District
Officials Recommend Changes to Special Ed |
By Jorge Casuso
April 16 -- Responding to a recent report criticizing
the School District’s handling of special education, staff
will present the School Board with a series of recommendations Thursday
that include using settlement agreements only as “a last resort.”
The three-page “Preliminary Draft Response” to an independent report
presented to the board on April 3 lists, among other actions, “creating
a culture of inclusion,” recruiting and developing highly qualified staff
and providing “early intervention to struggling students.”
The recommendations also include improving fiscal management by conducting
quarterly reviews of the special education program and hiring a consultant to
determine the district’s capacity to provide in-house services.
“Our goal is to create a District culture in which special education
is an integral part of the overall educational system; students with disabilities
are welcomed, supported, and fully included in district programs; and all parents,
students and staff are treated with civility and respect,” District officials
wrote.
The report comes two weeks after special education parents told the board that
the District had failed their children and left parents ashamed, frustrated
and powerless to help the sons and daughters with disabilities who were left
behind.
While staff’s response addresses some of the wider concerns, it gives
only a brief two-sentence response to the longstanding complaints about the
District’s common use of settlement agreements.
Parents have long charged that the District’s practice has forced them
to bargain for their children’s education behind closed doors, then barred
them from disclosing the terms.
Consultants found that the confidentiality clauses make it difficult to evaluate
a student’s progress and make placing students transferring to another
district more difficult. The policy, consultants said, also breeds distrust.
According to the report by Lou Barber & Associates, the District had entered
into 140 settlement agreements with parents over the past three years, compared
to few if any for most California districts, a number that “needs to be
reduced dramatically.”
The district’s response comprised one of the 22 recommendations in the
report.
“Settlement agreements will be used only as a last resort when an impasse
has been reached in resolving disagreements that arise at the Individual Education
Program meetings,” District officials wrote. “All settlement agreements
will require the approval of the Superintendent.”
Education activists say the recommendation fall far short of addressing a key
issue that led the City Council to threaten to withhold more than $500,000 in
school funding.
“The District's pattern of abusing the settlement agreement
process can only be corrected if the District ends its practice
of imposing confidentiality clauses in settlement agreements,”
Chris Harding wrote in a letter to the board Wednesday. (see
full letter in .pdf)
“As the Barber report recognizes, the District's widespread use of settlement
agreements with confidentiality clauses ‘raises concern as to the transparency
of the district programs and services.’"
In order to “restore credibility,” Harding wrote, the District
should appoint an independent special education expert to oversee implementation
of the report.
“Special education parents and others have no confidence that District
Staff -- who are responsible for the District special education practices that
have been criticized in the Barber report -- will attempt in good faith to fix
these practices.
“And they can hardly be blamed for their skepticism,” Harding wrote.
“This is a classic ‘fox guarding the hen house’
dilemma.”
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