With a new director behind Rowan-Salisbury’s Exceptional Children program, students with disabilities will have new opportunities to learn in Rowan County this year.

On Monday, Director of Exceptional Children Sandy Albert shared the new plan for the program with school board.

This year, she said, Rowan-Salisbury will reintroduce Intensive Common Core classrooms, better known as ICC classrooms.

These classrooms provide specialized, small group instruction on the common core standards for students with disabilities for more than two hours a day. Not only do these classes teach reading and math, but they focus on developing organizational, social and study skills as well.

Albert said that when common core was introduced and academic rigor was increased, so did the need for communication skills and creativity.

We didn’t teach those skills,” she said. “We’re just assuming they have those skills.”

The purpose of ICC classrooms is to catch students with disabilities up to their peers so they can eventually be worked back into a general education classroom. These students are more than two grade levels behind.

When these children do get to a point where they can re-enter a general education classroom, a teacher assistant goes with them, helping them – and their new teacher – assimilate to their new classroom.

There will be 10 ICC classrooms across nine different schools in the district: Enochville, Millbridge, North Rowan, Overton and Rockwell elementary schools and Corriher-Lipe, North Rowan and Southeast middle schools. Rockwell Elementary will have two ICC classrooms.

There will be 12 or fewer students in elementary ICC classrooms and 14 or fewer in middle school ICC classrooms.

These classes wouldn’t be for all of the district’s Exceptional Children students, however. Just like disabilities, Exceptional Children education programs follow a continuum.

Inclusion, Albert explained, is when a “special education teacher goes into the regular education classroom and teaches with the general education teacher.”

“The next setting is more of a resource setting,” she said.

A resource setting is when an Exceptional Children teacher “comes and pulls out a child for short periods of time” to work on reading and math, Albert said.

ICC classrooms fall into place next on the continuum. They teach organizational, social and study skills in addition to academics, things that resource and inclusion do not leave time for.

Self-contained classrooms are the most restrictive education program held at the individual schools, and include Cross Categorical Adapted Curriculum (CCAC) classrooms and Promoting Academics, Communication and Social Skills (PACSS) classrooms. CCAC classrooms are for students with severe disabilities, while PACSS classrooms are for students on the Autism spectrum.

“The students that are there are being taught the extended content curriculum,” Albert said, explaining that the curriculum in those classrooms is more focused on basic life skills, rather than academic skills.

The most restrictive learning environments for children with disabilities are homebound and residential/hospital.

Albert said communication is a top priority for her. Based on what she’s learned, the reason ICC classrooms failed in Rowan-Salisbury schools before is because of the lack of communication between the Exceptional Children department and the general education side of things.