Ms. Joyce Bertrand

Joyce Bertrand -- Second Grade Teacher, Groton-Dunstable Regional School District
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Dulcinea's second grade teacher, Joyce Bertrand, reported that while Dulcinea was making progress in the general curriculum she was not progressing at the same pace as her peers.She demonstrated relatively poor decoding, encoding and attentional skills. (P-26, S-31; P-28, S-18; Betrand) The Team found Dulcinea eligible for special education and developed an IEP providing for: 30 minutes of language arts instruction and support in the regular classroom each day; and eight half-hour sessions of small group or individual reading support outside the classroom each week.
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6. Joyce Bertrand, Dulcinea's second grade classroom teacher, described her as kind, cooperative, social, hard working, persistent and eager to learn.After initially resisting help, Dulcinea learned helpful reading strategies and was able to apply them in the general classroom.Thereafter Dulcinea fully participated in all aspects of the second grade classroom and curriculum.Ms. Bertrand testified that, based on the writing prompts, the Diagnostic Reading Assessments ("DRA") and the portfolio reviews she conducted with Dulcinea throughout the second grade, she believes Dulcinea made "significant" overall educational progress in the second grade.She did not recommend any additional or different services for Dulcinea's third grade year. (Bertrand; See also P-60; P-37)
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Dulcinea's special education needs arise out of her documented reading disability. (Hamel, Shaw; P-34, P-56) To address the reading disability directly, the school provided individualized, direct reading instruction using a structured, sequential, phonetically based reading program: Wilson, as recommended by all evaluators and service providers. (P-34; P-56; Hamel, Shaw) To ensure that Dulcinea has access to the general curriculum the School provided reading/language support in the regular classroom and presentation and production accommodations for the regular education demands. (S-4; Bertrand; Girouard) The preponderance of the evidence shows that with these services in place Dulcinea made meaningful educational progress both in mastering the IEP goals set out for her in the 2004-2005 IEP (Hamel), and in acquiring the skills necessary to participate effectively in the regular education setting. (Bertrand, Girouard, Shaw, Grant) It is highly significant that Dulcinea continued to make
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Further I find that the preponderance of the credible evidence in the record supports the conclusion that the 2005-2006 IEP proposed by GDRSD contains the type and level of special education services and support recommended for Dulcinea by both school based teachers and assessors and parent selected evaluators. (Bertrand, Hamel, Shaw; P-34; P-35) All recommended services were incorporated into the IEP.
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There is no credible formal diagnosis of any such disability in this record. (P-57; P-40, S-19; P-35, S-20) There are no functional observations by service providers working with Dulcinea that would support such a finding. (Hamel, Girouard, Bertrand) There are no service or accommodation recommendations relevant to such a diagnosis that are not already being implemented in Dulcinea's existing classroom, previously proposed in the 2005-2006 IEP rejected by the Parents, or peculiar in any way to the educational program available at the Carroll School. (Lowell; Girouard; Shubow; P-41, S-2; S-4) Finally the evaluation by Ms. Shubow that the Parents rely upon to demonstrate the existence of an auditory processing disorder was conducted in May 2006, six months after the Team meeting held to develop the rejected 2005-2006 IEP and in preparation for this June 2006 hearing.