The local Education Department has agreed to create a professional service providers task force, as one of the conditions cited in the ASDOE settlement agreement with the federal government to ensure that professional service providers provide students with disabilities attending public schools with such service; and ASDOE has been given until next month to create the task force.

The agreement, signed Oct. 11 by ASDOE Deputy Director Philo Jennings, addressed findings by the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, which received four separate complaints from parents of students with special needs, who were not provided appropriate service in accordance with federal law during school year 2013/2014.

One of the issues found by OCR is that ASDOE does not have sufficient licensed professional service providers for disabled students. ASDOE has agreed to take steps to ensure that it has sufficient number of professional service providers to fully deliver the services requires for disable students in its schools to receive, among other things, Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE), as required by federal law.

Among the steps, cited in the agreement, includes but not limited to, creating a task force to review ASDOE’s recruiting, hiring, retention and contracting procedures for professional service providers.

The task force members will consist of, at a minimum, the ASDOE director or director’s representative — someone with authority to create procedures outlined in the agreement, ASDOE human resources director, the ASDOE special education director, at least one resources specialist, at least one professional service provider qualified to provide services to disable students (e.g. a physical therapist, speech language pathologist, psychologies), at least one parent of a child that requires such professional services to receive a FAPE, and a community member that specializes in disability services issues — unless ASDOE is unable to get a volunteer in any of these categories to serve on the task force after attempts to locate and offer a spot on the task force to such potential volunteer and ASDOE documents such attempts and provides such documentation to OCR.

The agreement also calls for ASDOE to recruit members of the task force from school staff, parents, students, and the community by announcing the formation of the task force and describing the volunteer opportunity to those groups.

While ASDOE may limit the number of persons on the task force to a certain total number, the agreement ASDOE can do this as long as such limitation does not result in failing to have all of the types of task force members as cited in the agreement.

The agreement also says that the task force will conduct a review of the use of professional service providers in all ASDOE schools, including the number and type of additional professional service providers ASDOE requires to adequately evaluate and provide services to all of ASDOE’s disable students.

The task force will use the information from the review to create a plan to hire or contract professional service providers to provide services required for disabled students to receive a FAPE, including a strategy for hiring or contracting a sufficient number of behavior specialists, occupational therapists, speech language pathologist, psychologists, and physical therapists.

The task force will, at a minimum, consider the following factors in developing the plan for hiring or contracting a sufficient number of professional service providers:

•     the most effective method for recruiting professional service providers including advertising for positions, the hiring process, paying for current employees to receive professional certification, and terms of employment, to help ensure ASDOE will secure the services of professional service providers as needed to provide FAPE to its disabled students;

•     the most effective method for contact for contracting for professional service providers in American Samoa that are not employees of ASDOE and provide payment to the professional contractors as provided for in their contacts;

•     the most effective method for providing evaluations and services for students with disabilities who require evaluations and services from professional service providers in the interim until those professionals are hired or contacted by ASDOE.

According to the agreement, ASDOE will adopt and implement the task force’s plan and provide to OCR the first report regarding the creating of the task force by Dec. 12th this year.

A time line is also set of when additional reports are submitted to OCR and ASDOE will continue its work with the task force until provisions of the agreement are met.