23 April 2024 PAUSD Board Meeting

4. Open Forum –

Stipend for SPED teachers

Special Education Teachers are the Ginger Rodgers of Education.

They do everything gen ed teachers do but backwards and in heels. In addition to what their gen ed colleagues do, they: develop custom education programs for each individual student, ensure compliance with legal reporting under IDEA, coordinate and support general education teachers, coordinate schedules and support with multiple specialists, oversee a team of aides, create IEPs, attend IEP meetings, and deal with very demanding parents. We have a staffing problem for SPED. Hawaii addressed their Special Educator staffing problem with a $10k stipend in 2020. It’s worked. We’ve done the same for gen ed teachers who teach in a combined classroom with 2 curricula. Better SPED teachers will help us reduce our $1.65 million in legal settlements that increased modestly again this year. Let’s keep and hire better special education teachers using tactics we’ve used as well as others.

(Main link) – https://go.boarddocs.com/ca/pausd/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=D3PUAB7B177E

3A. Equity Report for Nixon – As a proud Nixon parent… I still reviewed the data. No suspensions. It is possible. I hope PAUSD gets serious about ending elementary suspensions. Chronic Absenteeism is a problem with Hispanic students at 22.7%, Students with Disabilities at 25%, and English Learners at 16.7%. English Language Arts is pretty impressive with English Learners 98.3 points above standard and even Students With Disabilites 28.5 points above standard (34.4 below standard for PAUSD as a whole). I think this may be the best numbers I’ve seen. Is this an anomaly, small sample size, or an example? Math has similar results, though Students with Disabilities are 6.7 points above standard though they dropped by 13.3 points (vs. 49.4 points below). Once again, it would be good if Panorama, iReady and other data were provided for both groups where we have equity concerns and the school and district population as a whole as well as tracking results year over year.

3C. Mental Health – It would be very helpful to break down information by schools and demographic groups or at least group schools and groups with higher rates of referrals. The specific school environment or group may or may not be a factor and this may also drive targeted staffing and programs. It is good to see the level of support for ERMHS (educationally related mental health services) in PAUSD. This is not universal. I do hope that parents, students, and teachers across the board are made aware of these services proactively as part of our community training. It would be helpful to have rate information for the Wellness Center visit data. Is Fletcher doing very well or is there an outreach problem and once again, Gunn has what looks like a notably higher absolute use of these services and rate than Paly. Again, better awareness or something else?

6A. It is disheartening that the only item cut in the budget assumptions is an additional Special education staff person for Elementary sites for the as yet unpresented Special Education Restructuring Plan

8A. PAUSD by the numbers is pretty impressive per the SWIFT Plan

5. Ranked Unified School District in California by Niche: #1

8. Ranked best places to teach in Bay Area by Niche: #1.

But how can we truly call ourselves a #1 school if we don’t have a #1 special education program?

PAUSD reports proudly that 63% of special education students participate in general education

classes for 80% or more of the day, but the US national average is 66.7% as of 2021 and has been trending upwards at the same time we’ve been trending down.

https://sites.ed.gov/idea/files/45th-arc-for-idea.pdf page 148