Distance Learning

Lone Pine USD Turns to Online Speech Pathology

• By Joshua Bolkan
• 08/17/15

The Lone Pine Unified School District (LPUSD) has gone public with its use of an online speech therapy service.

The district, economically disadvantaged and near the California-Nevada border, found it difficult to recruit and retain qualified personnel for the position and decided to use PresenceLearning's services.

"Research shows that socioeconomic status is the number one statistic in predicting overall student and school district underachievement, and approximately 70 percent of our students are socioeconomically disadvantaged," said Sean A. Cianfarano, superintendent of LPUSD, in a prepared statement. "However, with PresenceLearning and our pre-academic early intervention efforts spearheaded by our excellent educators and support staff, we are now beating the odds at LPUSD."

After adopting the service in the 2013-2014 school year, LPUSD received the company's Award of Excellence, which goes to the "districts with the highest percentage of students who improved one level or more in spoken language production and spoken language comprehension on the Functional Communication Measures (FCMs) scales during the school year," according to a news release.

"I would not choose a service option for our school district that we, as a family, would not choose for our own child," added Cianfarano, whose sone used PresenceLearning as a kindergarten student. "Early literacy is so important for young learners, but if the student cannot speak, it is really hard for them to be literate because it is all tied together. PresenceLearning empowers students to speak, but it's more than that. It empowers students to be successful."