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GBAPS closes special education seats to meet needs of in-district students

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GREEN BAY – During the Jan. 13 Green Bay Area Public Schools (GBAPS) Board of Education meeting, GBAPS Associate Superintendent of Continuous School Improvement David Johns and Director of Special Education Jacqueline Hauser asked that the seats for open-enrolling students for special education be closed as they struggle to provide resources for their in-district students.

“So when we look at our seats for special education, what we do is we look at our staffing methodology. So we look at our staffing allocation… we really look at that by services we provide, programs we provide and then what grade level we're providing those services — so different for elementary, middle and high school based upon needs,” Hauser explained.

“With our current allocations of staffing, we are currently full where we are staffed at this current point in time, with the students who reside in our Green Bay district boundaries.

“That being said, we also have been talking to you guys multiple times when we come to the floor of the fact that we struggle to find special education staffing, which adding more students that don't lie within our boundaries leads to us needing more staffing, more staffing allocations, which is a hard to fill area right now, whether that be our cross categorical special ed teachers, our vision impairment, our deaf and hard of hearing, our interpreters.  They're all areas and right now that's led us to be contracting.

“So we currently contract for multiple services with outside agencies. Right now, about four to five speech and language pathologists we're contracting with, as well as educational interpreters, vision teachers and so all of those come with an incurred cost as well.

“It's higher than the level that we tend to pay. There's differences, right, pay or benefits, but they come with that higher cost.

“And so that being said, we are asking for our seats to be closed because we are full. And then you'll see that in some we are over capacity with our current staffing.”

A memo to the board showed that in cross categorical, in the elementary level, the current capacity is 670, with a projected enrollment in the area for 2025-26 at 717; at the middle school level a 372 capacity with a 548 projected enrollment; and at the high school level, a 462 capacity with a 633 projected enrollment.

“So we are asking for the seats at this time to be closed, which we have been for a while so that we can meet the needs of our students and our boundaries,” Hauser added.

Hauser said that the department continues to meet the needs of in-district students, but resources are at max capacity with a shortfall in what they have access to internally.

 “We’ve been staying at 14-16% of our student population are students qualified as students with disabilities, who qualify for receiving an IEP. So I want to make that determination, there are some students that may have a disability who don’t qualify for special education services or an IEP,” which Hauser said has remained pretty consistent.

Hauser said that other area school districts are seeing similar issues.

“When we meet with the Brown County directors, I can share that in having conversations with them that most of them are closed,” she said

“Currently, we contract with a company that does our virtual contracted services and this last year at that point in time, we had hit a point where they had shared with us that they were maxed out on what they could even provide. And that’s when they are pulling from multiple states with people with Wisconsin licenses.”

GBAPS, special education, open enrollment

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