2010-11-13 LPS - Student Services Staffing & Financial Assessment

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45 3. Create unambiguous guidelines for eligibility for special education, service levels, group size and exit. The lack of clear guidelines creates many strains on the system including perceived over referral to special education, potentially excessive time committed to testing, high levels of legal or potential legal actions, intensive oversight by special education administration, friction between special education front line staff and the central office as well as with their general education colleagues, and waste of limited resources. Clear guidelines could be based on both nationally normed tests and classroom based measures, such as common formative assessments. This process is greatly simplified if a common set of test instruments are used district wide and if unambiguous measures of student achievement are established. Overtime, clear criteria will increase equity for children and reduce the staffing needed to test students and review IEPs. 4. Improve the technical infrastructure supporting special education. Technology has helped ease the work, improved the quality of decisions, and reduced costs in many aspects of our world. It has not had this effect for special education in Lexington. The IEP central database includes too much inaccurate data to be helpful to staff or useful to administrators. Scheduling therapists and resource room staff is done manually and with little oversight, despite the district’s considerable financial commitment of 72 FTE and over $5,000,000. This challenge exists because the student information system and the IEP software cannot share data. Efforts are already underway to move to a system that will share information. Centralizing and automating the scheduling of therapists, resource room staff, (and reading teachers?) would help staff and ensure that the workload guidelines are driving staffing decisions. 5. Create a system to improve the two-way flow of information. Despite the best intentions of all involved, insufficient or ineffective communication has created frustration for many. Numerous channels of communication are needed, such as between central office special education administrators and building based special education staff, between special education leadership and general education curriculum leadership, between building principals and special education staff, within job alike groups and more. Implementing the four opportunities above will require extensive communication and collaboration. Since no one is intentionally not communicating, a formal, scheduled system to share information, air concerns, make decisions, share decisions, and receive feedback on decisions is needed. Since everyone is very busy already, it is suggested that formal communication mechanisms be built into existing meetings, such as PLCs, early releases, and cabinet meetings. It would require expanding the attendance at some of these meetings to be more cross departmental at times. The District Management Council 7 Harcourt Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02116 - Tel:1877-DMC-3500 | Fax:617-491-5266 |www.dmcouncil.org