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Special Ed. Advisory Position Is Created

FREWSBURG –The Frewsburg Central School Board of Education created a new advisory position to oversee certain special educational athletic programs in the school district.

Through the Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools, a program previously approved by the board, the school district will provide social inclusion through intentionally planned and implemented activities using sports. At Thursday’s meeting, the board approved the required unified sports advisor position to oversee the program.

“The goal of this program is to use sports as the foundation, but it also offers a unique combination of effective activities that equip young people with tools and training to create sports, classroom and school climates of acceptance,” said Shelly O’Boyle, Frewsburg superintendent at Thursday’s meeting. “So, there needs to be an adviser that bridges that gap so that we have some activities between our gen(eral) ed(udcation) students and our students with disabilities to have an all-inclusive environment.”

The unified sports adviser position would be funded through the Unified Champion Schools grant. Special Olympics New York provides $2,000 for the first year of programming and $1,000 for the second year of programming. The provided funds covers the cost of the annual Youth Activation Committee (YAC) summit, sports officials in pre and post season events and awards.

In the memorandum of understanding the board approved to offer such programming the district has agreed to provide a unified advisor who completes YAC Adviser Training, hold monthly meetings with YAC to plan activities and events and have the adviser attend the YAC summit. By meeting the requirements for the Unified Champion Schools programming, the district is eligible to receive the Special Olympics funding to supplement the school district’s efforts.

In other news, O’Boyle explained to the board that recent refunds were issued to numerous parents and guardians regarding its physical education curriculum. The school district previously charged students to attend the local bowling alley as part of its curriculum to pay for the space. However, because the bowling programming is included in the district’s curriculum, the district had to issue refunds.

“Our PE curriculum includes bowling as part of it. … Well, when a school offers something as part of the curriculum you can’t expect payment from students,” O’Boyle explained. “Unfortunately, we had gotten payment and needed to reimburse that back. So the checks went to the parents and in one case a student had borrowed money from a classroom teacher so we paid that one classroom teacher back.”

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