Dist. 300 says no big changes planned for special ed next year

The newly named education services team in Community Unit District 300 presented an update on the plan for the district’s special education program, assuring parents that widespread changes are not on the table for the next school year.

Shelley Nacke, assistant superintendent for education services for teaching and learning, Don Wesemann, director of education services for compliance and Linda Breen, director of education services for instruction presented a list of 10 recommendations based on an audit by the Urban Special Education Leadership Collaborative.

Nacke told parents at Thursday’s forum that in addition to renaming pupil personnel services to education services, the district would make one major change next year: moving from supervisors to service specialists.

“I heard a lot about how the changes are going to come and the heavens are going to open,” said Nacke, who compared the shift to general practitioners and an orthopedic specialist. “But it’s not going to happen like that. We are making one change next year, from supervisors to education specialists ... That is a huge change for every stakeholder and we thought that was appropriate.”

Currently, the district has 13 supervisors who are employed under the teacher contract. The new positions, which will be administrative roles, include specialists in early education, emotional disability, speech and language and autism spectrum. That will save the district about $30,000 because the new administrators will start at a lower pay grade. The 13 supervisors are open to apply for the specialist role or return to a teaching position.

“The ultimate goal is helping teachers and working with students and parents,” Nacke said. “The specialist will have a very good knowledge base about an area.”

Furthermore, the district will not remove cluster sites.

“It is not our intent to have all students go back to their home schools,” Nacke said. “It is all about the resources that we have that best fit the students’ needs.”

Nacke said the district would use the 2011-2012 school year for research and development for what the district needs to do educate individual students appropriately.

In addition, the district will create a comprehensive strategic plan for education services.

“We need a clear plan,” Breen said. “We have so many different students will disabilities and we need your input.”

Parents said the sessions provided some encouraging information about the district’s plan for special education students.

“This was very helpful an there was a lot more information because it was a smaller meeting so we got to ask more questions,” said Brenda Webb, who has a student at Westfield Middle School. “It is promising that it looks like we will have more input from parents. They know they need to improve, which is huge.”