Illinois Valley news., February 21, 2018, Image 1

YOUR HOMETOWN NEWSPAPER SINCE 1937
Illinois Valley News
$1.00
Wednesday, February 21, 2018, 1 Section, Volume LXXXI No. 7
Published weekly for the residents of the Illinois Valley
First grade flag day!
City tackles meters,
chickens, tobacco
and weed at regular
council meeting
Derek Prall
IVN Contributing Writer
(Photo by Dan Mancuso, Illinois Valley News)
American Legion Post 70 Commander Bob Soria hands out flags to Evergreen Elementary
students during the I.V. Lions American Flag presentation Tuesday, Feb. 20.
Special ed is not what you think
“Life skills would be those students that have multiple disabilities,
sometimes mobility, sometimes sensory, sometimes cognitively. They
are served ideally in their home school, but in a life skills classroom,
although with access to the general ed curriculum.”
Stephanie Allen-Hart, director of Special Education and Student Services
Anita R. Savio
IVN Contributing Writer
Special education in the Three
Rivers School District is not your
parents’ special ed. In fact, if your
parents were born before 1975,
special ed barely existed. According
to the U.S. Department of Education,
“U.S. schools educated only one in
five children with disabilities, and
many states had laws excluding
certain students, including children
who were deaf, blind, emotionally
disturbed or mentally retarded.”
That all changed with the
Education for All Handicapped
Children Act, passed in 1975
and since amended in 1997 as
the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act (IDEA), which
mandates that schools provide an
appropriate education to children with
disabilities.
Stephanie Allen-Hart, director
of Special Education and Student
Services, spoke to the Illinois Valley
News about how special ed works in
the Three Rivers Schools and how the
district serves different levels of need.
“In each of our schools we
have two levels of special ed
student. Resource students are those
who maybe have speech-language
concerns, maybe a learning disability.
They are generally 100 percent in
their grade-level classroom, but may
get some services to help them out or
may get some extra help outside of
their classroom.”
“Life skills would be those
students that have multiple
disabilities, sometimes mobility,
sometimes sensory, sometimes
cognitively. They are served ideally in
their home school, but in a life skills
classroom, although with access to
the general ed curriculum.”
The Three Rivers special ed
program covers children from birth
through age 21.
Allen-Hart went on to
distinguish so-called 504 students
from special ed kids.
“Section 504 is under the
umbrella of civil rights. It’s all about
access. A student wouldn’t need
any specially designed instruction;
they just need accommodation. So
a student with diabetes might need
snack breaks or insulin given. A deaf
student might need an interpreter, a
blind student a braillist.”
The law requires each student
be educated in the “least restrictive”
environment. For most students,
according to Allen-Hart, that’s their
general ed classroom with their peers,
but with extra resources brought into
that classroom.
“Then there are some students
where we say, ‘They’re getting a
lot of benefit from their general ed
classroom but they’re having a lot
of attention issues ...’ We may give
them an extra 30 minutes in a smaller,
quieter setting.”
Allen-Hart said that 80 to 100
percent of special ed students are in
the general ed setting, with at most
a 30 minute pullout. Some 60 to 80
percent may come out for an hour
or two. They might have physical
therapy, occupational therapy or
speech therapy.
Students who are in their general
ed classroom less than 60 percent of
the time are starting to spend more
time in a life skills setting. “We
probably have about 10 percent that
are getting really intensive services.”
As readers might guess, special
ed involves an alphabet soup of
special terms. The keystone is the
IEP, or Individual Education Plan.
Mandated by federal law, the IEP
addresses what services a student will
receive, starting at kindergarten.
The IFSP or Individual Family
Service Plan is Three Rivers’ early
intervention program that serves
students birth through age five.
“Our county does a great job,”
said Allen-Hart, “between doctors’
referrals and parent referrals and early
intervention, of catching a lot of our
little ones coming in. Every year we
have 20 or 30 kids coming in who
already have an IEP.”
She added that if the student
arrives with an in-state IEP the
district can accept it out of hand.
But if the student comes from out of
state, then what she terms the “long
and difficult” process of developing
the IEP has to start over from
scratch, involving parental consent to
evaluate, testing and so on.
Development of an IEP is a
team process, including teachers,
specialists and parents.
Three Rivers also serves special
ed and 504 young adults, age 18
through 21, at the Jerome Prairie
Transition Center. The Jerome Prairie
program, according to the district’s
website, offers the opportunity to
“incorporate strategies, techniques,
employment skills, and environments
that simulate what it is going to
be like once the young adults
leave ... and provide opportunities
for developing adults to learn
independence to the best of their
ability.”
The program is open to anyone
with a modified high school diploma
or a certificate of completion.
SEE SPECIAL ON A-10
Haven’t you always wanted to know more about creepy crawlers?
Check out our new column on A-12
The Cave Junction City Council met Feb. 12 to discuss
several items, including ordinances regulating meter-reading,
domesticated chickens, marijuana business licenses, tobacco
usage and petroleum extraction facilities.
The meeting opened with updates from the Public Works
Department and the sheriff’s office – both reports were business
as usual. Planning updates, an update from the Municipal Court
and a park use request for the 19th annual car show were also
reviewed and accepted.
Then, after discussing potential uses for grants and
hearing a letter of support for the I.V. Watershed Council,
which would protect drinking water sources, the council
read four ordinances. The first was to update meter-reading
techniques i.e., to no longer round up to the nearest 10 cubic
feet, and to set a limit on the use of short-term service requests.
The motion passed unanimously.
The second ordinance would allow chickens to be kept
by the residents of Cave Junction, undoing their current
prohibition. The stipulations of the ordinance include how
many chickens may be kept, what type of structures they may
be kept in and how close these structures may be to neighboring
buildings.
It was noted that this particular ordinance has a great
deal of support in the community, however, Councilor Mark
Dillinger pointed out that enforcement of regulations would
be nearly impossible, and the public health risks associated
with the animals’ droppings are significant. “I very strongly
advocate for keeping the ordinance the way that it is,” he said,
and suggested holding a public forum to further discuss the
issue with residents.
Rather than belabor the issue further, the council decided
to limit the city’s liability by adding a clause into the ordinance
stating that a permit would be required to keep chickens, and
that at the time of the permit application the resident would
sign a waver to take full responsibility for their birds and the
potential consequences of keeping them. The motion passed 4
to 1, with Dillinger voting nay.
SEE CITY ON A-10
Max’s Mission to
freely distribute
opioid overdose
reversal medication
April S. Kelley
IVN Contributing Writer
Max’s Mission, a
nonprofit organization
dedicated to saving lives in
Southern Oregon through the
education and free distribution
of an opioid overdose reversal
medication called naloxone,
will be having a community
meeting Feb. 28 at 6:30 p.m.
in the Healthy U building
at the Illinois Valley Family
Resource Center, located at
535 E. River St.
Julia Pinsky, executive
director of Max’s Mission,
said the meeting will provide
attendees with free naloxone
training and information
regarding medication-assisted
treatment facilities and
other help for opioid abuse
available in the area.
“Anybody concerned
about somebody using
opioids, either themselves
or their family – we don’t
judge – should attend,” she
said. “If you think you know
somebody or you are taking
opioids, you should have
naloxone in the house.”
Max’s Mission was
started in November 2016, a
few years after Pinsky lost her
son, Max, at 25 to an opioid
overdose.
“We lived in a rural area,
outside of Ashland,” Pinsky
said. “Max died at home. We
realized after the fact that
had we had naloxone, things
would have been different. We
had never heard of naloxone
then. It was only after he died,
and I did a lot of research
online that I came across this
and realized that other states
were using it.”
Pinsky said she could
not find any information
about naloxone locally, so she
was concerned about people
in Oregon being able to carry
it.
“When Max died, there
were three other young men
also that winter that died
which really drove it home,”
she said. “Naloxone wouldn’t
have necessarily saved all
of their lives, but certainly
it would been good to have.
There was another young
man, if his father would have
had it, that might have made a
difference.”
SEE MAX ON A-10