Changes and challenges within its special education department were among the topics Detroit public school officials covered during a Sept. 1 community meeting at Mumford High School.
Special education – called Exceptional Student Education in the Detroit Public Schools Community District, or ESE – has been on the minds of parents and community members in recent weeks, particularly when it comes to timely Individualized Education Program (IEP) evaluations and ensuring students are receiving occupational therapy and other services during the school day to help them thrive.
The meeting occurred two weeks after DPSCD held a virtual ESE meeting, giving an overview of what the ESE department does and its services for students with disabilities.
For the in-person meeting, Superintendent Nikolai Vitti, Chief Academic Officer Leenet Campbell-Williams and ESE Senior Director Christian King discussed the ESE hubs the district implemented last year, dealing with staff shortages for ESE teachers, paraprofessionals and support staff, and the instructional framework educators use before they seek an IEP evaluation for a student.
The district on Sept. 1 asked parents and community members to write questions down on index cards, with Campbell-Williams, King and Vitti responding toward the end of the meeting.
Vitti told BridgeDetroit that all the questions were answered during the meeting unless they were related to a specific student. ESE staff attempted to speak to each parent directly who listed contact information on a card, he said.
ESE staff also had tables set up outside of Mumford’s auditorium before the meeting to provide information to parents.
The next ESE meeting will be held virtually on Sept. 9 where the district will discuss family partnership. DPSCD has not yet provided a link.
Here are some of the questions BridgeDetroit heard the district address:
Editor’s note: These responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Q: What is the process when parents request an (IEP) evaluation in writing?
King: A parent can make a request at any neighborhood school that the student attends. They can make that request through the evaluation portal, so the administrator and the ESE staff member can help them with filling out the link. They will also sign and write down their request so that it’s submitted to our evaluation team. Our evaluation team is going to respond to that request within 10 days and offer our procedural safeguards, or (notify of) a denial process where we might need some more information to move forward. During that time, the evaluation team will hold a meeting. They will go over the information with that process, and the 30-day (completion) timeline starts.
Once we have parent permission (to begin the process), the evaluation team can come over to the school, evaluate the student, get the essential information that they need, be able to do an eligibility recommendation if the student is eligible for services, and review the information with the parents, making sure that they’re answering any questions and providing reports for their review. Then (the evaluation team) will hold an IEP meeting to talk about the goals, present levels, and our offer of faith to support the student.
Q: What is the district doing to increase communication between ESE providers and parents?
King: We’re here right now, having engagement sessions, wanting to hear feedback and wanting to answer questions.
Additionally, we have engagement sessions planned out for the entire year, and so, we’re ready. We have presenters that are going to have to inform parents, making sure they know their rights, making sure they know about the process.
Additionally, there’s the ESE hotline, and that’s an opportunity to be able to either email or call to get live feedback in regard to concerns. And then, always on the school level, we’re able to support you if you have questions. Each school has an ESE lead administrator, as well as a lead teacher who is there should you have questions with the case manager.
Q: Who is involved with MTSS (Multi-Tiered Systems of Supports)?
Campbell-Williams: The structures for MTSS are in place in our classrooms. (MTSS is a framework meant to support students in achieving their best possible academic and social-emotional outcomes).
We make sure that we have high-quality instructional materials, and we have intervention–particularly in the K-8 space–but even in the high school space now. Through the parent-teacher conference and if your student is enrolled in (the phonics technique) Orton-Gillingham, there are data points that will talk about how they’re progressing through that intervention.
The structures for MTSS are in place in the district, and the challenge and opportunity for us is to make sure that all of that is communicated through progress reports, through the parent-teacher communications that go out, so when our students are evaluated for a benchmark assessment or diagnostic, the parent report would be able to tell you ‘Here’s how your child is performing,’ whether they’re at grade-level for reading and math.
One of the big things we will work on is how we document all of those interventions, particularly when we’re seeing that a child is not responding and whether we need to say, “OK, we’ve gone through every tier, the student is not responding. Do we need to refer them for an IEP?” That’s how that works with the MTSS process.
Q: How long do you allow a child to go through MTSS instruction before a referral is made for evaluation?
Campbell-Williams: The progress monitoring is really key. For our young students, we spend a lot of time talking about foundational skills and making sure that they have those at those early grade levels because we really want to give students an opportunity to learn the information. So, the teacher taught it and the teacher is assessing whether the student is getting it. They’re providing the interventions in real time, and they have more targeted interventions later.
The length of time is really based on the data. It could be weeks, it could be months. It could be allowing the student to absorb the learning. We don’t want to immediately say that a child is not responding because they respond at different times, in different ways, so we want to monitor that child over time to see whether appropriate interventions would accelerate their learning. So, not a set time frame, but obviously, students in kindergarten, first and second grades–if they’re not catching on, the interventions are in place, and the student is in school every day, then we definitely have to start talking about whether we refer for (an IEP).
Q: Very little is mentioned about our gifted and talented students. How are we meeting the needs of students who are excelling and doing well to ensure they continue to thrive?
Campbell-Williams: We have expanded the work that we’re doing with gifted and talented students, starting with an assessment we give them to test their giftedness, which is the Naglieri assessment.
We’ve targeted 14 schools now with gifted and talented programming, trained those teachers over the summer through conferences and institutes on how to provide a very differentiated instructional experience for our students that are showing that they can handle the content well.
We’re trying to firm up what is the curriculum experience for those students, but they have lots of great experiences after school. There are students that are involved in all kinds of extracurricular activities, not just STEM and robotics. That’s a part of it, but they have other opportunities to connect with universities and other students across our district. We’re really pouring into those students.
Q: Can we have something like this (an ESE meeting) in Southwest Detroit for our Spanish-speaking population?
Vitti: Yes, absolutely. We’ll coordinate an event to do that. Western (International High School) would probably be the best location to do that, but we’ll add that to the list of meetings.