PAUSD Board Comments – 10/10/2023
3A Open Forum
It is time to end the myth of “General vs. Special Education”
There are 1787 “officially” disabled students in the Palo Alto Unified School District. 1,069 covered under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (what most people know a Special Education). And 718 with “504 Plans”.
1787 out of 10,509.
Additionally, there are numerous students with dyslexia (3 to 7 percent), ADHD (estimated 9.8%), and other disabilities and impairments that aren’t tracked or supported in our schools. Finally, there are the uncounted students who may be eligible and need disability services, but who don’t get them because their parents are afraid of the unfortunate reality of disability stigma and discrimination.
All our classes are special education classes.
All our teachers and staff should be trained special educators.
4B – MTSS
This looks like it explicitly excludes students who are not in general education… this seems to be cited multiple times in the charts and is of considerable concern as the known problems in PAUSD for behavior and that would be part of MTSS are closely entwined with special education students.
Look at 2 of the key metrics they cite: attendance – which PAUSD reported a real crisis for disabled students last year (and it would be great to know what has been done)… and also where disabled students make up almost half of our suspensions – a clear issue that would be tracked under MTSS but it looks like it isn’t a factor here.
The Tier 1 focus in the early roll-out should be of serious concern. My previous school district, SMFC, had started implementing MTSS while we were there and the strategy of starting with “Tier 1” seemed like a bad one. It looked like a “Gold stars for good kids” system instead of providing real support to the students in most need.
Get your strategy, data, and Tier 3 right first.
This looks more like software sales than student support.
5B Certificated Staff
When is PAUSD going to provide the board and public with reporting on vacancies and churn information both by school and program including special education. These are important leading and trailing indicators of the health of the various parts of the district.
5C – Redline Special Ed Aide Strategy
4 Special Ed resignations this meeting out of 10 total. It is time to take a hard look at the PAUSD special education staffing and staffing strategy. As of this morning, there are 25 instructional mod-severe substitute vacancies. 12 behavioral support instructional assistants, 5 therapeutic instructional assistants. 4 mod severe instructional assistants, 5 mild-mod instructional aides, and 4 1-1 mild mod instructional aide vacancies. Aides are staffed right to a REDLINE. They work “bell to bell” which means they have no time to collaborate with the special education or general education teachers or attend IEPs. There is no built in available staffing for lunch breaks. There is no regular training time in their schedule, so, once again, teachers and classes are understaffed when training is given… and, as seen by the huge number of vacancies for substitute aides, there is no capacity in the system in the face of ordinary absences. It is a stretched out, stressed out system. No wonder there is so much turnover both for aides and teachers.
5E – Mental Health
It is troubling that there is no regular data collection and reporting in this policy so that PAUSD staff and the board will have insight into hot spots, trends, demographics, and performance of the mental health program. I ask that the board or PAUSD staff update this policy to address this.
5H – Purchases
Multiple law firms the only one of which looks definitely special education related – HARBOTLE LAW GROUP Legal Services 50,000.00
E250925 09/13/2023 ZATOPA & STEPHENS & KURZROCK Settlement Agreement 12,500.00
080-6500-0-5844-00-5760-1180-650000-037-0000 12,500.00
A settlement for $1621000 and a reimbursement for 2,300.00 (probably an Independent Education Evaluation)
080-6500-0-5844-00-5760-1180-650000-037-0000
080-6500-0-5250-00-5760-1110-650000-037-0000
Several NPS placements, which I assume are not part of legal settlements totalling several hundred thousand dollars
THE STEPPING STONES GROUP Contracted OT from SSG 183,120.00
080-6500-0-5804-00-5760-1110-650000-037-0000 183,120.00
BL403678 09/13/2023 THE STEPPING STONES GROUP Contracted Aides 425,880.00
080-3310-0-5804-00-5760-1110-331000-037-0000 425,880.00
PARENT/GUARDIAN 63,980.00 Sped Settlement Agreement
$12000 in airfare which is pretty impressive
7A – Reading
The gap between beginning of year improvement for SWD of 19% vs. 30+% for all other groups is a cause for concern.
On the charts for 23-24 baselines (slides 2ff), it would be good to show the district targets and the total number of students in each cohort… it kind of looks like many groups are either close or making the proposed board target as their baseline for the beginning of the year (hopefully a product of the success of last year’s work).
