Dist. 25 special education program gets mixed reviews

Arlington Heights Elementary District 25 released its annual special education report this month with the tagline “Celebrating Possibilities.”

But some parents at Thursday’s board of education meeting said the report was nothing to celebrate.

The report, which is available on the district’s website, outlines several aspects of special education services in the district, including the number of students with disabilities by program, data on students who moved into the district with special education needs and percent of students with special education needs by grade.

The report shows that 12.8 percent of the district’s students receive special education services, below the state average of 14.7 percent. Those figures troubled some parents, who took it as a sign the district was not doing enough to identify and serve children with special needs.

“There is absolutely nothing to celebrate in this report,” said parent Bonnie Graham.

If the district were at the state average, Graham said, as many as 96 additional students would be receiving special education services.

“We should be embarrassed. When has the district considered it OK for us to be below average? Something is not right. These kids deserve these services,” she said.

District 25 Director of Student Services Dennis Joyce said the numbers reflect increased efforts to identify special needs at a younger age in hopes that learning difficulties can be prevented or improved to prevent challenges later in the student’s academic career.

Those efforts are part of the Response to Intervention (RTI), a federally mandated program designed to help identify learning difficulties early.

District 25 was one of the first to adopt RTI, even before it was required in 2004. The intent of the program was to reduce the number of students receiving special education, Joyce said.

“The model is working,” he added.

The report indicated that more than 90 percent of parents gave the district ratings of satisfactory or above in the following areas: how valued parents feel as members of Individualized Education Program teams; how parents feel about communicating with school professionals; how those professionals make themselves available to answer questions; and how satisfied parents are with the decisions made by evaluation teams.

Graham, however, noted that the survey was sent to more than 800 parents and only 31 responded.

“Parents have given up. Nobody cares anymore and nobody’s listening,” she said. “The parent satisfaction survey is not an acceptable representation of how we parents feel in special education. We are not satisfied with communication.”

The district is doing several things to improve communications with parents, Joyce said, including distributing a booklet introducing the special education program and creating a parent communications link on its student services website.