Fargo, ND: Superintendent deals with "severe behavior issues," "early childhood SPED"

Aug 13, 2018, WDAY-TV, Fargo, ND Q&A: New superintendent talks about Fargo schools' toughest challenges http://www.wday.com/news/education/4484854-qa-new-superintendent-talks-about-fargo-schools-toughest-challenges Rupak Gandhi's first official day as Fargo Public Schools' superintendent was about a month ago, … …But he also inherited challenges that Schatz acknowledged when stepping down in June. Those include handling students with severe behavioral issues, teacher safety and southside enrollment growth, which Gandhi said he'd ask two task forces and a committee of stakeholders to tackle. … We are going to have a couple of task forces this year. One is looking at the continuum of special education services we provide to make sure all students are getting a quality education. Another focus is having a task force to look at early childhood special education needs. That's been growing in terms of enrollment. How do we sustain a high-quality education to those students?... Q. There's a controversy over how the district helps children with severe behavioral issues, especially the proposed Level D facility where they'd be segregated for part of their day. What's your thinking on that issue? There are two initiatives the district's going to be looking at. One will be our task force around LRE, short for "least restrictive environment." What we're looking at is how do we provide a full spectrum of special education services for all our students in their ideal setting…. Q. Are you hearing teachers talk about being assaulted by students? Yes, we have heard some — let's talk about how do we help our students that have demonstrated behaviors that we didn't necessarily see 10, 15 years ago. I've heard a variety of things: • How do we address complex behaviors from students? • How do we provide more social/emotional supports?