Newport Exploring Regional Special Education Services

As Portsmouth schools depart, Newport Public Schools could join or engage in a partial collaboration with the Newport County Regional Special Education Program.

Newport Superintendent Colleen Burns Jermain said in an interview Friday that she has received the blessing of the Newport School Committee to begin preliminary talks to see if Newport should join the special education collaborative.

She noted that no changes to special education programming here in Newport would occur without parent involvement and consultation.

“Before I’d make any recommendations to the committee, I’d first speak with parent groups and the community,” Jermain said.

Jermain said Newport schools currently has an interim special education director and “we’re looking at the possibility of exploring additional services.”

As the former assistant superintendent in Portsmouth and a former principal and superintendent in Little Compton, Jermain said she has a deep background with the collaborative since both schools were involved during her time in those districts.

Portsmouth has decided to pull out of the collaborative effective June 30 of 2015 after urgings from their new superintendent, Ana Riley, and a report from Futures Education that showed students were not showing substantial achievement gains on standardized tests.

Portsmouth officials described the step as “getting rid of the middleman” and told concerned parents of special education students that the town would have more control over special education functions and costs.

Jermain said that the discussions about joining here in Newport are extremely early and parents need not be concerned that their children’s special education programming will be changed anytime soon.

“We haven’t even had a cost analysis,” she said. “This is the very beginning.”

Jermain said that the district could become a full member in the hopes of reducing its special education costs. Or, there’s a chance that the district would use only some services from the collaborative.

The idea, she said, is that “there might be additional services that would beneficial for our students.”