Utah

Salt Lake City

Salt Lake City School District has established four primary ARRA IDEA Part B priority areas, which align with the district’s Program Improvement Plan for Special Education and IDEA early intervening services. The district hopes to use ARRA funds to enhance administrative support for the general supervision of special education programs and reform initiatives. The district also plans to draw on stimulus funding to increase the use of data in making decisions aimed at improving the school system’s special education programs and services. The funding would also be used to support integrated technology-based reporting. This would be achieved by identifying teachers who move from school to school and teachers who are in self-contained classrooms for fee-for-services, Medicaid reimbursable services, and would help special education teachers to use “Goalview” for the Individualized Education Program (IEP process).

One of the district’s priorities is to obtain state-of-the art assistive technology devices and to provide training in their use to enhance students with disabilities’ access to the general curriculum, which, in turn, can provide them with access to greater educational opportunities.

Thus, the district plans to provide 16 hours of professional development for approximately 100 special education and regular education teachers on how to integrate assistive technology into classrooms with special education students. The district will also provide six days of professional development to help academic support, behavioral support, and regular education teachers learn to use technology effectively for instruction and for monitoring student academic achievement.

In addition to using stimulus dollars to invest in professional development, the district plans to upgrade assistive technology for special education students (distributed through an assistive technology team-evaluation process); purchase computers and monitors for three classrooms, and provide tech support for academic support and behavioral support classrooms. Lastly, the district will use this funding for applications and licenses for reading, math, and science programs for academic and behavioral support classrooms.

The district will also use stimulus dollars is to hire transition coordinators to work with employers in the community to provide job placements for youth with disabilities. The district anticipates that this effort will lead to increased high school graduation rates and effective transition from school to the workplace for students with disabilities. With this funding, the district will also be able to offer improved transition services to students between the ages of 18 and 22 by expanding their access to community employers through job sampling and job coaching. Additional expected outcomes include improved transition planning at the high school level, designed to increase student success in coursework and in CTE programs; and better IDEA compliance for high school and post-high school programs, including appropriate transition assessments, transition planning, timelines, and exit performance reports.

In support of these efforts, the district will fund eight full-time positions for job coaches to support job placements/shadowing for high school seniors. Four full-time slots will also be made available for certified transition and compliance specialists in high schools. In the area of professional development, the district plans to offer three days of training on job coaching, data collection, and progress monitoring and an additional three days of training for transition and compliance specialists, focusing on their roles and responsibilities. To further strengthen staff development, the district has proposed a strong focus on positive behavior supports. This focus would be supported by providing intensive district wide professional development for special education and regular education teachers on scaling up proven and innovative evidence-based school wide strategies to improve outcomes for students with disabilities.

The anticipated outcomes would involve increased assistance to all schools for implementing a positive behavior intervention system and to middle schools with behavior support classes and classes for implementing Tier 3 behavioral interventions. In the area of job creation and retention, stimulus dollars would fund 2.5 FTE staff positions, adding licensed social workers to middle schools. This funding would also be used for individual and group social-skills counseling, and the implementation of Tier 3 behavioral interventions. In addition, the district would provide teacher-stipends for professional development on implementing PBIS strategies (Tier 1 and Tier 2).

Salt Lake City School District’s expected outcomes in this area include an increased level of early intervening services for academics, specifically, increased supplemental academic interventions and progress monitoring for Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions at the elementary level. Additional outcomes include increased effective instruction in language arts, math, and science in middle schools and high schools to students with disabilities; upgraded curricula and materials used to teach language arts, math, and science in special education classrooms in middle schools and high schools; and finally, more intensive professional development for teachers to improve instruction to students with disabilities.

The district plans to use stimulus funding to provide two additional special education academic coaches and two speech language pathologists for elementary academic support and behavior support classes in seven elementary schools. The district will also draw on stimulus dollars to fund 2.5 FTE staff positions for functional academic coaches in self-contained functional academic classes to extend core curriculum and instructional strategies to students with disabilities. Proposed staff positions include classified paraprofessionals (19.5 hours/week) to provide progress monitoring of Tier 2 and Tier 3 students and six elementary-level special education interns (30 hour/week) at high-impact special education programs, and an intern coach.

Additionally, the district plans to invest in professional development by adding eight hours of professional development for coaching teams on roles, responsibilities, and scheduling. School-based professional development would also be provided to general education teachers at elementary schools, and to middle and high school teachers, teaching both in regular and special education classes. The training would be focused on effective instruction for students with disabilities. Finally, stimulus funding will enable the district to contract the services of presenters for middle school and high school professional development training sessions and to purchase research-based curricula for language arts, math, and science for middle and high school special education classrooms.

Finally, the district will use ARRA funds to provide private schools their proportionate share of funds. One half-time speech pathologist will be assigned to private schools, along with a part-time certified special education teacher.

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SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) – Layoffs of special education teachers started this week in the Jordan School District.

The District says the state legislature cut retirement benefits for special education employees. Now the district is responsible for that money.

To fill the budget gap, special education programs were consolidated and 19 teachers’ positions were cut.

Doug Beckstead, an upset parent said, “To let one teacher go would be a great disadvantage to this school because they need everybody here that they have. These teachers are angels.”

Beth Usui, the Special Education Director with the Jordan School District said, “What I want is to be able to assure parents that we will absolutely work with them to make sure that their student’s needs are being met.”

More than 100 full-time assistant positions were replaced with part-time employees. But the district says students will not be impacted by the changes made.

By Deanne Winterton (Standard-Examiner correspondent)

MORGAN — Parents of special education students are concerned about how the Morgan School District is spending federal stimulus money and promise to keep a close eye on it handles money in the future.

“I want someone to come up with a plan and reason why we should be spending taxpayer money on items and what benefit that is going to have on my student,” said parent Tina Cannon.

“If you’re going to spend money just to spend money, then find a way to make it useful. We want what is best with the funds allocated for those children. The district should be responsible to taxpayers.”

The district received $364,400 in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 stimulus money meant specifically for special education.

The requires the funds be spent on “one-time resources in ways most likely to lead to improved results for students, long-term gains in school and increased productivity and effectiveness.”

In October 2009, the district spent $25,948 in stimulus money on 52 laptops to be split among the district’s four schools.

Special Education Director Steve Wood envisioned the laptops as part of a mobile computer lab for special education students, who also would be able to check out the laptops for home use.

Many of those laptops have been sitting in their original boxes since October, waiting for overworked district staff to implement and deploy them.

“Are we in compliance? No, we are not,” said Superintendent Ron Wolff. “Do we have to be? Yes, we do. The bottom line is, we’re out of compliance.”

In response, Cannon said, “That’s not going to fly with me.

“We are sorely lacking in speech therapy services by a master’s degree-level speech pathologist. My disgust and anger is (with the district saying), ‘We’re noncompliant, and there’s nothing we can do about that. You should be happy with that because we’re better than we’ve ever been,’ ” she said.

Joey Skinner, school board chairman, understands where the parents are coming from.

“We’ve got a group of very upset parents on one side and staff that thinks they’re making some progress on the other. We have 52 laptops, there for six months. We need a plan to use them productively.”

Wolff agrees, saying, “Those computers will be a waste of time if there’s not software and training as soon as possible.”

Many parents join Cannon in hoping the district spends remaining stimulus money on hiring a speech pathologist.

“We have kids not getting services they need. We need to create a better program,” said parent Mark Loucks.

Courtney Wallin, a speech therapist with the district, said the caseload of 100 students she was given three years ago is high.

“Sixty is busy but reasonable,” she said. “Two full-time speech therapists would be a reasonable request.”

“We’re understaffed,” Skinner said. “We knew that.”

However, qualified speech pathologists are hard to come by, with demand outpacing individuals coming out of graduate programs in Utah.

Many Utah school districts still hope to fill speech pathologist positions that have remained unfilled for as long as a year.

Morgan administrators are exploring job-sharing, contract and signing-bonus possibilities to fill the open speech pathologist position.

Parents will be included on a committee that will advise administrators on spending the remaining $139,200 in stimulus money, which must be spent on special education by 2012.

Education » Districts weigh spending money quickly versus wisely

BY: Lisa Schencker The Salt Lake Tribune

Federal stimulus dollars were supposed to be spent quickly to help jump start the economy, but some Utah school districts are hoarding large chunks of the money.

Districts have a little more than two years to spend two pots of stimulus cash: one for schools in poor areas and another for special education. But with nearly half that time already passed, some districts aren’t anywhere close to having spent half the money.

Canyons School District has spent about one-tenth of the $5.9 million in stimulus dollars it received for special education. The Jordan District has so far spent about $157,000 of the $8.5 million it got for the same purpose. Some other districts have spent more, but not half.

Schools that don’t use the money by fall 2011 will have to give it back to the feds.

So what are school districts waiting for? Why haven’t all districts in Utah, which has the lowest per-pupil spending in the nation, found quick uses for the windfall?

District officials say they’re trying to find a balance between spending the money quickly to help revive the economy and spending it wisely to best help students.

“I think really what the spirit of the law is, is not to just go out and spend money to spend money, but it’s to make sure the money is being spent for the benefit of kids,” said Keith Bradford, Canyons business administrator.

The U.S. Department of Education has asked that the money, which is part of The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), be spent both quickly and wisely.

“We must advance ARRA’s short-term economic goals by investing quickly, and we must support ARRA’s long-term economic goals by investing wisely, using these funds to strengthen education, drive reforms, and improve results for students,” according to a U.S. Department of Education presentation from April 2009.

But it’s not always easy to spend the money quickly for many reasons, district officials say. Jordan, for example, faces large budget cuts for next school year. But Beth Usui, Jordan special education director, said the money can’t simply be plugged into all those holes, partly because it will dry up in two years. Plus, this money must be used for specific purposes. The special education, or IDEA, money can only be used for special education, and the Title I stimulus money can go only to schools that serve large numbers of kids from low-income families.

Todd Hauber, state associate superintendent, said he’s not surprised some districts are holding on to the funds. He said it’s “a fine balance” between spending the money quickly and spending it on useful things, especially because the money will evaporate in fall 2011.

“It’s not like you can build up a huge program and offerings because in September of next year the money’s not there anymore,” Hauber said.

In all, Utah has so far been awarded $49.5 million in Title I stimulus money for schools serving high numbers of students from low-income families and $115.5 million in IDEA stimulus money for special education. And that’s in addition to nearly half a billion dollars in stabilization stimulus money the state was awarded to help plug holes in Utah’s education budget along with other areas.

Canyons has spent a portion of its special education stimulus dollars on computers, testing materials, assessments and preserving some special education jobs, said Kathryn McCarrie, Canyons special education director. She said the district is still deciding how to use the rest of the cash.

Bradford said Canyons got off to a slower start because it’s a new district. It didn’t have the kind of planning capabilities last year that other districts had, he said. Canyons officially opened in July after splitting from the Jordan District.

McCarrie said she “really wanted to identify what the needs in our district were before we started to throw money out and waste it.”

Jordan District also will likely use most of its special education stimulus money next year, not this year. Usui said the district plans to use $8 million of its $8.5 million on a new facility to replace the aging Jordan Resource Center which serves special needs students and is now located in the Canyons District. She said the district hopes to begin construction this summer.

“You cannot run a 21st Century school program in that building,” Usui said of the current facility.

She said Jordan would rather spend the $8 million on the building, which will “carry our programs into the future” than spend it quickly on things that might not last beyond the two years.

Officials in other districts, including Davis and Granite, say they are on-track to spend about half of their stimulus money for low-income schools and special education by June or September.

“We want to improve student achievement as quickly as we can with this money,” said Rob Averett, Granite Title I director.

Also, Jordan has spent nearly one-fifth of its Title I stimulus money and hopes to have spent half of the total by this fall, said Lisa Robinson, Jordan Title I coordinator. Canyons has spent nearly one-third of its $2.5 million Title I award and expects to have spent about 45 percent of the total by the end of June, said Karen Sterling, Canyons director of federal and state programs.

John Zurbuchen, federal programs director in Davis, said Davis, like many districts, is trying to pace its spending during the two years. Davis has so far spent about $825,734 of its $4.2 million in Title I stimulus money to help keep class sizes down in some schools and to hire math coaches to improve teachers’ math instruction, among other things, Zurbuchen said.

“Frankly, to have spent all of that $4 million in one year in 14 schools would have made for a wonderful school year,” Zurbuchen said. “But we would not just see a funding cliff, we would see a funding Grand Canyon” at the end of the year.

On a recent school day, Brenda Hodges, a Davis math coach hired with Title I stimulus money who works at Antelope Elementary in Clearfield, modeled a math lesson for a teacher.

Dressed as Esmerelda the Estimator, she taught third-graders how to round and estimate by reading them a story, asking them to work in partners, reciting a poem, getting them to move and by playing estimation games. Nearly all the kids eagerly raised their hands to answer questions.

Davis will decide when the money runs out whether to keep the math coaches, depending on how effective they are among other factors.

Zurbuchen said the challenge is to spend the money in a way that best helps students without leaving them wanting when it disappears.

“It’s real clear that different districts will answer that in different ways,” he said.