Concerned residents raise questions to RRISD

Concerned residents raise questions to RRISD

Written by Tiffany Young Thursday, 29 May 2008

Austin— Concerned parents of Forest North Elementary School and nearby residents quickly filled Forest North’s cafeteria May 28 to ask Round Rock Independent School District officials about its plan to move the Elementary Disciplinary Alternative Education Program from Union Hill School to the Forest North campus.

The Elementary DAEP was established in 1995, in response to the Texas Safe School Act, which requires districts to provide an alternative education setting for students who engage in adverse behaviors that interfere with learning. Eligible students for the program include students six years old through fifth grade.

The first RRISD Elementary DAEP was housed in a room at the old Round Rock Opportunity Center and has since been held at Caraway Elementary, Spicewood Elementary and for the past six years, Union Hill Elementary.

Union Hill Elementary School was designed for the program, but RRISD now plans on moving the Teen Parent Program there to keep teen moms from having to spend a lengthy amount of time traveling to and from school on buses.

Many of the residents and parents who showed up were concerned that the district had not told them the change would take place.
Beverly Helfinstein, RRISD’s assistant superintendent of elementary education, said that the neighborhood and parents of children at the school were not notified because the location change was standard program changes that RRISD makes on an annual basis based on population and other factors.

Some of the questions and answers that came from the meeting are:

• Why weren’t plans made to put this program in one of the new schools?
  Alan Albers, executive director of operation and facilities for RRISD said the district thought about it in the Bond 2000 election and the location was selected very carefully for Union Hill Elementary, but with North Forest going down to 300 students next year, it will have room to move the Elementary DAEP students from union Hill and moving the Teen Parent Program from rented space to one of the locations the district owns.
• Why aren’t the Elementary DAEP children put in portables?
  Dona Stallworth, assistant principal for the elementary DAEP program addressed this issue by saying that portables tend to be more destructive for the children in these programs. Also, the children from the DAEP program are not supposed to mingle with children from the elementary school and the portables have no bathroom facilities, meaning the children from the DAEP would need to be escorted into the building with the North Forest Elementary students.
• What is aggressive behavior?
  Stallworth said definitions of aggressive behavior differed from campus to campus, but could range from pushing to shoving or clearing their desk or pushing over a chair when they were agitated. Of the 82 offense codes of the students enrolled in the Elementary DAEP, 21 offenses were for persistent misbehavior and 21 were for aggressive action.

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