I Special Ed Rooms School Superintendent David Gangel is

I

Special Ed Rooms

School Superintendent David Gangel is reconsidering his decision to recommend that the two classrooms in the new addition not needed for regular education for kindergarten through second grade be assigned to two of the three sections of third grade. , , ■

Parents of children in K-2 special education have asked that that class and the pre-school handicapped class be put in the two rooms.

Last March Dr. Gangel gave the School Board a 1 preliminary floor plan for the use of the addition and the rest of the school that showed the K-2 special education class in the addition. At that time he assumed the kindergarten would have five sections and that only one room would not be i needed for regular K-2 classes.

Over the summer the School Board decided to have only four sections of kindergarten to free up a teaching slot for inschool suspension and alternative education.

With four sections of kindergarten, as well as first and second grade, two rooms of the 14-room addition are not needed for K-2 regular instruction. With two classrooms, Dr. Gangel decided he could move in most of the third grade.

That was the plan approved by the School Board last \ month. At that time, Dr. Gangel said he favored this because the addition will have the largest classrooms in the building, and it made sense to use them for full-sized classes rather than special education classes with few children.

Classes in the new wing are two sizes. The seven on the back side of the school which will house the kindergarten and three of the four first grade sections are 1,013 square feet. ' The seven on the front which will house one section of first grade and all of second grade are 866.6 square feet. Rooms in the main part of the school now housing kindergarten, which will house either third grade or special education classes, are 816 square feet, not much smaller.

Parents of students in special education classes argue that their children spend part of the day in regular classes and part in special education and have to travel between rooms frequently. A teachers’ aide walks the children between the rooms. They say the children should be as close as possible to the regular K-2 classrooms both to save travel time and because children in special education should have access to their peers. With special education on the saipe corridor the aide’s time could be spent helping with instruction instead of walking the halls.

Since it seems unlikely the school population will ever allow all the third grade to be in the addition, using the leftover rooms for special education for children in the same 1 grades makes sense. This keeps the third grade together and third graders in special education closer to their classes.

However, the day will come when all the rooms in the addition will be needed for regular education for K-2 classes, and then special education classes will have to be moved back to the main body of the school.