Special Programs
Faith Family Academy is committed to providing appropriate educational opportunities to all students with special learning needs. We provide the supplemental aides and services necessary to assist every student who receives special education, dyslexia, or Section 504 in becoming a life-long learner and model citizen.
Texas Education Agency Updates in Special Education
About
Faith Family Academy is proud of the instructional and related services provided on each campus. There is close collaboration between the campus and district level on overall programming issues and on the needs of specific students with disabilities.
Faith Family Academy offers specially designed instruction for students with disabilities in a variety of settings. These students are extremely diverse, and within disability categories, this diversity continues. Placements are based largely upon curriculum offerings and where these offerings can best be provided.
Several principles apply when decisions are made by the ARD (Admission Review Dismissal) Committee about services to individual students, including:
- Decisions are always based upon evaluation of the student's current level of functioning and unique needs of the student.
- Students are grouped by educational need rather than by disability.
- The educational setting is defined by the student's needs not the teacher's role.
The instructional arrangement is assigned to the student, and special education teachers may provide a variety of services throughout the day with an emphasis on opportunities to interact with age-appropriate non-disabled peers.
The Special Programs Department Can Assist With:
- Child Find
- Assessment Information
- Referral Process
- Individual Education Plan (IEP)
- Competency Testing
- Instructional Settings
- Content Mastery
- Resource, Speech/Language Therapy, Inclusion
- Homebound, Vision/Deaf Services
- **UPDATE** Procedural Safeguards English/Spanish
- Special Olympics- Extracurricular
- Modifications for Classroom & Standardized Testing
- IDEA-B Rules and Regulations
- Related Services
- Significant Disproportionality Requirements
- Significant Disproportionality Update
Operating Procedures
Child Find
- Ages 0-5
- Child Find Duty
- Children Who Transfer
- Dyslexia Services
- Referral For Possible Special Education
Evaluation
FAPE
- Admission Review and Dismissal Committee
- Composite
- Least Restrictive Environment
- Parent Participation
- Transition & Graduation Composite
Transition Resources
- Texas Transition Network
- Texas Workforce Commission
- Texas Transition & Employment Guide/English PDF
- Texas Transition & Employment Guide/Spanish PDF
Description:
The Special Education Information Center (SPEDTex) provides resources and interactive features for increasing family awareness of disabilities and special education processes, with the goal of improving partnerships between schools and families.
Contact information:
Phone: 1-855-773-3839
Email: inquire@spedtex.org
If you have questions, please contact Lorie Gassert, Assistant Superintendent of Special Programs.
Child Find
Child Find is a system used in Faith Family Academy for identifying, locating, and evaluating children with disabilities (birth through 21 years of age) who reside in our district jurisdiction and who may need special education and related services.
Dyslexia
Faith Family Academy supports the educational concept that reading, writing, and spelling skills provide the foundation for overall academic success. Opportunities are provided for students who are experiencing difficulty in acquiring basic language arts skills to maximize their academic development in a regular education setting. This service is providing by a reading specialist on each campus, using intensive small group and individual activities. The intervention incorporates strategies appropriate for struggling readers as well as students identified with dyslexia. Using this method of learning, students are able to grasp skills at a much faster rate and are ready to move into higher levels of application.
Structured intervention is designed for a period of time appropriate for each individual student in kindergarten through grade twelve. Beginning at seventh grade, reading instruction is offered as an elective to those students whose test results show that they could benefit from a multi-sensory and phonetically based approach to reading, writing, and spelling, many connections are made to support classroom instruction in the core classes.
Faith Family Academy complies with all TEA guidelines as per the 2021 update to the Dyslexia Handbook.
Dyslexia Policy
5.5.1.9 Dyslexia Services
The School shall provide each student with dyslexia or a related disorder with access to each program under which the student qualifies for services. The School shall implement procedures for screening, individualized evaluation, and techniques for treating dyslexia and related disorders according to the State Board of Education approved strategies. A process for early identification, intervention, and support for students at risk for dyslexia must be available; however, such early intervention strategies may not be used to delay or deny the provision of a full and individual evaluation to a child suspected of having a specific learning disability, including dyslexia or a related disorder.
Parents of a student with dyslexia or a related disorder must be informed of all services and options available to the student, including general education interventions under response to intervention and multi-tiered systems of support models as required by state and federal law. The School shall provide a parent education program for parents. The School must provide each identified student access at his or her campus to instructional programs required in subsection (e) of this section and to the services of a teacher trained in dyslexia and related disorders. The school district or open-enrollment charter school may, with the approval of each student's parents or guardians, offer additional services at a centralized location. Such centralized services shall not preclude each student from receiving services at his or her campus.
The School shall purchase a reading program or develop its own reading program aligned with the descriptors in the Dyslexia Handbook. Teachers who screen and treat these students must be trained in instructional strategies that use individualized, intensive, multisensory, phonetic methods and a variety of writing and spelling components described in the Dyslexia Handbook.
19 TAC § 74.28.
Resources:
Texas Education Agency:
- Dyslexia & Related Disorders
- The Dyslexia Handbook - 2021 Update
- Important Changes for 2021 - English / Spanish
- Book Share
- Learning Ally
- National Center on Accessible Educational Materials
Texas State Library & Archives Commission:
- Talking Book Program - The Talking Book Program (TBP) is a FREE service that allows students with a reading disability, like dyslexia, the opportunity to read. TBP offers more than 125,000 titles and 80+ magazines, all read with human narration. The program is completely free, with no charges and no overdue fees. Materials can be downloaded via the Braille and Audio Reading Download (BARD) Mobile app, on a smartphone or tablet.
Speech Language Therapy
"The limit of my language is the limit of my world." - Ludwig Wittgenstein
What is speech-language therapy?
Faith Family Academy offers speech therapy to help students whose speech and language skills may inhibit their academic achievement. Problems which might be addressed include:
- Articulation disorders
- Language disorders - Vocabulary development, sentence structures, appropriate use of language, etc.
- Voice disorders
- Fluency disorders - Stuttering
A student may qualify for speech therapy in addition to other special education services, or may receive speech therapy without the need for other services.
How do I ask for this help?
Referrals might originate with parents, physicians, teachers, or a kindergarten screening. The parent always participates in all decisions concerning special education services for a student, beginning with the referral. The parents may need to complete some of the papers at home, and are urged to return them very quickly, because laws dictate a strict timeline for the documentation process.
...for my child who is enrolled in school?
If a student is enrolled in an FFA school, the parents are asked to meet with the classroom teacher to discuss why a speech or language problem is suspected and how it might affect academic progress and to receive the papers to be completed, signed, and returned to the teacher. After the speech-language pathologist assesses the student's skills, the parents are invited to a meeting to discuss the assessment and recommendations (called an "Admission, Review and Dismissal Committee," or "ARDC").
How much time will my child be in speech therapy?
The amount of time designated should be appropriate to the need of the child and his Individual Educational Plan (IEP), which will be developed at the meeting after the assessment.
How will I know if he is making progress?
Parents will be sent reports at the end of each six weeks period, and will be invited to a conference at least once a year (the ARD meeting). Parents may contact the speech-language pathologist by phone during her planning period, or immediately after school to arrange a meeting.
What other services provide language instruction?
All special education programs seek to improve language skills. A child who has severe disabilities might need the instruction available in a self-contained classroom.
If the language problem is the result of learning more than one language, a service such as English as a Second Language (ESL) or Bilingual Education might be more appropriate.
Parent Resources
- Resources on Special Education in Texas
- *Update* Special Education Rules & Regulations
- *Update* Notice of Procedural Safeguards 2022 - English | Spanish
- Parent’s Guide to the Admission, Review and Dismissal Process - English | Spanish
- Delayed or Denied Evaluations and Compensatory Services - English | Spanish
- Autism Resources for Parents - English | Spanish
- Student Handbook Statements - English | Spanish
District 504 Policy
5.5.1.1 Section 504 Services
The district shall form Section 504 committees, as appropriate, to assess a qualifying student’s need for reasonable modifications in district policies, practices or procedures.