Brookhaven School District officials said Tuesday they havedeveloped a plan to address weaknesses found in the district’sservices for special education students.

Brookhaven High School Principal Susan Chapman, who chaired theself-review monitoring committee, presented a reported to districttrustees during Tuesday’s monthly board meeting. The MississippiDepartment of Education (MDE) identified three weaknesses in theBrookhaven school district’s special education program in need ofimprovement.

The first weakness was the area of implementation of LeastRestrictive Environment, which is an effort to integrate studentswith special needs into mainstream classes 80 percent of thetime.

The second weakness was that the schools are not using enoughassistive technology – particularly with the autistic children – toexpose students to those services to better help themeducationally. Finally, a state monitoring committee found that theschools’ transitional services need to be “beefed up,” Chapmansaid.

“They feel that we should do more counseling, not only with ourstudents, but also with their parents to talk with them about thestudents’ strengths and weaknesses as they relate to the jobmarket,” Chapman said.

School officials are working at improving the weaknesses andhave presented a corrective action plan to MDE, Chapman said.Despite the school district’s shortcomings, they do not face anypenalties because the corrective action plan has been approved bythe special education department of the MDE.

Every decision the state department makes is for the educationalgood of the child, said Lea Barrett, Brookhaven School Districtsuperintendent.

There are 334 children with special education needs enrolled inthe district, said Barrett. Thirty of those are children withlanguage and speech disabilities.

Chapman said the monitoring committee will not revisit theBrookhaven School District for at least two years, but the districtwill be required to submit data to the committee showing thatprogress is being made.