District approves 13 paraprofessional cuts

By COURTNEY LAMDIN | Staff Writer
mireporter@mac.com

The Milton School District could save more than $243,000 by cutting 13 paraprofessional positions, two of them vacant, from its fiscal year 2011 budget.

The majority of cuts would be from Milton Middle High School, leaving 2.5 paras in the building. The decision passed 3-2, with board members Jim Lyons and Mary Knight voting to modify the number cut.

The cut was debated at-length during school board meetings, where principals
Anne Blake and Laurie Hodgdon explained the reasons behind the cuts.

“We want to see highly qualified teachers working to support our students across the board,” Blake said.

The principals explained their teach-for-all strategy, where the school’s classroom teachers differentiate instruction to support all students, regardless of their having an individualized education program (IEP).

“We’ve exhausted the capacity of what an IA can do in terms of the curriculum we’ve started to create and write,” Hodgdon said.

The school has moved toward an “intervention model,” where, instead of getting homework help from IAs, students can take additional courses taught by licensed teachers, Blake said.

Other interventions include lunchtime clinics and after-school homework sessions facilitated by teachers.

These interventions provide specialized instruction that take the place of IAs, said Tim Dunn, director of Student Services, at the Jan. 21 board meeting.

“The capacity of the educational support system as a whole has blossomed,” he said, citing clinics and intervention classes. “Kids are rolling off of special ed services because the capacity’s been built.”

Most of the IAs cut will be from students who have IEPs but do not have intensive needs. The school recognizes that IEPs are legal documents, and if a student’s plan requires a one-on-one aide, that service will be provided, Blake said.

However, the school is looking to work with parents to remove the IA requirement from IEPs, to instead include a statement that mandates a student have general “access to homework support,” Blake said.

For example, a parent who wants their child to improve reading skills could agree to an IEP with 80 minutes of daily reading supports to be achieved in clinics or with “assistive technologies” versus with a paraprofessional that spends 80 minutes a day “reading to them,” Blake said.

School board member Michael Boisjoli noted that technologies like netbooks can replace paraprofessionals’ services.

“The students have their aides,” Boisjoli said of the compact laptop computers. “It’s right there – it’s in their hands.”

Jackie Root, who is a paraprofessional at Milton Middle High, disagreed.

“[Netbooks] are going to be great for some kids, not so great for others,” Root said. “In some ways, they will never take over what an IA can do; it’s just common sense.”

Responding to community criticism that the cuts are “too drastic,” Blake said 80 percent of classrooms in the high school already function without an IA; there is only one aide for both the 11th and 12th grades.

The school will also leverage support from the social worker, job developer, regular education teacher and two special educators being transitioned into the school from the alternate education program, which the board voted to close.

Cutting IAs is about progress – not their performance, Hodgdon said.

“We feel that our teachers can handle it,” she said. “We wouldn’t have proposed it if we didn’t believe in it.”

Stacey Endres, a middle school humanities teacher, spoke up at the Jan. 21 board meeting, saying that one year ago, she couldn’t have functioned without an IA.

Endres has “tremendous guilt” that her efforts in teaming could effectively work people out of a job, but she’s happy to reach all students without relying on IAs, she said.

Nathan Caswell, a middle school math teacher, said Endres’ situation is not the case for every classroom.

“The IA in my classroom is of tremendous value to meeting the needs of some of these students who don’t have all of the resources that other kids do,” Caswell said. “There are some situations where one teacher in the room cannot always reach all students, and that needs to be acknowledged.”

Board member Mary Knight, who voted to modify the number of aides cut, said Endres’ classroom was the ideal, but “obviously from Nathan Caswell’s description, that’s not always happening, and I know there’s not that many of them over at the middle high school to begin with.”

Blake Read, student representative to the board and a senior, was skeptical that 1.5 IAs at the high school is enough, especially if the full-time position is required for one-on-one help.

Board member Darren Carner voted for the administration’s proposal, saying, “I can’t believe that they would make cuts that they knew would not be sustainable, personnel-wise,” he said.

Board member Jim Lyons asked Endres if behavior problems would escalate if IAs were cut. Endres replied in the negative, explaining that teaming with her co-teacher and special educator allows her to attend to all students’ needs.

“You’re not putting out little behavior fires because you’re offering kids things at different levels, so they don’t get frustrated,” Endres said.
In a later interview, Lyons spoke about ongoing behavior issues at Milton Elementary School.

“Some of these kids, if they don’t have the proper supervision, that’s one of the things that sets them off,” Lyons said. “I’m fearful of getting rid of the IAs and things still don’t work and we’ve got no backup.”

However, Hodgdon and Blake said IAs do not deal with behavior at MMHS, as they do at the elementary school; instead, teachers handle behavior problems and send students to the Planning Room if necessary.

“The real question behind that is asking folks why is it that way [at the elementary school],” Hodgdon said, adding, “IAs deal with instruction here, and I think it’s been really hard to have that co-mingled [with behavior].”

Board chair Doug Stout said that based on seniority, most positions won’t be cut from the elementary school, where most of the behavior and discipline problems have occurred.

Stout voted for the cuts but warned the administrators present at the Jan. 21 meeting to deliver on their vision.

“If we come back next year, and the request is, ‘We screwed this up, we really need to start adding a bunch of positions to the budget,’ … it won’t be an easy discussion to have with me,” Stout said. “Don’t make me unhappy with my decision.”

Hodgdon and Blake hope to eventually remove all IAs from the school to have teachers personalize students’ learning without setting them apart from their peers. Essentially, they want to “put special ed out of business,” they said.

In the meantime, however, “it’s about progress,” which sometimes means making hard choices, Blake said.

“If somebody hired me to keep things exactly the same, I don’t know if I would have accepted the job,” she said. “Fear can keep you from changing; fear can freeze you. We’ve gone with what we think is best practice, and we’ve gone with the research. I just don’t think you often go wrong when that’s what you do.”