| FUND: SPECIAL REVENUE |
SPECIAL EDUCATION |
JANET VOEKS, DIRECTOR
Chapter 115 of the Wisconsin Statutes permits a County
Board to establish a special education program for school districts in the
County and to create a Children With Disabilities Education Board (CDEB). The
CDEB provides services for children with hearing impairments, vision
impairments, cognitive disabilities, learning disabilities, emotional and
behavioral disabilities, physical impairments, orthopedic impairments, other
health impairments, traumatic brain injury and speech and language impairments.
Related services, including physical therapy, occupational therapy, nursing
services, and transportation are also provided.
The County School Office is the administrative office of the Racine County
Children With Disabilities Education Board. Special education teachers of all
categories of impairments as well as teacher aides, social workers, school
psychologists, and program support teachers are employed through the County
School Office and are assigned to special education services in each of the
eleven school districts operating west of Interstate 94 in Racine County.
High quality special education services continue to be
maintained in Western Racine County through the achievement of many of the 2002
goals. We were able to add additional teachers and paraprofessional staff to
provide the services indicated on the individual education program plans of each
of the students and to maintain desired student/staff ratios based on caseload
guidelines. We successfully provided equipment and materials to meet the
instructional needs of students and staff and provided in-service training to a
significant number of staff members by enabling them to attend conferences and
workshops and through area special education meetings
Another goal was to expand the use of the satellite administrative offices
located in each of the three high school areas serviced by the CDEB. In
practice, this was found to be less effective as a method to improve
communication and efficiency than originally hoped. Given the current service
delivery model, which utilizes the Racine County School Office as the place
where much of the special education paperwork is completed and housed and where
the financial and human resources business for the County special education
staff is carried out, expanding the use of satellite administrative offices will
not be an effective strategy.
We have partially met the goal of increasing the use of assistive technology by
adding 5 laptop computers for staff to use when out in the districts. We have
also added 10 computers and upgraded a server used by the administrative staff
in the building.
