‘All kids belong’: Local special education staff members provide wide range of services | Tri-state News

Demetrice sat up straighter in his wheelchair and studied each image carefully before pointing to the house.

“That’s right,” said Krause. “It was about where we live.”

Demetrice and his classmates at Eisenhower are among the 1,730 students enrolled in special education services across Dubuque Community Schools, and 61,284 such students in the state of Iowa this school year.

It has been nearly 50 years since Congress enacted the major federal legislation that continues to support the rights of students with disabilities. The law was known as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act at its passage in 1975 and later renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA.

Since that time, the number of students with identified disabilities nationwide has doubled, climbing from 3.6 million in the 1976–1977 school year to almost 7.3 million in the 2021–2022 school year, according to National Center for Education Statistics. Other aspects of the special education field have changed in that time, too, including a shift from segregated classrooms to an emphasis on inclusion in the general education population when appropriate.

Special education has been in the spotlight in the Iowa Legislature this year as a result of Gov. Kim Reynolds’ proposal to restructure the state’s area education agencies. The statewide system of AEAs, implemented in 1974, provides programs and services such as special education for school districts.

While local districts and AEA officials are monitoring the proposed legislation, they and educators in other parts of the tri-state area emphasized the importance of special education services and the broad range of students those services impact.

“(Special education) is a layer of support for students, and it’s a service we want families to utilize … because a child is a child first,” said Maquoketa (Iowa) Community School District Superintendent Tara Notz. “You are not a special education student. You’re a student, a child, that might happen to receive special education services.”

Iowa’s AEAs provide a variety of services to the state’s schools, from professional development sessions to media resources, textbooks and other materials, but the bulk of their work falls under special education.

Keystone AEA Director of Special Education Annette Hyde said Keystone provides three main types of special education services: early intervention services for children from birth through age 3 who have a developmental delay, identification and evaluation of students to determine eligibility for special education and direct student support in specialized areas.

In the 21 public school districts and 21 nonpublic schools in Keystone’s service area, AEA staff served 4,816 students with individualized education plans, or IEPs, in kindergarten through 12th grade during the 2022-2023 school year.

To receive an IEP, a student must have a disability as defined in IDEA, which covers categories such as autism, deafness, blindness, intellectual disabilities, orthopedic impairments and traumatic brain injuries. The disability also must affect the child’s educational performance or ability to benefit from general education curriculum.

Not all students are eligible for an IEP and special education services, but some who do not qualify for one may be eligible for a 504 plan, so named because it falls under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. To receive a 504 plan, a child can have any disability that interferes with their capacity to learn in a general education classroom.

The 504 plans describe any accommodations such students might receive, such as additional time to complete tests, while IEPs lay out the goals and services for a child’s special education experience.

While district staff typically take the lead on developing 504 plans for students, AEA staff are instrumental in the “child find” process — the identification and evaluation of students eligible for special education and the development of IEPs.

Dubuque Community Schools Executive Director of Special Education Brenda Duvel said a staff member or parent can request an evaluation of suspected disability for a child, but the district must have the family’s consent to proceed.

“If the family wants to pursue suspected disability, an assessment plan is written by the AEA team,” she said. “Those evaluations need to be done within 60 days, and the team comes back together and determines whether a student is eligible (for special education services).”

Iowa is the only state in the country that is a “noncategorical” state, meaning a disability diagnosis is not a requirement in determining eligibility for special education. While staff do consider a diagnosis — for example, if a child has been medically diagnosed with autism outside of school — they also look at students’ progress, performance and instructional needs when placing them in special education services.

“Because we really focus on that functional assessment, we’re able to tailor a better plan for our students,” said Hyde. “We also exit them (from services) when they don’t need it anymore. We don’t keep kids in special education just because they have a diagnosed disability.”

Western Dubuque Community School District Director of Special Education Vicky Coyle said each child is required to have an annual review of their IEP and a reevaluation of the plan every three years.

“However, at any point, if the child has met their goal and has made a lot of progress, we can always determine as a team to exit services as needed,” she said. “We would do a 45-day trial, in which we still monitor the goal but don’t provide the services for it, to see how they’re doing without us … We might then exit at that time, or we might determine, ‘No, without our services, they aren’t as strong as they were before.’”

According to Iowa Department of Education data, the Western Dubuque district has 442 students with IEPs this school year, 12.9% of the district’s total enrollment.

This school year, the Dubuque district has 1,730 students with IEPs out of a total K-12 enrollment of 9,653, 17.9% of the entire student population.

That number has ticked upward slightly over the past five years. During the 2018-2019 school year, the 1,621 Dubuque students with IEPs represented 15.9% of the total student population.

Once a child has been identified as requiring services, district staff, including special education teachers and paraprofessionals, provide support as outlined in that student’s IEP.

Typically, AEA staff do not provide direct service for many students in special education programs. The exceptions include specialized services such as speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy or hearing or vision services, when AEA staff come into district buildings to work directly with students.

“The AEA provides any additional services that our teachers are not licensed to provide,” Coyle said.

Those services are delivered both in self-contained classrooms with special education teachers and in the general education classroom, where students might have the support of a paraprofessional or a special education teacher might co-teach with a general education teacher.

In a concept known as the “least restrictive environment,” federal special education law dictates that children with IEPs should be with their general education peers to the maximum extent appropriate.

“We know that students grow so much more when they’re around their peers who have strengths in those areas,” said Notz. “You don’t learn good communication skills unless you’re around other children with strengths in communication.”

Hyde said this represents a shift in understanding over the past 50 years, moving students out of the segregated classrooms that were the norm when special education programs first were introduced in the 1970s.

“The amount of kids that spend a good portion of their day in the general education environment successfully has grown, and because of that, our academic expectations have continued to increase,” she said. “We recognized that with the right supports, all students can learn a lot. … Our goal is to provide students everything they need, but not more than they need, because we want them to be independent.”

According to federal data, more than two-thirds of children with disabilities spent 80% or more of their school day in general education classrooms during the 2022-2023 school year.

Local special education teachers emphasized that while including students with general education peers is a high priority, it should only happen to the extent that is appropriate, beneficial and meaningful for that student.

“If they’re not able to make progress on their goals, or there’s other concerns such as safety … we might have to go more restrictive,” Coyle said.

In general, Duvel said, Dubuque district staff work hard to ensure students’ special education needs can be met in the school they would attend based on where they live.

However, for students with more significant disabilities, the district has a personal learning program (PLP) at one school at the elementary, middle and high school levels: Eisenhower Elementary School, Eleanor Roosevelt Middle School and Dubuque Senior High School. Students from across the district who are eligible for those services, regardless of where they live, are able to attend those schools.

Clustering the majority of students with significant disabilities at one school lets the district maximize resources and best use the expertise of its staff.

For example, Krause, one of the two special education teachers in charge of the PLP at Eisenhower, is internationally certified through Mobility Opportunities Via Education, a curriculum designed to teach basic, functional motor skills to students with disabilities.

“We have nine students in our PLP program, and if they would be in seven different schools across the district, they’d have to have that level of expertise in every building, which would be very hard,” said Eisenhower Principal Andy Ferguson.

On a recent afternoon, while Demetrice was busy reviewing the story the class had read, Krause turned to fifth-grade student Carter Cocayne.

The 11-year-old tapped the screen of a communication device, which spoke aloud the question, “Do you have a pet?”

“I do. I have a dog,” Krause responded. “Do you have a pet?”

With another series of taps, Carter was able to respond, “Yes, I have a cat.”

It has taken Carter several years to develop the dexterity and control of his fingers to select the image on the screen for each word, Krause said. Her students often begin by working on activating larger switches — Logan Kubik, 6, currently is developing the motor skills to hit a circular button with her hand.

“As she learns to activate this, it could lead to a bigger, more sophisticated device,” Krause said.

While Krause and her class were busy learning about communities and places to live, her co-teacher, Jessica Goodsman, worked with a group of other PLP learners in a separate classroom.

Among them was third-grader Emlynn Kempen, who smiled and bobbed her head back and forth as Goodsman placed an animatronic musical cactus on the tray of her wheelchair.

Emlynn’s mother, Amy Kempen, said Emlynn has attended Eisenhower since preschool.

“When she started here, she did not have any core strength at all,” Kempen said. “Over the years, and especially in the past year, she’s grown tremendously in her physical capabilities.”

Kempen said Emlynn has developed close relationships with her staff and peers, such that most weekends, she cries when realizing she won’t go to school that day.

“I know she wouldn’t be where she is if this program didn’t exist,” Kempen said.

In addition to PLP, Eisenhower is also one of eight district elementary schools that house what staff call “Level 2” or “Strat 2” programs, referring to the Instructional Strategist II endorsement needed for staff to teach in the program. Many students in these programs have autism or a similar diagnosis, but they need not have a diagnosis to receive services.

Reynolds’ initial proposals for restructuring Iowa’s AEAs included authorizing AEAs only to provide special education services and shifting general supervision authority to the Iowa Department of Education. State funds for a district’s special education services that currently are given to the AEA would have remained with the district.

In introducing the proposal, Reynolds said her goal was to return AEAs to their core mission of helping students with disabilities and provide choice so districts not satisfied with the services provided by their AEA can seek those services elsewhere if they choose.

After citizens and educators expressed concern about the proposed changes and the swift timeline for potential implementation, Republicans in the Iowa House of Representatives earlier this month advanced a modified version of the bill.

The legislation, which passed out of the House Education Committee earlier this month, mandates that AEAs provide special education services and that school districts contract with them but dictates that the Department of Education would only absorb five positions from each AEA. The bill would give districts one year to decide how they want to source media services and two years to decide on other education services they currently get from AEAs.

The Iowa Senate Education Committee also has advanced a different amended version of Reynolds’ bill. That version would see AEAs continue to provide special education, general education and media services but would gradually shift state funds from the AEAs to the school districts, among other changes to oversight of special education.

As the bills progress, local special education leaders continue to speak highly of their partnerships with AEA staff in delivering services.

“(Keystone) helps assure that we’re doing for all kids what we need to do and the right kids get entitled to special education supports and services,” Duvel said.

For schools in Jo Daviess County, Ill., a partnership similar to Iowa’s AEAs helps serve students with disabilities: Northwest Illinois Special Education Cooperative, which serves 11 school districts in northwest Illinois.

Director Tracy Dahl said each school completes an annual needs assessment to indicate what services it needs from the cooperative that year. The cooperative finds staff to fill those needs, including school psychologists and social workers; teachers for those who are deaf, hard of hearing or visually impaired; physical and occupational therapists and behavioral consultants.

“With our districts being so small, it’s nice to have that consortium because it’s hard for everybody to find staffing right now,” Dahl said.

Wisconsin’s answer to the educational consortium is the state’s 12 Cooperative Educational Service Agencies. More than 30 districts in southwest Wisconsin fall under CESA 3, including Platteville School District.

Platteville Student Services Director Max Long said the district contracts with CESA 3 for teachers in the areas of hearing or visual impairments. While some smaller districts may also use their CESA for needs such as speech therapy, Platteville has its own therapists on staff.

“A lot of what CESA does for us is offer different trainings along different topics,” he said. “They provide support services (and) professional development to districts like us.”

Long has seen the number of Platteville students receiving special education services increase over the past few years, from 202 students during the 2019-2020 year to 271 during the 2022-2023 school year. When the district’s numbers for this school year were recorded, they showed 260 students with disabilities, but about 20 students were under evaluation at the time, so Long believes the total has surpassed last year’s figures.

“I would say a lot of what brings about that increase is students who transfer in … (but) I do have some suspicion that COVID may have brought about some increase when it comes to the numbers for speech and language delay,” he said.

At East Dubuque (Ill.) Elementary School, special education teacher Melissa Diem runs a structured autism program, though students do not need to have a diagnosis of autism to be enrolled in the program.

The district launched the program in 2021 with three students. Today, Diem serves seven students in kindergarten through third grade.

“A lot of the kids in this program have problems with self-regulation of their bodies or emotions,” she said. “In here, we’re trained to support them in that and give them the accommodations they need.”

On a recent morning, when second-grader Easton Fincel arrived in Diem’s classroom, she led him to the nearby sensory room, which includes a trampoline, beanbags, exercise balls, a swing and other activities to help students regulate their bodies and emotions.

“We try to incorporate big muscle movements, small muscle movements and a little bit of calming activity,” Diem said, as she and Easton tossed a ball back and forth.

Later, Diem gathered the other students in her class that day, including second-grader Aurora Shimak, first-grader Anastasia Ross and kindergartner BraeLynn Huseman, for a reading lesson. She read the group a picture book, “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Rose,” then passed out a worksheet with comprehension questions.

“What did the old lady swallow first?” she asked.

“A rose,” said Anastasia, and Diem nodded.

After finishing the book, the students worked on an art project, stuffing heart-shaped felt pillows they could take home for Valentine’s Day.

“It feels soft like a kitty,” Anastasia said, touching the stuffing.

The structured autism program is among a number of special education offerings the East Dubuque district has added in the past five years, including an educational skills management program for elementary students with behavioral and social-emotional needs and a functional living skills program for high school students to practice skills such as cooking, laundry and shopping.

Diem said one of her favorite parts of working with the students in her program is seeing their growth.

“We had a student at the beginning of the year who couldn’t identify letters or sounds, and now she’s able to read three-letter words with relative ease,” she said. “Every day, something happens that is better than it was the week before or the day before.”

Balancing specialized programs such as the East Dubuque autism program and the PLP program in Dubuque with time spent in the general education environment allows teachers to meet the needs of a broad range of students with disabilities, area educators said.

“The norm now is that all kids belong, and this school is meant for all kids, so we do what we have to do to make the services that students receive work for each and every student,” Duvel said.