By SYDNEY KENT
The Norwell Community School district may soon see a host of new positions, particularly in the special education department, as the district continues the withdrawal process from the Adams-Wells Special Education Cooperative.
Some of the difficulties of this transition were broached during the final portion of Tuesday evening’s school board meeting.
Superintendent Mike Springer told The News-Banner the decision to withdraw from the co-op stemmed from a focus group with parents of students with special needs within the district in 2022. The participants expressed a perceived lack of support by the co-op, and 95 percent wanted the district to establish its own program, Springer reported.
The district began the removal process last year, and has since hired Mindy Scheumann as Education Services Director. The district also hired speech pathologists and multiple intense intervention teachers for all levels of the program, which has seen some turnover in recent months.
During Tuesday’s meeting, the board accepted resignations for Jennifer Osborn, the former Lancaster Elementary School special education teacher, and Kati Isbell, the former Ossian Elementary School speech-language pathologist.
April Roberts, who is currently at another school district, was also formally hired as the Norwell Middle School Intense Intervention Teacher for the 2024-2025 school year. The board also approved the new position of Special Education District Coach, and Maria Hillscamp was hired for the role.
“This came about after some things that have happened at Lancaster and we felt like we needed to support special education there more,” Springer said. “Kylie Heckber is going to step in as a general education teacher and step into that role. We were excited to see that at Ossian with teachers taking on the role. It’s an opportunity to grow our special education program from within. At the same time, they need support in doing that.”
Scheumann announced that, like other teachers, Heckber will go on to receive professional development in special education beginning in the Spring.
In an update regarding the district’s transition, Scheumann said multiple new roles are needed by the program, including a school psychologist, an occupational therapist, and another leading role to provide ongoing training and support.
Scheumann also explained that the district is beginning to work with two autism centers in order to provide RBTs, or registered behavioral technicians. However, this is not available to students without Medicaide, and Scheumann proposed that additional intense intervention teaching assistants could fill in the gap.
“Knowing we left the co-op for a reason, when I hear ‘Let’s train assistants’, it makes me cringe a little bit,” Board member Corey Krug said. “Not because I think we can’t do it, because I think assistants tend to be in high turnover positions. To me, the most important thing in the special education scope is consistency.”
Board member Angie Topp added that she believes it is more likely for assistants to stay when they have adequate training and resources, to which Krug agreed.
“It’s like giving them a toolbelt, so to speak,” Krug said. “If you said we needed to train all of our assistants to do x, y, z, it wouldn’t work. If we have a person that can initially show them and be there to train them along the way, I like that idea.”
Board member Traci Neuenschwander asked if the district currently had enough teaching assistants, and Scheumann said the program currently needs 1-2 more assistants in intense intervention.
Scheumann also emphasized the need for adequate pay and resources for the incoming positions in the department to avoid the high rate of turnover many special education departments in the state face. She also suggested more than one school psychologist may be needed.
“No negativity of the co-op,” Scheumann began. “One of the tasks I would have a psychologist do would be to go through re-evaluations, because what I am finding out is that we have students in eighth grade (and) the last time they were evaluated was in kindergarten. (The psychologist’s) first couple of years are going to be extremely busy.”
Scheumann later clarified that the legal requirements for re-evaluations of special needs students are every few years, and the majority of NWCS special education students have had case re-evaluations.
“We would like to exceed that standard,” Springer added. “We want to see special needs students re-evaluated at each transition point, such as when they change a grade level, and of course always at the request of the family. This is not to be disrespectful to the co-op, we appreciate all they have done, but we want to provide a higher quality of care for our students — in our schools.”
“AWSEC has been serving students and staff at Norwell Community Schools as willing partners for 43 years,” wrote Abi West, president of the AWSEC, in an email to The News-Banner. “Established policies and procedures are in place that meet state and federal requirements. Re-evaluations for students are initiated at the school level and addressed by the team at AWSEC in collaboration with school-based staff.”
Currently, the district has almost 430 students in special education programming.
“Every time a student comes in there is a certain dollar amount (we receive),” Krug said. “The difference in what we are bringing in and what we would be spending, I think that’s going to be important for the public to see. I agree that we need to make (the program) as robust as possible, but we are going to need to explain it to people.”
Krug later expanded on this comment in a phone call with The News-Banner.
“We need to be able to tell the public and taxpayers what their money is being wisely spent on,” Krug said. “First and foremost, that means taking care of our children, having enough staff, and fairly compensating the staff.”
On Tuesday, Topp asked Scheumann how she felt overall at the end of the discussion.
“I’m feeling much better. If we were to only get a teacher of record and not another coach, well,” Scheumann hesitated. “The probability of a teacher wanting 39 students (at Lancaster) on their caseload? It would not have happened. What would have happened is I would have had to pick up that case load. My fear was how I was going to manage that case load, how I was going to support Kylie and do all of these other tasks.”
“These are positions that are needed if we are trying to build the special ed program that we want to build,” Springer summarized. “We want it to be not only for our resident kids, but also for families that are looking for high quality special education, that they look to us.”
“When we withdrew, we knew it would be a two-year process,” Krug said. “It’s important to note that none of our students are being underserviced.”
“Whether they are high ability or have special needs or whatever it may be,” Board President Gene Donaghy added. “We want (students) to be ready to hit the world.”
Cyndi Betz, the leader of the local autism support group, offered her thoughts after the meeting.
“The idea of hiring and training more intense intervention assistants is a good move,” Betz began. “I hope there is not a lot of turnover. A school psychologist is also a great idea and could save a lot of parents the pain and heartache of trying to get a diagnosis for their child to get the correct services and accommodations.”
sydney@news-banner.com
