Staffing Shortages in Special Education: What Needs to Change?

Listen, baby, ain't no mountain high, ain't no valley low, ain't no river wide enough, baby. If you need me. Always call on me, boy. On that day, oh, I made a vow. I'll be there when you want me. So wait somehow. Oh baby, there ain't no mountain high enough. Ain't no valley low enough. Ain't no river wide enough to keep me from getting to you, baby.

Oh Lord, I know when All right, folks, I'm going to invite you to open your, open your cameras, turn on your cameras. Wonderful. Well, thank you guys all for being here today. I am Sarah Sindelius. I am our moderator. for today. So I'm gonna kick us off and give us a little introduction to who we are, what we're doing here, and what sort of the goals of the next hour are. So again, I'm Sarah Sendelius. I'm the founder and CEO of the Ability Challenge, and we are a national nonprofit that works with schools and school districts on improving special education and building authentically inclusive school communities and teams. So as I said, I'm the moderator, and we're going to talk today about special education staffing shortages, and I'm going to give us some framing to start us off. So this is going to seem like a set of a lot of statistics, but I promise you it's just framing, and then we're going to get to the good stuff. So in the last decade, we have seen dramatic changes in special ed needs and demographics in schools. So we now have 7.5 million students who have IEPs. That is 15% of our student population, up from 13% just a few years ago. The, the nature of the needs has also shifted. So for example, we're seeing autism identification rise from 5% to 13% of all students with IEPs. So that's a big shift. that we've seen, and more students are receiving services in integrated settings with their non-disabled peers, which is exactly what we want to see. So that is moving in a good direction. However, when we look at that against where teachers are, over 80% of our teachers report not feeling well prepared to teach students with disabilities. And so there's a lot of need, there's a lot of changes in demographics and need, And we overlay that with where we are on staffing, which is that we have a, we have a severe staffing crisis. We have 80% of states that reported that a special ed teacher— that 80% of states reported special ed teacher shortages last year. 80% of all the states. That's a lot. 74% of schools are struggling to fill special ed vacancies. So again, like very large percentages of our schools are managing these challenges. And this is not a new challenge for most of you who are in the field. I don't think I'm saying anything that we don't already know. For those of you who are new to this, this issue, join us and help us with some solutioning. Just a couple of additional factors that are important to mention when we talk about special education and staffing. One is we see disproportionate impacts on our most marginalized students with disabilities. And so when we look at Black students with disabilities, they are 2 to 3 times more likely to face punitive disciplinary removal and other adverse effects. And in some states, those statistics go up significantly. In one state I looked at to prepare for this panel, Over 90% of the Black students with disabilities had been subject to exclusionary discipline. So that's, that's an astounding number to me. Black and Asian students with disabilities are significantly more likely to be placed in separate schools than their peers, and often staffing shortages are hitting the highest needs communities the hardest. So this is a significant challenge. And as education leaders, you guys are all probably experiencing this right now, right? You're trying to solve a lot of things at once. You're trying to meet the complex student need. You're trying to support teachers who may feel underprepared, trying to navigate compliance requirements that are unwieldy and sometimes quite, quite deep, and then to do it with limited resources and vacancies. Just adds a lot of challenge onto the work that we already do. One more thing to top it all off, and then we'll get to the good stuff. We're going to be at a very critical moment in about a month, right? Or even last 2 weeks where we have an election coming up and things could look very different. And so we, when we think about solutioning and we think about how we're going to move past this, we have to think about both immediate needs and also longer-term needs because they're both really critical right now. Okay, so that's, that's the dire situation. What do we do? Right? We are sitting here because we want some solutions and we want some action. And so we've brought together this incredible panel of folks, and we've intentionally curated it to be a diverse set of perspectives, sectors, and backgrounds. So each one of our panelists today brings a different lens to looking at these challenges, and I'm really excited to kick it off to them. I do want to note we're not, we're not going to solve these national deep-rooted challenges today. But the goal really is to leave with some inspiration and some concrete ideas. What should we be doing? How should we be thinking about these issues moving forward? And I think our panelists today have a lot of really great ideas. So I'm very excited. We're gonna kick it off to them with some intros, and then we have a few background questions that we're gonna start with. And then we're gonna turn it over to the audience. So if you have questions, please put them in the Q&A. And if you have trouble finding that, it's down at the bottom for most of the Zoom users, although I believe in some Zoom users it's on the top or the side. It says Q&A. And then we're gonna wrap up at the very end with some, some key takeaways. All right, that's enough of me. I'm gonna get to our panelists right now. So panelists, can you introduce yourself and share a little little bit about your background, organization, role, and then one way your organization is directly addressing staffing shortages in special education. And Phyllis, I'm going to start with you.

Thank you, Sarah, and hello everyone. It's a pleasure to be here on the panel today with, uh, these wonderful colleagues. Again, my name is Phyllis Wolfram. I'm the executive director for CASE, the Council of Administrators of Special Education. We're a nonprofit professional association serving special education leaders throughout the country. I have a background in special education prior to becoming an association executive, and I was a special ed teacher and administrator for 35 years in public education. Very proud of some of the work that, that we were able to do in the school districts where I served. So I think that's a little bit about me. Our, our case office, I will tell you, is located in Springfield, Missouri, and we have a policy consultant in Washington, D.C. that keeps us connected with all that are happening at the federal and the national level. To kind of answer your question about what we're doing directly, first, I think I'd be remiss if I didn't say from all of us on the panel that as we had our conversations and discussion, that it's not— it's such a systemic issue, our educator shortage, that it takes all of us working together. And the one thing that I do believe that CASE is doing is garnering that collective voice of all of our organizations, and our leaders from across the nation. We have begun a coalition that we have called the IDEA Implementation Coalition. There is not one group in the D.C. area— and let me back up a second why that national coalition is important. Why is that? Because we're all implementing federal law. It all starts at the top, right? And then it trickles down to us here at the local level. So it's important that we have a voice at that federal level in special education and changes that we need to be— to make. And one of those is elevating the profession and saying this is an important area of education that we need to be celebrating all of the great work that is going on across this nation. It is one of the hardest areas of teaching, depending especially on the disability category that you're working with. And we need to hear great stories about great things that are happening at the local level, to elevate those at the national level. We have a coalition of 21 other professional organizations— elementary principals, secondary principals, superintendents. It would take me a while to name all 21, but NEA, AFT, those organizations that are representing our teachers, we are working together to look at all the challenges in special education, and educator shortage is one of those. So that we have this collective voice advocating at the federal level, looking at all of the experts from across the nation and looking for solutions. Um, Sarah, I'll stop there and, and toss that back to you for— Great.

Um, let's, I don't know, Jordan or Kristen, would you like to go next? How about you, Jordan? Why don't you go next?

I don't want to follow that. That's fantastic. I just want to sit here and listen to Phyllis. I am Dr. Jordan Wright. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me, Sarah. I really appreciate this collaboration. I am a psychologist, and I am the Chief Clinical Officer at Parallel Learning. I'm also a faculty member at NYU, where I run our PhD program in clinical and counseling psychology. My background, I've worked peripherally and in schools for a few decades, having partnered with the New York City Department of Education quite a bit, um, and writing grants to increase mental health services within the schools. Um, and, uh, got very concerned about a decade ago around access, access to evaluations, access to quality services, and started doing research in tele-assessment and tele-service provision to see what can we do ethically, what can we do validly, um, to make sure that we're reaching those kids who need who aren't getting the services that they need. So one thing that we're doing at Parallel— when I think about Parallel, what I think about is we are up-resourcing. So we partner with schools and school districts to provide extra resources. We leverage technology. We work fully remotely, but we push in and provide extra services and extra supports when schools need the extra resources. So we provide specialized instruction. So we have special ed teachers. who are pushing in and doing small group services, individual services as needed, as well as SLPs and school social workers and school psychologists doing evaluations and behavioral mental health counseling. We're really trying our best to leverage technology to provide excellence, to provide really, really high-quality services that rival on the ground. We all know that it's no Secret that people would probably prefer in-person on the ground, but we're really trying to show and see how we can leverage technology and leverage quality and quality assurance and oversight and supports for our providers so that they can be providing as good, if not better, services to help students meet their IEP goals.

Wonderful. Now I'm going to say that Our disclosure here is that Kristin and I work for the same organization, but Kristin's a panelist. So Kristin, why don't you introduce yourself?

Hi, I will try to make this swift so we can move into the discussion, but good afternoon. Very glad to be here to have a chat about something that is very near and dear to my heart. So I'm Kristin Briggs. I'm the Managing Director of Program at the Ability Challenge. As Sarah shared, we work together. I started my career as, and still consider myself, a special educator. I have taught special education from elementary school to high school, and then moved into school leadership and network-level leadership. I like to say that my career was always a journey of spreading special education knowledge. It's like, we really know what we're talking about if you listen to us. And then I transitioned into the nonprofit world where I supported curriculum implementation for large districts. And about 3 years ago this month, I joined the ABC team. And in my role, I support our work with codifying our program and engaging with partners. I— this is a topic that I have lived as a school leader and have had to navigate. And how that shows up with ABC is we partner with schools and districts. And our goal is around building knowledge, mindsets, practices for leaders and educators to build authentically inclusive school communities. And so this, unsurprisingly, this hot-button topic, especially over the past year, has come up with partners. And so that looks like strategic coaching with leaders around how to reimagine how you allocate resources. When we were having a chat and Phyllis was voicing over the way her work moves with policy, I was like, yes. And like, there's a perfect marriage there. Phyllis is like, let's move the policy in the system. And our work with partners is, and how do we support you with navigating it in real time? And so reimagining resource allocation so that leaders can understand, how do you maximize the staff that you have to provide students with what they need? And doesn't mean that the vacancy— where you might think it's a 10-person vacancy, let's actually see if it's actually 2. And now 2 is a whole lot more manageable. For folks, right? Additionally, we engage in a lot of training for educators, because to the point Sarah made with the framing, a lot of teachers feel like they don't have the knowledge and skill to meet student needs. And what happens is a lot of this is foundational. And so if we don't have those practices happening, and Kristen is a student with a disability, how my disability manifests when those foundational pieces are missing is a lot more observable. And so there may be other students who are navigating those challenges, but for me, it may lead to me ending up in a more restrictive environment, which to a leader or a school feels like I don't have enough staff. Where our, our proposition, if you will, is that if you push another lever and see how we can still get students what they need. So I'm looking forward to this chat.

Sarah, could I add just one more thing?

Go for it.

Yeah.

Kind of a resource that, um, the Council of Administrators of Special Ed CASE is a division of a larger organization called the Council for Exceptional Children, and we have worked extensively with CEC in our legislative summit where we go up on Capitol Hill every summer and we do advocacy around educator shortage. But as part of that work And we did this work several years ago with the Office of Special Education Programs when Lori Vander Ploeg was our OSEP director. And there are a number of resources around educator shortage that have to do with attract, prepare, and retain. And on the U.S. Department of Education's website, and I believe they're also on the CEC website, but if not, I'll send those and we could send those briefs out this information to people who are interested. But it gives lots of ideas. As we say, it takes a— it's a systemic issue. So we have to think about how do we work together to attract people to the field? How do we work together to prepare people adequately so that we retain them in the field? So those were 3 major pieces that we really looked at as a national organization. In, again, having conversations with our colleague Lori when she was at the Department of Education. And those are still resources that we look at and look to today for ideas.

I love that. I feel like that's a very simple way to capture solutioning for a very complicated issue, or what could be a very complicated issue. And so attract, prepare, and retain, this is maybe our takeaway theme For today. And also for all of the attendees here, we— I'm going to keep notes and we will send you all the resources that folks are talking about because who doesn't love a good click-through linked filled email afterwards in addition to the recording of the session. So let's talk for a minute. I don't want to— we could spend 10 panels talking about root causes. And so I want to make sure we don't spend the entire time talking about root causes.

Yeah.

But, um, there are a lot of root causes, right? Staffing could, could be seen, um, as a manifestation of a bigger root cause, right? Um, we've— many of us have spent a lot of time thinking about root causes and what is leading to this. And I think I would love for you guys to talk a little bit about, um, what is one root cause that people might not be thinking about? Or something that you think is— something that you think really needs attention, like a spotlight on it, as far as things that are contributing to staffing shortages. And I think you guys already named— you all named a few. But I'm going to kick it back to you all to talk through and just highlight one or two of the root causes that you think are most most important or most surprising or, or just anything you want to elevate.

So, Phyllis, why don't you go first? Yeah, I'll start. So as a special educator and as an administrator and someone who has been in the position to implement all aspects of IDEA with teaching staff, it's probably age-old, but it is still very prevalent today. And that is the paperwork and the compliance requirements, the regulatory requirements that have been put into play. As a result of how the Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Education, says we need to implement this law. So we're giving regulations. We know that there was a shift at some point in time where the focus was taken a little bit off of compliance, because if we think about compliance, it's about crossing T's and dotting I's, and we all know what the rules are. So we need to learn the rules and we need to follow the rules. But the emphasis needs to be on outcomes for students, right? So that shift really needs to take place. We, as of late at the federal level, have seen a little bit more push from the Office of Special Education Programs on compliance, and we're concerned about that. One of the things we're doing, we are hosting the Assistant Secretary of OSERS, which is the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, at our conference coming up in Savannah. And I'm very, very happy and proud to say that Secretary Gallo, Glenna Gallo, she is really focusing on outcomes. And we're going to have a panel and we're going to say we need to make this shift away from compliance to outcomes for students. And it's nice when the Assistant Secretary of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services is championing That. So I still think we have a hurdle with regard to paperwork and compliance and all the regulatory requirements. But it's something that has— one, we've, we've labeled it, we've acknowledged it even more so as of late. So now I think we're on that path to saying, how can we change that? Because the teaching aspect is tough enough in our classrooms. We need to alleviate all the other paperwork burdens that are required of special ed teachers, or else we need to infuse that funding to have more staff to do the paperwork so that we can teach. So that leads into numerous other issues. And I know that I'm sure Jordan, with his background, will talk about the other big issue that faces us. I hear from directors consistently across the nation, their number one concern is working with violent and aggressive students. So we know that that's a major issue right now, contributing, I think, to the educator shortage.

Yeah, I'll jump in. I'm so torn because I have so many, and I appreciate that you kept it to like one or two, because I do think, you know, the paperwork issue, I think if I think of a larger umbrella issue is I I believe that we as a society are not making it attractive to become a teacher. We know for their level of education, they are the worst paid. They are less and less respected year to year. They are challenged by parents and caregivers about what they teach, how they teach it, what they're allowed to teach. The violence, the behavioral mental health, the— I love hearing Kristin talking about upskilling. everybody at the school because teachers just don't always have every single skill they need to deal with every single problem. I think we're not making it attractive enough for teachers to enter the pipeline. I also think funding is an issue. The one I wanted to highlight, though, is, and this may be a little controversial, and I pre-apologize for that. I am a big fan of the MTSS model in theory. When I see it implemented, though, I don't see it implemented well very often. And I'm specifically talking about differentiated learning at Tier 1, but especially Tier 2. I think of Tier 2 as the Wild West. I know it's weird. The policy is that it's a different funding source than Tier 3, than special education, which is weird to me. But I do believe that actually, like Kristen was talking about, so many of our kids, so many of our students could be rerouted. on the trajectory from Tier 1, 2, to 3 with really good Tier 2 services. If we had good evidence-based, rigorous, systematic approaches to Tier 2, to reading instruction at Tier 2, to behavioral mental health at Tier 2, to speech at Tier 2, I think we could actually give resources well enough to keep many more kids out of the special ed pipeline, which would actually reduce the workload caseload of our special ed instructors who should be really aiming their resources and aiming their talents at those kids who really need the Tier 3 services. And I think, again, that would make it more attractive for not only teachers to become teachers, but teachers to become special education teachers and certify in specialized instruction so that they are not overwhelmed with gigantic caseloads and class sizes. We are actually rerouting students and giving them the resources they need and the skills they need at Tier 2 so that they can just make use of the general ed classroom so much better than I think they are now.

Yes to all of those things. I'm going to build on— so I tend to be a writer, so if you see me off to the side, it's just because I'm writing like a beautiful mind over here. There's a ton of root causes. It's like choose your own adventure, right? But a huge one is, I had seen this phrased a few months ago this way. It's like, we are attempting to Tier 3 ourselves out of a Tier 1 challenge many times. And I think that that is coupled with, there is a trend in like a fundamental misconception around what special education is, around what sound Tier 1 is. And so what that ends up How that ends up manifesting is, hey teachers, you do these 50,000 things, go. I've, I've been a teacher. I just left a school today. Teachers are working incredibly hard, so hard, and we keep adding and adding and adding. And so I wonder if we focus on one, clarifying exactly what we're saying. What is sound Tier 1? What does that actually look like? Don't try to jargon it. Don't try to intellectualize it. What does that look like for academics and for the social-emotional-cultural? Can we get that really right? And now when we talk about students who need additional support, what does that look like? Kind of, kind of like up where it's like squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. I feel this thing and it feels really like really high, like really, really tense and it's urgent. And so I think I need to do a new thing. What if we actually got the core things really right and start there and then help narrow down for our teachers what we're asking of them and how? See where that lands us, because truly by the numbers. Majority of students with diverse learning needs can and should be served in inclusive environments. That necessitates teachers having some foundational skill and support, which means we gotta get really clear on what we're asking them to do and the feasibility of it. And I probably named 10 root causes in there, but I'm— it's where I am.

Excellent. All of you, you're, you're, you're building on the attract, prepare, and retain theme quite well. I do want to remind all of our participants that— or the attendees, if you have questions, please make sure to put them in the Q&A. I am going to now ask you to turn to solutions. So we've talked about some root causes and very good ones, very deep-seated foundational ones. So thank you. Where do we start to solve these challenges? Because as Kristin mentioned, it, it can be a choose your own adventure. But like, how do you choose? Where do you start? I'm going to start with Kristin here since you were the last to go last time. What— where would you start to, to start addressing some of these root causes?

So the way I talk about this with partners, it's, it's really where do you choose to start? Right. And I think that's often one of the most intimidating and daunting things about this is people feel like I want to do this the right way. So let's pick a, let's pick a spot. If I'm a leader, we work with partners, actually spent the spring working with a partner on reimagining her schedule.

Mm-hmm.

And I said, I was like, what would happen if you actually started with your students with disabilities? Because I hear you saying like the student needs are so high and we have so many kids who need so many things and they— we have so many staff shortages. Okay, let's start with your students with disabilities. To Phyllis's point, for the compliance of it all, what are their service mandates? And now let's build around that. She ended up discovering that she had space to have 4 electives. She could keep teachers with a lot of their preferences, and all of her student minute needs were met. But it was a complete paradigm shift for how we approach resource allocation. You could opt to say, we are actually gonna focus on teacher training. Many teachers have a mis— and this is, this is not a blame, it's not a knock, right? Like, short of you going and getting your degree in special education, these are not things that are spent a ton of time on in teacher prep. But let's get really clear on what special education is, how a disability shows up, so that teachers can start to understand many of the things that benefit diverse learners are so foundational, so foundational. And so it often feels as a special educator, it felt like colleagues would be looking to me like I had the Harry Potter Expecto Patronus and I'm gonna like lay out all these magical things. And when they saw it in practice, they're like, yeah, you probably do a number of these things.

Likely.

The difference is I have the data from students to support the precision of how I implement this. So it could be starting with teacher training. It could be starting with saying, you know what, I want to reimagine how I allocate my resources. It could take a number of pathways. And what we say to partners, everything has a trade-off. And so there's, there's not a thing around a right or a wrong, as long as you were adhering To the law, because we—

the law.

You make the best decision with the information in front of you and recognize what the trade-offs are. And then as you get more data, you make more informed decisions. It seems like a very uncomfortable truth because we really do— it might be like the educator in us is like, what's the right answer? Let's release that for ourselves and say, what is the thing right now that I want to take a bite of? And so I, I think reimagining how you allocate your resources, starting with what your most diverse learners need, how do you maximize the people that you have? And then how do you get the information to your teachers in the knowledge and skill building? Not for adding another piece, but just making them, building their sense of efficacy. I, I believe that I have a stronger sense that I can do this.

I'll jump in. I agree completely. I'm going to answer it. It's a little unfair because, Sarah, you told us we didn't have to solve this today. But some solutions I'm going to offer too, because I am torn, because there is a part of me, I get inspired when I listen to Phyllis talking about going to Capitol Hill. I go to Capitol Hill a couple of times a year with the American Psychological Association to lobby for more resources for mental health in schools. We meet with congresspeople, we meet with senators, we meet with their staffs to really push these agendas to try and increase resources. And I would encourage people to get involved in that however you feel like you can. That's one area. I just think we need to be thinking nationally and federally at the same time as we're thinking about our own school. When I think about our own school, and this is going to be mostly stolen from Kristin, I think I think the place to start is with a really strong model of how you want to approach special ed, how you want to approach education in general. So if that's MTSS, you need to train your staff, you need to train your teachers on how to implement this really well and get creative. The thing I hate most is when I hear, but that's the way we've done it before. Or that's the way I learned to do it. That is not a good justification. I firmly believe we are letting too many kids slip through the cracks. I firmly believe we are not meeting our national mandate to educate every single child to their fullest potential. So the way that it's been done to me is not fully working, especially as has been pointed out for our most vulnerable learners. So we need to reimagine what MTSS can look like in your school. We need to look at, we need to do, I'm an assessment psychologist. We need to do an assessment of where your strengths are. Where are your teachers that are amazing and having great outcomes? And where are the teachers that are just checking the boxes and ticking off and they're compliant, but they're not really leading to amazing student outcomes? Let's look at those and let's reallocate those resources within our community to develop a better tiered system that can really approach these kids where they are exactly when they need it.

So I'll jump right in and keep piggybacking on because I think that Kristin hit the nail on the head when she started us off talking about resources. Um, what we know from some surveying that was done by the Council for Exceptional Children, it was called the State of the Profession Survey, and they're actually in the process of redoing that survey. And I think it's going to be out, if it's not already out, very shortly here. And so we want to hear from the field, uh, about the state of the profession. But what we learned the last go-around from teachers The number one— it was not the number one, it was in the top 3 that teachers said they needed or what they lacked was support from their leader in their building. So when we talk about how a leader can lead in their building to impact this educator shortage, one is how do we retain teachers? We retain them by preparing them well. Providing them with the resources that they need, providing them with the education to implement those resources that we put in their hands to use, and letting them have a stake in that, letting them have a say in, these are the resources that I need, here's why I need them, here's who I need them for. And I think working together collectively as a group around those resources and around that support That teachers feel very much a part of the community. Those special ed teachers feel very much a part of the whole community in the school. That makes a huge difference. So, you know, again, that whole retain piece, we look at what does it take to retain teachers, and we know it's by giving them the tools that they need and the support that they need. So I'm gonna do what Jordan did. I'm gonna say 2 things. So that's one, but the other piece, and it's kind of, our charge this year and in the coming years, and especially as we're in a different political environment, and we don't know what type of political environment we'll be in after the election this year, but we need a collective voice around special education as educators. And I said this to the group, I think, when we were doing some prep work, but, and this is not just about CASE, this is about professional organizations. I just told you we had We have 21 groups that are coming together around special education. Now, these are the principals, these are the related service providers, and they all want to coalesce. They all want to have conversations about special education. So if you're out there and you're a principal or a superintendent or a teacher or an occupational therapist or a physical therapist, join your professional organization. Because when we advocate on Capitol Hill, we have 5,700 members, 5,700 members. Members in CASE. There are over 13,000 school districts in the nation. How much more of an impact might I have if I go on Capitol Hill and I say, I represent 20,000 special education leaders and administrators across the nation? How much more powerful is the Elementary Principals Association if they say, we represent 20,000, not 13,000, because 13,000 districts equates to how many elementary schools? A whole lot more, right? So if we have this collective voice from every discipline in education advocating for change, we can be strong, and we can impact change, and we can elevate the profession, and maybe contribute to more educators in the field. That's my soapbox. I'm going to step off of it right now.

I'm going to jump in. I know I'm going out of order, Sarah. I'm sorry. I just want to jump in and underline one thing that Phyllis said before Before the soapbox, about the leadership in the building. I hear this all the time from special ed instructors and support services that their principals just don't really understand what it is that they do. They really don't get it. And they need— I was going to say the grown-ups in the building. They need the leaders in the building to understand and champion what it is that they do and what they're doing. I think that this is I think it's vitally important for us to really educate the principals, the heads of these buildings, to truly understand what it is that our special ed instructors are really doing for these highest need kids.

I'm going to get us to the Q&A because I think we're getting some really great questions in here, and I'm like, they're really good. So the first question, I'm going to have Kristin kick us off since the question was directed to Kristin. But everyone else can jump in. But Kristin, if you want to, if you want to phone a friend, you're also welcome to do that. Pulling back from a very old reference that maybe some of our audience members don't even know what I'm talking about. So one of the concerns, and someone else mentioned this already, is around violent students and students, violent students with disabilities. Being a challenge in terms of special education retention, or I guess I would say preparation and retention. What do you imagine could be done differently at a Tier 1 level to create more successful and supportive environments for students experiencing intense behavior dysregulation?

This is a good one. I saw it and I immediately started writing notes. So one of the root causes, as I like finessed my answer to name several, I lifted up were like the misconceptions that exist. And what comes to mind for me with this question in particular is one, with, with Tier 1, there's some foundational— what does classroom culture look like? How do we set very clear community agreements among students? And what does it look like to build a culture where this is our learning environment and it's our shared environment? So I do think that is one way and one opportunity. That can definitely be strengthened in the work that's happening in schools. And there's a misconception around the concept, I think, of inclusion. So it's kind of like the pendulum has swung so far to where it's, we are fully included. And I'm supposed to— what do you mean by that? What do you mean by that? Do you mean that there are students with disabilities sitting in general education classrooms? Because if they are not receiving the appropriate services, supports, environments, etc., then they're not actually included. They're not having a meaningful learning experience, right? And I think connected to just a lack of knowing that what happens is very— what happens is we put students into classrooms and we say, well, they're in a general education classroom, But then we tend to write IEP documents that have them receiving services in a pullout space. Then I'm like, okay, but hold on a second. Special education has those 2 purposes. So if I'm in a general education classroom and the only time I have an interface with my special education teacher is if I'm pulled out, or if they come into the room and they pull me to the side, I might not be in the most appropriate ratio for me. And that does not mean that we are not including students. Right? Least restrictive environment is saying to the greatest extent possible for that student to receive the services that they need and make progress in the general education environment. So if for me that means that my reading disability, my disability impacts reading so much that my frustration threshold is so low that if I'm in a classroom and I do not have the adequate specialized instruction, That's gonna manifest in a spicy time for all of us, right? And what can, what can end up happening is I get placed in a more, in a super restrictive environment where I'm likely still not getting my needs met. But now the, the behavior is being addressed without the underlying actual root cause being addressed. And so I think that there's the, the tier 1 of it all, but then there's also understanding what effective inclusion means and being okay with clarifying our continuum options. And knowing that it's not static. If Kristen's disability really manifests in reading, she may need a setting where she has a lower teacher-to-student ratio. But if it doesn't manifest in math, Kristen can be in a general education setting for math. She might not even need specialized instruction, or she might need some when, when the reading levels up in math. But I do map that back to how do we build folks' knowledge and understanding? Around these key components when it comes to special education. That was very verbose. I apologize. Let me get off my soapbox.

No, I'm gonna— can I jump in? Sorry, my ADHD is showing. It's the hardest thing in the world for me to hear a great question and not just jump in on it. I love that. I will add, I know SEL is very sexy right now. I would double down actually on executive functioning. I think if we had more robust executive function training at the earliest grades, kindergarten, K through 2, executive function, like train our teachers to train the students in better self-regulation, executive function coaching, reinforce it through the academics. I think we would actually see a lot less, not just aggression and violence and that kind of stuff, but, and this is not just for kids, it benefits everybody. Like executive functioning is good for all of us. I need a little more of it. But we, we, would see, I think, better academic achievement across the board. And I think we would see fewer behavior problems as we get into the older elementary years and middle school years. I think, I think for me, this is the next frontier beyond SEL is executive functioning.

Okay, I'm going to move us. We have about 13 minutes. I'm gonna move us to one last question, and then I have— I get to be the last question askers. So we have a bunch of questions here, and I don't think we're gonna get to all of them. So we'll have to figure out what we're gonna do to make sure that we address all of the questions. And I just wanna thank you all for putting your questions in there. I feel like this hour is going by very One of the questions we got was around the focus on special ed teachers. We're talking a lot about special ed teachers. So what are the other— who are the other people who can help with shortages, and how are we calling attention to the other special ed support roles that have shortages? And Jordan, I know you spoke last, but also you guys have other services besides special ed teachers. So I wonder if you could start us off on this question.

Yeah, I think, you know, obviously we have shortages in related service providers, our speech-language pathologists, our school social workers, our school psychologists. We've got shortages across the board. And there are lots of the same problems and the same possible solutions for getting more of them. But I think actually Phyllis offered a suggestion that I think is key here. Which is how can we get the resources that we do have doing the work they should be doing, right? How can we get the special ed teachers using 99% of their time with kids, teaching, interacting with those kids? How can we get those SLPs? One thing we do at Parallel a lot is think about how can we use technology to reduce the paperwork, to reduce the scheduling conflicts? How can we provide resources to a district to help them streamline so that special ed teachers can spend most of their time special ed teaching? How can we get the school psychologists doing the work that they should be doing that requires their school psychologist brain and use technology or support staff or others to do the stuff that doesn't need a school psychologist's brain? The paperwork, the notes, the charting, the checking the boxes, the IEP programs, the All of the things, the administrivia that need happening. So I think there are ways we can, again, up-resource and upskill all of those providers, not just special ed teachers, but all of the related service providers, our paraprofessionals who are doing a lot of the day-to-day work with our kiddos. I think we can do a lot there.

I have a thought, but I also want to yield the floor to Phyllis because I've taken up a lot of airtime. So, I mean, the reality is, and I'm curious to know if this is the trend that folks are seeing also, we're seeing a spike in roles like paras or one-to-ones or, you know, a rose by any other name. And what we're not seeing Is the same spike in the training, right? And so, and this is, I wanna be very clear, this conversation, especially in education, I like to say like educators are artists and we're very sensitive about our stuff. So it's not a slight to anyone, but I've been a teacher in a classroom where I have paras who aren't necessarily trained in the ins and outs of how to really fulfill their roles effectively. And it can be exhausting. And that was before teachers were navigating a pandemic and students with intensive needs. And so I think it's really elevating as much as possible the importance of those roles and what they do in meeting student needs, right? Because there's a balance. We do need special education teachers. They are the experts and they are highly skilled and highly trained.

Mm-hmm.

Who support diverse learners, right? And I don't think that that's often seen or understood as much in the conversation. And as my own little plug, I think that we need to do a lot more work to ensure that the voices of folks who support special education and diverse learners are at those decision-making tables, because we often aren't. And that is a critical, critical need if we're going to make the most informed decisions for, for our staff and our kids.

I'll just kind of piggyback on that. You know, Jordan talked initially about executive function, and it was all I could do just to not turn on and start cheering because we as educators don't look deep enough into how our kiddos are processing information, how they're learning, what's going on in here. And it doesn't— it takes more than one person. As Kristin was saying, we need OTs who have specialized training, PTs, school psychs, special ed teachers. They all need to be coming together because they all bring a discipline that's different to meet the needs of some of those severe and aggressive and violent students, as well as some of our most challenging students who have difficulty in reading and in math. And sometimes we lose sight of, um, I don't have to have all the answers, but my team together can have all the answers. And I think when we go To that issue of attracting and preparing and retaining, it's not one person's issue. It's all people's issues. And when we think about what teachers need in the classrooms, sometimes we don't ask them directly. And we need to ask them, what do you need? How can we make that happen? What are your ideas? And when you start that brainstorming, you realize you come up with some ideas that maybe you had never thought of. Because someone said earlier, Sometimes we do things the way we've always done them or the way we were taught to do them, and we are not thinking outside of that box. And it's going to take a lot of outside-of-the-box thinking to really begin to get us back to that full staffing of all disciplines, not just special ed teachers, not just general ed teachers in those high-need areas of science and math, But also our occupational therapists, our school psychologists, our physical therapists, all those resources, speech-language pathologists, all those resources that we need.

I just want to make one note here too, just to tie up everything that we're talking about, especially similar when Jordan spoke about executive functioning. I was like, oh, okay. It also underscores the importance Of having culturally and linguistically responsive training, right? And I'm, I'm gonna just use executive functioning as an example. Sarah shared a statistic at the top of the call around what is the overrepresentation of Black and brown kids, in particular Black and brown boys, when it comes to diverse learning, as well as we know research shows when it comes to Black and brown children, girls, boys, etc., the behaviors that students exhibit tend to be viewed with a very different lens. And discussed very differently, right? And so the need to have our practitioners trained in a culturally and linguistically responsive way is how we also attend to bias. So that if I've been in conversations where we're talking about 6-year-old students, and it's a 6-year-old brown boy, and teachers like, I'm scared that he's going to hit me. And I've observed this child, and I'm like, There's a lot happening in the classroom. The child is overstimulated by and large, and I am really concerned with how we're talking about this child. And I want to assume the best intentions, and I move through the world as a Black woman. I've lived my whole life in this Black skin, and I'm very aware of the ways in which biases can show up. And so it's not to demonize, but I think like the second we start talking about like demonizing a person, we move the— we move the focus from where we need it to be, which is around like, how do we, as we, we make the efforts to provide students with what they need, we're also doing our work to make sure that we are being culturally and linguistically inclusive in all of the ways that students show up in our spaces that are different from what we know, how we've been raised, how we've grown up. And, and so again, I realize as I say that, it's like, great, Krystin, you just made this, this whole big thing again. Choose a thing. Choose a thing and, and go at it and try it and give yourselves grace and see how it's going and tune. And we're teachers, be data-driven, but try a thing, not 50. One.

All right, on that note, we have 4 minutes and we've got 3 panelists. So in your last minute, What do you want folks to leave with? Like, if we are talking about solutions or action or inspiration, what's one thing that someone can do tomorrow that will help solve staffing challenges as we've defined it as broadly as possible in the last hour? Who wants to go first?

I'll go first since I don't want to be the last one to speak. So Kristen, Kristen took mine, which is do anything, just, just do something. But I, I would say if I had to choose one thing, I would say try and get a bird's-eye view, try and get a 50,000-foot view of how you are implementing MTSS, how you are implementing your vision, and try and get creative. around how you are implementing, how you are upskilling the people in the building already, the resources that you have, so that we can better meet the needs of kids earlier and try and keep as many of them rerouted from Tier 2 back to Tier 1 rather than Tier 2 to moving to Tier 3. Save Tier 3 for those who really need it, and there are many kids who absolutely need it.

So I would say step out of your comfort zone. We talked about how this is a systemic issue. Not one person can solve it. Not even 2 people can solve it. So it takes a collective voice. So if you're that person who can pull together somebody from your state department, somebody from your local university, somebody from your board of education, a general ed teacher, if you're an administrator, your superintendent, or if you're the superintendent, you have the power to garner all those people together within your school district and you begin the conversation. It just takes one person to step outside the box and invite people to a conversation. And I believe that's a starting point if you, if you have no other, other resources at your fingertips.

Kristin, you get the last word. I get the last word, but you get the last.

Yeah, what I wrote down is butterfly effect. This is something we close our trainings with, and we like to ask folks That's one thing, one thing you could change. And so I would offer for the leaders in the room, what is one thing you can change in your practice that would center the most diverse learners in your building? And then how can you maximize— what is one thing that you can do to maximize the experts to address that? So shrink the change. And then for educators, my question is the same. It's just from For you in your practice, what is one thing you can shift in your practice that centers diverse learners? And then with that, what is one way you can leverage, be it a special education teacher or an interventionist or an EL coordinator or para, to support you with that one shift? Just start with one thing.

Well, thank you guys. This has been phenomenal. And thank you to Phyllis, Kristin, Jordan, Thank you. For your incredible insights. I know I'm going to be processing for a very long time, and I'm excited that we recorded it so I can listen again and fast forward through my own parts. And I would also like to say thank you to all of our attendees for participating. So watch your inboxes for a follow-up, follow all of our organizations, go to Savannah next week. And engage with the case conference. We will all be there, and we're excited about continuing this conversation and to see what everyone does and picks up from from the insights from today. So thank you guys so much for all being here, and have a great afternoon.