IN Brentwood-Baldwin-Whitehall Fall 2016 | Page 78

Brentwood Borough School District

ANNUAL
PUBLIC NOTICE
SPECIAL EDUCATION FOR SCHOOL AGE
CHILDREN
Determining Eligibility: Your child may be eligible for special
education if your child:
➢ Has a physical, sensory, mental, or emotional disability and
➢ Needs special education as determined by an evaluation
team.

SC HO O L DI ST RI C T NE WS

rentwood Borough

Indications of Physical, Sensory, Mental, or Emotional Disability:
Some indications that your child may be a child with a disability in
order to meet the first part of the two-part definition are:
➢ Difficulty performing tasks that require reading, writing, or

mathematics,
➢ An emotional disturbance over a long period of time which

affects your child’s ability to learn,
➢ Consistent problems in getting along with others,
➢ Difficulty communicating,
➢ Lack of interest or ability in age-appropriate activities,
➢ Resistance to change,
➢ Difficulty seeing or hearing that interferes with the ability to
communicate,
➢ Health problems that affect educational performance,

including attention problems.
Your child may need specially designed instruction that isn’t
normally needed by other children in the general education
classroom to make progress in school. This need for special
education is the second part of the two-part decision to qualify a
child for special education services.
Screening: The Brentwood Borough School District has a screening
process within each student’s home school that identifies students
who may need special education. This process includes: screening
preschool and early intervention students in the spring and
summer prior to their entering kindergarten; screening students
for speech and language services in Kindergarten and by referrals
throughout the school year; routine health screenings, including
height, weight and vision, for all students Kindergarten through
12th grade, hearing (K-3, 7, 11), physical exams (K, 6, 11), scoliosis
screening (6, 7), and dental screenings (1, 3, 7); monitoring student
progress on reading and math performance assessments at
selected intervals throughout the year; multidisciplinary team
referrals; screening student records (discipline reports, progress
reports, standardized test scores); screening referrals to the
Student Assistance Program; and screening student enrollment
records throughout the school year.
For students with academic or behavior concerns, an intervention
is developed based on the results of the screening. The student’s
76 Brentwood-Baldwin-Whitehall

response to the intervention is looked at closely and if screening
activities have produced little or no improvement within 60 school
days, the student will be formally referred for an evaluation for
special education. Parents may request that the evaluation take
place without going through these screening activities.
The Evaluation: The evaluation process collects the information
that will be used to determine if the student needs special
education and, if so, the types of programs and services needed.
The evaluation shall include information provided by the parents;
review of school records (attendance, report cards, standardized
test scores); information provided by the classroom teacher
and school nurse; screening by speech and language therapist;
observation of the student’s behavior in the classroom; curriculum
based assessments; evaluation by a school psychologist; and input
from an occupational or physical therapist, if therapy may be
needed.
The student may be referred for the evaluation in several ways:
➢ The parent may ask the school to evaluate the student for

special education at any time. This can be done by sending a

letter to the student’s school principal. The Permission to
Evaluate will then be issued.
➢ The school may contact the parent and request permission to

have the student evaluated. The parent must consent in

writing to the student’s evaluation. School officials cannot

proceed without the parent’s written permission on the

Permission to Evaluate form. If permission is not received

and the school continues to find that an evaluation is

necessary, they may ask for a due process hearing and get

approval from an impartial hearing officer to evaluate the
student.
All evaluations needed to determine the student’s eligibility
for special education will be provided by the student’s school
district at no charge. Results of the evaluations will be made
available to the parents for their review. The parents may also get
evaluation reports from professionals outside the school district
and send them to the student’s school. The results of these outside
evaluations will be considered in determining if the student has a
disability and needs special education.
Evaluations must take into account the student’s language skills
and ethnic background so that the testing and evaluation will not
be unfair for the student of a different race or culture. Tests are
given in the language or form that is most likely to give accurate
information, unless it is clearly not feasible to do so. Evaluations
also take into account the student’s disability to be sure the results
are reliable.