‘Better ways to detect kids with disabilities necessary’

The special education program of the CNMI must find better ways to detect and monitor children with disabilities, while sanctions for noncompliance must be better enforced, according to the Office of Special Education.

This recommendation, presented during the Public School System stakeholders’ dinner held last Thursday at the Saipan Grand Hotel, is in line with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, requirements.

Special education coordinator Joanne Nicholls said the IDEA was originally enacted to make sure that children with disabilities have the opportunity to receive free, appropriate public education, just like any other children.

Early childhood coordinator Suzanne Lizama and Guam CEDDERS official Dr. Nieves Flores, who presented the summary of the OSEP’s monitoring and verification visit last March 7 to 10, said that further training must be conducted for the development and implementation of monitoring procedures to include sanctions for noncompliance.

“There should be further training on the procedures involving compliance with the Disabilities Act,” they said.

Nicholls said the findings were divided into sections: General Supervision, Child Find, Free Appropriate Public Education in the Least Restrictive Environment and the Individualized Education Program.

General Supervision issues include parent rights, data collection, private school, parent participation at IEP meetings, hiring and retention of personnel, maintenance and destruction of records.

Under parent rights, the program must conduct training on understanding parent rights, procedure for documenting that parents receive rights, and translation of parent rights. For data collection, procedures on data gathering must be outlined properly and training is again required for the staff.

Nicholls said procedures on developing and implementing Child Find activities must also be defined clearly. Child Find, she said, is a program-locating children with disabilities from birth to age 21.

SPED staff must be trained in such activities, said the report. School personnel and parents must also undergo training on identification of students with emotional disabilities.

Provision of interpreters for meetings and evaluation was also raised under the IEP section. SPED must develop procedure for securing and using interpreters at meetings, said the report.

The summary also tackled transportation, so that late pick-up and early pick-up do not affect the “Free Appropriate Public Education” provision of PSS. The program must always coordinate transportation with the transportation coordinator at the Education office. Other issues include procurement of assistive technology device in a timely manner, responsibility for informing teachers and other service providers of their duties in the IEP, among others.

Nicholls said these are just some of the issues and concerns raised by the OSEP consultants and she will also relate the same issues and concerns on the next principals’ meeting on April 21 at the Pacific Islands Club.