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OASD Special Education Network

Dear Parents, The end of our 2012-13 school year is upon us, and we have many things to reflect on as well as to look forward to. This year, our District chose to adopt Inclusive practices to better serve our childrens individual learning needs. This was a huge undertaking that required a great deal of change for teachers, paraprofessionals, students and parents. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for the tremendous amount of support, hard work, patience and dedication that has been displayed to help the District with this transition. OASD has much to be proud of, and is happy to share the implementation was quite successful. As our children progress to the next grade level, so will the needs of each individual school and classroom. At the end of each year, the District needs to reallocate personnel to ensure that appropriate staff has been shifted to help accommodate the changing needs. This sometimes requires certain teachers and paraprofessionals to transfer from one grade level to another, or perhaps even a different school. This is a very delicate procedure, in which every effort is made to help ensure a smooth transition for each student. In addition, this year the District faced challenges for the 2013-14 school year, as a result of the implementation of the Affordable Healthcare Act. The Affordable Healthcare Act is commonly referred to as ACA or Obamacare. Among other key features of this legislation, the ACA has a Pay or Play component effective July 1, 2014. The ACA requires large employers with 50 or more full-time equivalent employees to either offer health insurance to full-time employees or to pay a penalty tax. Under the ACA, full-time employees are defined as those employees who work 30 or more hours per week. While the law does not dictate employer contribution levels, coverage must be deemed to be affordable for the employee. Coverage is affordable if the required employee contribution for the lowest cost option that provides minimum value coverage levels does not exceed 9.5% of W-2 wages for

that calendar year. In other words, the District cannot offer coverage that meets minimum value coverage levels and then pass along the majority of the costs to the employees. That would fail the affordability test. For example, the cost passed along to an employee averaging $20,000 in W-2 earnings annually could not exceed $1,900. Unfortunately, all employees working 30 hours or more per week are impacted by the ACA, regardless of whether or not insurance benefits are needed. Employers dont have the option to allow employees to waive off health insurance in lieu of maintaining hours over 30 per week. The bottom line is that the District was faced with significant increases in healthcare premiums in excess of $1,500.000.00. The Districts main goal is to maintain staffing levels to ensure the same level of services, while remaining fiscally responsible. To accomplish this objective, the District will be doing so with additional employees working fewer weekly hours. This primarily affects the paraprofessional staff. The solution essentially consists of reducing current paraprofessional staff hours less than 30 hours a week, while hiring additional part-time paraprofessionals to fulfill the appropriate personnel needed. For example, instead of one full-time paraprofessional working a full day; one part-time paraprofessional would work the morning half of the day, while a second part-time paraprofessional would work the afternoon portion of the day. Keep in mind, regardless of the ACA, each year the paraprofessional staff fluctuates from the changing needs of the students within the district. Again, every effort has been taken to try to align students with paraprofessionals they are familiar and work well with. All of the paraprofessionals have been informed of these changes and every effort has been made to keep our current dedicated and much appreciated paraprofessional staff intact. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this matter, please feel free to contact Lisa Dawes at lisa.dawes@mail.oasd.k12.wi.us or (262)560-2156.

Here is some helpful information:

. Our latest Gratitudes Program recipients - Congratulations to Becky Beck 2nd Grade Teacher of Park Lawn Elementary and Koni Adams Special Education Teacher of Park Lawn Elementary, both nominated by Tim and Corrine Gartzke. Once again, we have 2 teachers highlighted for their exceptional service. Thank you Mrs. Beck and Mrs. Adams for all of your hard work and dedication! Thank you Tim and Corrine for taking the time to nominate and recognize their efforts.

Here is what is happening:

Congratulations to Kim Schiefelbein! Kim has accepted a new position in the District as a Universal Design coach with an emphasis on assistive technology. Universal Design for Learning is a framework that provides educators with a structure to develop their instruction to meet the wide range of diversity among all learners. UDL is a research-based framework that suggests that a one-size-fits-all approach to curricula is

not effective. UDL was inspired by universal design in architecture, where design features intended for individuals with disabilities have had unexpected benefits for the general population. Kim has a Bachelors of Science degree from Western Kentucky University in Exceptional Child Education; learning and behavioral disorders K-12 and a Masters of Education: Elementary School Counseling K-8. Kim taught in Kentucky for 5 years at the high school and elementary before joining OASD in 2005. Kim has taught at Ixonia Elementary, Greenland Elementary and Silver Lake Intermediate School. OASD is proud to announce the return of Dr. Alice Udvari-Solnar next year. Dr. Udvari-Solnar is a Special education Professor from the University of WisconsinMadison, who will continue to providing training and coaching in inclusion, coteaching and Universal design practices for our educators. Dr. Elise Fattura, Associate Professor and Director of Student Services and Special Education License Coordinator of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee will return next year along with team members Amy Tosen and Nancy Rice to coach educators and build leadership teams based on our belief statements. Positive Behavior Interventions & Supports - Greenland Elementary Receives PBIS School of Merit Distinction! Greenland School, now completing its second year of Positive Behavior Intervention Supports (PBIS), received the School of Merit distinction, recognizing the school for successfully implementing tier 1 behavior interventions. Congratulations, Greenland students and staff!