Conclusions — Morningside Special Education Staffing Data Brief

What the Data Shows

Morningside Elementary School currently serves 28 students with special education service minutes, 20 of whom are in grades K–4 and will continue next year. This meets Granite School District’s own threshold of 20 students for full-time special education staffing. The decision to reduce the position to half-time was made when the count stood at 19. The data has changed.

Published research shows that each student on a special education teacher’s caseload requires approximately 1.54 to 2.42 hours of teacher time per week — covering direct instruction, IEP meetings and compliance, paperwork, collaboration with general education teachers, parent communication, and the new responsibilities created by Utah’s SB 241 Early Literacy law. For 20 students, that totals 30.8 to 48.3 hours per week. After accounting for non-special-education duties — morning duty, recess duty, lunch (duty-free by law), staff meetings, and other school responsibilities — a full-time teacher has approximately 31–34 hours available for special education work. A half-time teacher has approximately 14.5, further reduced by travel time between schools.

At half-time, the teacher is 16 to 34 hours short every week. This is not a matter of efficiency or prioritization. The gap is structural — there are not enough hours to deliver mandated services, conduct required meetings, maintain compliance, and fulfill new state obligations within half-time availability.

What It Means for Students

When a special education teacher cannot complete more than half of their required responsibilities, the consequences fall on students:

IEP service minutes may not be fully delivered, denying students the specially designed instruction their plans require
Annual IEP reviews, triennial re-evaluations, and amendment meetings face scheduling bottlenecks and potential timeline violations
Collaboration between the special education teacher and general education teachers is reduced from daily availability to half-time availability, weakening the inclusive support students depend on
On days the teacher is at the other school, students in behavioral or academic crisis have no immediate special education support
Progress monitoring becomes less frequent, resulting in less responsive instruction and potentially inaccurate reporting to parents
Relationships with families become fragmented, increasing the risk of miscommunication and due process complaints

Looking Forward

The data presented in this brief is based entirely on publicly available research, published state frameworks, and the district’s own reporting. All workload estimates use conservative, low-end figures. Substituting actual Morningside IEP service minute data would likely produce a larger gap than the 53% conservative estimate.

Three facts have changed since the original staffing decision was made:

The student count has increased to 20, meeting the district’s own threshold of 20 — and does not account for the needs of incoming kindergartners, which may push the count higher.
Utah SB 241 (Early Literacy) was signed into law, taking effect July 1, 2026, and substantially increasing the special education teacher’s workload through individualized reading plans, literacy team participation, benchmark coordination, and retention exemption processes.
National research continues to document the connection between special education teacher workload, burnout, and student outcomes — with particular urgency following pandemic-era achievement declines among students with disabilities.

The estimated annual savings from this staffing change is approximately $55,000. The potential annual costs — including due process hearings ($70,000 per case per Granite SD’s own estimate), compensatory services for undelivered IEP minutes, teacher replacement if the position drives attrition, and SB 241 funding penalties — range from $130,000 to $270,000 or more depending on outcomes. The break-even point is less than one due process case per year.

A workload-based analysis demonstrates that half-time staffing for 20 students across five grade levels creates an unworkable gap. The data supports revisiting this decision.