South Texas ISD begins Special Education cooperative with other districts

RIO GRANDE VALLEY, Texas ( ValleyCentral ) — South Texas Independent School District is beginning a cooperative to share Special Education services with other school districts.

The new program will start when schools re-open in the Fall.

STISD said its new cooperative will provide child-centered Special Education services. So Far, they have partnered with Rio Hondo and La Villa.

“We currently have two partners, Rio Hondo and La Villa ISD,” said Brenda De La Garza, Special Programs Director for STISD. “But we are open to having more districts in the future. Making sure that we’re collaborating, and that we can help as many school districts as we can, in our tri-county area.”

De La Garza said STISD looked to work with smaller, more rural districts to start. Costs for Special Education are going up while funding is going down. She said that smaller districts often cannot afford to hire full-time staff for these services and their workaround can cost significantly more.

“They usually have contracted services for a lot of things like physical therapy or occupational therapy,” said De La Garza. Those providers, when they’re contracted, just kind of come in and out. And by us joining with them, we can share staff that can provide better wrap-around services for their students and our students.”

South Texas ISD said it is actively hiring now to meet staffing needs for the cooperative. Those new hires would then work in different districts.

The partner school districts will pool their money from government sources to pay for the cooperative effort.

“The school districts do put their federal funding into the cooperative, and a small amount of their state and local funds. By using our funds, their funds, all together, we can hire that staff here, said De La Garza.

De La Garza told us the new co-op is just one more program the district has for Special Education students. STISD also offers the students a half-day program where they can go to a South Texas ISD campus and earn a Career Technical Education certificate.

The program is free for participating students and STISD covers transportation. The half-day program is a separate initiative from the Special Education cooperative and open to students in Cameron, Hidalgo and Willacy Counties.

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