As the Special Services Director for Claymont City Schools, I am required to hold an annual public hearing to provide opportunities for comment from the public regarding the use of the district's IDEA Part B funds. Below is the budget for the 2021-2022 school year for our IDEA Part B and IDEA ARP funds, with Disproportionality.

Thank you,

Heather O'Connor

IDEA - B Funds $ 489,334.42 Carry over $ $20,468.37 Total Funds available $ $509,802.79

Amount Budgeted for Special Education Staff:

Intervention Specialists - 4

Paraprofessionals - 3

Salaries - $303,143.70

Fringe Benefits - $164,198.42

Supplies - $16, 500.00

Purchased Services - $5,492.30

The district spends an excess of $3,600,000.00 on special education services.

IDEA Part B ARP Funds- $99, 349.49

Capital Outlay - $54,200.00

Supplies - $30, 928.51

Purchased Services - $13,349.49

We have already purchased many needed classroom supplies, provided evaluation services, purchased evacuation chairs for our students in wheel chairs for our multi-floor buildings, LAMP licenses (assistive technology) , and non-public funds required to go to St.Marys.

The capital outlay funds have been set aside to provide age appropriate and handicap accessible playground equipment for our primary students. This building has smaller and often high need students.

The district had a disproportionality finding on the 2020 Special Education Profile. It was found the district has a disproportionate number of students identified as having a speech and language disability. In order to correct this finding, the district was required to create a plan and utilize 15% of our IDEA funds towards this correction.

15% of the IDEA funding is $73, 400.16

15% of the IDEA ARP funding is $14, 902.42

Our plan to correct this disproportionality is to facilitate the MTSS/IAT process consistently in order to provide interventions in the general education classroom. We have hired a Tier One/Two Teacher who works very closely with our Speech and Language Pathologists (SLP) in order to provide whole class and small group language interventions. We have also purchased several iPads to for our SLPs to utilize in the classroom language centers for sustainability.

From our 15% we have purchased:

Tier One/Two teacher ($59,160.32 salary and benefits)

iPads (24)

iPad speech apps

Mac Book

Heggerty Training for our SLPs and Tier One/Two Teacher

OG Training for our Tier One/Two Teacher

ASHA conference (PD) for SLPs and Tier One/Two Teacher

Evaluation Services

Currently, we have 281 students identified as having a disability. The % of students identified is 17.31% of our student population. (current state average 14.5%).

We employ:

Intervention Specialists: 20

Tier One & Tier Two Teacher: 1

School Psychologists: 1.5 (.5 contracted through purchased services - Kali Fronzcek)

Speech and Language Pathologists: 3

Occupational Therapist: 1 (contracted through the ESC)

Certified Occupational Therapist Assistant: 1

Physical Therapist: 1 (contracted through the ESC)

Certified Physical Therapist Assistant: 1 (contracted through the ESC)

Paraprofessionals: 37 (to include: classroom aides, ISS aides, bus aides, library aides)