STUDENT SUPPORT SERVICES

Kara Griswold, Director

Points of Pride

During the FY21 school year, the Special Education department went into year six of having an evaluation team. The Agency of Education (AOE), as part of their annual compliance monitoring, complimented us on being one of a few districts in the state again to have 100% compliance on our evaluations. We also received a letter of commendation from the AOE for achieving 100% on Indicator 13 (Transition Planning for students with disabilities), again only a few in the state achieved this standard. We also were selected to participate in the annual monitoring cyclic by the AOE. The AOE looks at 12 different areas of special education and requires a multitude of submissions of data to analysis. We were found compliant in all areas except our Suspension and Expulsion Policy, which has been updated through VSBIT for all districts to adopt.

We continue to work with the AOE to move from a discrepancy-based eligibility model to an MTSS-SLD model to align our work with the roll out of ACT 173, which is set to be in full implementation as of July 1, 2022. This continues to afford us the opportunity for classroom teachers, interventionists, and special educators to improve their targeted interventions and progress monitoring abilities which increases the menu of instructional practices and programming available to all students.

We continue to use Goalbook as a tool to develop goals and objectives that are aligned to the CCSS and in SMART format as well as using some of their progress monitoring data tools and UDL strategies. The Special Education Department and the Department of Learning continue to work closely to bring Structured Literacy using the Orton Gillingham Approach to all classroom teachers in grades K-6 and effective structured literacy instruction to all interventionist and special educators K-12.

Updates on Program

We continue to increase our capacity to serve and meet the needs of students who struggle with behavioral and emotional challenges. FY21 was the first year of implementation of the Addison Wayfinder Experience program housed at ACS. This is a collaborative program between the three districts in Addison County to support students with social, emotional, and behavioral needs within our county.

We continue to grow the knowledge and skill of the evaluation team by participating in trainings offered by the Stern Center. Co-teaching continues to be a strong instructional model at the 7-12 level. Co-teaching is occurring in the 7th and 8th grade ELA and math classrooms, as well as high school English, math, and science courses.

Future Planning

We will continue to support and consider ways to grow the Wayfinder program to help meet the needs of the students in our county. We will continue to work, as a county, to see what type of programming we might be able to offer grades K-5. We continue to learn about the new special education regulations attached to Act 173 that will go into effect July 1, 2022. The Department and District will be participating in many trainings around the new regulations and how they affect special and general education. We also continue to learn how Act 173 will continue to impact special education funding in the coming months.