Seattle’s special education teachers asking for more support

As Seattle teachers continue to strike, issues of pay, testing, and social justice remain a key focus in bargaining.

But another major concession the Seattle Education Association is fighting for is a lighter load for school support staff, or Educational Staff Associates, who work with special needs children. That includes speech pathologists, occupational and physical therapists, school nurses, counselors, and psychologists.

Related: Seattle teachers remain on strike

Julie Salazar is a bilingual speech language pathologist at Concord International School who identifies speech delays and works with students on their language and communication skills. Over the years, she says she’s seen the number of students assigned to her increase.

“These kids are not getting enough individualized instruction and they’re not making progress,” Salazar said. “And so they cannot move towards meeting the Common Core standards. They are not able to communicate as effectively.”

While there isn’t a national standard for therapy time in public schools or ratio of students to therapists, The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association says therapists should get enough time to “provide appropriate and effective intervention, conduct evaluations, collaborate with teachers and parents, implement best practices in school speech-language pathology, carry out related activities, and complete necessary paperwork and compliance tasks within working hours.”

Salazar says she likes to get at least an hour a week to work with each child either in small groups or individually. But because she is sometimes responsible for up to 50 students, that kind of attention isn’t always possible. Often, Salazar has to reduce the time she spends with students or form bigger groups of students who don’t always work well together.

Although Educational Staff Associates like speech pathologists and counselors have very different jobs, the workload problem is the same. And that can translate to issues with discipline when counselors and psychologists, many of whom are part time, work with hundreds of students. It can cause problems in identifying behavioral or developmental problems and delay getting students help.

Because of this, the Seattle Education Association is asking for hard case load caps for Educational Staff Associates, as well as more support for “intensive” classrooms. The district is offering to work toward more solid caps, but also wants to reduce staffing of special education teachers in preschools.

Salazar hopes that, in the end, the district allocates more resources for these services, especially at young ages.

“The more intense intervention they receive in the younger years, the more that they progress, and also no longer possibly need those services,” Salazar said.