The Highland Local Schools Department of Special Education provides services to over 300 students with disabilities and approximately 60 gifted students.  By federal and state law, school districts are required to identify children with suspected disabilities and to provide a free and appropriate education for all children with disabilities.  These services can either be provided within the district or by agreement with another school district or service provider.  Currently, all but a very few students with disabilities are served within the district.  

Highland’s preschool special education program includes children with disabilities ages three through five.  Services include classroom instruction, school psychology, speech/language therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and transition.  There is a preschool classroom at each elementary school.  For purposes of inclusion, typically developing children are also enrolled in the program.  Currently there are more than sixteen preschool aged children with disabilities enrolled and approximately ten typically developing children.

School-age services for students with disabilities ages five through twenty-one include instruction in special education classrooms and resource centers, individual/small group instruction for students who are fully mainstreamed in regular education, school psychology, speech/language therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, work study, adapted physical education, consultation, transition, community exploration, and several others. 

The Department of Special Education staff includes a director and secretary, two school psychologists, and two speech/language pathologists. The special education instructional staff is comprised of seven teachers for students with specific learning disabilities, five full-time and two half-time individual/small group instructors for students with learning disabilities, three teachers of students with developmental handicaps (mental retardation), two teachers of students with multiple disabilities, two teachers for preschool-age children with disabilities, one teacher for gifted students, two part-time adaptive physical education instructors, and six instructional aides.  Contracted special education services are provided by an occupational therapist, a physical therapist, and an audiologist.

Funding for special education programs and services is derived from several sources.  This year the state changed the primary method of funding these services.  The major change was from a “unit” approach in which each eligible unit received approximately $40,000 (these included classroom units for various disability areas and specific services such as school psychology and speech/language therapy and separate funding for individual/ small group instructors for students with learning disabilities) to a “weighted per-pupil” system that takes into account the state’s share of funding.  These changes were the result of the State Supreme Court’s finding that Ohio’s method of funding education throughout the state was unconstitutional at that time.  The net result of the new budget bill is that, instead of all districts receiving the same level of funding for special education services they provide to students with disabilities, lower wealth districts now receive substantially more funding than higher wealth districts.  Most higher wealth districts did not lose funding because of a “guarantee”, but without that safety net, many districts would have received significantly lower reimbursement for special education services that they are mandated to provide.

Other sources of funding special education programs and services include preschool unit funding, preschool grants, and Title VI-B flow-through funding based on the annual December 1 child count.  The remainder of the funds necessary to support special education programs and services are provided by Highland Local school district.

Programs for gifted students are still funded through the unit approach.  This unit reimbursement allows Highland Local to hire a teacher that provides services in both elementary schools and the Middle School.  Supervision services are obtained from the Medina County ESC.