Longview School

"Taking Responsibility for Change"

Principal - Karen Hamilton

Mission - Beliefs - Objectives - Program Description - Longview School Enrollment

Longview Services - Profile of Longview School Students - Awards and Recognition


Mission:

Longview School prepares students academically, behaviorally, and socially to succeed in the least restrictive educational and post school setting. We educate students to be motivated learners who take responsibility for their own choices, decisions, and actions.


Beliefs:


Objectives:


Program Description

Longview School encourages students to take responsibility for their actions to change failure into success. Longview serves middle and high school special education students, primarily Behaviorally Emotionally Handicapped, following failure in other less restrictive environments. Our goal is to return students to their base school with support as soon as possible. While at Longview, multi-disciplinary family groups design and facilitate educational and behavioral programming for students.

Longview's multi-faceted program seeks to impact all areas of a student's life. Program elements include:


Placements

A multi-disciplinary team including the parent/guardian, student, school staff, BEH case manager, and Longview staff decide placement into Longview. The process begins at the base school through the case manager. Additional base school interventions must be developed. Brief visits to Longview may be used as a deterrent. Some students require an extended assessment period.


Families

Longview serves all students in small family groups. Families use a holistic approach to facilitate academic, behavioral, IEP, and inclusion objectives.


Inclusion Program

Upon entering Longview, all students have written exit plans. The exist plan drives student programming to ensure the student completes the objectives necessary for return to their school. Inclusion Program staff provides support services to students, families, and base schools to successfully serve Longview students in the mainstream. They construct interventions to prevent behaviors from escalating beyond school limits. When students are ready to return to their base schools, an inclusion team that includes teachers from both schools identifies problem behaviors and generates possible interventions.


Longview School Enrollment

Current Enrollment: 57 Maximum Capacity: 65
    Total served 1996-'97: 126
High School 15    
Middle School 20    
Life Skills 7    
Inclusion 15    

Enrollment fluctuates throughout the year. Students come and go and move between placements at Longview and support service provided by our Inclusion Program in regular school settings. We currently serve 18 Willie M. students. This represents approximately 1/3 of the total county Willie M. population.


Longview Services

Longview School is a public separate school providing a variety of services for middle and high school students with severe behavioral and emotional needs that are impossible to meet in the regular school setting.

DIP Plan: Short-term intervention to stabilize students with escalating behaviors, usually 1-5 days at a time.

Assessment Placement: Serves students re-entering the system from hospitals, out-of-county residential facilities, Wilderness Camp and incarceration. Evaluation of behavioral and academic needs with a recommendation for service setting.

Placement: Occurs after all options exhausted at regular school. Collaboration with the BEH case manager required. Placements reassessed regularly to determine when the student is ready to return to the regular setting.

Discipline Review Committee-DRC: Superintendent's placement for students with a Long-Term Suspension recommendation for dangerous behaviors.

Inclusion Program: Support for students who have met the criteria to return to a regular school setting.

Accessing Longview Services: Regular schools must attempt several interventions to resolve a student's behavioral issues. If the interventions are unsuccessful, the school contacts the BEH Case Manager who provides additional support. Once all possible interventions have been exhausted, the school and case manager determine an appropriate use of Longview services. All due process and IEP procedures must be followed prior to the student attending Longview.


Profile of Longview School Students

Longview provides students from grades six through twelve with special education services. Students are predominantly male (6:1 ratio of male to female), and between the ages of twelve and eighteen, although provision of services extends through the age of twenty-one, if needed. The typical student presents impaired cognitive and academic functioning, attendance problems, substance abuse, and legal involvement. They exhibit maladaptive behaviors in the classroom that teachers and administrator find intolerable.

Most students are state identified "Behaviorally Emotionally Handicapped." This disability is characterized by behavioral or emotional responses in school programs so different from appropriate age, cultural, or ethnic norms that the responses adversely affect educational performance, including academic, social, vocational or personal skills. These responses are more than a temporary, expected response to stressful events in the environment. The behaviors do not respond to direct intervention applied in general education, causing these interventions to be insufficient.

Although most of these behaviors are exhibited by non-handicapped children at some point in their lives, behaviorally disordered children exhibit more of them (higher frequency) with more determination (higher intensity). Externalizing problems, considered behavioral excesses, are directed towards other people and the environment. Examples include aggression, noncompliance, and property destruction. These behavioral excesses substantially interfere with the developmental and educational progress of the student. Internalizing problems are directed inwardly away from the social environment. Examples include depression, fears, anxiety, and social withdrawal.

Other behavior characteristics include:


Longview School Awards and Recognition

Student Awards

School Awards