Children experiencing disabilities are guaranteed a free appropriate public education.

The North Slope Borough School District provides comprehensive, free educational services to all children ages 3 through 21 who qualify in the following areas:

Hearing Impaired - A hearing impairment that adversely affects a child's educational performance may require a student to have special education, hearing aids, or other assistance or may be so severe as to result in total deafness so that the child cannot understand, what is being said with or without a hearing aid.

Visually Impaired - A visual impairment, which, even with correction, adversely affects a child's educational performance. The term includes both partially seeing and blind children.

Deaf-Blindness - A combination of hearing and visual impairments causing severe communication, developmental and educational problems.

Learning Disabled - A disorder affecting the child's understanding or use of spoken or written language that adversely affects educational performance. The student's ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or do mathematical calculations may be affected. Conditions such as perceptual disabilities, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia are included in this category. This term does not include children who have learning problems that are the result of visual, hearing, motor disabilities, mental retardation, emotional disturbance, or environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.

Speech Impaired - A communication disorder, such as stuttering, impaired articulation, a language impairment, or voice impairment, which adversely affects a child's educational performance.

Mentally Retarded - Both significant sub-average general intellectual functioning and deficits in adaptive behavior. These deficits should have been observable throughout the child's development and adversely affect educational performance.Multiple Disabilities - A combination of impairments, other than deaf-blind, which adversely affects the child's educational performance to the extreme that any one of the impairments cannot be determined to be primary.

Seriously Emotionally Disturbed -Children who have a marked degree of one or more of the following characteristics, which adversely affect educational performance and are displayed over a long period of time. - An inability to learn which cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory or health factors
- An inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships - Inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances - A general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression - A tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems. (This term does not include students, who are socially maladjusted, unless they are also seriously emotionally disturbed.)

Orthopedically Impaired - A severe physical disability that adversely affects educational performance. The term includes impairments such as clubfoot, absence of a limb, cerebral palsy, poliomyelitis, bone tuberculosis, etc.

Other Health Impaired - Limited strength, vitality, or alertness due to chronic or acute health problems such as rheumatic fever, asthenia, hemophilia, leukemia etc., which adversely affects the child's educational performance.

Pre-School Disabilities - A child who is 3-5 years old and is significantly developmentally delayed in one or more of the following five areas: cognitive development, fine and gross motor development, speech language' development, psychosocial development, self-help skills.

Traumatic Brain Injury - A student who experiences impairments that adversely affect educational performance due to the result of a serious open or closed head injury.

Autism - A child that experiences irregularities in communication; resistance to environmental change and unusual responses to sensory experiences. The services available through the North Slope Borough School District include:

Preschool Special Education - For young children 3-5 years of age with special needs. This program services all children experiencing disabilities - Communication, social skills, developmentally appropriate classroom activities, and parent training.

Elementary Special Education - For students experiencing disabilities special education services are available in all elementary schools, dependent upon individual needs.

Secondary Special Education - Middle school and high school special education services are provided in all schools within the NSBSD. Theemphasis is collaboration, support, adapted curriculum, vocational education, transition planning, and individualized programming.

Related Services - The District also provides related services including, speech/language services, psychological services, physical therapy and occupational therapy services on a contracted basis.

To ensure that parents are provided with every opportunity to become involved in their child's educational program and to document that involvement, several rights to which parents are entitled are included in a summary, addressed as "procedural safeguards":

1. Prior Notice - Parents must receive written notice before their child is evaluated or placed in any specialized education program. Written notice is also required before any change in program.
2. Consent - Parent consent must be obtained before conducting a pre-placement evaluation, re-evaluation, and before initial placement of a child experiencing disabilities in a program providing special education and related services.
3. Evaluation - Before any action is taken with respect to the initial placement, a full and individual evaluation of the child's educational needs must be conducted. A re-evaluation must be conducted every three years or more frequently if conditions warrant or if the child's parent or teacher requests an evaluation.
4. Independent Education Evaluation - Provisions in the law describe when independent evaluation completed by non-district personnel can be performed at public expense.
5. Least Restrictive Environment - To the maximum extent appropriate, children experiencing disabilities, including children in public and private institutions or other care facilities, are to be educated with children who do not experience disabilities. Special classes, separate schooling or other removal of children with disabilities from the regular education classes should only be utilized if the use of supplementary aides and services cannot assist students in achieving satisfactorily. Unless a child has an individualized education program, which requires some other arrangement, the child is educated in the school, which he or she would attend if not experiencing a disability.
6. Confidentiality of Information - With the exception of school officials and teachers with legitimate educational interests, no one may see a child's records unless parents give their written permission. If parents believe that their child's records are inaccurate, misleading or violate the privacy of the child, the parents may request the district to amend the information.
7. Impartial Due Process Hearing - If at any point during identification, evaluation, or placement, parents do not agree with the educational decisions made concerning their child, they have the right to request mediation or a hearing. The right to appeal the findings and decisions of the hearing also are assured.

For a full copy of the Procedural Safeguards go to the following: procedural safeguards here

Child Find requires that a school district identify and locate each qualifying child residing within the district's boundaries. The district's boundary essentially includes the North Slope Region.

If you know of a child who may qualify for special education services, lives in the area, and is the right age, please call Cassie Wells, Special Education Coordinator and 504 Coordinator at (907) 852-5311.