Page 265 - BOXFORD

Whitsons provides the district’s nutrition program with services in management,
marketing, professional development, procurement, and accounting. These services are
integrated with our existing employees that work in our kitchens.

The FY2016 Projected Budget is more expensive than if we maintained management
services in-house by approximately $13,111 (Please note: health insurance is not
included in either managed estimates). It has been our understanding and expectation
that we will need three years with this service to determine if the management services
are advantageous to the District.

Special Education
The special education programs in Boxford have always been outstanding and we
continue to assess and modify our program needs each year to ensure we remain flexible
enough to meet the complexity and numbers of our students with disabilities. School
districts are mandated by state and federal laws to provide special education services to
those students with disabilities who require specialized instruction in order to make
effective educational progress and to ensure that these services occur in the least
restrictive environment; we are obligated to begin providing special education services to
rd
eligible students on their 3 birthday. We work closely with the local Early Intervention
Program (birth to age 3 support program) to gather pertinent information about children
with whom they work, allowing us to plan for incoming students during the school year.
Special Education programs are required to be individually tailored to ensure the
individual student makes steady progress towards meeting the same curriculum standards
as all students in our district. Therefore, this is an area over which the local School
Committee has little control in terms of costs, which does have a major impact upon our
budget. Clearly, there are diverse student needs that must be addressed through highly
specialized educational programs and the School Committee asks for your continued
support with the local budget to ensure all children’s needs are fulfilled to the best of our
ability.
As of December 1, 2015, there were 130 students in the Boxford Elementary Schools,
grades Pre-Kindergarten through grade 6 identified as eligible for special education; this
st
represents a 7 student decrease. Over the past 4 years, our Dec. 1 special education
headcount has been between 128-134; the 4 years prior to 2012, the headcount was
between 135-150.
The District is deeply committed to an inclusion philosophy pursuing effective ways to
integrate all our children into regular education settings. We continue to implement an
inclusive Co-Teaching Model at both schools, which combines the strengths of a
classroom teacher with those of a special educator to provide specialized instruction in
the regular education classroom setting, one of the goals and requirements of the special
education regulations. While the co-teaching model is effective for many students, we
also recognize that we need to offer a full continuum of services, therefore the co-
teaching model is not a ‘full-time’ program model. We also have Resource Room and
Learning Center Program models in order to address the varied needs of our students. In
September 2014 we added a Language-based Learning Center at the Cole School which
has been very successful in meeting the unique needs of some of our youngest students.

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