Autism Specialist​/BCBA;

Starting Date: Immediately

DISTRICT OVERVIEW

Holyoke Public Schools is a PreK-12 public school district serving nearly 5,100 students, of whom 80 percent are Latino/Latina, in 11 schools. We employ nearly 1,300 people who together educate and support a richly diverse community of learners. We are committed to recruiting and retaining top-quality educators who believe all children can and will learn and who strive daily to make school a joyful place of discovery, support, and belonging.

Holyoke Public Schools’ strategic plan, “Moving Forward Together,” builds on the strengths of our past while serving as a call to action to accelerate student learning by thinking differently about how we teach, how we work together, and how we support students’ well being.

Our Equity Commitments are pledges we are making to address systemic equity challenges.

• We intentionally build a community that is anti‑racist, inclusive, and culturally responsive.
• We ensure that students, families, and staff get the support they need to be successful.
• We seek out and incorporate the voices of those impacted, with a commitment to include those who have been excluded in the past.
• We promote access and inclusion for all students, staff, and families.
• We respect, embrace, and honor the diversity of our students, families, staff, and community.
• We reflect on our own behavior to minimize harm to others.
• We create a culture of acceptance and empathy so that everyone feels valued and is able to contribute to our community’s success.

Goal:
The primary role of the Autism Specialist/BCBA is to support the development, implementation, and refinement of programmatic and individual social and behavioral supports, using strategies based on principles of applied behavior analysis (ABA). The Autism Specialist/BCBA will function in a consultative role, whose expertise will increase the capacity of all team members to effectively provide least restrictive behaviorally‑based supports to students and related professional development and direct training to staff throughout each school day.

The following outline of the role and responsibilities is intended to provide a broad overview, but is subject to change according to the needs of the school district, as required by the Director of Intensive Services, Chief of Pupil Services, and Receiver/Superintendent of Schools.

• Adheres to all ethical guidelines, as outlined by the BACB. Adheres to all state and district designed special education processes and procedures.
• Creates & implements staff training and development around principles of ABA and related school‑based topics during building based and district wide professional development opportunities throughout the school year, as directed by Director of Intensive Services and building principal.
• Direct supervision of assigned RBT staff
• Conducts assessments including, but not limited to:
  Functional Behavioral Assessment/Analysis (FBA/FA), adaptive assessments (ie. Vineland, ABAS‑3), social/language/skills‑based assessments (ie. ABLLS‑R, VB‑MAPP, AFLS), home visits, and other related assessments necessary to analyze measurable information to formulate team recommendations and action planning toward overcoming learning barriers and meeting IEP goals and objectives.
• Collaborates with educational teams to create Behavior Support Plans (BSP) and other behaviorally based student support interventions, that are feasible for implementation across all educational settings.
• Creates and implements structured program/individual staff training on therapeutic staff design/implementation of BSPs and other individualized recommended strategies to ensure: high fidelity of implementation, progress monitoring, and student success and independence.
• Models applied behavior analytic intervention strategies and data collection techniques for direct service providers, classroom teachers, paraprofessionals, and other school‑based stakeholders.
• Monitors data on a scheduled basis, identifies change timelines, shares action steps to staff, and provides real time feedback to staff following observations.
• Directly assists and supports teams with crisis/safety situations where…