The school speech pathologist noted down how many therapy sessions she has had with my child, of the possible 30 sessions, she has had 8 so far this year. I had asked the speech pathologist who I could contact to get future coverage for her and was told there is a shortage of speech pathologist so will not be able to get another to cover but will try to arrange something with the special education teacher for the future if it happens again. Should I settle and do that . I was thinking maybe she could do grammar related things at that time with the special education teacher but it seems like they owe my child a whole summer of speech therapy.
Re: comments on no coverage for school speech therapy
Thanks alot for responding, I needed a boost to get me going. We will see if a few letters will help.Thanks-
Re: comments on no coverage for school speech therapy
Golly, Patti, sounds like you have a nice job. You get to do the therapy.
On behalf of the district I will state that my district has a dastardly time locating SLPs. They look and look and place national ads, etc. There is a serious dearth of SLPS.
I think this will continue until the districts and the state funding model that compensates districts for SLPs shapes up. It is common for SLPs to teach caseloads of 60 and even 80. That means they have to test all of these students each year, plus evals. that don’t result in placement, hold more than that number of IEP meetings, do all the paperwork for all of this, generate all assessment plans, generate and send home invitations to IEP meetings, plan therapy…………..It is truly impossible to do all of this and do it well.
My district assigns all SLPs two elementary schools, two days per week per school and one day for assessments. So, nobody gets more than two sessions per week of about 25 min. per session. There is no “I” in the IEP in the true sense.
At JHS SLP is reduced to one session per week, whether they need it or not. And sometimes we are short a therapist.
Can we blame therapists for having no interest in serving public schools? The job is impossible to do with true integrity. Until their caseloads are reduced, until they are given parapros to handle the paperwork, (at least part time parapros), things won’t get much better.
one more thing
Florida has somewhere in their special education laws a loophole for make-ups…If the SLP can show the child is making progress and make-ups were due…they don’t need to have make them up. It is an IEP decision..however, I know in my district if an HP starts screaming troops are sent to handle it. Keep the customer happy…
Compliance is something that is a real problem especially with caseloads of 70 and 80….being strung out between 2 or 3 schools is no fun…It seems we spend a lot of time in the car and guess where my office is…My trunk..
SLP’s can go out on stress leave so districts are becoming more proactive… if one starts getting overwhelmed they are sent help to keep them afloat…
In addition, to help deal with the huge caseloads everyone is praying for SLP-aides…which are community college graduates of a 2 year program…who can help with the therapy and screenings but they aren’t qualified to do assessments.
Also they can get SLP-Interns from MA programs to work for FREE for 150 hours during a semester..
But like Anitya said…it isn’t easy juggling caseloads like this by a long shot…
Yeah, there is a shortage but by law they have to do the make-ups…even if the SLP is using the shortage as an excuse to not do the make-ups. I am an SLP that a district has hired to do make-ups for SLP’s who are over burdened with doing assessments, therapy and keeping their records up to date.. I basically shuttle from school to school doing make-ups and getting files and records organized.
So you become one of the HP’s (High Profile) parents and demand your make-ups… :x