Florence Unified School District No. 1
Adam Leckie
Director of Exceptional Student Services
February 2017
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Training
●LETRS IDEA Grant Training: Kelly Smith, Mary Grant, Pam Fesko, Maribel Lopez, and Lisa Grigorieff attended the LETRS training in Phoenix.
Unified Sports
Track season is underway third quarter. San Tan Foothills will be hosting an area track meet on February 21, 2017.
Reading & Literacy Plan
One of the major goals for the upcoming year is to establish a multi-pronged reading intervention plan designed to address the needs of our students with specific learning disabilities in the area of reading. This includes an 18-month intensive literacy training through an IDEA LETRS Grant. This trainer of trainer model will provide ongoing literacy instruction for our teachers. The second prong is a robust, multisensory reading intervention program. Several schools will be piloting one of three potential programs during the upcoming 2017-2018 school year. After which a committee will review and determine if large scale adoption is warranted. Finally, the third prong of our reading intervention plan is to identify and implement a variety of educational and assistive technology designed to provide better access to students with reading disabilities to the general education curriculum. This includes expanding use of text-to-speech, audio books, among other AT interventions.
Gifted
Each gifted coordinator is currently enrolled in higher education coursework to obtain his/her gifted endorsement. These classes, sponsored by the Colorado Department of Education will improve the pedagogical knowledge of our gifted coordinators, thus allowing us to better serve our students who have gifts and talents.
Transition-to-Work Program
Through an intergovernmental agreement with the Rehabilitative Services Agency of Arizona, Florence High School become the pilot site of our transition-to-work program for students with developmental disabilities. Claire Allain-Broeman, Shana Smith, and Pam Fesko were instrumental in establishing this program that is designed to provide systematic evaluation and instruction in a variety of career areas including culinary arts, business processes, and construction. Materials are all real-life and work to ensure students with developmental disabilities have market-ready employability skills. No other school in Pinal County has such a program.
Respectfully,
Adam Leckie
Director of Exceptional Student Services
Board of Education
Denise Guenther, President Steve Johnson, Vice-President
Jm Thomas, Member Bob Dailey, Member Katrina Solis, Member