Warren County Public Schools plan special education improvements

The Warren County School Board approved a move by the local school district to join a regional special education program and considered proposed budget items slated to further improve instruction and support for students with disabilities.

School board members voted unanimously during their Wednesday, January 5 regular meeting to permit Warren County Public Schools (WCPS) to join the newly formed Fauquier-Rappahannock-Warren Regional Special Education Program, a collaborative effort among school districts in the three counties to pool resources and seek state funding support.

The Fauquier-Rappahannock-Warren Regional Special Education Program would be able to receive funds from a Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) program that ensures equitable funding for students with specific needs throughout the Commonwealth, explained WCPS Director of Special Services Michael Hirsch to School Board members.

WCPS Director of Special Services Michael Hirsch explains new special ed program to School Board members. Photos and video by Mark Williams, Royal Examiner.

School divisions that are in a regional program may receive additional funds to support these populations, he said, with 58 of the 132 divisions currently receiving such extra support.

WCPS wants to partner with Fauquier and Rappahannock Counties to participate in a regional program to allow the school district the same opportunity to access those dollars, said Hirsch.

“This will allow us to tap into regional dollars that the state department of ed has allocated for Warren County that will support students with low-incidence and some specific types of disabilities,” Hirsch told School Board members during the action agenda portion of their meeting.

Hirsch also said that the three counties, and possibly Culpeper, will share professional development opportunities and collaborate to provide additional strategies to support students. One requirement is that WCPS have an administrator and school board member as part of the regional board.

According to the corresponding Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that accompanied the WCPS request to join the program, the purpose of the Fauquier-Rappahannock-Warren Regional Special Education Program is to serve students under certain identified categories of disabilities, including students with multiple disabilities, students with severe cognitive disabilities, and students with autism.

“Initial eligibility for services will be determined by the school division in which the student resides,” according to the MOU, which adds that the cooperating school boards, and any additional party, shall provide each fiscal year, on a pro rata basis, the necessary funds to establish, operate and maintain the regional program as determined during the budgeting process.

Hirsch told the School Board that regional program members put together an application and mailed it to VDOE and he was presenting it to board members last night to see if they also wanted to let WCPS join.

“It went before the regional board on Monday and they approved our acceptance pending your approval,” he said.

The regional program would be similar to Northwestern Regional Educational Programs (NREP), which provides cost-effective, quality programming for school-aged (K-12) students with autism, emotional disabilities, hearing impairments, multiple disabilities, and traumatic brain injury for the school divisions of Clarke County, Frederick County and Winchester City.

NREP programs are offered at the Senseny Road School just outside Winchester. NREP is governed by a Committee of Superintendents comprised from each of the divisions with the superintendent of Frederick County Public Schools serving as chairperson of the committee. Frederick County Public Schools serves as the fiscal agent for NREP. Fauquier County is the lead for the program Hirsch discussed WCPS joining.

“NREP operates a separate school, but that’s not our goal,” said Hirsch. “We want to collaborate with Rappahannock and Fauquier to create professional development activities for all of our staff at no cost and so that we can tap into the regional dollars to help support the programs we already have in place.”

“We feel our programs are competitive with any program in the Commonwealth and we want to access more dollars” to maintain them, he added.

The agreement to establish and operate the Fauquier-Rappahannock-Warren Regional Special Education Program was unanimously approved February 5 following a motion by Warren County School Board Vice Chairman Catherine Bower, and a second by School Board member Kristen Pence.

WCPS special education also was discussed during a work session held Wednesday night by Warren County School Board members as part of their review of the proposed FY 2021 operating budget for WCPS.

“We think special education will be our next accreditation problem,” WCPS Interim Superintendent Melody Sheppard said in starting off the work session.

To nip that issue in the bud, WCPS staff have devised a preliminary budget that includes proposed additions to the existing WCPS budget, such as:

• $231,833 for the Behavior Support Specialist Program to hire one clinician and four support coaches;

• $132,056 to hire two special education instructional coaches; and

• $170,938 to hire two Instructional Resource Team (IRT) specialists.

Sheppard said that WCPS has operated the Therapeutic Day Treatment (TDT) Program that was started several years ago in which the Medicaid-funded program brings in outside professionals to work with students.

However, Medicaid no longer funds the program to its previous level, “so we are finding ourselves with some additional behavior support needs,” said Sheppard. “We would actually like to have our own behavior support specialist program, and this would be the cost of that program.”

The proposed $231,833 total includes benefits for the five 12-month positions needed to run the program in-house.

“We have noticed an increase in behaviors in our classrooms,” Sheppard added.

For instance, one WCPS middle school used to have five TDT counselors at its height, said Sheppard, but now there is just one person who works two hours a day.

And because Medicaid funded the TDT Program, over the years it has increased work eligibility criteria, which now calls for a qualified mental health position that requires a four-year college degree.

“We feel that we can hire people at the instructional assistant level and provide them with a training course through our department and be able to support them with a clinician just as well as we can with the qualified mental health professionals,” Hirsch told School Board members during the work session. “There are a lot of TDT people out of work and we feel we could attract them at this level.”

Additionally, the proposed FY 2021 WCPS budget would add more than $2.84 million to the existing budget to fully implement teacher, instructional assistant (IA), and nurse pay scales so that working for Warren County would be more competitive for prospective employees compared to neighboring Frederick County, Va.

Currently, WCPS has roughly 119 IAs working throughout the school division. They have a huge impact in the classroom and between classes, said George “Bucky” Smith, WCPS director of personnel.

“Their jobs can be challenging in the different settings,” Smith said, “and may be quite difficult.”

The current scale isn’t competitive, he said, and IAs working for WCPS “have the skills and the talents to do this and they can find work that’s going to pay more, so we want to be able to reward them more.”

Therefore, the proposed IA scale starts at a yearly salary of $15,750 at step 0 (or, zero years of experience) and then with each year of experience, or step on the scale, the pay increases by 1.013 percent between the steps.

“So, IAs would each get a step, a one-and-a-third percent pay increase, and a one percent cost-of-living adjustment totaling a two-and-a-third overall increase,” said Smith.

Similar pay scale and step increases also are proposed for WCPS teachers and nurses.

“If we are able to move forward with what you see proposed in front of you, then we will have completed phase two and phase three of the teacher salary scale, which is phenomenal,” Sheppard said. “I’m very excited to say that.”

The entire proposed WCPS FY 2021 budget will be discussed again during a February 18 joint budget work session between the Warren County School Board and the Warren County Board of Supervisors, as well as during a School Board work session scheduled for February 19.

To see what else transpired during the School Board’s regular meeting and work session on February 5, watch these exclusive Royal Examiner videos: