Suzie Reagle hopes perspective applicants see her job postings.
As director of the Kokomo Area Special Education Cooperative (KASEC), Reagle hires certain staff for schools in Howard County, including Eastern, Taylor and Western school districts.
That includes speech language pathologists for KASEC’s functional skills classrooms. These classes have students on nondiploma tracks and teaches them basic life skills they’ll need for after school.
A speech language pathologist (SLP) is a required position for schools. An SLP is a type of therapist who works with students on their speech, language and communication skills.
The range of skills is expansive, everything from pronouncing the “R” sound correctly to communicating wants and needs.
“A large number of students require those services,” Reagle said.
Speech language therapy is written into a student’s Individualized Educational Plan (IEP). An IEP is a legally binding document for a school district. A school must provide the services listed in an IEP. Failure to do so violates federal law.
Hence, SLPs are important in a school setting. And they’re getting harder to find.
SCOOPED UP
All too often, those who see Reagle’s postings aren’t SLPs but contract companies offering SLPs.
“That’s when my emails increase,” she said. “They’re actively watching our website or the DOE (Indiana Department of Education) website.”
These companies, with names such as Soliant, IEP Therapy and Cumberland Therapy Services, offer employees schools have difficulty finding.
Schools negotiate a contract with a company for an SLP, for example. How many hours and days the SLP works is part of the negotiation.
The relationship between schools and contract companies is a complicated one.
A contract SLP can be a godsend, especially for a rural school district that struggles to recruit and retain staff or for schools scrambling mid-year to fill an important position.
But there are plenty of catches.
A school does not pay the salary or benefits of a contracted school employee. Instead, a school pays the contract company, sometimes double what a school would pay the employee if they were on the district’s payroll.
Reagle said KASEC will pay a contract company between $90,000 and $110,000 for an SLP. In some cases, it’s more than double what a school might pay a SLP directly.
Speech language pathologists for the special education cooperative are on Western School Corporation’s teacher pay scale. They are placed on the pay scale much like teachers, based on years of experience and education.
Those salaries are less than what a school pays a contracted company. Reagle is unsure what a contract company pays an SLP. No company contacted for this story responded to interview requests.
What Reagle does know is these companies are scooping up SLP candidates long before a school can reach them.
“They’re getting to those students as undergraduate students,” she said. “I know it. They’re making what they do seem far more attractive than working in schools.”
A COMPETITIVE MARKET
The contract-company model isn’t reserved just for SLPs.
Companies work with schools to staff school psychologists and other types of therapists, including occupational and physical therapists. Reagle said companies are branching out, now offering special education paraprofessionals.
Companies actively recruit for these positions, meaning schools are competing with the same companies they are often end up paying to help fill their staffing needs.
Leah Nellis, Indiana University Kokomo’s dean of education, has been recruited herself. Her background is in school psychology with more than 20 years as a school psych educator and program director.
Nellis said there is a perceived benefit for a licensed school psychologist or therapist to sign on with a contract company. There’s more flexibility, and work could be remote or virtual.
“I think contract companies make that seem more possible,” Nellis said. “I can’t tell how much more lucrative it is, total compensation package.”
A contract between a school and company for a therapist or psychologist is usually a year. If a school wants to increase the amount of days and hours a week, that must be negotiated. Upping hours or days might work, or a company might offer a speech language pathologist assistant.
Contracts come with an out-clause for both parties. Reagle said it’s usually a 30-business-day notification.
There are also non-compete clauses. An SLP can’t work for a school they were contracted with for a certain amount of time.
If a school likes their SLP, they can buy out their contract and have them work directly for the district. Buying out a contract is expensive, though.
“Talk about a money maker,” Reagle said.
A 2022 survey by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association found Indiana school SLPs had the highest median caseload with 72 students.
School psychologists also face high caseloads. The National Association of School Psychologists recommend a school-psychologist-to-student ratio of 1:500. In Indiana, it was 1:1,502 during the 2021-22 school year. That’s worse than the national ratio of 1:1,127.
Are contracting companies compounding the shortage issues school face in filling these positions? It’s a good question, Nellis said, but she’s not sure.
They’re likely not a barrier for entering the profession. Instead, companies that scoop up therapists and psychologists might make it harder for certain schools to find staff, Nellis posited.
“It’s probably hurting most, those regions, those communities, where they have trouble recruiting people to simply live,” she said. “It is probably exacerbating the issue in some areas.”
Schools aren’t just competing with these companies. There’s also the medical field, which offers better salaries and benefits. An SLP can work in a medical setting, such as a nursing home, and make more.
Reagle said they try to leverage a school’s schedule with possible candidates — summers off, plenty of breaks during the year.
But Nellis said there’s another reason why schools are staring down shortages of positions they’re legally required to have: the number of students being admitted into college programs.
NEEDS: MONEY, FLEXIBILITY, SUPERVISORS
To be a certified speech language pathologist, one needs an undergraduate degree, a graduate degree, an externship and fellowship.
The fellowship, which comes after grad work, is a paid position. The SLP might work in a school under the supervision of someone else.
Purdue University’s Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Science graduates between 25 and 30 students a year.
The graduate program is highly clinical. Students must complete several clinical hours, which are supervised. People are needed to supervise. To admit and graduate more students would take more faculty.
“It would take more money to support clinical faculty lines,” said Chenell Loudermill, director of clinical education for Speech-Language Pathology at Purdue. “The main thing is more faculty and university programs.”
There would also be a need for additional facilities to host students completing their hours. This can be tricky, Loudermill said. There are only so many hospitals in a city, for example. There are also liability issues participating facilities would need to work through.
School psychology is also very clinical in nature. A school psychology degree is somewhere between a master’s degree and doctorate. Programs are geared toward full-time students. Part-time students and non-traditional students are often shut out of these programs due to workload demand.
But Indiana University is working on changing that. A program is in the works at IU and its regional campuses that would allow students to go back to school for a school psychology degree while keeping their day job.
“We’ve got to create some flexibility and provide some financial support,” Nellis said. “We know we’re going to have to develop some programs for working adults.”
It’s not that easy for SLPs. Loudermill said SLP programs are more demanding, given that speech-language students must learn to work in nine different environments, not just schools, per accreditation standards.
“This requires a lot of their time to get all the clinical hours and course work complete,” she said. And like many other issues facing public education, funding is needed. Additional funding would help schools offer more competitive wages when going up against the medical field for employees.
The proliferation of high caseloads and less therapists and psychologists to do the work will cause those in the profession to provide reactive services instead of proactive services that get at the root of a student’s issues, according to Nellis.
“It’s totally opposite of what we know,” she said.
“It makes you feel like you’re not making a difference, which is why you probably went into the profession,” Loudermill added.
That in and of itself will result in burnout, which will lead more people to leave the profession.
“The barriers they face is continuously mounting,” Loudermill said of schools. “There’s a great need for school-based SLPs.”
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