Duval County Public Schools will use Jacksonville University speech-pathology students as instructors at the dyslexic-focused GRASP Academy. The School Board voted in favor of the partnership Monday night.
Superintendent Nikolai Vitti says JU will provide a full-time pathologist at GRASP along with several student interns.
“Those interns that will be servicing students at GRASP, as far as speech is concerned, we’re hoping to recruit them as full-time employees after their education is completed so that we’re building a pipeline or a bench of speech-language pathologists, so we’re not relying as heavily on contracted services going into the future,” he says.
JU will also provide bilingual training to speech pathologists to help with students whose second language is English.
District-wide, Duval is short 13 speech pathologists, and some students who require services aren’t getting them. Vitti says he expects to fill half the vacancies by year’s end. The JU partnership is set to begin in January.
