How Knox County Schools plans to fix special education with a student-first mindset

The rift between parents and Knox County Schools over special education services is starting to mend as district leaders and the school board begin the work it takes to improve the district's resources for students.

Administrators have committed to adopting a student-first mindset in supporting special education and when the district is confronted by lawsuits from families.

At the same time, the Knox County School Board approved a resolution to make the district a model for excellence in special education and to hire an accountability officer to help drive the change.

Earlier this year, Superintendent Jon Rysewyk charged Assistant Superintendent of Student Success Jason Myers with the effort.

In a passionate speech before the school board on Sept. 5, Myers committed to being personally involved in forging change.

"Under my leadership," Myers told the board, "our pursuit of continuous improvement will never be finished. There will never be a time where I sit in a meeting and be like, 'Yeah, we've arrived, we're as good as we can ever be.'"

"We will continually be seeking to get better," he said.

Knox News sat down with Myers Sept. 27 to hear from him directly what's in store for special education.

This Q&A has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What are you most excited about with the upcoming changes?

The thing I'm most excited about is just how supportive the community, our board, our superintendent have been toward this work. I think that puts us in a really solid position to be successful in this endeavor. Just knowing that level of commitment is out there is very promising.

Especially with the board approving the (ESS South Central) contract, for example, that puts us in a position to act really quickly to address some of our staffing shortages, which does present a challenge in our schools.

So I think that just the level of support that special ed is getting is really exciting.

Note: In September, the school board approved a contract with ESS South Central to fill a shortage of 63 special education teaching assistants.

You spoke about the need for an “all staff” approach and an emphasis on developing a “student-first” decision-making strategy. What immediate steps are you taking to include all staff?

We met with a potential technical support partner to help us develop some input portals for broader outreach to our general education staff, our school and district administration. We're also going to reengage with our special education teachers and our service providers and we hope to be able to launch those portals in the next few weeks.

I've also met with an outside potential partner that has expertise in inclusion and behavior because that was one of the things we committed to. We have posted the advisory position and we're receiving applications there and we will dig into that interviewing process following fall break.

Are you able to share any specifics on these outside experts that you've been meeting or a timeline on making those announcements?

I think the timeline for the technical assistance will probably be in the next couple weeks. Right now it looks like we'll probably continue our partnership with Ackermann. They served us very well in the first part of this project and we hope to continue to work with them as technical assistants moving forward.

Note: The district enlisted Ackermann PR to help survey families and teachers on the state of special education. It reported that participants expected clearer communication and more accountability from the district.

For the last couple of years, Knox County Schools has not met its inclusion targets. Can you talk about what the district has done to address inclusion?

Note: The state's inclusion target measures whether the district includes as many students as possible in the least restrictive environment. It shows how many students in special education have access to a regular classroom for 80% or more of their learning day.

Increasing inclusion has always been a focus in special ed since I got to the central office in fall of 2019.

Our approach to that has been really school-specific. So it's about going in and providing that support at the school level as it relates to scheduling and things like that to make sure that our students have the best opportunity to be included at that 80% of the day mark, which is what we're looking for there.

We've made steady progress over those years. Are we where we want to be? Of course not.

This endeavor really is about continuous improvement, right? And so I don't know that we would ever find ourselves in a position where it's like, yes, we're totally satisfied with the level of inclusion. We want to constantly be improving those practices this year. We have to be much more specific in the guidance that we're giving to schools to make sure that we're including kids to the greatest extent that we can.

You committed to personally checking in on some individualized education program meetings and visiting classrooms. What plans do you have for changing or improving how those meetings are run?

Note: IEPs outline measurable goals, how the district will collect data on the child’s progress and what services are needed for the child to be able to accomplish the goals. An IEP team consists of, at minimum, an administrator such as a principal or assistant principal, a special education teacher, a teacher who knows the child and a parent.

My plan is to start attending those meetings following fall break to gather some qualitative data about what that experience may look like through the eyes of an observer.

My intent is not necessarily to go in and be an active participant in the IEP team meeting, but to be able to just go in as an outside observer and see how are people playing their specific roles.

My hope is to be able to get that experience across regions and grade bands to the greatest extent that I can.

We've heard concerns from parents whose children are sent to comprehensive development classrooms where their academic needs are not being met. Is that an area you're focusing on?

Note: Comprehensive development classrooms are special classrooms intended to meet the unique needs of students with disabilities. However, research shows students with disabilities often perform better when exposed to peers in regular education classrooms. That helps meet the goals of the inclusion targets.

Certainly those programs will be part of any visit that I would do. I do plan to visit those classrooms and see what sort of curriculum is being implemented in those programs.

Does the increase in the district's child find numbers indicate an increased push toward identifying more eligible students?

Note: Under federal law, all school districts are required to identify, locate and evaluate all children with disabilities, regardless of the severity of their disabilities.

Under child find we have the obligation to identify children with educational disabilities from age 3 through 22, and we have seen that influx a lot of times.

We have seen a significant increase in the number of special ed pre-K numbers and there are any number of variables that could be contributing to that increase.

Does that increase mean that there were students who were not being identified before who should have been?

Not necessarily. It means that there are more children living in our community who may or may not have an educational disability and then we have an obligation to evaluate and "find" those children.

About the new supervisory position, the emphasis on hiring someone with a law degree signals prioritizing preventing lawsuits. What's the intention with the new position?

Note: Federal law guarantees a “free and appropriate education” to all children. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, adopted in 1975, requires public and private schools to make efforts to include children with disabilities in general classes in their zoned schools, not special institutions.

I don't see the endeavor as one framed in avoiding litigation. I see it as an endeavor toward improving outcomes for kids.

I think that the legal lens is an important lens to make sure that we don't do anything that puts us at risk of purposefully making a violation or making a change to our programming that could lead to us violating the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act. But to me that position really is more about setting our focus toward the future and how do we improve programming.

The legal lens is important, but it is not the sole factor.

There were concerns brought up by some board members that it could be difficult for this person to hold you accountable and report to you at the same time. How will you ensure that long-term this position can truly hold the district accountable?

Note: At the September board meeting, some board members raised concerns about the supervisory structure of the new position. As it stands, the person in this position will report to Myers. Board members had suggested some form of outside accountability.

It's not so much about the accountability piece as much as it is bringing that internal expertise. I don't have a law degree; I'm a special ed teacher.

I see this person as bringing in the legal lens and allowing us to be able to have conversations as we're making changes or if we face potential litigation to be able to say here are the legal facts, here's what I think and ultimately the decision would lie with me and then Superintendent Jon Rysewyk.

In regards to lawsuits, are you able to share any sort of ballpark figure of what they've cost the district's taxpayers in the last couple of years fighting these special ed cases?

I don't have a specific number, but I'm sure the law director's office has.

Who decides between fighting special-ed disputes in court versus mediating outside? Is it the school board, the district or the county law department?

The ultimate decision to litigate has always fallen to the school district. It's not really a school board decision.

The law department's role has always been more of an advisory role, covering the facts of the case and historic case law.

They can make recommendations, but ultimately the decision lies with the district supervision. The new supervisory position will also be in an advisory position but the ultimate decision would be the superintendent's.

The special ed task force in their recommendation talked about addressing "the culture of resistance." Did we get here because of a culture problem or a funding problem?

I would be hesitant to venture a guess as to what someone else's perception of the culture is.

Special ed, unlike any other part of public education, is a part where the disconnect between what the school district's recommendations are and what the parents' desires are can become litigious.

We want to put ourselves in a position where we're being as collaborative as we can in that IEP team process. But, at the end of the day, the school district's obligation is to offer individualized programming that is appropriate for the student.

And sometimes there can be a disconnect there and as we continue down this road and continue our work with parents, I do see it being an ongoing process of how do we close the gap.

How do we become better at communicating? Why our proposal may differ from what the parent or guardian proposes for the program and the closer we can get with that gap, the less resistant we may be perceived as.

Can you share specifics on what kind of organizations the district has reached out to for outside expertise?

I would like for us to be able to announce who those partners might be in January or February to help us carry the work forward.

The task force and our educator survey both recommended those outside experts and both referenced specifically behavior and inclusion as where they would like to see the work go.

How do you plan on rebuilding trust with families who have long advocated for services and maybe have been let down?

Trust is something that has to be earned.

It's going to be really important for us as we walk through this process to be very transparent about the changes that we're making. What is it that we're going to commit to?

Until time passes and we have these new structures and systems in place and it starts to feel different from that perspective, I think that's how trust is earned.

I don't think there's any magic words that I'm gonna say or that anybody can say to repair that. I think that we have to demonstrate that we're making progress toward our commitments and as we make progress that we're putting our money where our mouth is.

How can we expect to see these efforts in next year's budget? Could you give us a sneak peek into what we can expect to see?

Before I can really articulate what the budget implications could be, we really need to get feedback on what the needs are.

What sort of support our school-based staff believe that they'll need to be successful. I would be hesitant to attach a dollar amount to it or even a staffing number because we really won't know until we really dig in and see from multiple perspectives.

Every kid is different, every staff is different. We want to make sure that we're casting a broad net to get feedback so that we can make better informed decisions as we go through the budget process.

That is a question I would be able to answer more accurately by January.

Where is the district on filling special education teaching assistant positions with the contract that was recently approved?

Note: Knox County Schools in September approved a contract to fill in 63 special education teaching assistant positions.

The last number that I have was that they had already located 21 teaching assistants, which is huge.

Those are resources that would make an immediate impact on the school setting. Twenty-one is not the final number, certainly. We know we've got many more to hire.

I'm not certain on how long it take it will take HR to get them processed in and get them assigned to schools but I do know that our special ed department has already prioritized where those people would be deployed as we get them, so I would imagine that after fall break we would be able to get those folks in place.

Areena Arora, data and investigative reporter for Knox News, can be reached by email at areena.arora@knoxnews.com. Follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter, @AreenaArora.

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This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Knox County Schools special education fixes coming to classroom