Nahant SPED changes cause some anger

NAHANT – There are some changes to the special education program on tap for this fall, which Superintendent Joseph Lisi said has caused anger among some parents.Lisi said some of the SPED staffing has been reallocated to better meet the needs of students on Individualized Education Plans (IEP).”The staffing levels are ones we inherited from the previous administration,” he said. “We are reorganizing the staffing to better meet the needs of our students and increase academic services.”Lisi said Christine Johnson-Liscio, who was the full-time speech teacher for the 2007-2008 academic year, has been reduced to .6 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) for the fall and resource room teacher position, which was .4 FTE in 2007-2008, has been increased to .8 FTE. He said Donna Paige, a former fifth grade teacher, would be the resource room teacher this fall.According to Lisi, the number of students receiving speech services dropped from 25 students last year to 23 for the upcoming academic year.”We’re talking about 23 students receiving speech services,” he said. “We feel we can accommodate them based on the .6 FTEs we’ve allocated. We’ve looked at the number of children assigned to speech services and how to manage those services more efficiently.”Lisi pointed out the IEP for every special education student is different and the school only has a handful of students needing one-on-one speech services.”In some instances we have increased groupings for speech instruction to 3 or 4 students,” he said. “This is consistent with the IEPs for these students and they will receive the services needed. If a child needs one-on-one speech instruction that is what’s assigned.”Lisi said increasing the number of hours the resource room teacher works allows special education students to receive the additional help they need.”It gives us a person in the resource room every day as opposed to the two days a week we had last year,” he said. “Having the resource room teacher on two days a week created some issues and made it difficult to meet the needs of our students so we had to reallocate resources to better meet the needs of kids on IEPs.”Lisi pointed out the resource room teacher reinforces academics taught in the regular classroom and identified in the IEP for each child.Lisi is quick to admit not everyone is happy with the changes made to the program. He said it is not easy raising a child with special needs and he understands the concern of the parents.”There are a handful of parents blistering about this,” he said. “But I think the people who are complaining now will be complaining less this time next year. The bottom line is we have improved getting academic services to the children every day and are working hard to provide the best program we can.”