To: Michael Green
From: Deb Kernen
Date: October 1, 2014
Re: September Special Services Monthly Update
The Special Services Department has been extremely busy this last month welcoming 27 new students to our district that have special needs. Four of them come from behavioral programs that are residential day treatment programs that we are required to place directly into Fir Grove. Our Special Ed Preschool program is looking at 6 new transfer preschoolers which will necessitate adding additional staffing. Our October 1st count hit 246 students. We haven’t seen numbers that high on our October count ever! Most of our programs are at or above capacity. The resource room at the Intermediate school has 42 students; our middle school resource room has 33 students as well. Each of our high school resource rooms has 33 students. These programs typically should run between 25-28 students. Our Speech therapists caseloads are nearly 50 students each. These should also run around 30-35. Our Life Skills program at the middle/high school has 22 students. Typically this program should have 10-12 students. While we are planning for reconfiguration we will be looking at what impact the grade reconfigurations will have on these high numbers and what additional staffing we will put in place to help support our students.