Attention to all of the Utah based NATSAP programs and allies! Be aware of the current challenges working with outside agencies.
Many Utah programs currently are approved by the California Department of Education to provide mental health and educational services to their students. These students are placed outside of the state of CA because the school district and the family have determined that all lower levels of intervention in their state have been tried and the student has failed. Therefore a decision will be made during the students IEP meeting to seek placement outside of the state, sending an abundance of students here to Utah to seek treatment.
During the past few months, schools have been notified by the state of IL that they are no longer willing to seek placement for their students in Utah because the state of Utah does not regulate nonpublic special education facilities. So all of the Utah based programs that have been working with the state of IL are no longer able to accept and work with this state.
Now the state of CA has decided to follow in the footsteps of the state of IL. All affiliated programs will be receiving a letter from the California Department of Education in the next month indicating that they have until September 30, 2019, to come into compliance with the standard that the State of Utah Department of Education will provide regulation over the nonpublic special education facilities.
The President of the NATSAP has stated that he feels an obligation to the over 300+ families that have students currently in placement in Utah, as well as the hundreds of employees that will be affected in the programs provided if they do not address this problem right away.
Therefore they will be hosting a meeting on Tuesday, August 21st at 11:00. You can either join the meeting by conference call or come in person to Youth Care. This meeting is designed to lay out an action plan regarding how they can all work together to get the State Office of Education to regulate Special Education Schools.
There is no limit to the number of individuals from programs that you are interested in joining the meeting. They anticipate that Executive Directors and Academic Directors will be in attendance, but anyone from their programs are more than welcome to attend.