The Port Washington Board of Education discussed changes to its special education program and how it is increasing inclusion at its Jan. 14 meeting
Port Washington Union Free School District
The Port Washington Board of Education discussed the district’s updates to its special education programs and current use of technology at its Jan. 14 meeting.
The district previously conducted an audit of its special education services in the fall of 2023 through surveys, building visits and small group discussions with stakeholders. Those results were released in 2024.
In response to those results, the district has implemented changes to its program in a continued effort to improve student services.
Assistant Superintendent of Pupil Personnel Services Stephanie Allen said this has contributed to a philosophical change in the district, which has helped students flourish, both in special education programs and not.
“This is becoming part of the fabric and culture of our district,” Allen said.
The audit included three recommendations: organizational support, structural support and family engagement. These included the need for another assistant director, professional development, program expansion, and the education of families on different types of services and the processes to receive them.
In response to these recommendations, Allen said, the district has shared additional resources with staff and reviewed material with them, digitized their manuals for teachers to easily access resources, hosted collegial circles, had regular meetings with principals and Special Education Parent Teacher Association co-presidents and provide informational presentations for families and the community to view.
A recommendation to add an assistant director, which would bring the support staff from two to three, was not included in last year’s budget.
Allen said the current caseload is about 400 students per director. She said other districts of similar sizes typically have three directors, who have a lower caseload than those in Port Washington.
The district has been implementing ongoing changes to its special education programming, notably expanding its Integrated Co-Teaching Model, which the district refers to as ICT.
This program moves special education students from more restricted classrooms to less restricted ones while ensuring their academic needs are met. For example, it brings special education students back into general classrooms through the use of personal aid to ensure a student’s needs are met and integrated into the classroom.
The district began expanding this program in September 2021, starting with the elementary school and focusing on different grades each year. This year, the district is expanding it in its seventh-grade classrooms.
Allen said the greatest impact of the program is fostering inclusion among its students and normalizing differences. This benefits both special education students and general students, she said.
“The change in what you see students being able to do and just watching it happen is unbelievable,” Allen said. “They’re able to transition, they’re able to do work collaboratively in groups, they’re able to independently move around and do different activities in a way that we aren’t seeing before.”
Allen said the program hopes to bring special education students back to the district, which would also diminish the district’s costs for sending students outside of the district for instruction. She said last year, she knew of two students who returned.
Trustee Sandra Alvarez said she believed that investing in this program could potentially bring a higher cost saving for the district, through the program bringing students back to the district and thus diminishing its expenses to send them out of the district, but also through the lessening use of aids as some students re-integrated into classrooms get their educational needs met and are no longer requiring the use of one.
The board of education also evaluated the district’s use of technology, focusing on its safety measures of content filtering and the amount of screen time students use.
Executive Director of Technology Ryan Meloni said technology use skyrocketed in the district due to the pandemic and the need for student learning via technology utilization.
Meloni said this inherently increased student screen time, but the ability to quantify a student’s total screen time is not so cut and dry. He added that teachers are also not aware of how much it is being utilized across classrooms and, therefore, can not modify their own use based on these metrics.
Students use devices such as Chromebooks, which every student in the district is issued one, and iPads for students in pre-K through first grade.
He said since the pandemic, it has been a focus to use technology to support student learning and teacher instruction.
As for content filtering, Meloni said they have measures in place, such as blocking certain websites based on content, but that some students are finding ways to circumvent them. He said the greatest restrictions are implemented at the elementary school level.
Trustees had questions about what the district could do to filter content and potentially reduce screen time, but they opted to save that conversation for a later date.
The Port Washington Board of Education will convene again on Jan. 28.