Chelsea special education staff continue to shine

In the words of Principal Nick Angel, the Special Education staff at Beach Middle School continues to shine.

Angel said this in his report to the Chelsea School District Board of Education at the Oct. 26 meeting.

“This could not be more evident than to watch the success of our students in the building who had been receiving face-face support over the last six weeks. Ms. Emlaw, Mr. Tropea, Mrs. Manning, Mrs. Bell and Mr. Fitch and their respective paraprofessional teams have been invaluable,” Angel’s report said.

To get a better understanding of how the students in this program are doing, specifically since this new school year began under COVID precautionary safety measures, the Sun Times News followed up with Angel.

“Our Special Ed staff at BMS (and all the other buildings in the Chelsea Schools) made the choice to ensure we were serving our students who needed the most supports as we began a virtual school year,” Angel said. “This meant that groups of students would enter the building and take their virtual courses with assistance from their teacher consultants and paraprofessionals. This started as a one day a week support and has grown to three days per week even with our general education students attending two days per week in a hybrid fashion.”

Beach Middle School staff: Corrina Rotondo, Greg Stephens, Jeff Fitch, Jack Smith

He said this model was intended, “to best support students and to provide both direct and remedial support to ensure our students were not slipping through the cracks.”

This was a coordinated effort with the food service and transportation departments to ensure that the students would have access to the building and nutritional support when they arrived, Angel said.

“In addition, our student services team provided service to all eligible students to ensure their needs were being met in a virtual world,” Angel said. “This includes our Speech Pathologist, Mr. Embury, our Social Worker, Mrs. Kelly, our School Psychologist, Mrs. Talarico, and our School Counselor, Mr. "S".”

In answering what does success look like, Angel said it is measured in many ways at the middle level, “but for simplicity sake we want students to feel supported in their social and emotional needs while we raise their academic abilities.”

Beth Bell of Beach Middle School.

He said this is measured via work completion, and both summative and formative assessments. The students participated in weekly screeners to access their current mode and needs for Social and Emotional support and school staff tracks their progress closely via the Teacher Consultants.

In explaining how the current learning delivery model is going, Angel said, “We have roughly 80 percent of our students attending school in a Face-Face Hybrid schedule meaning they attend every other day as decided by last name.”

He said 20 percent of the students are virtual or in a virtual blend model. The special populations students, who have attended school since the beginning of September, include students who had digital access issues or receive special education services and supports.

Tiffany Manning of Beach Middle School.

“Our technology team both in the district and locally at Beach did an excellent job problem solving technology, getting our online learning platform up and running and providing creative solutions to connectivity issues with hot spot distributions and technology accessibility within the buildings,” Angel said.

So how is the face to face learning going overall.

“The Beach MS staff (and entire CSD staff) has masterfully danced in providing simultaneous face to face, asynchronous learning experiences and virtual student teaching. This is a difficult task,” Angel said. “It is a testament to their commitment to support all students. Remember this is a new expectation for all both students and staff. The Chelsea Schools teachers have doubled down their efforts with professional learning to make sure they were prepared. They are and what we are seeing is the talent of our teachers in action.”

He said the district support team of Heather Conklin in the instructional world and Eric Robinson in the technology integration world worked well together to create professional development for the staff.

Meg Emlaw of Beach Middle School.

“It is a testament to the district's planning that staff were as ready as they were realistically going to be in a tight window of time,” Angel said.

Although the district is just two months into the new school year, it’s fitting to give the special education staff and all of the CSD staff recognition for what they are doing.

When asked what else should the community know, Angel said, “I would like the Chelsea Schools community to know that the CSD staff is working incredibly hard to reach our learners and to learn a new way of teaching. We appreciate the community showing us grace as we continue to perfect this herculean task.”

Josh Tropea and Steven Fifield of Beach Middle School.