Special Education Resources

4/3/2020

Dear Parent/Guardian,

As an initial matter, we hope you and your family are doing well during this very difficult time of state and national emergency. Our warmest thoughts and concerns go out to you during this pandemic.

We are writing in regard to your child’s special education services during the COVID-19 closure. As you know, school is currently closed until at least May 1, 2020. On March 20^th, 23^rd and 24^th, individual packets of specially designed instructional materials and learning resources were mailed and/or delivered to individual student homes based on their IEP goals. In addition, grade level general education learning and resource packets were distributed during the school lunch bus runs starting on March 23, 2020.

We believe it is important for you to understand how we will address your child’s educational needs during this time. We requested special education teachers to contact you to ensure you received the materials, answer questions, and provide support when needed. Hopefully you have heard from them by now and have ongoing contact from them during these next few weeks. They are hard at work preparing for the possibility of remote, or distance learning. Additional packets will be mailed and/or delivered on April 6^th and 7^th. This will ensure the opportunity for your child to continue working towards the attainment of the annual goals outlined in their IEP and have access to appropriate learning materials while schools are closed. During these unprecedented times, we continue to look at ways to support you and your child throughout this process.

Our hopes and expectations are that these opportunities will allow your child to benefit meaningfully from the programming. But, at the end of the closure, we also want to assure you that we will address whether our children with disabilities have lost ground, and if so, ways to remedy such losses.

School closures provide unique challenges for IEP Teams to meet, discuss, and design special education services. We continue to look for alternative means of conducting meetings (virtual meetings, teleconference, etc.). Inevitably, this may inhibit IEP Teams to meet in a timely manner. In such a case, your child will continue to have access to the services outlined in the current IEP. We will continue to seek guidance and follow recommendations from the Maine Department of Education and the Office of Special Education Programs (an office of the U.S. Department of Education) regarding the provision of special education programs. Your child’s special education case manager will contact you regarding any upcoming required IEP meetings.

We will stay in touch with you over the next few weeks, and please know we are here to support you and your child. Thank you so much for your patience. We have been especially impressed by the commitment of school staff to ensure the continuation of school services for our children in MSAD #54 and with the wonderful patience and support we have received from parents. We will support you during this difficult and trying time. Please stay healthy and we are looking forward to seeing everyone as soon as we can.

Thank you for your continued support through this process.

Directors of Special Education,

Erica Thompson and Renee Hovey