Olympia’s special education report, one of two districts to provide ‘early support services’

 Ken Turcotte, Executive Director for Student Support and Special Education, presented the Special Education (SpEd) Annual Report for the academic year 2022-2023 during the Olympia School District (OSD) board meeting last Thursday, August 24.

Out of 1,769 SpEd students, the highest percentage were under the Specific Learning Disability category, where 503 (28.43%) were identified.

“Our State and Federal guidelines describe 13 eligibility categories students must satisfy to enter Special Education services,” said Turcotte.

The eligibility categories are Autism, Developmental Delay, Deaf, Emotional/Behavioral Disability, Other Health Impairment, Hearing Impairment, Intellectual Disability, Multiple Disabilities, Orthopedic Impairment, Specific Learning Disability, Speech/Language Impairment, Traumatic Brain Injury, and Visual Impairment/Blindness.

For the staffing, Turcotte reports the following number of paraeducators and therapists in the whole district.

“This just breaks out the number of folks working with students receiving special education. We look to one-on-one paraeducators. Those are paraeducators who are supporting students who, for some reason, require student-specific support,” Turcotte said.

Turcotte also showed the breakdown of the SpEd students according to demographic, with the Caucasian demographic group having the most students, accounting for 1066 (60.26%) SpEd students.

Assistant Director of Special Education in Early Learning Tom Parnell shared the highlights of the district’s SpEd programs.

“We are one of the two school districts in Washington State that provide early support services within our school district,” Parnell said. “We're proud of those services, and they allow us to provide our special education services in a more seamless way from birth all the way going up to kindergarten and beyond.”

Parnell shared OSD’s SpEd programs in early childhood: Early Support Services ("Birth-to-Three"), Early Childhood Evaluation Team ("Child Find"), Community Integrated Supports ("CIS") Preschool, Developmental Preschool, Intensive Preschool, and Transition to Kindergarten ("TK").