By Scott MacKeen
Times Staff
9/11/08

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Jeff Rubin, personnel administrator for schools, spoke about the report at the Sept. 2 School Committee meeting.
He called the review “outstanding,” saying that the town has made significant progress over the past few years.
“We put a lot of money into special education and this is just a wonderful news story for the entire school system,” said Superintendent Mary Gormley.
Gormley praised Rubin for his work in improving the town’s special education standing.
“We should give tribute to him,” she said. “He’s in the classrooms. He’s in all the schools. He’s making the difference.”
Rubin chose to praise the “outstanding” teachers in the programs.
In an interview, he said that most neighboring towns fall short on a significant number of compliance issues and that Milton has come a long way.
“Almost none of them come out perfect,” he said. “If you go into some other school districts you’ll see they have many, many noncompliance (areas). We just have three.”
He called the noncompliance areas cited in the report “minor, minor issues” that are the result of paperwork reviews and don’t necessarily reflect day-to-day observations.
He said the areas of noncompliance often result from “someone sitting there with a pile of paper records, who happens to notice that one in a 100 isn’t completely filled out the way they want.”
“We really think we were 100 percent (in compliance),” he said.
The report cites the school system’s documentation of student suspension time as one area of noncompliance.
It also cites a procedural issue involving Individualized Education Program (IEP) team meetings. The report states that Milton does not have an adequate procedure to excuse team members from meetings. Although it acknowledges that the town has complied with state regulations, the report requires that further training and oversight be implemented for this policy.
Rubin said the policy was put in place to “save time” but is not really necessary.
“They’re basically saying that all our team members attend the meetings but we haven’t shown them the right process to excuse someone (from a meeting) if we needed to,” he said.
“If that’s all they can find we’re doing wrong, we’re in pretty good shape.”
According to law, the annual IEP meeting must include the team chairman or school representative, a regular education teacher, a special education teacher and a parent or guardian. The meetings chart performance, establish goals, list services and measure progress for students with disabilities.