Dr. Victoria Pettis

Summer Cohort 2006

EOCS 7450

Standard VI. A school administrator is an educational leader who promotes the success of all students by understanding, responding to, and influencing the larger political, social, economic, legal, and cultural context.

Description of the Activity: Have an extensive conversation with the administrator in your building who is responsible for supervising the special education program in your building. Your goal is to develop an understanding of the laws/policies, processes, and procedures that determine what is done from identification to program review and including disciplining of special education students. The outcome should be a brief explanation of the controlling law/policy or process.

Explanation of the Activity: For EDUL 6024, I interviewed special education team, who is responsible for supervising the special education program at our school. The goal of the interview was to develop an understanding of the laws/policies, processes, and procedures that determine what is done from identification to program review and including disciplining of special education students. On another related assignment, I interviewed him about how Behavior Intervention Plans, or BIPs, work. Below are excerpts of both reports I wrote based on the interviews.

Legislation Affecting Students with Disabilities

Description of Process

At CMS, it takes a village of educators to ensure that all faculty and staff are kept knowledgeable and informed about legislation affecting students with disabilities and those with identified chronic behavior/discipline problems. Here are the critical players:

Special Education Contact Person. First, there is a special education contact person from the board office assigned to CMS. Some of the responsibilities of special education contact person’s includes: meeting with the team leaders on a regular basis to discuss issues related to special education; responding to team leaders and building administrators’ questions or requests in a timely manner; providing support to school and staff as appropriate; communicating with team leader and building level administration pertinent information, policy changes, and other materials as they related to special education; working with team leaders and building administration in problem solving as related to special education issues and students; monitoring issues related to due process; maintaining open communication with school and BOE administration; providing leadership in assessing the training needs of team leaders, teachers, compliance clerks and others; and providing access to training to special education staff as needed.

Special Education Team Leader. Second, CMS has one special education team leader named Dr. Horace Wells. Dr. Wells, considered fourth in command in administrative team, serves as primary consultant to building level administration as related to special education. He provides instructional leadership among special education faculty and staff and disseminates all information to the school administration and building level staff.

Special Education Case Manager. Third, the special education case manager is responsible for collecting, maintaining, and reporting all data on student progress from other special education teachers who instruct students. If special education teachers express frustration about professional learning they need to better serve students and to perform their job duties, this educator is responsible for filling this need. Regarding due process and compliance, the special education case manager is responsible for: developing, writing, and implementing appropriate and legally defensible IEP’s. It is this individual who must cooperate fully with the special education staff to insure total compliance with State and Federal standards and regulations and must ensure that all timelines are met regarding evaluations, placement, annual review, related service referral and transfer interim paperwork. For the special education case manager, communication is key. He/she is responsible for communicating concerns regarding student’s performance, classroom needs, training needs and/or other issues to building level team leader, principal and the special education contact person

School Counselor. Finally, our school counselor is responsible for explaining any new laws and regulations to the entire CMS faculty and staff. These briefings are usually done during our monthly faculty meetings. At times, this information is disseminated on the smaller scale via grade level meetings.

BIPs

Description of Process

Until this assignment, I had never heard of Behavior Intervention Plans, or BIPs. In my quest to learn more about them and the process by which they are developed, implemented, and monitored for students with challenging behaviors, I talked to special education team leader Dr. Horace Wells and compliance clerk Mary Jane Walcott.

According to Dr. Wells, about 25-33% of the 140 special education students at CMS are currently identified as Emotional Behavior Disorder (EBD) students. Most of these students are served in regular education classrooms where collaboration is done with a special education teacher. At the beginning of each school year, it is Ms. Walcott’s responsibility to distribute BIPs to the grade level teams. Reading through the BIPs, collaborative teachers determine which EBD students, if any, will be placed in their classrooms.

A child’s Individualized Education Program, or IEP, must require that EBD student be placed on a BIP and a FBA. Some students, who are not classified as EBD are also on BIP due to their IEPs. Every EBD student has a BIP and Functional Behavioral Analysis (FBA) in place, and these forms are monitored by the special education case manager. Both the BIP and FBA can be updated as needed. If changes have to be made, a meeting is scheduled to involve a parent or guardian.

On the BIP, teachers are asked to cite such information as interfering behavior, desired behavior, strategies to increase desired behavior, and strategies to decrease interfering behavior. The FBA requires that the teacher describe the problem behavior (up to three) in both concrete and observable terms, its frequency, the places the behavior is likely to occur, when the behavior is likely to occur, consequences of the behavior, and the hypothesize the purpose the behavior serves the child. The third form that must be filled out in addition to the BIP and FBA is the IEP Measurable Annual Goals and Short Term Objectives form. Note: Some IEPs require that teachers maintain a Behavior Checklist.