Since it was formed in 1977, the Houston-based Exceptional Child Education Cooperative (ECEC) has been serving area students with special needs.
In the 2017-2018 school year, the ECEC is serving more than 700 students in 12 school districts (including six in Texas County, two in Dent County, two in Wright County, one in Phelps County and one in Shannon County). The organization provides specialized resources for its member school districts and is one of 20 similar entities in Missouri. The goal is to meet federal requirements put into law in 1975, and provide “free appropriate public education” (FAPE) to students identified as disabled based on any or all of 13 categories of disability.
Houston resident Jeremy Smith is the ECEC’s eighth director, and is in the second year of his tenure.
“FAPE basically means that after a student is identified as having a disability, a team will come together and provide services, modifications and accommodations for them to be able to have equal access to education just like their non-disabled peers,” Smith said. “That’s different for every kid; for us to level the playing field for some kids, we have to do a little more, and for others it’s a little less.”
The ECEC is headquartered in the vocational-agricultural building on the Houston High School campus, and serves about 160 students in Houston. It is technically part of the Houston School District and is subsequently overseen by the Houston Board of Education, but also has its own 12-person board made up of leaders from member districts.
The ECEC’s funding comes from each of those districts, based proportionally on how many students are being served in a given district.
Students are tended to by 22 full-time teachers with varying specialties who travel each day from Houston to member schools. Students range in age from pre-school to high school, and each one has an “individualized education program” (IEP) designed especially for them.
“There’s no two kids even with the same disability who are exactly alike,” Smith said. “What makes them tick and makes them successful is different kid by kid.”
Smith lives in Houston with his wife, Amy, who is HHS principal. They have two children – one in college and one who is a senior at HHS.
Smith graduated from Diamond High School and went on to earn a degree from Missouri Southern State College in Joplin and a master’s in educational administration from Missouri State. He is a long-time educator who has worked in several capacities, including (among other things) as a social studies teacher, a principal and a special education coordinator at Moberly Area Tech Center, where students from 11 school districts were served.
“That was somewhat similar to what I do here,” Smith said, “because there was that confederation of a bunch of different schools and having to work together for a common good and that kind of thing.”
Smith said the ECEC provides significant benefits to all member districts, but especially the small ones.
“If you only have a small staff and had to hire another person to do what we do, that would be very costly for them,” he said. “I think we’ve kind of become almost like an insurance policy in that if a little school has a really high needs kid who comes in, it could be really difficult for the school to have the resources to handle that. But if that happens, we have the resources here and the folks with the know-how.
“There might be years when you don’t need to use the policy and years when you do.”
THE 13 CATEGORIES OF DISABILITY
• Autism
• Deaf/blindness
• Emotional disorders
• Hearing impairment and deafness
• Mental retardation
• Multiple disabilities
• Orthopedic impairment
• Other health impairments
• Specific learning disabilities
• Speech or language impairment
• Traumatic brain injury
• Visual impairment/blindness
• Young child with a developmental delay
Smith said he’s particularly impressed with the results in the early childhood segment of ECEC’s clientele.
“Research shows that the more early and often you get intensive services to kids, the more likely it is that they won’t have to have services as they get older,” he said. “It’s really amazing where a kid starts out when they’re first identified as a 3-year-old and where they get to by the time they’re going into kindergarten. Before I took this position, I had always been K-12, but here I get to see these little bitty guys getting some great help. That’s been a really good thing.”
The ECEC even added a fourth early childhood teacher for this year.
Along with servicing students, the ECEC helps member districts with steps and procedures necessary to meet state and federal requirements. Smith said the organization is able to recruit and hire individuals highly qualified to interact with special education students, and in turn is able to deliver quality results.
“The ECEC is an organization that provides comprehensive and exhaustive services I an attempt to maximize the learning of all children,” he said. “I think we do a fantastic job of that. The way this is set up, we’re able to attract really good candidates, keep really good people and provide excellent services to our member schools.”
For more information about the Exceptional Child Education Cooperative, call 417-967-3196 or log onto the Houston R-1 School District website (www.houston.k12.mo.us) and find the ECEC under “schools.”