ODESSA, Fla. — Pasco County parents pushed for changes to the school district’s PIP, or Private Instruction Personnel policy, last school year after some revisions in January raised concerns.

What You Need To Know

  • Pasco County's updated PIP Policy allows for therapy during instructional, and non-instructional time at school

  • The PIP, or Private Instruction Personnel policy, allows for outside therapists to come into the school to work with children who may have special needs

  • More Spectrum Bay News 9 Back to School headlines

Now, after meeting with district officials and working together throughout the summer, they say there’s a new PIP policy in place that will make it much easier to get children the therapy they may need during school.

Spectrum Bay News 9 first introduced you to Jessica Silber, and her son, Elliot, last March.  At the time, she was worried about changes Pasco County Schools made to its PIP policy.

“A PIP policy is a private instruction personnel policy.  It allows a parent to hire a private person to come into the school district to provide services for their child, so it could be occupational therapy, speech therapy, a private duty nurse, but most commonly, the most controversial one, is an ABA therapist,” Silber said.

Elliot, who is now five and will be entering kindergarten, is diagnosed with autism. Silber says the old PIP policy may have prevented him from receiving his ABA therapy in the classroom, and she wasn’t alone with her concerns.

“We went to the school board, we had news articles, they seemed to be very receptive. And at the beginning of this summer they pulled together some work groups,” she said.

Silber says the school district was receptive, and after taking all of the feedback, students will have the opportunity to receive ABA therapy in the classroom, not just during “non-instructional” time, should they need it.

“They drafted a new policy, which really seems to put more of the responsibility on meeting with the school based team to determine where the best place to provide that is,” said Silber.

While the plan for Elliot doesn’t include having his ABA therapist in class with him, Silber says knowing the option is there should he ever need it gives her peace of mind.

“What was important to me, is that if we need to bring it in, I didn’t want to jump through 10 hoops. I wanted to be able to implement it immediately and by having this policy, we’re able to see that turnaround is happening very quickly,” she said.

Now, the Silber’s plan on enjoying what’s left of summer, knowing they’re ready to confidently conquer kindergarten. 

The policy in Pasco County is very similar to the policy in place in Hillsborough County Schools. If your child may need some sort of outside therapy during the school day, Silber says your first step is to contact the principal at their school, then a meeting will be scheduled to review an adequate plan.