Hi everyone,
As it states in the Case Manager Responsibility document, the person who will be assigned as case manager will be based on the student's primary eligibility. Since the vast majority of Special Education teachers are not credentialed to case manage Speech Language Impaired (SLI)-only students, Speech Language Pathologists (SLPs) are now being assigned as case managers when SLI is the primary eligibility.
When we first switched over to SEIS, I assigned all SLI-only students to be case-managed by their SLP. However, some of those students have since been switched over to be case managed by the Special Ed teacher. Since the teacher's credential does not match the student's primary eligibility, the CCTC considers these cases to be mis-assignments and therefore out of compliance. I have moved all of these students back to the SLPs in SEIS, but I want to prevent this from happening in the future. Coordinators, please let Special Ed teachers know that their SLI-only students must be case-managed by SLPs, and to please not submit Student Change forms requesting that they become the case manager. When you receive requests like these, please make sure to check the student's primary eligibility before re-assigning the case manager.
The second issue is that of primary vs. secondary eligibility. In almost all cases, a student should only have SLI listed as the primary eligibility if it is the only eligibility. In many cases, a student's initial Sped eligibility is SLI. As they get older, the school psychologist will often assess in other suspected areas of disability.
If a student becomes eligible as Specific Learning Disabled (SLD), Autism, ID, etc., IEP teams should consider this new eligbility as the primary eligibility and SLI should be moved to secondary. This will allow the Special Education teacher to case manage the student without causing a miss-assignment. Also, those eligibilities are a much more accurate description of a student's disability over their entire school career than SLI, which is often removed in middle or high school if the student is exited from speech.
Finally, please make sure that Special Ed teachers know that only school psychologists, SLPs, and other related service providers who conduct assessments should add to or change a student's eligibility categories as determined by IEP team.
Thank you,
Sarah
Sarah Cragg
Lead Speech-Language Pathologist
San Francisco Unified School District
Special Education Services
750 25th Ave.
San Francisco, CA 94121
(415) 379-7641 ext. 1041