Chester-Upland School District Special Education speaks up

On August 22, 2013 I wrote a post “Chester Special Ed students get Overtime”.

Somehow the State agreed to offer 20,000 hours of education to special education students. With no details on how this all came about, or how they came up with 20,000 hours, or how they plan to provide extra education to people already going to school, I was confused.

I asked the questions and got no help from y’all, which usually means that you are as confused as I am.

However, someone took the initiative to hook me up with the Chester Upland School District Assistant Superintendent of Student Services & Special Education who was more than happy to provide the details of this bizarre arrangement.

The post is longer than normal but you often ask me to interview people. Here’s a great interview. Let me know you read it.

By: Cheyenne Majeed &
Stefan Roots

Andria Saia, JD, M.Ed. 

She joined the Chester Upland School District in March 2013 but she’s no stranger to the district. She came here from the Intermediate Unit (IU). Prior to that she was a special education attorney and had done legal work representing the Chester Upland School District (CUSD) in special education and litigation in the mid-2000s for a few years. She knew the district before making the leap to come here. She was not involved with the litigation but I knew about what was going on through her association with the IU.

Here’s what she shared…

In the 2011-2012 school year, CUSD was suffering extreme financial hardship primarily because of the amount of money given to charter schools for child subsidy. Chester Upland is not in a unique situation, but certainly in one of the most dyer situations because there is not a huge tax base here. There is a per children subsidy that we get from the state. For each child that is lost to another school, that subsidy money goes with that child to Chester Community Charter, Widener Charter, or whatever charter school they go to. As more money goes to the charter schools, that much more money goes out the school district door.

In ‘11-‘12 the State controlled the school district for approximately nineteen years and in June of 2011 passed it back to the city. Financial distress hit and the district filed suit.

There were many suits filed. There was a suit of the district against the state for money. There was the suit by the charter school against the district for money. There was the suit by the charter school against the state for money. There was a group in Philadelphia called PILCOP, the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia, representing special education parents of students with special needs against the state.

A settlement was reached in August of 2012. Part of that settlement brought money into the district from the state for a variety of uses, some of which was special education. Part of that settlement was to have the special education department look at what was lost in special education to students that year when they were cutting back drastically on staffing.

CUSD weren’t paying contracts because they had no money.  So contracted staff, such as speech and language pathologist, people that we would contract with outside agencies, weren’t getting paid. The therapist weren’t coming to the district.  Students weren’t getting the services.

So they needed to go back and look at what did students lose and what needed to be provided in the form of compensatory education, because that’s what’s provided to students who lose educational benefit at some point during their career if they’re eligible.

They had two things that had to look at. They had to look at what happened during the ‘11-‘12 school year and then what happened during the 2012-2013 school year.

There were two settlements. One was ‘11-‘12 looking at actual lost services, one of which was looking primarily at speech and language service. We didn’t have the people here to provide the service. The other was primarily counseling, again the people weren’t here. The last was tutoring services for children who received an itinerant level of service, which means they get less than 20% of their day with special education staff. That staff had been spread very thin.

So there was a compensatory education (Comp Ed) award of hours split amongst speech and language, counseling, and tutoring hours. That was for ‘11 – ‘12.

I can tell you that we’re still working the second year out so the number really isn’t settled yet. The second year, 12-13, three quarters of which I was not here for, they were supposed to have meetings all year long about whether or not compensatory education was owed to each family for ‘11-’12 by asking a simple question, ‘During the previous school year did you lose any services?’

When I came in March there was some disagreement about whether or not that process was going well. I investigated. I don’t think the process went well. 
I think that the staff was not entirely clear on what they were doing; I think parents didn’t necessarily understand the questions that were being asked. Just because the teacher and the parent are there doesn’t mean they know whether or not the student didn’t get counseling the year before, or speech and language the year before, or whether or not that itinerant teacher saw them every time they were supposed to the year before.

It was a nice idea in theory, but in practice it didn’t work which is why we came up with the global settlement.

Then ‘12-‘13 came around. We were fully staffed. It was not a matter of how many services were provided. It became a matter of paperwork.

One of the things that the law requires us to do is provide quarterly progress reports for parents on how students are doing on their special education goals. There has been a lack of accountability and I think that everyone has heard the messages of our new superintendent around accountability.
When I arrived in March 2013, we were behind with progress reports. There will be no more of that. I was very adamant with my staff about getting it done and by the fourth marking period we were where we belonged.

But the attorneys for the families were not happy with that so we developed a compensatory plan around tutoring hours for students.  
I know that we are not done quite figuring out the exact agreed upon settlement of hours of compensatory education each student will receive.
What the settlement will provide the students are two years to use those hours. They will be provided services inside their school day, some of them after school, some of them are going to use their tutoring hours with local agencies that provide tutoring. We have a list of twenty-five providers for tutoring hours and I’m thrilled to provide more services for kids, so I think it’s a win-win. Anything that gets services for kids and families will use is ok by me.

If you were owed services and you left the school district - graduate, dropout - you can come back and we’re going to work it out. So you can still go to Knowledge Point or one of those places and still get services. If we’ve determined you are owed services you will have eligibility for those services. You will receive a letter saying this is what you’re owed, why you are owned, and what you will receive.

The letter is called a Notice of Recommended Educational Placement. If you agree and sign the letter, you are entitled to the services and we’ll track it and pay the bills. Anyone who has either gone, graduated, or just left us, if they’re entitled to the services, they’ll receive them. They will have two years to use those services.

NEXT:  Andria Saia defines special education in a way that even I understand now.