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Date: 8/9/2023
LUDLOW — The School Committee approved creating a job description for three registered behavior technicians.
The School Committee met with Superintendent Frank Tiano and Special Education Director Jean Fontaine at its Aug. 1 meeting to discuss a proposed position.
The request was to create a job description to add three district registered behavior technicians to be used at the elementary level.
The position would be non-union, similar to other assistant positions such as certified occupational therapy assistant and speech language pathology assistants.
Ludlow currently has three full-time board certified behavior analysts in the district to cover grades K-12.
Fontaine said, “The BCBAs, they train teachers, they train paraprofessionals, they provide programming support for our autism programs. They are just a general resource for behavior that is not the expected behavior that we want. They help develop behavior plans, they take data and then help staff implement behavior plans so that we can shape student behavior to be more in line with what our goal is.”
The registered behavior technicians would be able to collect student data and implement the behavior plans.
Fontaine said, “The key thing for me is training paraprofessionals to model the way we want them to interact with students and then gradually release that responsibility to the paraprofessional. They also can respond to a crisis in the building so that at times can free up our administrators or counselors.”
Fontaine and Tiano stated that the reason to add these positions is due to the increased behavioral needs of its students as well as the high turnover rate for new paraprofessionals.
Tiano said, “Currently we have lost three or four paraprofessionals who are getting this training and then going to a school district that is able to employ them. It is having a staff member whose more highly trained. We would like to keep our own folks as well but at the same time as we are looking to attract people, people of this caliber.”
Fontaine added, “We are hoping by adding this middle layer of support between our teachers and our paraprofessionals and our board certified behavior analysts that we are able to better support and train our paraprofessionals.”
The presentation also stated that other reasons to move to this model is Ludlow is losing paraprofessionals to other districts who already have this model, students are presenting greater behavioral challenges in the schools and BCBAs need assistance with data collection and programming.
Tiano added, “What we have discussed is behaviors we’re seeing with the students, our students have become more needy and the significance of some of those behaviors have been increasing so that our paraprofessionals that we had, need that additional training and support as well as our regular in-staff.”
The elimination of the Structured Individualized Program and social worker at East Street School are other factors that were considered to move to the RBT/BCBA model.
Tiano added that the plan is although these are new positions, they would be reducing other positions that they can’t fill.
There is an Intensive Learning Program teacher position unfilled at East Street School for $65,000 and two paraprofessional positions unfilled with a budget total amount of $50,000.
The Intensive Learning Program was the formerly known as the intensive autism program before changing to its current makeup
“We are trying to rebrand that so that it’s not disability specific so Intensive Learning Program was a program that we had at the pre-school that kind of served the same population so we are taking that name and program and running it up through the high school.”
The proposal stated that an average registered behavior technician salary is $35,880 which would total $107,640 for all three.
The total cost would save approximately $7,360 without losing any programs or items the Ludlow Schools supply.
“Its such a competitive pool for all the districts in the area, we believe this will attract folks and fill needs for us in between the BCBA and providing support for our paraprofessionals and most importantly for our children who need it,” Tiano said.
Fontaine added, “Behavior can be refusal or not engaging, it isn’t always acting out. It can be getting students to be motivated, to engaged in their learning. It is not always disruptive, and we don’t have kids running amok.”