7/28/2019 End of Year Oasd Newsletter
1/3
LE TS GET CONNECTED! OASD Special Education Network
Dear Parents,
The end of our 2012-13 school year is upon us, and we have many
things to reflect on as well as to lookforward to. This year, our D
istrict chose to adopt Inclusive practices to better serve our
childrensindividual learning needs. This was a huge undertaking
that required a great deal of change forteachers,
paraprofessionals, students and parents. I would like to take this
opportunity to thankeveryone for the tremendous amount of support,
hard work, patience and dedication that has beendisplayed to help
the District with this transition. OASD has much to be proud of,
and is happy to sharethe implementation was quite successful.
As our children progress to the next grade level, so will the
needs of each individual school andclassroom. At the end of each
year, the District needs to reallocate personnel to ensure
thatappropriate staff has been shifted to help accommodate the
changing needs. This sometimes requirescertain teachers and
paraprofessionals to transfer from one grade level to another, or
perhaps even adifferent school. This is a very delicate procedure,
in which every effort is made to help ensure asmooth transition for
each student.
In addition, this year the District faced challenges for the
2013-14 school year, as a result of theimplementation of the
Affordable Healthcare Act. The Affordable Healthcare Act is
commonly referredto as ACA or Obamacare. Among other key features
of this legislation, the ACA has a Pay or Play
component effective July 1, 2014. The ACA requires large
employers with 50 or more full-timeequivalent employees to either
offer health insurance to full-time employees or to pay a penalty
tax.Under the ACA, full-time employees are defined as those
employees who work 30 or more hours perweek.
While the law does not dictate employer contribution levels,
coverage must be deemed to beaffordable for the employee. Coverage
is affordable if the required employee contribution for thelowest
cost option that provides minimum value coverage levels does not
exceed 9.5% of W-2 wages for
https://www.facebook.com/OasdSpecialEducationNetwork?ref=tn_tnmnhttps://www.facebook.com/OasdSpecialEducationNetwork?ref=tn_tnmnhttps://www.facebook.com/OasdSpecialEducationNetwork?ref=tn_tnmn
7/28/2019 End of Year Oasd Newsletter
2/3
that calendar year. In other words, the District cannot offer
coverage that meets minimum valuecoverage levels and then pass
along the majority of the costs to the employees. That would fail
theaffordability test. For example, the cost passed along to an
employee averaging $20,000 in W-2earnings annually could not exceed
$1,900.
Unfortunately, all employees working 30 hours or more per week
are impacted by the ACA, regardlessof whether or not insurance
benefits are needed. Employers dont have the option to allow
employeesto waive off health insura nce in lieu of maintaining
hours over 30 per week.
The bottom line is that the District was faced with significant
increases in healthcare premiums in excessof $1,500.000.00.
The Districts main goal is to maintain staffing levels to ensure
the same level of services, while remainingfiscally responsible. To
accomplish this objective, the District will be doing so with
additional employeesworking fewer weekly hours. This primarily
affects the paraprofessional staff. The solution
essentiallyconsists of reducing current paraprofessional staff
hours less than 30 hours a week, while hiringadditional part-time
paraprofessionals to fulfill the appropriate personnel needed. For
example, instead
of one full-time paraprofessional working a full day; one
part-time paraprofessional would work themorning half of the day,
while a second part-time paraprofessional would work the afternoon
portion of the day. Keep in mind, regardless of the ACA, each year
the paraprofessional staff fluctuates from thechanging needs of the
students within the district. Again, every effort has been taken to
try to alignstudents with paraprofessionals they are familiar and
work well with. All of the paraprofessionals havebeen informed of
these changes and every effort has been made to keep our current
dedicated andmuch appreciated paraprofessional staff intact.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding this matter,
please feel free to contact Lisa Dawes
[email protected] or (262)560-2156.
H ere is some helpful in formation:
. Our latest Gratitudes Program recipients - Congratulations to
Becky Beck 2nd Grade
Teacher of Park Lawn Elementary and Koni Adams Special Education
Teacher of Park Lawn Elementary, both nominated by Tim and Corrine
Gartzke. Once again, we have 2teachers highlighted for their
exceptional service. Thank you Mrs. Beck and Mrs. Adamsfor all of
your hard work and dedication! Thank you Tim and Corrine for taking
the timeto nominate and recognize their efforts.
H ere is what i s happeni ng :
Congratulations to Kim Schiefelbein! Kim has accepted a new
position in the Districtas a Universal Design coach with an
emphasis on assistive technology. UniversalDesign for Learning is a
framework that provides educators with a structure to developtheir
instruction to meet the wide range of diversity among all learners.
UDL is aresearch-based framework that suggests that a
one-size-fits-all approach to curricula is
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]
