Special Education Services

St. Cloud Area Schools ensures that all Multilingual Learner (ML) students who may have a disability receive support for both language and special education needs as mandated by The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504).

Our team includes the student’s family as the most important stakeholders in decisions regarding services for their child. We will, to the best of our ability, ensure that your student’s special education evaluation is provided and administered in a language that is understood by individual families.

To best meet the academic and language needs of your student, our team will also include:

• Parents and/or guardians
• English learner staff who have the requisite knowledge of the child’s language needs
• Special Education staff
• Classroom or content teacher
• Principal or administrative representative
• Translator or Interpreter as needed to enable parents to comprehend everything being communicated about their student

To best meet the academic and language needs of your student, we will:

• identify, with the parents and stakeholders, ways to provide coordinated services for language acquisition and special education services
• ensure that a student receives all services for which he/she qualifies (i.e. both EL and SPED). Enrollment in one service does not reduce level of service provided in the other.
• respect a parent’s right to refuse services (i.e. EL and/or SPED). Refusal of services will not impact the level of service in those services not refused by the parent.

For more information see the Minnesota Department of Education or Chapter 6 in the English Learner Toolkit published by the United States Office of English Language Acquisition.