At last Wednesday’s Wallkill Central School District Board of Education meeting Anthony White, a member of the district’s special education committee, proposed a plan that would bring integrated co-teaching classes to special education students in grades K-6 at Leptondale and Clare F. Ostrander elementary schools.

The committee was tasked with reviewing the current special education programs in grades K-6 to see if there is a way to reduce the amount of transitions special education students would have to make to access their Individualized Educational Program (IEP).

In the current school year’s integrated co-teaching (ICT) programming model there are four full-time special education teachers and four full-time teaching assistants for grades K-4 at Leptondale. For grades 5-6 at Ostrander there are four full-time special education teachers and no full-time teaching assistants.

The committee proposes that next year’s ICT model for grades K-5 at Leptondale will feature four full-time special education teachers and four full-time teaching assistants. In this proposition one special education teacher and one teaching assistant will be assigned to kindergarten and first grade. Much like kindergarten and first grade, one special education teacher and one teaching assistant each will be assigned to second, third and fourth grades. The special education teacher and teaching assistant would rotate between the two classrooms. Two special education teachers and teaching assistants would be responsible for the fifth grade to help students as they transition to Ostrander. In addition, the committee proposes two fifth grade ICT special education classes in order to maintain small class sizes.

White noted that the committee’s goal is to bring the special education integrated co-teaching model to grades K-6 at Leptondale. This is planned to happen beginning with the 2022-2023 school year.

“So you may be asking why not K-6 this year,” White said to the board of education. “That is because we have a cohort of students in an integrated co-teaching class at Ostrander that are fifth grade and we don’t want to bounce them back to Leptondale for one year prior to them going to middle school. We’re gonna phase in that fourth grade integrated co-teaching cohort and they’re gonna have an option to either stay at Leptondale for the fifth grade year or to go to Ostrander, which some of them may choose for the fifth grade year because siblings may attend Ostrander or because of the programming needs that they may have.”

The 2021-2022 proposed ICT model for grades K-6 at Ostrander features four full-time special education teachers. Four full-time teaching assistants would be reassigned within the district. Currently there are no students in pre-kindergarten that are projected for an ICT program. However, this could change and a special education reading teacher would cover kindergarten if needed. One special education teacher and one teaching assistant would assist the first and second grade. Similar to first and second grade, third and fourth grade will also receive one special education teacher and one teaching assistant as will fifth grade. The special education teacher and teaching assistant would rotate between the two classrooms. Two special education teachers and teaching assistants will be assigned to sixth grade. Like fifth grade at Leptondale, there are projected to be two ICT sections for sixth grade in order to keep class sizes low.

The cost for this implementation would be $30,000. The expense would come from hiring two part-time aides to replace teaching assistants in the academic intervention services program. White is confident that the aides would be able to do their job effectively.

“The aide can do the responsibilities and the work that the TAs (teaching assistants) are currently doing,” he said.

Joseph LoCicero, president of the board of education, thanked the committee for creating a plan that is financially viable and beneficial to the students.

“Great job to you, your staff, the committee that you have,” he said to White. “We work on these goals as a board and that’s a long day. It’s really nice to see something that we came up with from listening to the people complaining about moving their child. It’s nice to see that this is working out. You guys did a good job building a great program that’s fiscally responsible and addresses the needs of the children.”