By Linda Conner Lambeck
WESTPORT–Six firms submitted proposals to conduct a critique of the school district’s special education services by the September 1 deadline.
The firms, according to Elio Longo, the district’s chief financial officer, are:
- ABG Sped Consulting
- CREC Resource Group
- FourPoint Education Partners
- New Solutions K12
- The Stepping Stones Group
- Urban Collaborative
Longo said the district also received an unsolicited Request for Proposal from a firm that had not participated in a request for qualifications process held earlier this summer. As such, the proposal was disqualified.
During the RFQ process, 10 firms collectively submitted nearly 1000 pages listing experience, references and examples of past work. All 10 were invited to bid.
The school board, last spring, took the unusual step of involving itself in the selection process after parents expressed concerns about district special education offerings and the administration’s ability to select a non-partial vendor.
At a meeting on Thursday, Schools Superintendent Thomas Scarice said the program review will determine how well the system is working for families and students. There is to be data analysis, family and staff surveys, focus group interviews, classroom observations and comparisons with effective practices, Scarice said.
He expects the review to take six months to complete.
The independent review will run alongside a standard state-led compliance review.
Roughly 770 students in the district receive special education services, about 15 percent of the district’s 5,193 students.
When Scarice said the plan was to return to the board on October 15 with a recommendation of which firm to select, Board Member Stephen Shackelford asked if there shouldn’t be a meeting beforehand for the board to review the RFP’s along with the public.
Apparently, there are issues with immediately releasing those documents, Longo told the board on Thursday.
While negotiations with the vendors are ongoing, there are concerns with releasing pricing information.
Scarice said board attorneys were consulted on the matter.
“It’s a timing issue,” Longo said, acknowledging that, as public records, the bids do eventually need to be made public.
Shackleford said he understood the desire to negotiate with a favored vendor to get the price down but added the whole premise behind the board’s involvement was to be transparent with the public and to get community input before a decision is made.
“We should know what we are discussing before we discuss it,” Shackelford added.
Board member Andy Frankel said he wants maximum transparency but also doesn’t want to prejudice the district’s ability to get the best price on what is anticipated to be an expensive study.
Board member Jill Dillon asked if it wasn’t possible to release the proposals minus the pricing. Shackelford called that a great idea.
Board Chair Lee Goldstein said the board did not agree to get formal presentations from vendors or an open forum on the RFQ’s before getting a recommendation from staff.
“It would be nice to hear from the community before the interview process is over,” Shackelford said. He said it would be useful for that to occur before the administration gives its recommendation to the board.
“We will find out a way to make it work,” Goldstein said.
During the public comment portion of the meeting, Michelle Vitulich, a parent, asked which parents will get the surveys conducted by the firm selected. Some parents whose children do not have Individual Education Plans may want to weigh in.
At an earlier meeting, Vitulich suggested the firm look at why conflicts arise over services provided and why parents sometimes resort to obtaining legal advice to advocate for their children.
Rosa Balestrino, another parent, called the scope of the work laid out in the Request for Proposals a good foundation but hopes some of the systematic issues raised by multiple families over the course of the calendar year will be addressed.
Vitulich also asked the board to make special education topics a regular part of its twice monthly agendas.
While the broad categories in the RFP establish a baseline for the review to be conducted, an external consultant cannot automatically infer or identify out district’s specific, localized challenges under generic review headings. To ensure this evaluation yields actionable solutions, systemic issues raised by the community should be highlighted as areas for the consultant to include in the review. Individualization of education plans for special needs children, legal spend and use of the district’s outside counsel in routine special education planning meetings with schools and parents, delays in delivering data to families (sometimes in excess of 1 year) that prove that education plan (IEP) goals are being met are just a few of the key areas to consider for inclusion in the review. Families who have taken their children out of the district in favor of private schools should be surveyed, together with families whose children remain in RTI (intervention services) long term and are not offered an IEP, as well as families who have been denied evaluations and services for their children. Lastly, the community has a right to know why 4 out of the 10 initial consulting firms bidding for the review are no longer participating.