Communication and Collaboration Among Stakeholders

Principal Paraprofessionals General Education Teacher Parents Special Education Teacher Student with disabilities Agencies Related Service Specialists School Psychologist Community All Interested Stakeholders All Required Stakeholders Parent-Teacher Meetings IEP Meetings How would your program be designed? Be sure to identify the roles and responsibilities of the various stakeholders. The special education program in the charter school would be designed as an inclusive model with students with special needs receiving as much of their education as possible in the general education classrooms.

This model would be configured in accordance with the federal laws and regulations (Public Law 94-142 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) (subsequently amended to Public Law governing the education of students with special needs. Educators in the charter school are responsible for ensuring that the individual education plans (IEPs) of the students are met and that they receive a quality education that is commensurate with the education that students who do not have disabilities receive.

The school principal is responsible for providing the oversight, instructional supervision, and organizational capacity to ensure that the general education teacher and the special education teacher can meet their respective obligations to the children with disabilities. The general education teacher and the special education teacher are both responsible for training and supervising the paraprofessionals who work with the students with disabilities, particularly as their duties will generally be integral to the implementation of the IEPs.

Since they serve in a proxy role for the teachers and the specialists, the paraprofessionals are responsible for ensuring that they understand the IEP sufficiently for correct and thorough implementation. The parents serve as advocates for their children and provide family -- based instruction at home. As primary stakeholders in the IEP implementation for their child, parents also bear the burden of ensuring that the professional educators and the paraprofessionals conduct instruction and provide social opportunities that result in a well-rounded and pedagogically sound program for their offspring.

The school psychologist plays a pivotal role in the identification and assessment processes of students with special needs. In their role, school psychologists utilize psychometric techniques to learn about the functioning and capacity of students with special needs, and they may also play the role of a counselor to parents, students, and professional educators. Usually, the school psychologist serves as the head of the multidisciplinary team that participates in the identification and classification of students with special needs and in the reviews of IEPs according to the proscribed schedule.

The general education teacher, the special education teacher, the paraprofessional, and the specialists are all members of the multidisciplinary team. The specialists include physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech therapists; their roles dictate that they provide direct services to students with special needs when that is indicated, and that they also serve as resources to ensure that the objectives they have identified in each of their respective areas of related services are achieved as much as possible in the general education settings.

The role of the community is primarily to serve as a resource for social opportunities for the students with disabilities, and to ensure that their organizations provide equitable program models. Moreover, the role of the community will vary across the lifespan of the children with disabilities, just as it does with everyone else.

For children with special needs, this means that the community will need to be compliant with federal and state laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires physical and/or structural accommodations in public facilities to ensure access by people with disabilities, and also Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which addresses the provision of accommodations in the workplace. Various agencies provide services to students and the families of students with disabilities.

Each agency has its own purpose from which the duties, roles, and responsibilities of its workers are derived. As children with disabilities age, they and their families engage with different agencies depending on the needs and objectives associated with particular phases of their life. The agencies may be educational, regulatory, supportive, or transitional in the way they function. Furthermore, agencies play a strong role in the compliance and quality assurance of educational programs for children and students with disabilities.

2) Reflect on the barriers that you might encounter when collaborating with stakeholders. How would you address these barriers? A wide variety of perspectives greet the special education teacher who strives to ensure that students with special needs receive.