What Superintendents Want You to Know Before you talk to them about anything special ed!

The Basics: Superintendents and Special Ed. For most superintendents special ed is a very small part of their job. For the most part they support all the values we support, though some don’t believe in inclusion…though in fact neither do many special educators. They rely on other people to “do” special ed for them. That may be SELPA staff, attorneys, or agencies. Most of them do not have a special ed background. They would like it to go away. Please.

The Basics: What Else Does a Superintendent Focus On? LCAP. Many don’t have SWD in it explicitly. Finance. Perhaps the biggest part of the job and one for which special ed is a problem. Always growing and not much insight into how to curb that. Always meeting with CBO/manager. HR. Always working on filling key positions or discussing staff issues and meeting with HR director/admin. Board: Takes a ton of time to feed and care for the board. The joke among supes is your only as safe as your board majority. If that goes, you do too.

The Basics: What Else Does a Superintendent Focus On? Facilities. Can be completely consuming at times of the year or if a bond measure or parcel tax was passed. Negotiations: Nothing is as fun as constantly having your integrity questioned by people who purposely don’t want you to know what they know or think they know. IBB helps though it takes a lot of time, which for some reason no one can find. Other management: Food service, data management, etc… and...

The Basics: Instruction Instruction! Supporting principals, teachers, assistants Curriculum and instructional practice discussion, including data review, adoptions, implementation issues, etc. PBIS or other school culture issues. Many superintendents don’t have a C & I person so they do it themselves.

The Basics: When Special Ed Reaches Superintendents Budget. CBOs complain a lot about the cost of sped and supes look for ways to reduce those costs. Generally that will look like personnel or special programs. Legal. Compliance or due process or OCR. Parents. Those parents that want a response figure out pretty quick that they can call the supe and get action faster. Board. Someone complains to the board or the local paper. And now, the dashboard ( which by the way has red as bad and blue as good…another liberal California statement?).

From their own mouths: What they want us to know. I surveyed 20 superintendents. Here’s what they said: Compliance reviews are of little value. They don’t learn how to improve from them. Why is no one working on increasing funding for sped? If they are, we don’t hear about it. They feel they are guilty until proven innocent in terms of compliance/DP filings. They want parents/advocates to assume good intentions. Several mentioned OCR complaints where there was no backup info offered as to the complaint. They feel OCR also sees them as guilty first.

Mouths cont’d: Please work with the legislature on the impact of general education laws on special ed and costs and workload. CTA, CSEA, ACSA need to have one voice on funding problems. Supes want to hear 5 things they can do now to impact funding and not just hear complaints about how it’s poorly funded. Some legal options are a burden…the choices given by attorneys don’t make sense and are always costly. Can we move beyond compliance and due process outcomes to support of lower cost options? Promote ADR to avoid compliance/DP issues. Would like caps on cost of advocate requested services.

More Mouths Help districts figure out what percentage of IEP goals are met for an LCAP action. Help districts figure out what data matters to help move SWD forward. How do we implement UDL or an MTSS program that isn’t just the same old stuff? Special ed is a small part of what we do and most of us don’t understand it. With the new legal standard, if we include special ed kids in our LCAP we are opening ourselves up to greater challenges from advocates. We already work on their needs: help us just do that better.

Possible Strategies to Use with Superintendents Approach issues from the supe’s own interests: are they focused on fiscal, legal, or programmatic issues first? Think of ways to counter their anxiety over increased costs and legal compliance obligations. Think of ways to offer relief from any other issue facing them…general ed staff development for example, or easier ways to use data. Offer a well-developed support process for instructional and behavioral needs. What does your support look like? How can a superintendent easily market that to school staff?

Bottom Line Every person walking into the superintendent’s office wants something. Most superintendents are overwhelmed and always being asked to do a number of things. They have the last word and may take time to reach a decision or to get informed. With a mindset of “how do I relieve this person’s anxiety” you may be more successful and getting cooperation from the person. Small acknowledgements work well too…it’s a thankless job and most supes don’t feel anything but requests for more and blame for not doing something.