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Southampton School District Special Education Director Barbara Brown walked into the high school on Narrow Lane last year with a mission—she was charged by Superintendent Dr. J. Richard Boyes to analyze the schools’ programs, and suggest ways to improve them.
Ms. Brown, who has 30 years of experience working in special education in districts across New York State, presented her findings to the School Board in mid-September, and one of her main plans for the program is to create a task force that standardizes protocols for committees on special education for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. The committees are teams of teachers, aides and parents who evaluate student’s educational progress among other tasks.
“We’d like to develop districtwide standardized systems and approaches,” Ms. Brown said about the task force’s mission.
School Board Vice President David Dubin said that Ms. Brown has a momentous task in front of her in terms of revamping the special education system and has put in an extraordinary amount of work to re-think the program.
“Things were unsettled,” Mr. Dubin said about how parents felt about the department before Ms. Brown was hired a year ago, after Dr. Cynthia Jacunski resigned. “There were people who felt their kids’ needs were met, and others who felt the needs were not met.”
Besides creating a task force to overhaul the program, Ms. Brown has had the School Board hire a number of teachers, specialists and administrative assistants to support the program. Sarah McGuire was promoted from her special education teacher position to dean of students/assistant director of high school special education this year. Besides working in the special education department, as dean of students, Ms. McGuire will be involved with disciplinary issues, such as behavioral and attendance problems, with the general student body. And the special education department also hired a social worker, Betty Reynoso, for the intermediate school, as well as a new speech therapist, Lindsey Rae Dargan, for the high school.
“The social worker provides an interface between the school district, families and agencies,” Mr. Brown said, explaining that the worker also provides counseling regarding IEPs, and can serve to support all students in case of a crisis. An IEP, or an individualized education plan, documents a special education student’s progress and sets out a strategy or blueprint for their education, and, when he or she turns 16 years old, must also explain their plans for college. The plan establishes what the district and teachers will do to educate and support the student.
Southampton High School Principal Adam Fine, who is also a certified special education teacher, explained that some of the protocols Ms. Brown may look to revamp with the task force include how students are assigned to special education from general education. Getting a student into special education involves a group of teachers, aides, and the student’s parents—a committee—that reaches a consensus on whether or not the student needs extra help.
“She is going to look at how all is done, and make it more official,” Mr. Fine said Tuesday afternoon.
There are 174 students in the Southampton School District who are in special education, and according to Ms. Brown’s presentation the last month, 64 of them are learning disabled, 24 of them are speech-language impaired, and 22 of them have other health impairments.
Ms. Brown explained that as soon as a student is placed in special education they need to have an IEP.
In fact, Ms. Brown has taken major steps in making Southampton students’ IEPs better organized and more accessible to parents, according to Mr. Dubin.
Mr. Dubin said that one of the most immediate, proactive steps Ms. Brown has taken since she was hired was creating Ms. McGuire’s position because part of her job is filing and maintaining all of the students’ IEPs.
Mr. Dubin explained that many special education students receive services from outside providers for occupational, physical or speech therapy, and Ms. McGuire needs to be in frequent contact with those providers about the student’s performance.
“It’s a time-consuming process, contacting providers and making sure the records are up to date,” he said.
Ms. Brown said that since Ms. McGuire is assigned to the high school, she will have more time to keep operations running smoothly in the elementary and middle schools.
Mr. Fine explained that the high school has extra challenges for the special education department as compared to the elementary and intermediate schools because it is larger. New York State Regents testing also complicates the program, as do graduation requirements.
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