Youngstown schools counselor criticizes special ed practices

YOUNGSTOWN

A district counselor expressed discontent with special-education practices in the school system when she spoke to Youngstown Board of Education.

“When the [school] reconfiguration happened, we neglected special education and tried to mainstream [students] and it’s not working,” school counselor Lori Sakacs, said Thursday.

The reconfiguration put students in kindergarten through eighth grade in schools closer to their homes to rebuild pride in the neighborhoods within the district.

Sakacs said she is not seeing teachers and counselors getting the support they need, however.

This support includes testing students who may qualify for special-education learning and addressing students’ individualized education plans.

“It needs to be addressed in order for education to happen,” she said. “It takes one student to disrupt a classroom.”

Superintendent Joe Meranto said there’s a process with several meetings that must take place in order to address students’ special-education needs, and to his knowledge they are being done.

“I’ve written down everything [Sakacs] said, and I will present everything to our student service chiefs and pass information on to Lori Kopp [district chief of student services] and [Linda] Yosay,” he said. Yosay is special-education consultant from the Mahoning County Educational Service Center.

This past summer school officials announced they were launching a new system for special education.

In June 2016, The Vindicator reported the district wasn’t following the law in its practices to address special-education students’ needs.

Read more about the situation in Friday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.