Special needs noted at Blair Oaks

Staff at the Blair Oaks R-2 School District have recently noted they're seeing worrisome trends in their students when it comes to social, mental or behavioral health needs.

There are multiple, complicated and distinct trends of student needs playing out across the local school district, but it all adds up to more proactive work for staff to try to reach students earlier, in order to identify and figure out how to best address their needs. (Editor's Note: There will be more reporting specific to Jefferson City Public Schools in Friday's News Tribune.)

At the monthly meeting of Blair Oaks' Board of Education on Tuesday night, Director of Special Services Lynn Bowens shared with the board that, as of Dec. 1, her office had received 77 referrals for students to be considered for evaluation to determine if they qualified for an individual education plan (IEP) or other special education programs.

Bowens offered some data from the Hallsville and Southern Boone districts as a comparison, to provide a perspective on a "normal" level of referrals at districts in Blair Oaks' Tri-County Conference that have a similar number of special education students - 150-215 total students who qualify for special education programs.

"The total (number of) students with IEPs and ISPs in Hallsville on Dec. 1 was 148, Southern Boone was 147, and ours was 166. And if you look at those active evaluations, Hallsville was 22, Southern Boone was 15, and we were already (at) 77," she said.

She told the News Tribune on Wednesday there are even more evaluations now.

An ISP is an individualized service plan. Bowens explained Blair Oaks also serves three nearby parochial schools with speech, language, occupational therapy and physical therapy services to students from those schools who qualify: St. Thomas the Apostle, St. Francis Xavier and St. Stanislaus. Parochial students who qualify are included in the numbers of evaluations.

Not all referrals lead to evaluations, of which Blair Oaks had 36 new ones and 41 other students being re-evaluated to determine their continuing qualification to receive services.

However, the referral and evaluation process is a lengthy one involving lots of data analysis after the recommendation of a parent or teacher for a student to seek aid. To illustrate it, Bowens showed the board 34 pages worth of procedures that "go into every single one of the initial evaluations that we do; so it's very meticulous and very detailed and very time-consuming."

If the information from records including grades, attendance, discipline and state testing tells them a student might have an educational disability, she said her team proceeds to administer tests to figure out precisely what a student's needs are.

She started at Blair Oaks in the 2014-15 school year and has seen the number of cases she manages more than triple, from six for her predecessor to 22 of her own. She said other staff have reported similar increases.

This in itself has presented challenges for a small staff. "As these numbers increase, special ed teachers have more responsibilities. Their small groups are getting larger, and the referrals are not stopping," she said.

In addition, while the overall number of students who receive special education services at Blair Oaks remains fairly stable year-to-year as seniors graduate and students with simpler-to-address speech needs complete their programs, each year the needs of the students are increasing.

"They are students that have more (behavioral needs); they have more academic needs; they have more sensory needs, whereas - and I'm sure Kim (Rodriguez) can attest to this - before maybe we had a student who qualified for a specific learning disability and they saw Judy Schroeder for 30 minutes, and now they're seeing Judy Schroeder and Angela Anderson and Bridget Berhorst and (Rebecca) Schaefer, and then we're contracting for outside counseling."

Rodriguez is the principal at Blair Oaks Elementary School. Schroeder is a learning specialist there. Anderson is a privately-contracted behavior support specialist. Berhorst and Schaefer are contracted through Special Learning Center; Berhorst is an occupational therapist, Schaefer is a physical therapist, and they both come in once a week.

Blair Oaks school board President John Weber asked Bowens what she thought might be causing the trends of students' needs.

Bowens said she didn't know, but Rodriguez suggested it may be because parents in the district are being proactive about taking their children to doctors, who in turn give the district referrals.