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Counselor: Special education needs special attention
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.
A review by the Ohio Department of Education’s Office of Exceptional Children, based on an audit in spring 2015, found three areas in which the district did not adequately or properly follow required procedures regarding its special-education students.
“Due to the extent and nature” of the noncompliance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the Office of Exceptional Children “has determined that Youngstown City Schools is in violation of Free Appropriate Public Education requirements ... particularly with respect to its junior high and high-school students with disabilities placed at East High School, Choffin Career & Technical Center” and Wilson Programs of Promise, the June 20 report said.
Rather than delivering services tailored specifically to individual special-education students, the district is applying standardized services or, in some cases, no services. In doing so, those students are being denied a free and public education, the report said.
Almost exactly a year later, The Vindicator reported the district’s new Multi-Tiered Support System was seeking to cut down on labeling students in need of special education prematurely.
“Just because a student is struggling behaviorally or academically doesn’t mean they’re special education [students],” Yosay said. “We are still looking for indicators if they might be, though. ...However, if they don’t have a disability, they should be back in general population.”
But Sakacs said that is not what’s happening.
“We are being told by the [Krish Mohip] administration to hold off on testing [for individualized education plans],” she said.
In other business, Meranto announced every building now has a student resource officer and will have sports.
“These will include track in the winter and rugby in the spring,” he said.
In addition, both weight rooms will also be renovated at East and Chaney high schools.