NORTHAMPTON — The superintendent wants to be clear: The proposed overhaul to the way students are taught in the district’s elementary schools is not about money. It’s about inclusion.
“This isn’t a model that saves money for the district,” Superintendent John Provost told the Gazette of his plan to shift elementary school students receiving special education services into the mainstream classrooms.
During a School Committee meeting on Thursday, the schools’ top leader put forward a modified version of his earlier proposal, which would mean fewer cuts to paraprofessionals. In the original plan, Provost proposed eliminating 32 educational support professionals (ESPs), and under the new plan he proposes cutting 21. In turn he’d be able to add 5.5 special education teachers to the ranks compared to the 9.5 in the original plan.
To achieve the change, the plan combines team- and co-teaching models. Co-teaching involves having regular and special education teachers share a classroom, while team-teaching means a group of students is assigned to three or more teachers.
The updated plan also takes into account feedback from parents about wanting to keep class sizes low.
Under the modified plan, Provost said — since three ESPs have already resigned and the district could retain 14 as building-based subs — he would need to layoff four ESPs and two elementary school librarians.
Provost said the average ESP makes an annual salary of about $20,000 a year, while the average special education teacher makes about $50,000. Those 14 building-based subs are “a bridge to the next year to avoid layoffs.”
Elementary school principals spoke in support of the new plan during the meeting. “It is a mindset and a saying at our school that everyone belongs,” said Jackson Street School Principal Gwen Agna, adding she’s “in full support” of the proposal.
Still, teachers remain reticent about things moving quickly without time to work out the details.
“We share with Dr. Provost many of the concerns about the increasing needs of our student population and the desire to better meet those needs. Our members support the inclusion of students with special needs in general education learning environments to the greatest extent possible,” said Northampton Association of School Employees President Julie Spencer-Robinson. “We respectfully request that the School Committee pause in the implementation of the proposal to restructure of our elementary special education delivery in order to allow time for consultation, collaboration, and thoughtful implementation.”
Committee member Nathaniel Reade said he thought the teachers need bolstering to make this major change happen.
“We’re asking teachers to make this big shift, but they need more support,” he said.
Some asked Mayor David Narkewicz to think about dipping into stabilization funds to hire more people during the shift, but the mayor said he will likely need to tap those reserves in order to achieve the currently proposed appropriation of $28,838,966 from the city budget.
“I’m doing everything I can, but I also have to fund the city budget as well,” he said. “We are going to use all the resources we are allowed by law.”
Provost added the mayor is also making an unprecedented move by funding the schools’ new math curriculum within the capital budget, typically reserved for infrastructural improvements.
The desire to press the pause button on the shift is tempting, School Committee member Edward Zuchowski said, but in the end it’s about what’s best for the students — it’s “unacceptable” for the district to continue serving students as it is, separating out students, however inadvertently, by gender, race and socioeconomic status.
“Change is never an easy thing,” he said. “I don’t think in this situation we have time.”
Advances in medicine, Provost told the Gazette, are “a main driver” in the increased need felt in districts around the country. “It’s truly amazing some of the students who are able to not only survive, but thrive in a school setting — who only a few years ago had a high mortality rate,” he said.
He said schools are also seeing an increased number of students with autism, a spike that so far remains unexplained. The trend is not new, but the dramatic spike in the district’s high needs population signals a major shift — it jumped 49 percent over the last three years. And those students, separated from traditional classrooms, are overwhelmingly male students of color who are on reduced lunch.
Provost said this disproportionality takes root in several systemic issues, an over-reliance on IQ testing and inflexible general education programming among them.
Plus, he said, laws dictating how students receiving special education programming were written in 1975. “The landscape has definitely changed,” he said.
When a school participates in an “inclusion” model, Provost said, it means students receiving special education services are removed from the mainstream for less than 21 percent of the day.
“Co-teaching is one of many ways to do inclusion,” he said, calling the proposed model one that’s “very similar to what I’ve done in my experience.”
Previously, he said, he was the special education director in Holyoke and Agawam.
Other area districts that incorporate inclusion and co-teaching include those in Westfield, West Springfield, Ludlow, North Adams and Agawam, according to Curriculum Director Nancy Cheevers.
Amanda Drane can be contacted at adrane@gazettenet.com.