GRAND FORKS – Grand Forks Public Schools’ share of students with individualized education plans continues to climb, while the increase in multilingual students marks a significant rebound after years of decline.
District administrators shared data on two of the district’s more significant specialized programs during an annual report to the School Board on Monday.
Some 19.8% of the student body had some kind of IEP as of Dec. 1, 2023, when the federal government conducted its annual count, up from 19.6% the same time last year.
Special Education Director Elisa Diederich said she expects that number to continue climbing when the official count is taken in the coming days.
The share of students with IEPs has been increasing steadily over the last decade, up from 14.8% in 2014.
The current near-20% of students with IEPs is comparable to other large school districts, like Fargo, West Fargo, Minot and Bismarck.
Lately, the district has added a sixth autism classroom at the elementary level, Diederich said, with an average class size of eight, “which is a pretty heavy class size.”
Early Childhood Special Education – which serves children ages 3 to 5 with developmental delays – has also seen increases, Diederich said.
The district has seen its share of special educators grow through its resident teacher program and para-to-teacher programs at UND, but still needs more school psychologists, as well as occupational therapists and speech pathologists.
The district is now able to bill more special education costs through the state’s Medicaid program, Diederich reported, instead of having to pay out of pocket.
The number of students in the multilingual program was actually decreasing for several years after a peak in 2014 before rebounding earlier this year, multilingual program coordinator Ivana Todorovic reported.
A significant exodus of Nepali and Bhutani families to larger ethnic communities in Pennsylvania and Ohio had led to a steady decline in program participants before the number of students more than doubled over the 2023-24 school year.
The official federal count for 2023-24 only counts 268 program participants because it was taken early in the school year, Todorovic noted; 446 students were in the program as of Sept. 30 of this year.
The makeup of multilingual students has changed significantly since Todorovic, herself a former refugee, began working at the district 20 years ago.
Historically, Bosnian, Nepali and Bhutanese refugees made up most program participants, with a handful of Iraqi, Liberian and Chinese and Vietnamese emigrants.
In the last year, though, that’s changed dramatically as a result of new migration through refugee resettlement agency Global Friends Coalition and, more significantly, an influx of Ukrainian and Turkish families brought into the community by companies like LM Wind Power and Simplot on work visas.
“I don’t think we’ve ever had almost 50 languages in our district,” Todorovic said.
The district began operating a new multilingual program this year at Lake Agassiz Elementary to accommodate the new population.
Joshua Irvine covers K-12 and higher education as well as the Grand Forks County Commission for the Grand Forks Herald. He can be reached at jirvine@gfherald.com.