School officials in the Lodi Unified School District in San Joaquin County are investigating a big jump in special needs students at a time when overall enrollment is declining, the Lodi News-Sentinel reported.
The district’s overall population has dropped by 11% since 2005. But during the same period, the number of special needs students increased by 25%, the newspaper reported, a gain that is flummoxing district officials. That puts the district’s special needs population 5 percentage points higher than the state average of 13.7%, according to a report provided to school board members.
“When we came to the realization that we were so high, we were really looking at it from a variety of ways,” Student Support Services Director Paul Warren said this week, the newspaper reported. “What’s happening on the intervention side of general education, what’s happening when it comes to our assessors making the determinations, why are so many people qualifying disproportionately to other districts.”…