CASE Conf 2025

Sessions Speakers Exhibitors Products Press Releases Show Specials Floor Plan

Poster Session: Least Restrictive Environment: Supporting the Continuum of Services (Room Hall A Poster 10)

The purpose of this session is to share our district level experiences in analyzing "where we are" versus "where we want to be" in having processes and procedures in place to support considerations of a student's least restrictive environment. This topic is critical to all students as one goal in special education is to ensure that students receive the appropriate support and levels of service based on their individual needs in the least restrictive environment. Ultimately our district goal is to ensure that students are making progress towards mastery and that we see positive impacts on student's academic, behavioral, and social/emotional performance. Our session goal is to share how our district began looking at ways to better support students, teachers, and IEP teams to have well rounded data-based discussions to consider how to appropriately serve students in their least restrictive environment. We have taken state and federal guidelines and developed a committee to review data and provide feedback to teachers and IEP teams for consideration. This has helped our teachers and administrators develop a better understanding of the various components needed for discussions, as well as, provide an opportunity to train them on the guidelines. Throughout the refinement of the processes implemented in the current school year our district is working to ensure students have access to their standards, adjusting to individual needs, and will have a positive impact on student outcomes. From this session participants will see how our district has developed systems of checks and balances that they could then take back to use in their own district.