Norwalk’s Special education program has been under sanctions a number of years. So naturally, now that Corda has hired a new director of Pupil Personnel Services, he deflected answering any questions to the new director. Who would of course be unfamilar with all that has gone on for several years.
And what is with this title, “director of Pupil Personnel Services”? It has a Soviet Sptunik era ring to it.
It is unclear how long Norwalk schools have been under the sanction, what the specific sanctions are or why the state felt it had to step in to correct the situation. Superintendent of Schools Salvatore Corda acknowledged Tuesday the state had identified areas “we have to address†and that sanctions
were in place.
“We’ve had several issues relative to special education,†he said.
Corda declined to be more specific and referred all questions to
Janie Friedlander, the newly hired director of Pupil Personnel Services.
Friedlander did not return calls for comment. According to research by NorwalkSEEKS (Norwalk Special Education
Empower Through Knowledge Source), “black kids in Norwalk
are more than five times as likely than their non-black peers to
be identified with an emotional disturbance.â€
Lauren Garrison however was able to get Janie Friedlander’s comments at the BOE meeting.
The district’s new director of pupil personnel is recommending using additional state funding received by the city to hire a speech and language assistant to work at Kendall and Jefferson elementary schools.
Janie Friedlander, who offered her suggestion to the Board of Education Tuesday night, said that a speech and language assistant can provide therapy and “a lot of face time†to children, but cannot evaluate children or write Individualized Education Programs, or IEPs. The assistants work under the supervision of a speech and language pathologist who also provides services at the same school(s). Friedlander said she identified Kendall and Jefferson as “the two schools that were most in need of extra service,†though she said there were many other schools that could use additional speech and language personnel.
At Jefferson, an increase this year in kindergarten enrollment has driven the higher need for speech and language services.
I am struggling to understand how a language specialist is needed in kindergarten when the whole point of kindergarten is to teach, presumably, English to toddlers. Here’s an interating thought for the over specialized, there’s this school or philosophy regarding language leaning called immersion. There’s a whole country, Canada, that has wrestled with this two language issue for decades without the need to “language specialists” in kindergarten. It’s called letting teachers teach. Might be handy here in Norwalk.
source: The Hour, Director recommends additional speech, language assistant , by Lauren Garrison, October 3, 2007
