By Charlotte Matherly, contributor
More than a third of Rockingham County teachers believe their school doesn’t provide adequate and equitable services to special education students, according to a district survey.
A report from the Special Education Advisory Committee shows that out of 134 teachers surveyed, many feel those students’ needs aren’t being met, largely because of labor shortages.
“There’s a staffing crisis, inadequate funding and ability to provide student services, lack of support for educators and caregivers, and need [for] more training and professional development,” Amber Ham, who chairs the committee, told the school board at Monday’s meeting.
Superintendent Larry Shifflett said it’s always been difficult to hire highly qualified special education teachers — a struggle that’s been heightened in the past five years by the staffing shortage and not enough funding.
“If we have more money to hire more teachers? Yes, let’s do it,” Shifflett said. “But I cannot promise you that there’ll be teachers there.”
He also said Rockingham County might need to invest more in professional development.
“We have a lot of really great teachers, but some of them are inexperienced,” Shifflett said, noting that it may take more training to help those teachers succeed. “It boils down to budget, right? Budgeting for hiring and training.”
It’s not just more teachers that the district needs. The teachers who responded to the survey indicated that they need more support staff and assistants to help address more diverse student needs and allow for individualized attention for students who need it.
While most educators said they felt supported in their work, about a quarter said they plan to look for a new job within the next three years. Their reasoning, Ham said, included low pay, burnout and a combination of large class sizes and a lack of resources and administrative support.
Board members said they want to dig into this further and appeared open to allocating more money toward special education, as the budget process for the next school year is currently underway.
“We need to be investing more in this department for our students,” said board chair Sara Horst. “It’s what they deserve.”
Budget updates
Legislators are still hashing out the details of the next state budget, but Justin Moyers, the school district’s chief financial officer, said Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s proposed draft allocates an additional $4.3 million to Rockingham County schools.
Most notably, Moyers said, the state would allocate more than $2.8 million to RCPS to pay English language learner teachers. That’s about a $1 million increase from this year and is tied to the number of English-learning students in the district.
The Virginia Senate and House of Delegates have both released their budget drafts, and both would be even more favorable toward Rockingham County, Moyers said, with each adding an additional $2.5 million on top of the governor’s increases.
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