School board hears SPED presentation amid parental concerns

KYLE — Several parents recently spoke at the Hays CISD Board of Trustees meetings regarding concerns within the district’s Special Education Department. To provide clarification and answers to trustees, Executive Officer of Special Education Michelle Velasquez and Director of Special Education Melissa Corona gave a presentation at the Sept. 24 meeting. During public comment, Allison Stern, who is a parent of three special education students and is a Hays CISD employee, stated that her top concerns are the safety, the Individual Education Plan (IEP)s and foundational learning environments for her daughter. “[There is an issue with] the retention and burnout of our current and amazing special education staff. I am concerned for my colleagues and my [daughter’s] current [foundational learning] teachers and support staff with the caseload they currently have,” said Stern. Two other parents also expressed concerns about the ongoing staffing issue and missing inclusion minutes. According Hays CISD officials, inclusion minutes “are minutes where a student is supported by an adult in a general education setting.” Because these students may need additional learning services or support in a foundational learning classroom, they may receive inclusion support in the general educational classroom. These minutes do not have a state-mandated amount, but are instead determined by the student’s Admission, Review and Dismissal (ARD) committee. Beginning the presentation, Velasquez noted that in October 2022, at Regional 13 trainings for special education directors, there was discussion on how to retain and hire teachers. After listening to their teachers, they recognized that there was a significant amount of burnout. Other challenges included: the increase in the number of students needing services; students of varying grade levels in the same classroom, which would take away a professional from the classroom in order to take students to specific activities for their grade level; and some programs only had one teacher, while other campuses didn’t have a program at all. “We also noticed that the exposure of students to different staff and paraprofessionals and different people in class was very limited. We weren’t exposing our students to different styles and personalities for them to be able to adapt and learn those skills to be out in our community,” said Velasquez. Velasquez stated that it has been difficult to keep up with the growth, as the student and staff numbers have increased. She then presented “the facts” of the school year: • Two classrooms were added at the elementary level to keep up with growth. • Some classrooms were shifted from one school to another, since there is growth in certain spots. • New campuses opened, so the district evaluated schools and students to see where they needed to be because they had new programs available for them, with no change to the secondary schools. “As of Monday, {Sept. 23], we have 324 students who have transferred into Hays CISD who already were receiving special education services from a previous district. Just to put that in perspective, our number of students that we typically have at the end of the year that transfer into Hays CISD with services is 480,” said Velasquez. These transfers create challenges, as Corona stated that staffing is based on the known students returning, so the district has no way of predicting how many children will transfer in. “There are some things in education that we can’t control. We can’t control the funding that the state is giving us; what we can control is the amount of support that we are giving to our teachers through our facilitators taking that paperwork off of their plates, support from our district staffer instruction and behavior. Our special education teachers and paraprofessionals are doing things like giving up lunches because they know that the safety of their kids comes first. And so, they are working without, so that our students can be in a safe situation,” said Corona. She also stated that they had a chance to speak with some of the teachers in the foundational learning classrooms, who expressed concerns of overcrowded classrooms, the difficulty to find substitutes to cover their classes, etc. “They have asked us to consider the following: an increase in the special education stipend, compensation for them when planning periods are not possible, adding additional classrooms to decrease the class sizes and having campuses provide subs on a regular basis so that teachers can work on paperwork. For further consideration, they’ve asked us to continue to consider staff to student ratio in classrooms,” said Corona. In a previous interview with the Hays Free Press , district officials stated that each classroom varies based on needs, but that the range is from 1:1 (one student per one staff member) to 4:1 (four students per one staff member). These foundational learning educators also stated that having more than one teacher in a classroom would be great to team teach and serve all the students. While acknowledging these issues, Corona listed several ways that the district is attempting to mend the situation: • For classroom vacancies, campus administrators are working to secure qualified substitute teachers. • Low incident specialists and special educational coordinators are acting as case managers to monitor IEPs. • In order to not overload campuses, they sometimes have to bus students to different campuses. • They are tracking inclusion minutes that are missed and will be working to provide creative solutions to the missing minutes. “In retrospect, we do recognize that we could have clarified some of the language that we used when we were discussing some changes that were happening and we also could have definitely communicated with families sooner. There were some contingencies with that and so, some of that information didn’t come through as soon as it should have,” said Velasquez. According to Velasquez, next steps are continuing to search for qualified candidates, continuing to track the goals for students, looking at determining the need for compensatory services, they are communicating with families on the state of the services (especially at the Special Education Parent Advisory Committee meetings) and continuing to communicate with staff about the needs to classrooms. Trustee Vanessa Petrea began the discussion by revealing that the board has no input on the — what she would classify as a — program change to the foundational learning classrooms. According to Petrea, the change of staffing within the classrooms qualified as a budget concern, which should have been presented to the board. “We’re the only ones that can approve those budget creative solutions, so I really wish we would have been able to be better partners in solving this instead of being blindsided at the beginning of school with this information,” Petrea said. The program change Petrea is discussing is what Velasquez stated both at the meeting, and district officials stated in a previous interview with the Hays Free Press, is the removal of “structured” from the foundational learning class. According to the trustee, the definitions in the board policy code deem this a program change, which states “the definition of a program change is … the restructure of an instructional delivery method or a modification or reorganization of staffing patterns in a department on a particular campus or district wide.” Trustee Johnny Flores asked the presenters whether they would agree that merging these classrooms, the foundational learning and the previous foundational learning structured classrooms, would pose a safety issue for students. To which Velasquez said that it could pose a threat if the classes were mixed, but that the teachers stayed in their same rooms. Lorraine Patterson testified at the Sept. 16 meeting that her daughter, who was in a foundational learning structured classroom, was put into a regular foundational learning classroom with less than 24 hours’ notice to the teacher, which caused injuries to her daughter, the teacher and other students. Trustee Bryan Severance noted these contrasting statements and emphasized that there needs to be consistency for children. “This is more than a name change and I think everyone knows that,” Petrea said. She also said that the number of special education students in Hays County is rising, but resources are steadily decreasing, so having a communicative relationship is vital for the care of students. To further demonstrate the lack of communication, Petrea stated that she asked two times in June of this year what changes would be made to the Special Education Department, both times in which she received no notification of changes in foundational learning classrooms. “I defended — what I now know to be — a false narrative, that there were going to be other changes,” emphasized Petrea. Flores also questioned why this information was sent out the day before school started. Velasquez explained that at the April 30 meeting, staff discussed considerations, but that, ultimately, they were unaware whether they would receive the staffing that the department requested. Petrea stated that, in her opinion,  she believes that foundational learning classrooms need to be less than 10 students, with no more than three students per educator, to have a functioning classroom. Other questions the trustee had were whether the district considered sign-on bonuses and retention bonuses, differentiating pay for special education qualified substitutes, having other students volunteer in foundational learning classrooms and asking principals what ideas they have. “I know that our district is working on long-term solutions …  But we can walk and chew gum at the same time. We have a problem right now that we have to solve for,” concluded Petrea. In similar sentiments to Petrea, trustee Courtney Runkle asked whether the Special Education Department discussed with other districts that are using the same format and ask what the results have been as well as the teachers in the district’s own campuses: “It seems like we’ve heard from —it feels like — almost all of them that this is not working and that they are not happy and this is affecting our students.” “I have two children in special education and it is incredibly hard and frustrating as a parent to have to advocate for your kid and to constantly advocate and advocate and advocate. There are so many parents — there are so many students — that don’t have or not even they don’t have, but their parents aren’t capable of advocating for them and that’s where that’s up to us, and up to you guys, to be that advocate for them. We have to do better,” Runkle said. “We’re 100% Hays. We make 100% of things possible, but this has to be for 100% of kids,” stressed Flores. To listen to the full presentation and discussion, visit bit.ly/3ZEzQIs .