The Eastern Pulaski School Board has approved the restructuring of the school corporation’s special education services.
Eastern Pulaski had been part of the Logansport Area Joint Special Services Cooperative. But it’s set to dissolve at the end of the month, after some of its larger members announced plans to leave.
The school board officially gave its approval to the dissolution agreement Monday, according to Superintendent Dan Foster. “This is something we’ve been working on for over a year,” he explains. “We all knew June 30, 2019, it was coming. The eight school corporations have been working with an attorney to try to figure out, ‘How do we do this?’ ‘How do we do this?’ ‘How do we do this?'”
Among other things, Foster says the dissolution agreement outlines how any outstanding bills that arrive after June 30 would be handled. “The funds will remain there for a certain amount of time, and then once all the bills have been paid, so to speak, the funds would be divided according to how they were receipted in, in the first place,” he says.
Going forward, Eastern Pulaski plans to share some special education services with Caston and Pioneer. Foster says an agreement outlining that new arrangement was approved, as well. “For instance, at Eastern Pulaski, we already have special education preschool, so Pioneer and Caston may send some students to us for the preschool program. And we will also house an elementary ED and autism room, and so if Pioneer or Caston has a student that qualifies for that program, they would send them here for that.”
Meanwhile, plans call for Pioneer to host the junior/senior high school emotional disability room, while Caston will host an elementary moderate room. Foster says Eastern Pulaski will continue to send some special ed students to Logansport for certain services.
