By NEIL ZOLOT
NORTH READING — The School Department will be using new Individual Education Plan (IEP) forms in the 2024-25 school year, as mandated by the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE).
“The goal is to make it more user-friendly,” Director of Student Services Cynthia Conant told the School Committee at their meeting Monday night. “It’s to have student input with a section devoted to the student’s voice and not as heavy on technical terms.”
According to the Massachusetts Teachers Association Policy Minute website the “current IEP forms and the IEP Process Guide have not been updated since 2001 and are based on late 1900s systems for Special Education programming. DESE’s IEP Improvement Project has been working since 2014 to design, pilot and roll out a revised form and process for students in Massachusetts.”
Implementation was optional for this year, but is required for the next. “This year we’re doing a deep dive and training staff to have sufficient time for them to acclimate to the new forms,” Conant said of the time lag.
That information was just part of her briefing on Student Services and Special Education for the committee. Most of her time was spent on positive results of DESE’s review of the school system’s compliance with Special Education regulations.
“The preliminary report suggests we have demonstrated full compliance across all regulations and they’re considering a commendable rating,” she said. “That’s hard to get and very challenging to receive. Two aspects brought it up. One was the composition of the teaching team in the Reaching Independence through Structured Education (RISE) at the Hood Elementary School, including the appointment of a General Education teacher in the program. It required us to be thinking outside the box.”
“The second was use of supports available to all students. We’ve been able to create programs to promote Social and Emotional Learning,” Conant continued, explaining, “They said we’re modeling how to create supports. You can’t have a strong Special Education program unless you have a strong General Education program. If not, you end up having more students in Special Education. We’re seeing fewer students in Special Education because more are staying in General Education.”
The DESE review, dubbed Tiered Focused Monitoring, takes place every three years, succeeding previous reviews every six years, dubbed the Coordinated Program Review, focused on staffing and facilities. “It’s to make sure we’re in line with laws and regulations, as opposed to evaluating services,” Conant explained. “It doesn’t mean all our delivery is super, but is an evaluation of a level of our compliance. It ensures we have a continuum of services. They want to see if we’re meeting requirements.”
“Compliance is a big deal and can lead to problems if everyone doesn’t understand its importance. Compliance is the foundation on which you build. If you don’t have compliance you can’t plan programs. You achieve compliance and build from there,” she added.
Representatives from DESE visited schools, held an orientation session for parents and talked to staff, mostly in early December. “They wanted to see where Special Education is delivered, not evaluate the person delivering services,” Conant said.
Conant came to the system in 2015, at which time the DESE rated 10 areas of the district’s Special Education “partially implemented.” Conant said her first step was to “draft an action plan for the 10 areas.”
By 2018, only three areas were out of compliance, with full compliance achieved in 2021. Factors in achieving that included minimizing instability during turnovers in leadership and staff and “making sure staff is up-to-date on compliance and creating workflows to ensure the staff is up-to-date,” Conant said.
Superintendent Dr. Patrick Daly said Conant “does a great job with her team and is a calming presence. The reasons these laws are in place is to make things flow smoothly. Cynthia’s job is to keep all these things running and she does a great job.”
“I’m just the messenger,” Conant reacted. “There’s a whole team of people that helped me put this together. It’s not just one person.”
