2023 Laws of Puerto Rico › TITLE EIGHTEEN - Education (§§ 1 — 3510-3520) › PART III - Educational Activities Generally (§§ 861-866 — 1597b) › Chapter 87A - Integral Educational Services for Persons with Disabilities (§§ 1351 — 1359) › § 1354 - Office of Assistant Secretary—Creation

The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Integral Educational Services for Persons with Disabilities is hereby created as an operational component of the Department of Education, which henceforth shall be the successor of the Special Education Program, which is hereby empowered to be organized, exercising the powers, autonomy and administrative and educational flexibility granted by this chapter, to render educational and related services to persons with disabilities; and to coordinate the services assigned to the other participating agencies.
The Assistant Secretary shall be appointed by the Secretary of Education and shall implement the public policy established in this chapter.
Taking into consideration the multiplicity of special conditions and needs of the persons with disabilities and recognizing the need for those services and equipment to be provided promptly, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Integral Educational Services for Persons with Disabilities is hereby granted the administrative, educational, and fiscal autonomy to operate effectively.
Administrative autonomy. — The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Integral Educational Services for Persons with Disabilities shall have autonomy to plan and implement the administrative processes for the attainment of an effective education. Likewise, it may make decisions and take steps to expedite the functioning and operation of the Office of the Assistant Secretary. It may select and appoint the teaching and classified personnel who shall render services thereto; it shall recognize the vested rights from the training and experience of the candidates in the various categories; it shall also recognize the vested rights of the teaching personnel. In addition it shall design a personnel evaluation system and shall provide activities for professional growth.
Educational autonomy. — The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Integral Educational Services for Persons with Disabilities shall have educational autonomy. This implies the freedom to develop specially adapted to persons with disabilities and to identify and select the teams and special indispensable teaching materials. In this manner, the student shall be provided with a diversity of educational options so that, on the basis if his/her particular needs and interests, he/she may achieve the greatest development of his/her personality and potentiality.
To attain that diversity of options, the Office of the Assistant Secretary can be organized following different schemes, modalities of services including schedules that are deemed to be adequate to achieve the desired goals of educational excellence.
Fiscal autonomy. — The Office of the Assistant Secretary shall have its own budget and fiscal autonomy which will allow it to draft, administer and supervise its budget; reprogram the funds appropriated or economies according to the priorities of the services; purchase services, materials, books equipment and supplies without the intervention of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Administrative Services of the Department of Education or its equivalent, and without being subject to the Purchases, Services and Supplies Program of § 933a of Title 3. It shall prepare and approve regulations for the purchase and payment of services, equipment and supplies pursuant to the norms and procedures established in said Act that are in harmony with the fiscal autonomy that this chapter grants it and to expedite the contracting of professional and related services pertinent to the special needs of persons with disabilities, in accordance with the norms and regulations to be established in harmony with generally accepted accounting principles and established as sound practices of fiscal administration.
The Office of the Assistant Secretary is hereby empowered to receive donations, which shall be governed by §§ 1101 et seq. of Title 3, which shall be invested in direct services for students with disabilities.
History —June 7, 1996, No. 51, § 5.