Report 3: June 9, 2025
Strategy 3 has wrapped up their work for this year. We have done much work on our recommended goals to be presented to the board. We also worked on cohesion and standardization of vocabulary to be stakeholder-friendly. We have revised our recommended goal for Year 4. We met this spring in February and April to finish our work for the year and present the recommendations below.
Our main goal this year encompassed five components. We broke down each of those components into their parts and created a smart goal for each for the board to consider.
- IEP Implementation Group: Beginning August 2025, we will implement a process for ensuring IEPs are implemented with fidelity through communication, professional development and trackable data on accommodations in all settings across the Derby district.
- 504 Implementation Group: Beginning August 2025, we will implement a process for ensuring 504s are implemented with fidelity through communication, professional development and trackable data on accommodations in all settings across the Derby district.
The two goals above recommend that all teaching staff track the accommodation usage for students
with IEPs and 504s on their assignments and assessments throughout the year and enhance communication between case managers and teaching staff. We also recommend increased focus across the district on professional development surrounding the implementation of IEPs and 504s in all educational settings.
- Professional Development Goal: Beginning with the 2025-2026 school year and subsequent years, the Derby Public School District will provide one professional development opportunity for both certified and classified staff in the following areas, including but not limited to Behavior Support, Instructional Support and Accommodations with a focus on self-advocacy which will be followed by one refresher opportunity throughout the 2025-2026 school year.
- Facilities Group: In conjunction with the facilities master planning committee, the district will explore adding adult changing tables, the location and number of ADA door access buttons, discuss realigning classroom locations for multi-level schools, including the unique needs of those classroom types and the addition of family restrooms.
- Transition Group: Using the district advancement process, transitions between EC-K, 5th-6th and 8th-9th grades will follow a standardized communication process to ensure clarity and increase inclusion. Please see the new District Advancement Process ( this one is already completed with the work of the department over the last year)
Our revised goal for the 2025-2026 school year that we would like to offer the board for approval is:
Beginning in June 2025, the district will explore ways to increase engagement in the parent satisfaction survey. Following the aggregation of the survey data, Strategy 3 will determine further goals or action steps to present to the board through a discussion/action plan at a future board meeting.
We revised this goal because our initial goal was only to increase engagement in the parent satisfaction survey. Besides increasing our marketing, we cannot empower stakeholders to participate in a survey if they are not inclined. Therefore, we wanted to add an actionable item to present to the board following the survey results. We will send out our survey in November of 2025.
Finally, we worked on cohesion and standardization of vocabulary to be stakeholder-friendly. The names of some of our classrooms were confusing to parents and staff. The term PBIS (Positive Behavior Intervention Strategies) is an evidence-based practice. With our increased focus on Character Strong and evidenced-based PBIS methods across the district, we did not want to confuse the interventions with a location. Therefore, Strategy 3 recommends a vocabulary change from PBIS to Therapeutic
Learning Classroom (TLC), which enhances the classroom description rather than naming it after a set of
interventions that are good for all students.
Strategy 3 also recommended continuing to use the name Mixed Abilities for any new integrated low-incidence classrooms that are added across the district. It is the goal of Special Services to have one low-incidence classroom per building in the future so that students with more complex needs are not required to leave their neighborhood building to receive services. As we continue to add classrooms, like the one the Board of Education approved at Wineteer for next year, we will use the term Mixed Abilities
for those classrooms.
Finally, we discussed the confusion between Interrelated (IR) at the elementary level and Curriculum Modified (CM) at the secondary level. That was the hardest for us to come to a consensus on. We determined that we would move to the name Curriculum Modified so there would be a cohesive name for that classroom type across the district. You can look at the descriptions of our classroom types on our website.
Next year, we will also continue our work to explore the service delivery model at our secondary buildings. When looking at licensure for Special Education in the secondary realm, those staff must be duly certified in Special Education, and the content area they teach must be reimbursable by the state. Currently, we have several staff members who are content specialists but are not Special Education certified; therefore, we cannot financially recoup a portion of their salary from the state. Or conversely,
they are Special Education certified, but not certified in the content area they teach. If the staff are not certified in Special Education, they are not able to write IEPs. Therefore, we must pay other Special Education staff who volunteer outside of their contract to be the case managers for those IEPs, or what we call overloads. If we looked at a model change where our Special Education staff were co-teaching with general education staff, we could financially recoup a portion of their salary. We would also not be required to employ a dually licensed teacher, which is hard to find. If we had all Special Education staff, they would all be able to manage cases, reducing the overloads we currently pay.
Report 2: February 10, 2025
Strategy 3 held its second meeting on November 4, 2024. We reviewed our norms during that meeting
and began working on SMART goals. SMART stands for:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
Following a presentation on SMART goals, we divided into interest groups to work on the five focus areas. Each team drafted a goal that hit each section of the SMART goal template and then used that information to complete a draft goal we will begin working with during our December meeting. We also provided time to preview two sub-committee tasks, reviewing the classroom-type names across the district, aligning them, and reviewing the service delivery model at Derby High School. Volunteers for those subgroups emailed Dr. Gresham with their interest and will begin to meet before winter break.
Strategy 3 held its third meeting on December 2, 2024. During that meeting, the groups presented their previously drafted SMART goals to the entire group. Edits, based on other people’s suggestions, were reviewed until a final goal was constructed. Specifically, we worked on the IEP Implementation goal. The Strategy 3 team would like to propose that all students on an IEP have their accommodations tracked by staff beginning in the 2025/2026 school year in a way that can be quantified.
This process will continue until all five goals have been finalized. We also set up the dates to meet as a sub-committee. The Derby High School classroom service model and the classroom type name committees met in December, and both agreed that we needed to explore the proposed options. Future dates will be set with the group.
The proposal is that we create a district-cohesive classroom-type system to name our categorical classrooms. Currently, we have two different names for the same program at the elementary and secondary levels. Interrelated at the elementary school is the same as curriculum modified at the secondary level. We want to ensure that only one name is used across the district. We would also like to change the name of PBIS to something that does not conflict with the vocabulary in Character Strong and other evidence-based practices. Confusion may abound if we use PBIS as an evidence-based strategy in social-emotional learning while also having it as the label for a classroom type. Finally, we want to ensure that we are using the Mixed Abilities term across the district for our combined type of low-incidence programs. This will not supersede the current Life Skills, Structured Learning, and Functional Classrooms. It is not a replacement for those classrooms; it is to ensure that our vision of low-incidence classrooms in all buildings has a common naming procedure.
Report 1: November 25, 2024
Strategy 3 held its first meeting of the year on September 16, 2024. We started with introductions and discussed our reasons for being a part of this team. Each member shared personal motivations that highlight the importance of our work. After this, we set some ground rules for how we would communicate, make decisions, resolve conflicts, and follow majority rules.
Next, we began our work for Year 3. The Special Services Parent Advisory Council (SSPAC) presented a report to our committee. The SSPAC is responsible for overseeing the initiatives related to Strategy 3. This year, their goal is to increase parental involvement. They currently have 44 members representing each school, except for Cooper. We are happy to report that the SSPAC has been successful in achieving their goal, as shown by the higher attendance of new members at meetings.
We then outlined our goal for this year. By May 2025, Strategy 3 plans to find, identify, and share ways to improve inclusivity for students with exceptionalities across the district. We will focus on specific areas including:
- Professional Learning
- Transitions
- IEP Implementation
- 504 Implementation
- Facilities
At this point, we engaged in an activity to gather input from stakeholders and recorded their ideas. After this collaborative session, we organized our thoughts under the five focus areas mentioned earlier.
As a committee, we reviewed the feedback collected on sticky notes, and any additional comments were included. The Special Services team documented this information to help with goal-setting on November 4.
Looking ahead to our meeting on November 4, we will use the information gathered in September to start creating measurable goals. The meeting will begin with a review of our ground rules and an introduction of any new participants. We will also welcome the SSPAC to share their important work with the committee. Following that, we will have a short session on SMART Goals, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Framed.
During the meeting, we will discuss our goals within the five focus areas set by our overall annual goal. We will work together to create a collective goal for each area across the district. It is important for us to focus on the overall vision instead of individual agendas, set both short- and long-term targets, create realistic timelines for systemic changes, and discuss how we will achieve these goals.
If time allows, we will also conduct a quick survey to understand the committee's views on aligning district program names. Right now, "Curriculum Modified" is only used in secondary schools, while elementary schools call it, "Interrelated." Additionally, elementary schools have three different names for our low-incidence programs, while secondary schools use the term "mixed abilities." This inconsistency can create confusion, which we want to avoid.
Lastly, we suggest forming a subcommittee to look into possibly revising how we provide services at DHS. This subcommittee would help us identify service models that could reduce challenging behaviors, retain teaching staff, improve student achievement, and decrease the time spent in, “special education classrooms” while focusing on the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE).
