Lake Travis combines particular training program, citing workers scarcity
The Lake Travis School District announced in late September that students on the Lake Travis Elementary’s G3 special education program would transfer to Lakeway Elementary on October 12 following the resignation of their teacher, highlighting the pressure of the school staffing shortage this year .
G3, which stands for Get Ready, Get Set, Go, was founded in 2017 to provide a structured environment for students with communication and behavioral needs, including students with the autism spectrum, said Stefani Allen, assistant director of curriculum and instruction .
“We didn’t make the decision easy for ourselves,” said Allen of the move. “But to ensure our students’ needs were met, we felt that consolidating the program and deploying it to just two locations instead of three would solve human resource issues and meet student needs as well.”
Parents on the G3 program were already frustrated with the district as students who expected to return to Rough Hollow Elementary in the fall, instead moving to Lakeway just four days before the school year started due to overcrowding.
The move from Rough Hollow to Lakeway Elementary came just a year after the program was split across three campuses. This means that some of the G3 students are attending their third elementary school campus.
Read more: Lake Travis District Moves Special Program to New Campus, Worrying Families
Allen said four students moved campus from Lake Travis to the Lakeway Elementary in October. Among them were Lindsay Londoño’s two sons, fifth grader Fenix and second grader Milo.
Londoño said she feared the move will be difficult for her children, who have to spend time in both G3 and general education classrooms learning a new campus and making new connections with their peers and teachers.
“Our children are on the autism spectrum and they really live off consistency and stability, and whenever we have these changes that really hold up their progress and time, it can lead to regression,” she said. “Fenix is going to middle school next year, so we have many concerns that he hasn’t had an opportunity to make friends because he’s been moved so much in his elementary school career.”
Shortage of staff
Londoño said her children struggled this year, even before the move was announced, because of a lack of consistent staff in their classrooms. That has led to incidents where her sons were left unsupervised or engaged in classroom activities as they should be, she said, including once when Fenix stayed on break with without the personal help he was supposed to have him.
“The paraprofessional left him alone during recess and whenever he was released from recess and they went back to the classroom, Fenix didn’t because he didn’t know,” she said. “When the next break started, he realized, ‘Oh no, it’s time for me to go,’ so he went into the building alone, found someone to help, and they took him to his class.”
Another day, Milo returned home with an empty iPad and his screen time monitor indicated that he had played video games for two and a half hours while he was in school. Londoño said that on that day, as she understood from conversations with the school principals, the G3 class had no teacher or substitute, but was led by three paraprofessionals who act as teacher assistants and were controlled by other staff throughout the day.
Allen said she needed to check to see if there were days when G3 classrooms were left with no certified teachers or proxies. However, she said that if there is a teacher or assistant who needs additional training to effectively support students, the district will provide that training as best it can.
Allen said that G3 in the district was not fully staffed this year, which combined with a lack of substitute teachers for the district made it difficult to keep the adults in the room.
There are 25 students in the G3 program and the district has assigned 19 staff – five certified teachers and 14 paraprofessionals. Since the merger into two locations, the district has one teaching position and six part-time positions open within G3. In order to compensate for vacancies, the district relies on a combination of permanently assigned deputies, regular deputies to be brought in and the drawing in of its behavioral specialist or the district office for lessons.
Personnel shortages and creative solutions for this go beyond G3 and special education, said Allen.
“Our top priority is student safety and student education,” she said. “Sometimes we can combine classes or ask teachers if they have additional planning time if they give up their planning time and replace it in a class. Deputy headmasters take lessons, headmasters take lessons. We all work very hard to make sure our students are safe and our students are learning. “
Staff shortages plague school districts across Texas and across the country, with the Texas Tribune reporting that school districts are facing an above-average shortage of full-time staff and alternates this year.
A survey by Frontline Education, an educational software company, found that the hardest-to-fill positions in districts across the country are special education teachers, followed by alternates, with paraprofessionals on the list.
“They are simply distributed too thinly”
Parents in G3 said they are concerned about how this staffing shortage is affecting their children. Lindsay Peck, whose son Riley is in third grade of G3 at Lakeway this year, said the inconsistency in the classroom was causing him trouble.
“The teachers do their best. They are just too thinly distributed and the behavior specialists are all too thinly distributed, ”she said. “We need a consistent cast, otherwise we will see regression. Every time subs come in and out, people who are unknown, people who don’t stay, it throws us back. “
Peck said when she talks about her children’s experience with other parents, like Londoño, it makes her nervous about her son’s education.
“Riley is nonverbal enough that I can’t know, he can’t tell me if he’s been left alone,” she said. “I just have to trust what the district no longer trusts.”
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Londoño said her younger son Milo has seen regressions in behavior and communication this year, which has been very difficult for him emotionally.
“Milo didn’t speak until he was about 4 years old. So when he gets into this room emotionally, he kind of falls back on it and he loses the ability to communicate and say, ‘I’m frustrated with XYZ’ so we see a lot more screaming and screaming, ”she said. “The idea that he could retreat further into this area is really terrifying for us as parents because I just don’t know how far we can push him any further.”
Londoño said she was frustrated with the lack of communication from the district as a whole during changes to the program this year and in response to specific incidents with her children.
“For us it feels like one after the other. We have moved from campus to campus year after year and for reasons that never seem in the best interests of our students, it always seems to be in the best interests of the district, ”she said. “I would love it if you sometimes just put yourself in our shoes and think about how this affects our everyday lives as families and our ability to be together and to be whole.”
Londoño said she plans to speak to the school board to get more support for G3 and to meet with Lakeway Elementary staff to discuss her sons special education plans.
Allen said the district is still working to create a liaison office for families with special education to improve communication. She also said they will continue to look for qualified candidates to fill vacancies within G3 and beyond.
“We’re always interviewing and looking for highly qualified candidates to hire, but at the same time you really want a good candidate in the classroom, so we don’t settle for anything less than just filling the position,” she said. “We’re not just looking for someone, we’re looking for the best person because our children deserve it.”