Special Education

ON THE AGENDA The following items will be considered at today’s Glendale Unified School District Board of Education meeting: NEW ACADEMIC PROGRAM The board of education will discuss a new academic program meant to serve students who are going through the expulsion process, and special-education students who have been suspended for more than 10 days. The new program is a way to make sure students who have been removed from the traditional school setting don’t fall behind academically.

GLENDALE — The board of education on Tuesday discussed a proposed update to district regulations that guide administrators when disciplining disabled students. The Glendale Unified School District has standing regulations on the subject, but they are in need of updating to be in concert with the revised federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which was reauthorized in 2004, said Lou Stewart, assistant superintendent for special education. While the reauthorized act went into effect in 2005, the school district has had to wait for the state to release its regulations associated with the new law before it was able to update its own regulations, Stewart said.

Singing and swaying along to John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” and then standing up to learn some line dancing, special-education students at Valley View Elementary School joined second-graders in Lisa Jenks’ class Tuesday for a music lesson. For the last five years, Jenks and special-education teacher Celeste Maeshiro have brought their two classes together for twice-weekly art and music sessions. Jenks and Maeshiro started the full-inclusion music sessions as a way to improve special-education students’ social skills and foster a sense of acceptance among the general-education students, Jenks said.

GLENDALE — School district officials are doing a case-by-case analysis of every special-education student suspended for more than 10 days or expelled during the 2006-07 school year after the state education department found that the district suspended or expelled a disproportionate number of Latino special-education students during the 2005-06 school year. The state department of education notified Glendale Unified officials on Nov. 5 that the self-review of last year’s suspensions and expulsions of special-education students was necessary to make sure the district is complying with state and federal law, said Lou Stewart, the assistant superintendent for special education.

GLENDALE ? Education for students with disabilities undergoes a major shift between high school and college, and local special-education experts explained some of those key differences to families Wednesday at a community meeting on special education. The meeting was a joint presentation by Glendale Community College and the Foothill Special Education Local Plan Area, which provides resources for special-education students in the Glendale, Burbank and La Cañada unified school districts.

GLENDALE — Lou Stewart, the district’s assistant superintendent of special education, has taken to wearing a button that says, “RtI — Ask Me Why.” Stewart explained the whats and whys of RtI, or Response to Intervention, to the board of education at its Tuesday night meeting. Stewart told the board about some of the principles and concepts behind Response to Intervention, an initiative being piloted at John Muir Elementary School this year. The initiative is an instructional model that seeks to more quickly help struggling students by having teachers modify their instructional techniques to include them.

After 23 years in Glendale, Young Scholar bookstore is closing up shop in late September, leaving a void for many teachers and parents who have long sought supplementary materials and classroom knick-knacks from the specialty store. The store is stocked with thousands of educational books, puzzles and games, glittery pencils and a healthy dose of "Great Job!" stickers — just about anything elementary school teachers and parents need to enrich children's curriculum, said Les Simons, who co-founded the company with wife Lois Simons.

College View School celebrated the departures of some familiar faces on Tuesday — once for a handful of students who are moving onto other schools and once for its principal, who is retiring. The special education school, which serves children age 3 to 22 with severe disabilities, held its graduation ceremony Tuesday morning for six students. "When we feel, as a team, [that the students] are ready to handle a regular education campus with special education support, we send them off," said Principal Nancy Epstein who is retiring after four years at the helm.