Comprehensive Services


Related Services are integrated into the learning and working environments of the Pathway School by full-time credentialed professionals.



    Related services professionals are part of the student’s IEP team and provide consultation and training to teachers and parents.


Counseling Services


  • Utilizing a preventative wellness model of care and service delivery, the Clinical department of Pathway embraces each student fully at their current ability.

  • Our program model takes a developmental approach designed to support, encourage, educate, and empower students toward wholeness and to equip students to be connected, contributing members of society.

Tier I – Approximately 80% of Pathway students receive clinical services at the classroom or milieu level. These students receive proactive clinical support through:

  • Regular classroom consults

  • Social, Interpersonal skill groups, and Experiential groups

  • PRN emotional support

Tier II – Approximately 20% of Pathway students receive clinical services at the strategic monitoring level. Students meet requirements for this level of service through a clinical evaluation where it is determined clinical services are required to help the student access their educational environment. Services may include:

  • Case management

  • Group therapy

  • Individual therapy

  • Teacher consultation

  • Parent consultation and/or therapy

  • Consult with home-based clinical and/or behavior team

  • Social and Interpersonal skill groups

  • PRN emotional crisis support


Speech Services


Approximately 85% of Pathway students receive direct speech services, including individual, group and/or consult services. These services can include:


  • Individual student support for social communication, language skills, and auditory processing in treatment, inclusionary and generalized settings.

  • Themed social skills groups in order to utilize and/or promote hobbies and common interests as the basis for peers connecting through communication and socialization. Previous group themes include: scrapbooking, sign language, event organizing, detective activities, world cultures, and girls only topics.

  • Weekly classroom language groups to teach, practice and generalize social communication and perspective taking skills.

  • Special Education Teacher/Speech Therapist classroom collaboration to support vocational education/communication skills, and writing support for struggling students.

  • Careers collaboration to teach and reinforce pragmatic skills and employability skills in the employment setting.

  • Drama class collaboration, co-taught with a speech therapist.



Occupational Therapy


Students qualify for occupational therapy services if they demonstrate challenges with meaningful daily activities that the team identifies as interfering with their educational performance. Services can include:


  • Gross motor activities involving general strength, endurance, coordination, balance and positioning.

  • Fine motor activities involving object manipulation, written communication and assistive technology

  • Sensory motor activities involving spatial, tactile, movement and body awareness.

  • Cognitive skills including concentration, attention, memory and general problem solving skills.

  • Self care skills involving eating, dressing, grooming and hygiene.

  • Relaxation strategy exploration and training to provide students with tools for managing stressful situations

  • Organization of materials for ease in access to supplies

  • Work related activities involving body mechanics, perceptual skills, task organization, independent work skills and time management.

  • Social skill development involving interactions with others, self concept and self advocacy.


Positive Behavior Support


An essential part of the school’s education approach is the implementation of a School-Wide Positive Behavior Support model.


Attention is focused on creating and sustaining primary (school-wide), secondary (classroom), and tertiary (individual) systems of support that improve lifestyle results (personal, health, social, family, work, recreation) for all students by making problem behavior less effective, efficient and relevant, and desired behavior more functional.


The dynamics of School-Wide Positive Behavior Support (SW-PBS) focus on: environment, skill building, and staff responses. For more information, please click here (link to Addendum G)

Students who require more behavior support than what they can access at the milieu level will receive support through one or more of the following:



Functional Behavior Assessment (FBA)

A Functional Behavior Assessment is a document that looks at why the behavior is occurring, or what is maintaining the behavior. A Strategy Sheet or Positive Behavior Support Plan must be completed along with the FBA unless the function is not behaviorally based (e.g. medical or psychiatric) or the interventions/recommendations listed do not describe behavioral interventions (i.e. social skills training).

Strategy Sheet

A Strategy Sheet is a document that briefly describes the behaviors of concern for an individual student as well as the antecedents that trigger the behavior and strategies to reduce the behavior. The strategies include pro-active interventions to teach the student how to manage their own behavior and interventions to help de-escalate the student. A Strategy Sheet is the first formal behavioral document that Pathway staff will use for students with challenging behaviors and it is the least restrictive of all the behavioral documents. In addition, the Strategy Sheet fulfills the requirements for students who have “behaviors that impede learning” checked on their IEP.

Positive Behavior Support Plan (PBSP)

A Positive Behavior Support Plan is a document that describes the challenging behaviors of an individual student, as well as the appropriate, or replacement, behaviors that they are learning. The PBSP is a more restrictive and in-depth document than the Strategy Sheet, and is used for students who have needed two physical interventions in the or for students whose FBA findings require the need for intensive interventions. The PBSP shall:

  1. be developed by the IEP team

  2. be based on a FBA

  3. become part of the student’s IEP



Reading Services


Reading therapy follows the diagnostic/prescriptive model. Testing, observation and teacher input is utilized to determine an appropriate approach to reading instruction.

  • Evaluate all new students to establish an instructional reading level and appropriate placement within the program.

  • Evaluate students on a yearly basis before their IEP meeting.

  • Implement progress monitoring GRADE and Aimsweb.

  • Consult with all staff in regards to reading instruction.

  • Administer any additional testing if warranted.

  • Deliver reading services in a small group setting or on an individual basis.

  • Team teach with English teachers.

  • Investigate new reading programs.

  • Keep a running record of all the students’ progress in reading based on the informal reading inventory results.

  • Provide a list of summer reading books.


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