having said that just for the benefit of the public when a speech and language pathologist is supervising an assistant [snorts] there is regulations around their lensure they can only supervise three

assistants. So for every three assistants we need to make that we have um an SLP who has um the license to be able to supervise. So that's why some of the they go hand in hand. My question is on the numbers of the [clears throat] SLPAS. If we gave five more that'll total 34, but there's 21 SLPs. So if the if the assistants can work and service children and the with person supervising

them by three if we have 21 SLPs it the numbers aren't making sense to say not all of them are able to certif are we choosing not to have more because we need even more SLPAS. We have six um SLPs that have not met the lensure requirement to be able to supervise an SLPA. So what happens with an SLP when you're in your final year after you complete your coursework, you're considered a clinical fellow. A clinical

fellow has to work under a SLP that has their CCS, which is their lensure.

the first um the first year they work under the uh supervision of the SLP. The second year they're considered an SLP, but they still can't supervise an SLPA. So there's two years we have six people somewhere in those twoear cycles. So I can tell you at the end of this year, two of them will be able to supervise because they're in that second year.

Yeah, I understand. So I I'm just going to predict something based on these numbers that we currently have and we need more SLPAS than the five that you're asking for. So if I'm looking at 20 plus six is 15. If they can all supervise three, 15 * 3 is 45. So we can have up to 45 SLPAS supervised by our own people. And we're only going to have 34 because this here is the

and I will be transparent with the committee. We do have three open SLP positions. So even if I could fill more SLPA positions, I can't supervise them yet until I get SLPs.

So you could be up to 36 under your numbers.

So I'd be up to 36 SLPs. I mean um SLPAS that could be serviced if you had 12. So if you have 21 SLPs minus 6 and three vacancies, that takes you down to 12.

12* 3 is 36. So you could service with the current population of SLPs up to 36 SLPAS based on what you're saying if if it was always that clear. So I'll give you Yes. But here's another example, right, of a some of our current positions are filled by agency.

[clears throat] Well, the agency has someone who can work a 08 position. So can they supervise?

They can supervise, but again, they're here one less day a week. So like what does that do for the actual My only point is I'm supportive of this.

needed. The data is here. You don't present things to us that don't make sense. The data is here. Whoever did the work for you did the work. You can clear as day. It's not a complicated uh formula. But with that being said, I think we need more support. And that means if you fill up all these positions in the next if the committee goes with it and then you fill them all,

please come back to us ASAP with any additional because [snorts] we definitely going to need more support than what's here. These numbers are staggering and um And through the other piece of the Walker report, we got to figure out why and how. This is just I had some notes on grades coming in like that's a whole another discussion, but we have way too many um students qualified students almost now

2,000 students who receive speech and language services in our district. We have about a thousand students out of 3,200 special education students. So the the numbers are so twothirds get speech services of every and what is the industry standard on that? Typically um there really anything specific from the industry but if the state like overall special ed numbers is around 20% we wouldn't want to go over that so

I'm say we so we are currently how many we have 25% of our kids have special ed an IP here it's 62% of our special education students are eligible for speech and 31% of our special education students are eligible for um OT but how many of our overall students are eligible for an IEP Oh, it's high and we're at what? Yeah, it's about 30%. We're high or 27%.

It begs the question of doing something different, which I think is the Walker report's going to help us with that.

So, with that, I I am going to be supportive, Mr. Curry.

So, uh, Mr. Chain begs me to ask a question about recruiting the SLPs and the SL, you know, the S.

What's that whole picture looking like out there? We're already using a temp agency. All right. Is anybody in the temp agency willing to cross over or become full-time employees for us?

Um, we have not explored that with many of the temp agencies that um we utilize for related services because there's a buyout piece which again we've done that with Mr. Almea. He's not here is he? Um, we've done that with Mr. Alita in the past and it's not cost effective at that point but I honestly haven't looked at it because we are looking to do that with the teachers in the paris from the

agency and that's kind of where I started.

So are we going to find how are we going to recruit this extra personnel that you need?

We're going to keep doing what we doing right like we have tons of we've always put our feelers out there. I have a great team that knows a lot of people in the surrounding area. We try to get them that way. We try to have I have um our HR department um what do you call it up update school spring like refresh our postings every two weeks just to try to

get new candidates. We do have some schools that again that send us the CFS and those pieces.

What schools in the area offer those programs?

I want to say Simmons is a big one for us. Um honestly I'd have to go back and look. I don't know off maybe one we can energize the recruitment at at those kind of places and try to get somebody in their senior level classes ready to move into a career thanks I the only question I had was regarding recruitment which was kind of answered because what I'm what I'm understanding

if I'm correct is that regardless of how many um SLPs we want to give you we do not have enough SLPs to supervise So right now you're basically saying I this is the maximum that we are allowed to have. Is that is that accurate?

Yeah. Three. Is that what you're asking about the the limit of three?

But you're saying that we have 20 what is it 29? I base my request honestly is the amount of service needs I need to do from now projected till the end of the year based on so that being said how many SLPAS could be could we have right now and have supervisors for them so if it's one go ahead oh I forgot we had microphones um so how many I can what I can tell you

with some assurity is that with the new positions, both SLPs, SLPAS, everybody has supervision. Now, if I said if I went up to seven, I'd have to go back and look and see how many. Not all of our SLPs like you're saying are here. So, even though you're saying six aren't able to supervise, there's actually more than six are not able to supervise at full capacity because they're not here enough.

Well, we're not here at the correct times or No. Well, not necessarily, but there's also SLP. So, the way the contract language is written is something along and again, I don't have it directly in front of me, but if I only service, if I only supervise two SLPAs right now, I can see a case load of kids. If I was to give that SLP another SLPA, that means more kids that need to be serviced by an

SLPA.

It is it's not as black and white as I'm I want it to be so that I can be totally transparent. I'm trying to be as transparent based on like we look at this.

So the law said one person can supervise three, but you're saying well if they do then they're not going to do a lot of the other important work they need to do and we're just tipping it up.

contract contract language and the like it ties the hands of the administration whether it's in sped or another department we should never have agreed to it but the infinite wisdom of those in power said that that's what they wanted to do um the issue of recruiting I think one of the suggestions I've made it I made it at the budget I made it last year in 2018 it was said that in

the HR audit report that we actually did that we need an HR recruiter hello but then we have a a director of HR that doesn't want it and I tried to give him the the position, oh no, I don't need it. I don't know if anybody saw the Colin Center report, but you should probably take his words, figure out what's in the Colin Center report and say, I guess there's a problem here

because everyone told me, including him and superintendent and everybody, we got a high functioning HR department. Let's put them in for a raise. Everything's going great and now we got a mess on our hands because we can't recruit properly.

We don't recruit properly. We can sugarcoat it all we want. Our HR department is a mess and it has a problem. So, you're going to have a hard time doing it because we don't have a recruiter. And that's the problem. We have so many vacancies, but we're not doing everything we can do in HR. You're the SPE director. You can only do so much. We need to look at the HR

department to try to help. To my colleague's point, where are we going to get these people from? We need to do a better job recruiting and we need to put the people in place that can actually do it. We obviously don't have that. Um, with that, I think it's a the data is showing it. It's very clear. So, can we get a motion to refer? Motion made to refer. Seconded. Roll call, please.

Mr. A.

Yes.

Mr. Corey.

Yes.

Miss Pereira.

Yes.

Next up is a Walker report. Is this just a simple?

Yeah. I'm just going to do um just a brief overview. I just want to take this opportunity um to kind of tell you where we are with the Walker report. So um just for the public's knowledge, we with the support of the committee, we asked the Walker um educational services group to complete an program evaluation which is required we're required to do uh periodically from for DESIE. So I asked

the committee uh to support uh program review of our related services because again the numbers are astonishing and I can ask for as many positions as I want but I want to meet the needs of kids in the best way possible. So we were able to get that Walker report um completed the four areas they looked at and I'm just going to provide a brief summary because this will be an ongoing work in

progress over the course of the year. We had them look at um our MTS systems of support. So what happens before students need a related service um eligibility and identification because our numbers are high service delivery models and just overall systems and workflows. So summarizing each of those areas, MTSS in Fall River is a work in progress. It's not just specifically related to um the area of related

services but academic seal MTSS is a priority for us and with the office of instruction collaborating with myself and Dr. Barnhard we're trying to bring some systems and structures in place to have things more consistent. what that means with related services because of having to prioritize these four different areas. MTSS for related services is a longer term goal for me because the urgency is on service

delivery and eligibility first. But MTSS in relation, what we can do is look at what resources are available for classroom teachers to support students who may present with um some some weaknesses prior to making a referral for special education because we out of all of the students the I think we had 500 um referrals for special education last year that involved related services, 40% of them were found not

eligible for related services.

Therefore, we are spending a lot of time referring kids who weren't getting picked up anyway and evaluations are time consuming and those are again time where we could be servicing kids. So, if we're strengthening tier one, we hope some of those findings again would be reduced. The second piece was the eligibility. Like I mentioned before, um you know, we have a 25 26% eligibility rate overall in special education in

Fall River. However, the the eligibility rate for related services is even higher than that. Like I mentioned, 62% for speech and 31% for um OT. What we uncovered with this is that although eligibility is a team decision, we need to have some consistent guidelines because we have multiple people doing the evaluation. So depending on who's evaluating what school you're at, so we need some consistent guidelines. The

guidelines most re recently used by our staff are from 2013. In fact, I didn't even know they existed and I've been here for four years. So we need to go back and um work on those. The third piece is service delivery. Um, we need to diversify our service delivery. Right now, 94 to 100% of our current service providers say they do pull out only services and most of those services are

done one-on-one or in small group. So again, we have a great need in Fall River. We need to think about service delivery diversification because not everybody, we're not a one-stop shop, right? We need to individualize things for kids. So service delivery is another piece for me. And the last piece is what I've been doing I feel like since I got here four years ago is developing systems and structures that bring

clarity, consistency, and effectiveness to our special education department. So we need to look at systems for what is a case load cap in relation to a workload.

How do those things overlap? Monitoring our case loads. What are our procedures for evaluations? Right now there is no standardized kind of toolkit. It's at the discretion of the evaluator. Um inventorying supplies again tracking referral data all those um kind of systems and structures that strengthen any department especially a department as large as special education. So, next

steps, um, I'm actually having, uh, the Walker team come down and present the findings to my entire, um, department meeting, which involves our team chairs, our psychologists, our related service providers, because they're the ones around the table, oftentimes doing this work. Then from there, I'm going to ask for um, volunteers to participate in a task force or a focus group with me. So,

we're going to kind of develop an action plan for each of the areas that I've just told you we will prioritize. So, I envision it coming back to this subcommittee and then full committee to kind of share what our plan is and the impact on the budget for FY27.

Any questions?

All right. Thank you.

Mr. I I couldn't hear you.

Sorry. when it comes to uh eligibility determination, what roles currently are the school teachers and the adjustment councils have in that? [snorts] So this is strictly for um related services, but overall if we're doing eligibility, the teachers are obviously a very active role. They are required team member around an an eligibility meeting. So they are giving us input in the evaluation itself by completing kind of

where the student is at and what supports they require in the classroom.

If the student has an emotional impairment or is seeing a sack for some reason they are around that table too providing some context of you know the needs of the student the accommodations that support them all of those pieces.

So if they are there during an eligibility meeting, they are an active team member participating along with you know the other team.

They could refer to a site to do some assessments and and and try to gather some data.

So we try to um Yep. So what we try to do is we try to utilize our MTSS process which means that if a school has a concern either a social emotional concern, an academic concern with the student, the teacher who has the concern or a service provider who has that concern should meet with the school-based um student support team, the MTS team, kind of start documenting because not every single um student

who's referred for special ed becomes eligible. So we want to make sure the law is we have to exhaust all of those options first before we make the referral. So yes. So then if the MTSS team felt like the um the school has exhausted all the tools in their toolbox and they want the student was not showing progress then we would want to make that referral and that would come through from the uh school themselves

the referral to my team including the psychologists who do the evaluations.

Thank you.

Okay, next item, update on early childhood plan.

So, um there is a one um page summary of um current status and what the potential is um moving forward for um preK programming. We currently have um 18 classrooms operating out of the early learning center at Bishop Conley, another five classrooms at the Fall River Learning Center and 10 classrooms operating out of four different elementary schools, Sylvia, Spencer, Warden, and Doran and Green. Currently,

we're we have an enrollment of 471 students with a capacity of 631. So, we do have um 160 openings in existing classrooms. Um the plan for next year is to maintain the current 33 classrooms um with all classrooms operating out of the early learning center um which would necessitate um the transfer of existing classroom staff um from the ELC um teachers Paris PCBA and um and actually

also you know that's coming out of all of our the four schools as well as the Fall River Learning Center.

in in doing that for next year. Um we there are some anticipated needs in terms of resources um that include you know people power as well as materials.

Uh full-time second shift custodian um because at capacity we will have over 600 um students in in the school. a full-time nurse, an leaison or behavior therapist that would work um with the BCBA, BCBA that is transferring over um furniture in the form of student and classroom storage because the the rooms at um at Conley don't actually have um closets and storage built in um as well as tables and chairs for those

classrooms.

Outdoor recess equipment um for four and 5year-olds.

Um, we don't really have a concern about the indoor recess space because we do have full use of the gymnasium there and that takes place now. Um, we'd look to fence in the circular space um, out back for outdoor recess for the four year olds and um, we'll need to revise schedules for tiered arrival and dismissal so that the buses aren't all arriving and and leaving at the same time.

Cory, so on the anticipated needs list, Madam Superintendent, is there a priority [snorts] to that? I mean, I see outdoor recess equipment as important for a four or 5year-old, especially for developmental purposes, but is it a priority over some of the other items?

Um, I would say that the classroom um needs would come first. Um in terms I you know I had asked the question around the um the need for the tables and chairs since we are coming out of classrooms and that was a question you know on my part like why aren't we just bringing the furniture uh the furniture that's in the classrooms especially in the 10 classrooms that are in um standard classrooms that you know what

would have been say kindergarten classrooms in schools it's much bulkier furniture that you know isn't really fit for um the classroom space at Conley.

So, we would need, you know, we would certainly need that kind of thing first.

Um, and I think Mr. um, Pico could speak to the need for the the second shift custodian, but I think that would that would run parallel with, you know, a school of similar size. And so, it seems like that would be that would be a necessary piece there. full-time nurse, you know, of course, I think the idea would be um we we I don't know the recess I do think the recess equipment across our schools

is important. Um and we've recognized the need to do some upgrades um in some places and I think this would be um this this would just be no different.

So, as far as the early learning center um at at the Derby site is where would where would they do recess? Where's the space for that?

Chris Conley I think um it's going to be at Conley but but what about the um uh uh pace pay center?

We haven't this this plan doesn't involve um that conversation yet.

Okay.

So this is only moving everyone to the site.

U if we move everybody to the Conley site, what does that render the pay center site?

Future discussion.

Future discussion. Right now at Conley is through the end of the summer of 2027. So we do have to continue the conversation. This is for next year.

There's [snorts] a lot of intersecting pieces going on right now. Huh.

Well, that's good. I mean at the Conley site there's plenty of space. We could even build another building on that site if you ever need it in the future.

Anything else?

I have a question. Going back to the the desks that the students are so we have prek students currently using desks right now. What are we going to do with those desks?

They're not good enough to size the [clears throat] size of the classroom is is what's the determining factor as to taking with us. So the classrooms that that are at most of our schools are kindergarten classrooms which are much larger than prek size.

Are these individual desks or group desks in our mostly group desk in kindergarten tables? So we're saying desk it's and accommodate. That's what I want to make sure that we're not it's not going to sit in some storage facility somewhere. Okay. So those tables and chairs are going to be used in the classrooms they're in. We're talking about like tables that you that you'd see in a preschool. Correct. Okay.

We're not We say desks, I think some people are probably thinking individual desks. Okay. Um All right. That's all.

Thank you. Want to make sure we waste our money.

Thank you. I think the um it's a stepped process as I mentioned. So, there's going to be decisions that have to be made by different committees or whether probably not this committee, but some other committees where we're going with the rest of the redistricting. Like I said, my opinion is that should be all done by the end of the calendar year.

So, one of my requests is that the um superintendent send us the list of the redistricting committee, the members of the committee along with the dates that they've been meeting and making sure that we have a representative group. So, I'm assuming that it's representative of special education, uh different types of uh whatever, you know, all the different groups are part of it, but just so we

can sort of move that uh process. I think this makes the most sense right now. Mr. Chico can do whatever he's got to do with getting some of this material. If you recall, we spent $200 $300,000 when we opened Connelly. So, we have to anticipate that we're going to have other expenses for furniture, uh, for repairs, for the fence, for all of these things are going to be needed because [snorts] it's 600 students,

especially the littles need make sure they have the best of everything. We're going to do it the right way.

[clears throat] It's not going to be done on the cheap. But once you consolidate all of these staff members, I think to Mr. Cory's point, they they needed a plus because you're going to have 600 kids in one school. So, I know we talked about our principal in the past like what did we need it because we had the thing. We said yes. Now, we add another 200 kids. So, you have 600

students in that one building with prek students. You're probably going to need another administrator or a hybrid of something. You need other people because you're going to have 600 kids at that place. There's a lot of moving parts. Uh so, I would say I like this plan. I think we need to go with it, but don't be shy with coming back to us and when we say we need more resources because if

we're going to do it, you need to do it right. And um that's what I would hope for. So, I do appreciate the um the information. Um I would say that it's not on the agenda for a vote, but I think we should forward this to the full committee in a couple weeks to get a a vote to say to combine because that's going to ultimately give direction to the superintendent on where we're heading.

Sure.

So, made a motion to refer.

Second. Second. All in favor? I oppose.

So voted. Thank you very much. Any other questions?

Any new business to come before us? No new business. Motion to adjurnn. Can I have a motion?

Motion made.

Second by Mr. Corey.

Roll call.

Mr.

Yes.

Mr. Cy.

Mr. Yes.

Thank you all. Have a good night.

Sounds like tonight.