ED PARA,EX ED,C

Salary Schedule

About the Role

Under direct supervision, this position provides staff support in an educational or child care environment, performing paraprofessional work to assist teachers and students. Employees work with certified teachers, occupational therapists, and other certified specialists in the education, care, and development of mentally, physically, emotionally disabled, and other special needs students. The role involves providing instructional, vocational, and developmental assistance to trainable and educable exceptional students.

Responsibilities

• Responds to internal and external customers in a timely, accurate, courteous, and empathetic manner, representing OCPS positively.
• Provides instructional, vocational, and developmental assistance to special needs students as prescribed by the supervising teacher.
• Assists students with transportation, including physically transferring students from wheelchairs to school desks or floor mats.
• Supports students with gross motor activities such as grasping, holding objects, posture, crawling, walking, and running.
• Assists with fine motor activities, including playing with toys, cutting materials, and coloring.
• Helps students with daily living skills such as dressing, eating, lavatory needs, grooming, and personal hygiene.
• Monitors, observes, and charts student behavior, documenting changes, outbursts, and other actions.
• Applies crisis intervention principles for students with aggressive behavior, including physical restraint when necessary.
• Reinforces school rules, encourages appropriate behavior, and corrects inappropriate behavior.
• Assists in preparing lesson plans, behavior modification plans, and pre-planning sessions; helps develop learning activities and instructional materials.
• Maintains accurate records of student activities and behavior, including data entry on computer terminals.
• Supervises learning activities, circulates within the classroom, and provides support to students.
• May perform monitoring duties in hallways, lunchrooms, restrooms, and during bus duty; escorts students to designated areas.
• May assist in labs, translating lesson plans and information for better student comprehension.
• Stays updated on current technology used by OCPS and attends training to maintain required skill levels.
• Ensures timely and accurate information management as part of job responsibilities.

Requirements

• Associate’s degree or higher; or at least sixty (60) semester hours from an accredited institution of higher education (official transcript required).
• Passing the paraprofessional certification exam can substitute for the educational requirement to meet highly qualified status.
• Must be highly qualified prior to the start of employment with Orange County Public Schools.
• Ability to fulfill physical and dexterity requirements of the work and effectively attend to school-age children.
• Minimum two (2) years of experience working with school-age children in an educational environment, with familiarity of the physical and emotional behaviors and challenges of exceptional needs children.
• Demonstrated stress management skills.

Skills

• Data Utilization: Ability to evaluate, audit, deduce, and assess data using established criteria, including discretion in determining consequences and selecting alternatives.
• Human Interaction: Ability to apply principles of persuasion and influence.
• Equipment Utilization: Ability to operate special needs equipment, devices, and standard office equipment.
• Verbal Aptitude: Ability to utilize a wide variety of reference, descriptive, and advisory data and information.
• Mathematical Aptitude: Depending on assignment, may require ability to perform basic arithmetic, calculate decimals, percentages, use fractions, or interpret graphs.
• Functional Reasoning: Ability to follow detailed but uninvolved written or oral instructions with some latitude for independent judgment.
• Situational Reasoning: Ability to exercise judgment, decisiveness, and creativity in evaluating information against sensory, judgmental, or subjective criteria.

ADA Compliance

• Physical Ability: Tasks involve exerting very heavy physical effort, including climbing, balancing, stooping, kneeling, crouching, crawling, and lifting, carrying, pushing, or pulling objects up to 100 pounds (occasionally heavier).
• Sensory Requirements: Most tasks require visual perception and discrimination; some require oral communication and sound discrimination.
• Environmental Factors: Tasks are regularly performed with exposure to adverse conditions, such as violence when working with developmentally disabled or emotionally disturbed children.

The Orange County School District will provide reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities to allow them to perform the essential functions of the job when requested.