By Charlotte Matherly, contributor
For the first time, more than 1,500 students with special education needs are enrolled in Rockingham County schools, marking a gradual 13.5% increase over the past three years.
The school district has seen growth in nearly every type of disability, though it’s most pronounced in children with speech and language impairments. The number of students with speech difficulties rose from 305 in late 2024 to 398 today, according to data from Chris Bryant, who oversees the district’s special education services.
“Speech is really, really, really growing — everywhere,” Bryant told county school board members on Monday. “I do think our kindergartners from the pandemic have hit our schools. They’re intelligent young people, but they didn’t see facial expressions. They didn’t see words and mouths moving to make shapes and sounds, so we’re going to have some catch-up to do with that.
Other diagnoses are growing, too, Bryant said, as schools begin to better understand research on things like autism and mental health disorders.
About 13% of the county’s students use special education services. The national average is around 15%, Bryant said.
Over the next school year, Bryant said his team wants to focus on improving in three key areas:
- high-quality, specially designed instruction for special education students
- inclusive, meaningful classroom participation
- and parental engagement.
After conducting a survey about inclusive practices, Bryant said, parents had positive feedback but thought the schools could do a better job of “getting them pulled into the mix.”
District leaders hope to add six new special education staff next year, including a teacher, two paraprofessionals, a behavior analyst and two new positions: a preschool supervisor and a facilitator for intervention services. The school board approved its 2026-27 budget last month.
For the following year, Bryant already has a new position at the top of his wishlist: an autism coach. This person would bring a behavioral understanding and years of experience to help teachers who work with students with autism.
“We’re finding high-functioning students with autism are extremely bright, but they may have social implications. They may have some rigidity, some things that a gen ed teacher cannot manage,” Bryant said. “That’s the population that the coach could really help make sure these folks have access to their general curriculum … If they’re getting in trouble because they don’t know some inferences and some things, then they’re going to have problems, so I think the coach could really help.”
Grading policy in the pipeline
Superintendent Larry Shifflett established a committee to review the district’s grading policies. After receiving input earlier this year, the group plans to present a new policy proposal in June for how assignments are graded, Shifflett said. He didn’t specify what that policy might entail.
“Our first two meetings were more about information-gathering, kind of determining what we were doing across the division, K-12 and all the schools,” Shifflett said, “and now we’ve kind of started to narrow our focus a little bit.”
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