Early Childhood (EC): These services are for children ages 3-5. Special programs include Head Start, the Colorado Preschool Program, and Special Education.

Early Intervening Services (EIS): Coordinated services for students in grades K-12 who have not been identified as needing special education but who need additional academic and behavioral support in order to succeed in the general education environment.

Emotionally Disabled (ED): This term refers to students who have emotional issues that impact their learning, rather than just behavioral issues. Students may receive services in their home school through the resource teacher or, if the need is more severe, students may be placed in a center-based ED program after going through the ED referral process.

English Language Learners (ELL), formerly English as a Second Language (ESL): Students who are not proficient in English are eligible for English language instruction in their buildings. Schools ask families to complete the Home Language Survey when they register their child. An ELL teacher tests students to determine if they qualify for services.

Extended School Year: Instruction given beyond the "regular" school year in order to prevent significant regression.

Functional Behavioral Assessment (FBA): A process for gathering information to better understand the reason for a student's problem behavior.

Gifted and Talented (GT): Those persons whose abilities, talents, and potential for accomplishments are so exceptional or developmentally advanced that they require special provisions to meet their education needs. Gifted and talented students are capable of high performance, exceptional production, or exceptional learning behavior by virtue of any or a combination of the following areas: intellectual, academic aptitude, creative or productive thinking, leadership and human relation abilities, visual arts, performing arts, musical abilities, and psychomotor abilities.

Highly Qualified: A teacher who is licensed and endorsed in each/all core academic content area(s) in which they are teaching. If they are teaching outside of their licensed and endorsed core academic content area(s), the teacher must provide documented evidence of having completed 24 semester hours or its equivalent in the core content area(s) being taught or have a passing score on the state or national core content area test(s) (PLACE, Praxis) in the content area being taught.

Inclusion: Thompson School District believes in providing students with special needs access to the general curriculum. These decisions are based on individual needs in order to benefit the student. Other terms include integration and mainstreaming.

Individualized Literacy Plan (ILP): Students who are not reading at grade level are placed on an ILP.

Individualized Education Plan (IEP): An IEP is written for all students who are identified as educationally disabled and receive special education or related services. This plan describes an educational program based on the student's educational needs.

Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA): IDEIA is the federal special education law (formerly P.L. 94-142). The basic purpose of this law is to ensure that all children with disabilities have available to them a free, appropriate education that emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their unique needs and prepare them for further education, employment and independent living, and to ensure that the rights of children with disabilities and parents of such children are protected.

Informed Consent:

Information Review Conference (IRC): An IRC is a regular education meeting where colleagues share concerns regarding a student and suggest strategies that address those concerns. A special education staff member attends these meetings. It may or may not lead to a special education referral.

Integration: see Inclusion

Intensive Learning Center: A classroom where a special education teacher provides inclusion to the students to the general education curriculum to the fullest extent possible incorporating academic and personal care assistance as well as speech, physical and occupational therapies as determined on the IEP.

Learning Center: A classroom where a special education teacher works with a small group of students, using techniques that work more efficiently with special needs population.

Mainstreaming: see Inclusion

McKinney-Vents Act: Ensures educational rights and protections for children and youth experiencing homelessness, including those with disabilities.

Mediation: Formal intervention between parents/guardians and agencies to achieve reconciliation, settlement, or compromise.

Migrant Program: Based on specific criteria including the student's mobility and the parents' involvement in agriculture related areas, a student may qualify for services and school funds.

Modifications: Only students on IEPs may receive modifications. Modifications are substantial changes in what a student is expected to learn and demonstrate. These are made to provide a student with opportunities to participate meaningfully and productively in learning. Modifications include change in the following areas: instructional level, content, and performance criteria.

Occupational Therapy (OT): A service provided to students who have motor concerns (fine or gross). In order for these students to receive OT services, they must first qualify for special education.

Parent: A natural, adoptive, or foster parent of a child (unless a foster parent is prohibited by State law from serving as a parent); a guardian (but not the State if the child is a ward of the State); an individual acting in the place of a natural or adoptive parent (including a grandparent, stepparent, or other relative) with whom the child lives or an individual who is legally responsible for the child's welfare; an individual assigned to be a surrogate parent.

Parent Liaison: A person who functions as a liaison between the parents, community, and school staffs to facilitate communications and encourages parent engagement.

People Offering People Support (POPS): A peer support group with adult supervision available at some schools in the Thompson School District.

Physical Therapy (PT): The district contracts with a physical therapist who provides services to students that have motor needs. These services are primarily consultative.

Resource Teacher: A teacher who provides the opportunity the opportunity to meet the needs of students with special needs while maintaining a traditional classroom atmosphere.

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (504 Plan): This law is aimed at eliminating discrimination against the disabled. Developing a 504 Plan is a regular education process. This applies to students who have an impairment that significantly limits one or more of life's major functions. A 504 Plan is a legal document that requires the school/teacher to provide reasonable accommodations for the student to participate and benefit from regular education. Children who have health, physical, motor, learning or behavioral needs are some examples where a 504 Plan might be warranted.

Sensory Integration Impairment Department (SIID): A global term referring to Hearing, Vision, Occupational Therapy, Adaptive Physical Education, Physical Therapy, and Audiologists.

Severity Rating Scale (SRS): A tool used by Speech/Language specialists that helps determine a student's eligibility for those services.

SIED: A child with significant identifiable emotional disability shall have emotional or social functioning, which prevents the child from receiving reasonable benefit from general education.

Significant Limited Intellectual Capacity (SLIC): A term that refers to students who have low cognitive functioning. This term is unique to Colorado.

Specific Learning Disability (SLD): A disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or do mathematical calculations. The term includes, but is not limited to, such conditions as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimum brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia. The term does not include children who have learning problems that are primarily the result of visual, hearing or motor disabilities, cognitive delay, or environmental, cultural or economic disadvantages.

Speech/Language (S/L): Services including instruction in language skills, articulation, voice, and/or fluency.

Statewide Augmentative Alternative Assistive Communication (SWAAAC): A service to students who have severe language delays and may require special help with communication and/or equipment.

Student Intervention Team (SIT): A team of regular educators who meet to share concerns regarding a student and suggest strategies or interventions.

Swallowing Action Team (SWAT): A district team that assists building level special education teams with students who have swallowing and feeding issues.

Title I (formerly Chapter I): This is a federally funded program based on socio-economic status that provides remedial help to students in reading, writing and math. In Thompson, a limited number of elementary schools provide this service.

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI): An injury to the brain caused by extreme physical force which occurs after birth. Referrals are made to the district TBI team.

Triennial (TRI): An Individualized Education Plan meeting required every three years. All areas of the student's functioning are addressed either formally or informally and continued eligibility for special education is determined.

Twice Exceptional: A child who is gifted or potentially gifted in one or more areas, including intellectual ability, specific academic ability (such as reading, math, science, etc.), visual or performing arts, leadership, creativity, or psychomotor ability, and who is identified as having a learning, emotional, communication, or physical disability.

Universal Design: An approach to the design of products, services, and environments to be usable by as many people as possible regardless of age, ability, or situation.

Ward of the State: A child who, as determined by the State where the child resides, is a foster child, is a ward of the State, or is in the custody of a public welfare agency. The term does not include a foster child who has a foster parent who meets the definition of a parent.