School district in search of few good speech therapists

WENDY PIERRO/Acorn Newspapers Speech Pathologist Laura Cornish works with students at Tierra Linda Elementary School earlier this week. Carol Bjordahl, special education director for the Pleasant Valley School District, was in a pinch. The 2009-10 school year had started and three schools in the district didn’t have speechlanguage pathologists on staff.

Speech-language pathologists, more commonly known as speech therapists, help correct speech problems for special education students from preschool through high school.

In June, Pleasant Valley lost three speech therapists to retirement and a fourth to another job offer.

Only a few applications “trickled in” after the district began posting job vacancies on a local and statewide education employment website the month before, Bjordahl said.

She interviewed three people and offered the job to one. But that person turned down the offer after asking for more benefits than the district could deliver.

After exhausting all the applications, Bjordahl contacted employment agencies that represent speech-language pathologists. She interviewed about a dozen people for one full-time and four part-time positions. Because none of the candidates wanted full-time employment, Bjordahl hired five part-time specialists.

Desperately seeking

speech therapists

At a time when unemployment is near an all-time high and most employers have their pick of applicants, speech-language pathologists can call the shots, even in a tight market.

The district had to fill a fulltime position at Dos Caminos and Camarillo Heights elementary schools with three part-time specialists—one an independent contractor and the others hired through an agency. The Dos Caminos specialist started in September and the speech therapists for Camarillo Heights should begin working this month, Bjordahl said.

This scenario is likely being played out in the rest of Ventura County and the state. The statewide education employment website, Edjoin.org, listed 70 openings for speech-language pathologists at K-12 schools throughout California last week.

In Ventura County, the Special Education Local Plan Area (SELPA) listed job vacancies for speech-language pathologists at eight schools. Ventura County SELPA, the coordinating agency for special education in 21 school districts from Agoura to Ojai, serves 11 percent of the county student population, about 16,800 students ages 3 to 21.

Time was another concern for Bjordahl. The law requires schools to fulfill the requirements of an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) created for every special education student. The plan is developed by the school district, the parents, a classroom teacher and a specialist in the area where the child needs help—a speech-language pathologist, an occupational therapist, a physical therapist or all three.

The plan could require the specialist to work with the student for a certain number of hours a week, and the school must comply or face possible legal action.

Mary Samples, SELPA assistant superintendent, said another problem is pay. Speech-language pathologists, who must hold a master’s degree and a state license, can earn twice as much in the medical field as they do in education, she said. They must also hold a credential to work in California schools, although it doesn’t require more training, Samples said.

Bjordahl and Samples attributed the shortage to two main factors. First, the local pool of speech-language pathologists is evaporating, due in large part to retirement. Second, there is no local education program to train qualified specialists.

The closest university offering the entire program is California State University Northridge. At any given time, there are some 450 undergraduate and graduate students in the speech-language pathology program, said Stephen Sinclair, chair of the communication disorders and sciences department.

About 110 students a year are accepted into the two-year residential and three-year online master’s programs.

The program runs at capacity all the time, Sinclair said.

Despite state cutbacks, the program has not had to eliminate courses, but Sinclair said he fears that further budget cuts could force the issue.

The shortage of speech-language pathologists is nationwide but more acute in California, where there are few master’s programs and no doctoral program, he said.

“It’s a problem because the best and brightest leave California to seek (the training), and it’s unlikely they’ll come back,” Sinclair said.

Ventura County sends a representative to the university to recruit budding graduates, but Los Angeles-area schools seem to snap them up, Samples said.

The problem with

contractors

Bjordahl said that for several reasons she’d prefer that speechlanguage pathologists were district employees. Agency-hired specialists are more difficult to supervise and direct and can leave the job at any time, while district employees tend to stay put, she said.

In addition, agency hires and self-employed contractors cost the district more than actual employees. Pleasant Valley pays a newly licensed, credentialed speech-language pathologist with a master’s degree about $60,000 a year in salary and benefits.

The self-employed specialist is charging the district $95 an hour, a rate that, if full-time, would equal an annual salary of $112,300.

Agency hires cost Pleasant Valley about $70 an hour or the fulltime equivalent of $82,800 a year.

“It’s supply and demand,” Bjordahl said. “They know we need them, so they can charge more.”

She must act quickly when she finds an excellent candidate.

“I’m in a race with all these (school districts) who could possibly offer a better salary,” Bjordahl said.

Samples said at least five school districts in Ventura County have had to fill vacancies for speech-language pathologists through outside agencies.

“We don’t have a choice,” Samples said. “If the child has an (IEP), we have to serve them the hours listed. . . . It’s a legal requirement.”

Samples said her department has called on local universities to start a program that would turn out qualified specialists. But the schools face several obstacles.

A certain number of the faculty must hold a doctoral degree in speech-language pathology, but such professionals are very difficult to find.

In addition, Jeffery Danhauer, chair of speech and hearing sciences at the UC Santa Barbara, said instituting a program for speech-language pathologists would take an enormous amount of resources for undergraduate and graduate courses, laboratories and such—too much to expect from smaller universities.

Samples said perhaps the re

cession could offer some relief. Unemployed people may be enticed back to college, but even if they meet the academic and financial demands of college, they still have to be accepted into a program.

“We just have to keep trying to get people into the profession,” Samples said.