St. Jerome Academy 

St. Jerome Academy's Student Assistance Team (SAT) provides extra support for students struggling to benefit from general education, whether below expectations or insufficiently challenged. Aiming to resolve problems collaboratively without special education referral, this team designs tailored interventions focusing on individual students' strengths within general education.

The SAT meets weekly and includes homeroom teachers when their students are discussed. The team members are listed below.

The St. Jerome Academy Resource Program is a program designed for the service of students in kindergarten through eighth grade. The program was created to make our classical education accessible to all students, especially those students with diverse learning needs. Whether students have Individual Education Plans (IEP), 504 plans, private evaluations, or need intervention, the resource program seeks to assist in reading, writing, and mathematics instruction. In the resource program, students are either pulled out of their classes for more individualized instruction or are instructed within classrooms using an inclusion model. St. Jerome Academy has two full-time Resource Teachers who work with teachers, parents, and the Student Assistance Team to oversee the progress of all students.

Our Resource Program works with students and parents to develop a Catholic Accommodation Plan (CAP) to document in-class accommodations and where necessary Individual Catholic Education Plan (ICEP) for broader accommodations, modifications, intervention services, annual goals, and short-term measurable objectives. These plans are reevaluated every semester and include feedback from the classroom teachers and specialist teachers.

The Orton-Gillingham Program is the primary reading intervention for students who need extra help to learn how to read and spell decodable and sight words. Depending on educational needs, students may receive one to five 50-minute sessions per week.

In addition, the school has two other programs available to help with reading fluency:

1. Great Leaps is an individually administered program that builds reading fluency with individual sounds, word phrases, and passages.
2. Learning Ally is a text-to-speech program that uses a human voice instead of a robotic one, allowing students to read with emotion and better comprehend the material.

Teachers consider adjusting homework assignment quantity, format, and timing to support a student's learning. This could include writing upcoming assignments, projects, quizzes, and tests on the board, having a signed assignment pad from both the teacher and parent daily, and emailing assignments to both the student and parent as necessary. Submitting homework electronically, breaking work into smaller segments, allowing extra time to complete tasks, and reducing the emphasis on handwriting can benefit resource students.

Additionally, providing written directions for assignments, simplifying multi-step directions, using audio books, speech-to-text/text-to-speech technology, spell checkers, calculators, addition/multiplication charts, and other assistive technologies can lead to increased academic success. Furthermore, providing copies of notes or note-taking templates, organizational/procedural checklists, read-tos, visual aids, and timers can all assist with learning.

Finally, providing a study guide as specified, reducing the amount of board copying, providing a scribe, small group instruction, large print, allowing wait time for oral responses, and utilizing graphic organizers for written pieces can all lead to more significant progress in the classroom. Exemptions from Latin foreign language requirements could include providing two 50-minute sessions per week to complete classroom assignments and two 50-minute sessions for reading instruction.