Child Find

Paris Independent School District is ready, willing and able to identify and serve all children with disabilities residing within its jurisdiction who are in need of special education and related services.

Paris Independent School District is responsible for identifying, locating, and evaluating children from birth through age 21, with known or suspected disabilities who reside in and/or attend school within the school district’s boundaries to determine whether a need for special education and related services exists.  Child Find includes children who reside in group or nursing homes and/or who attend private or homeschools within the district’s boundaries regardless of place of residence.

Anyone in the community who is concerned with the welfare of a child may participate in the Child Find process.  Child Find accepts referrals on children who may have a disability.  Parent involvement and agreement is obtained prior to any further action.  Information is confidential and the privacy of the child and parents is protected.  Should an assessment be required, it is provided at no cost to the parent.

If you suspect or know of a child who has one or more of the following disabilities, please contact our office at (903) 737-7494.

Speech and/or Language Impairment

Speech or Language Impairment is a communication disorder, such as stuttering, impaired articulation, language impairment, or a voice impairment that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.

Autism

Autism is a developmental disability significantly affecting verbal and nonverbal communication and social interaction, generally evident before age three, which adversely affects a child’s educational performance.  Other characteristics often associated with autism are engagement in repetitive activities and stereotyped movements, resistance to environmental change or change in daily routines, and unusual responses to sensory experiences.

Specific Learning Disability

Specific Learning Disabilities is a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in the imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations including conditions such as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, and developmental aphasia.

Intellectual Disability

Intellectual Disability is significantly sub average general intellectual functioning, existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior and manifested during the developmental period that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.

Emotional Disturbance

Emotional Disturbance is a condition exhibiting one or more of the following characteristics over a long period of time and to a marked degree that adversely affects a child’s education performance.

• An inability to learn that cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory or health factors.
• An inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers and/or teachers.
• Inappropriate type of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances.
• A general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression.
• A tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems.
• The term includes schizophrenia.  It does not apply to children who are socially maladjusted, unless it is determined that they have a serious emotional disturbance.

Orthopedic Impairment

Orthopedic Impairment is a severe orthopedic impairment that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.  The term includes impairments caused by a congenital anomaly, impairments caused by disease and impairments from other causes such as cerebral palsy and amputations.

Other Health Impairment

Other Health Impairment is having limited strength, vitality or alertness, including a heightened alertness to environmental stimuli, that results in limited alertness with respect to the educational environment, that

• Is due to chronic or acute health problems such as asthma, attention deficit disorder, diabetes, epilepsy, heart condition, hemophilia, lead poisoning, leukemia, nephritis, rheumatic fever, and sickle cell anemia, and
• Adversely affects a child’s educational performance

Visual Impairment (including blindness)

Visual Impairment including blindness means an impairment in vision that, even with correction, adversely affects a child’s educational performance.  The term includes both partial sight and blindness.

Auditory Impairment (including deafness)

Auditory Impairment is an impairment in hearing, whether permanent or fluctuating, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance but that is not included under the definition of deafness of this section.

Deaf is a hearing impairment that is so severe that the child is impaired in processing linguistic information through hearing with or without amplification that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.

Traumatic Brain Injury

Traumatic Brain Injury is an acquired injury to the brain caused by an external physical force, resulting in total or partial functional disability or psychosocial impairment, or both, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.  Traumatic brain injury applies to open or closed head injuries resulting in impairments in one or more areas, such as cognition, language, memory, attention, abstract thinking judgement, problem-solving, sensory, perceptual and motor abilities, psychosocial behavior, physical functions, information processing, and speech.  Traumatic brain injury does not apply to brain injuries that are congenital or degenerative, or to brain injuries induced by birth trauma.

Multiple Disabilities

Multiple Disabilities are concomitant impairments (such as intellectual disability-blindness, intellectual disability-orthopedic impairment, etc), the combination of which causes such severe educational needs that they cannot be accommodated in special education programs solely for one of the impairments.  Multiple disabilities does not include deaf-blindness.

A student with multiple disabilities is one who has a combination of disabilities included in this section and who meets all of the following conditions:

1.  The student’s disability is expected to continue indefinitely, and

2.  The disabilities severely impair performance in two or more of the following areas:
   1.  Psycho-motor skills,
   2.  Self-care skills,
   3.  Communication,
   4.  Social and emotional development, or
   5.  Cognition