Dr. Gregory Rosenthal
Reminder Publishing file photo
WESTFIELD — In an effort to assess its special education programming, Westfield Public Schools has asked a Massachusetts-based educational consulting service, through a bidding process, to suggest where the programming can be improved.
Dr. Greg Rosenthal, administrator of special education for Westfield Public Schools, gave a summary of a review by Academic Discoveries to the School Committee on May 18.
“It was important to have someone come in from the outside and help give us the foundation of a plan to improve moving forward,” said Superintendent Stefan Czaporowski after the meeting.
The slideshow presented to the School Committee, along with the executive summary and the in-depth report by Academic Discoveries are posted on schoolsofwestfield.org under WPS Special Ed Review.
Rosenthal said the lengthy process by Academic Discoveries involved classroom observation, focus groups, individual interviews and surveys of parents, teachers and staff. The summary underlined areas of promise, such as a strong commitment to inclusion and collaborative co-teaching, but also the lack of a consistent district-wide inclusion model and a gap in its implementation and effectiveness.
“There are pockets of great collaborative co-teaching, but they are not throughout the system,” Rosenthal said.
Other areas that need improvement, according to Rosenthal, are effective professional development and consistency in staffing and instructional practices at the classroom level.
“We need professional development. We don’t have enough time for the professional development that we need. What we do with the time that we have is awesome,” Czaporowski said, referring to the curriculum summit held over the summer. He said the new school year calendar has five early release days built in for professional development.
Czaporowski added that Westfield has been short-staffed since COVID-19 in the special education area, often due to a lack of candidates. “You can have all the PD [professional development] that you want, but with the constant turnover, it’s like Groundhog Day all over again,” he said.
Rosenthal said the department is setting multi-year improvement goals.
In the first 12 months, a coherent district-wide inclusion and service delivery framework will be defined and published district-wide. Co-teaching expectations that support inclusion will be clarified, and different models presented. Role definitions for educators and service providers will be standardized and feature written guidance for inclusion and service delivery.
Rosenthal said the new guidance will work to build protected co-planning time and structures into teachers’ schedules, and will establish minimum collaboration expectations by formalizing team structures and limiting reliance on informal collaboration.
Towards that goal, the department will start with very small and very motivated teams of general education and special education staff to launch instructional consistency and co-teaching foundations, to be used as “islands of influence,” spreading to other staff, he said.
The district also wants to improve communication and service delivery through an annual staffing audit, strengthen professional development and its relevance for teachers, and communicate staffing structures and constraints to stakeholders.
“The bottom line is we’re struggling to meet our requirements for special education for a number of reasons, most glaringly, lack of funding and lack of ability to find staff. It’s pretty frustrating because there are no candidates out there to hire,” Czaporowski said, adding that the next step is to find contracted services, which almost doubles the cost.
During the School Committee discussion following the presentation, a concern was expressed about the increase in students in substantially separate programs.
Rosenthal acknowledged that the department is seeing more transitions to these programs and students not coming back out. He said some of that can be addressed through professional development skills that will be worked on every day, which he said go hand in hand with inclusion practices.
School Committee member Jeffrey Gunther said he is looking forward to the staffing audit. “It’s very clear through qualitative data that needs to be done. The struggle with staffing shows up,” he said.
Gunther also noted the relatively high rate of substantially separate programs, and wondered how the new separate program planned for 390 Southampton Road fits in.
Rosenthal said the entrance criteria for the 390 Southampton Road program will be strict. “We want to make sure we’ve exhausted all options before referrals there,” he said.
Czaporowski said the former Head Start building at 390 Southampton Road will house transition services for young adults in the front of the building, and three elementary classrooms in the rear for students needing more specialized services.
He said right now there are five substantially separate classrooms at Paper Mill, two of which will be moved to 390 Southampton Road, along with one of the three at Westfield River Elementary.
“The goal will be to provide special services in a smaller environment, to help students to develop the skills to go back to their sending school,” Czaporowski said, adding they will move the classrooms but not necessarily the students. Every student will be reviewed in their IEP team meetings to determine their placements.
“We’re trying to prevent students from going out-of-district as the very next step,” Czaporowski said.
The review by Academic Discoveries was done in advance of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education coming for an internal monitoring review of Westfield’s special education program on June 8, which is done every three years. Czaporowski said DESE will be in Westfield for four days, and the schools have been gathering documents and evidence for them since January.
Czaporowski said the biggest problem is that special education is severely underfunded by the state, with costs going up $1.9 million this year.
“What is the state going to do to help fund that gap?” he said, and to address the shortage of teachers in special education or going into special education.
Czaporowski said he plans to ask DESE when they come if the state has a plan to incentivize people to go into the field.
“The report spelled out a lot of the things that we felt. Until DESE fixes the funding formula, the system is broken,” Czaporowski said, adding that it’s a statewide issue.
