The Exceptional Child Education Cooperative will host an open house from 4 to 6 p.m. Thursday at its new location at 204 Spruce St. across from the new justice center in Houston.
The coop was formed in 1977 to meet federal requirements mandated in 1975 by Public Law 94-142. The law’s purpose was to assure that all children with disabilities have a free appropriate public education. It was signed by President Gerald Ford and emphasized special education as well as related services to meet the needs of disabled students. This law has been updated several times and is now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Since the inception of the Coop 32 years ago, IDEA has greatly expanded the requirements of public schools to accommodate and serve disabled students. The coop has also grown to meet the needs of area schools.
Andy Millman, Houston High School principal, was the first director of the Exceptional Child Education Cooperative. He organized all Texas County schools. as well as Willow Springs, Mountain View, Winona, Eminence and Van Buren. to establish the special education cooperative. He recognized a need for rural schools to be able to receive quality specialized services that individual schools were not able to access. Mary Wood became the director in 1990, followed by Charlie Taylor in 1997 and Lisa Cox in 2004. Eileen Fronterhouse has been the director since 2005.
The first coop was in the Houston superintendent’s office and consisted of three individuals. The first diagnostic team was added in 1978 that included a nurse, Evelyn Behrens, and Mary Jane Lybyer, a speech/language pathologist. Chris Honeycutt was the first secretary. In fall 1978, it moved to a trailer behind the gymnasium, then to a building across from the Texas County Library. After a three-year search for larger facilities, the Houston Development Co. offered to renovate and remodel a vacant building to meet the coop’s specific needs. Eddie Smith, a Houston Development Co. board member, supervised the project.
The coop has 22 employees. This includes two teachers of the deaf/hearing impaired, a sign language interpreter for the deaf, eight speech/language pathologists, a psychological examiner, a school psychologist, three educational diagnosticians, one adaptive PE teacher, two early childhood special education teachers, a Medicaid coordinator, an administrative assistant and the director. Teachers serve approximately 800 special education students in coop districts between the ages of 3-21 years old. The diagnostic team conducts an average of 500 student evaluations per year for its member districts.
The Exceptional Child Education Cooperative includes 13 districts as members: Cabool, Houston, Eminence, Green Forest, Licking, Norwood, Oak Hill, Phelps County, Plato, Raymondville, Success, Summersville and Skyline. The coop board consists of superintendents of each member district and the coop director. The Houston School District serves as the fiscal agent for the coop. The Houston superintendent, Dr. Dan Vandiver, serves as a liaison between the coop board, the director and the Houston school board. Aside from specific contracted services, funding for the coop is generated by federal and state money, and there are no local costs to districts for its operation.