Busy as a Beehive: Utah Addresses General Supervision, Part Two

00:00:01.52 >> You're listening to "A Date With Data" with your host, Amy Bitterman.

00:00:07.34 >> Hey. It's Amy, and I'm so excited to be hosting "A Date With Data." I'll be chatting with state and district special education staff who, just like you, are dealing with IDEA data every day.

00:00:19.50 >> "A Date With Data" is brought to you by the IDEA Data Center.

00:00:24.62 >> Hello. Welcome to "A Date With Data." On this episode, we are continuing our conversation with Leah Voorhies, who is the State Director of Special Education, and LauraLee Gillespie, who is the Special Education Coordinator of the Utah Program Improvement Planning System. They’re both with the Utah State Board of Education. On the last episode, they started their story about their state's general supervision system, and today we’re going to hear more about the challenges they’ve experienced, how they’ve addressed them, and the areas they’re proud of.

So what are some of the challenges that you've encountered, and how have you tackled them to make these improvements and put these great processes in place?

00:01:12.60 >> Well, I'll speak to a few challenges that I see. Bridging the gap between compliance and program improvement. We know from the Supreme Court that we look at benefit, we look at procedure—those have been requirements in special education for decades. But sometimes procedure gets more focus. Although it’s important, we want to ensure those procedures lead to outcomes for students and program improvement for schools.

It’s easy to look at a file and say, “Here’s the issue,” but it’s more difficult to look at it over time and really see what we’re doing to improve outcomes. In talking to staff in LEAs, individuals at the state level, and parents, that is probably the largest challenge. Trying to bridge the importance of compliance—yes, it matters, and I have a place for compliance in my heart because of my legal background—but also understanding the “why” behind it and helping LEAs understand why it matters from the parent and stakeholder point of view.

00:03:17.16 >> Mm, yeah, that is a big challenge for sure.

00:03:24.01 >> Another challenge we identified last year—we’re still not sure if it made a difference—but when the monitoring team reviews files, they give the teacher of that student an opportunity to sit with them. They talk through the process, listen to what the teacher was trying to accomplish, and help the teacher understand the compliance issues.

Because we don’t have a statewide IEP system in Utah—there are 16 different IEP systems, and some LEAs use model paper forms—we recognized that teachers struggle with how to fill out forms and why they’re filling them out. They struggle with the “why” behind the rule and how it connects to student outcomes.

00:04:44.76 >> Right? We have a statewide institute on special education law—basically a law conference—every year. We’ve been doing it for 35 years. Every summer, we spend two days and bring in attorneys from around the country to talk about important issues related to the state and our general supervision system.

We did something different for the first time: LauraLee and her team led a three-hour session with nearly 2,000 attendees, going through a file line by line with the whole state. They made up a student and conducted a file review together so they could have the same conversation they usually have with individual teachers—now at scale.

00:05:55.69 >> Wow.

00:05:56.55 >> Another big challenge is staff shortages. LEA directors are overwhelmed. Teachers are overwhelmed. Parent educators are coming and going—it’s a rotating door.

00:06:20.49 >> There’s always a need for professional learning, technical assistance, and emotional support. We’ve created synchronous, on-demand, and asynchronous professional learning—available even at 2:00 a.m.—so overstretched educators and administrators can access consistent information anytime, anywhere.

We have one consistent message across our team. To the point that compliance supports practice and practice supports compliance, we all say the same thing, and educators can hear it directly from us or through recordings.

00:07:30.21 >> Sounds like you’ve come up with unique and creative strategies to handle challenges. One last question: you mentioned the 23-01 memo, the OSEP General Supervision Q&A. Can you talk about how that has impacted Utah—anything you might be changing and your reaction?

00:08:03.34 >> My reaction was probably not as dramatic as some other state directors because we had already moved to a mostly cyclical monitoring cycle and already had many requirements in place.

There were a couple things we needed to address: the transfer issue (ensuring correction once a student transfers across LEAs and states) and the credible allegation issue connected to our statewide education complaint hotline.

We route special education-related hotline complaints to our dispute resolution team so people can access IDEA dispute resolution options. We needed a process to connect our existing hotline to the credible allegation requirements in the memo.

I asked LEA directors (we have about 160) to nominate participants for a workgroup to address those issues and develop recommended policy to take to the state board. About 17 directors nominated themselves or others. We held several meetings and reviewed the guidance together. LauraLee and I created a PowerPoint covering key issues, then we focused the workgroup on the transfer and credible allegation questions.

It was some of the best and quickest work I’ve experienced. The group set aside defensiveness about increased workload and got to work. After about three hours across a few meetings, they created a decision tree I took to the state board as a recommendation.

00:11:19.57 >> The state board accepted it, and we’re moving forward with creating a database to track the procedure outlined in the decision tree. We’re beginning implementation now.

00:12:11.04 >> Wow, that’s fast. Bringing in the directors to help formulate the plan makes so much sense since they’ll be involved and their buy-in matters. That’s really smart.

00:12:31.02 >> It was amazingly smooth. I’m really proud of them.

00:12:34.37 >> That’s a testament to the relationships you’ve built over the years and that you can tap them in that way. Thank you both so much for your time and for sharing the work you’re doing on general supervision and what you’re building.

00:13:08.87 >> Thank you, Amy.

00:13:10.03 >> Thanks.

00:13:12.23 >> To access podcast resources, submit questions related to today’s episode, or share ideas for future topics, visit the podcast page on the IDC website at IDEAdata.org.