Knox County Schools special education task force makes recommendations to address “cultural problems”

A special education task force says Knox County Schools (KCS) needs curriculum modifications and other culture changes to ensure special education students are learning in the right environments.Members of that task force provided the Knox County School Board with a list of recommendations Monday night to improve special education. The task force has spent the last three months evaluating how the district serves its special education students and determined there are cultural problems originating from outside of the local school level.“The task force is equipped to make recommendations, but it is not empowered to implement cultural change. This is a challenge that requires more than a few dozen band aid solutions produced by one task force in less than three summer months without full engagement from KCS leadership, the special education department leadership, and staff. It’s time to reimagine special education to ensure teachers, educators, administrators, parents, and students across Knox County have the supports and structures in place to thrive,” said parent and task force member Cortney Piper.The task force found 45 areas of improvement across eight categories. They include:

• Inclusion and least restrictive environment
• Curriculum modifications
• Ability/provision of services, facilities, supports and training (for students and teachers)
• Communication and decision making
• Parental consent to program/placement/setting
• Isolation/restraint/discipline and absenteeism
• Transitions
• Testing/evaluation

The task force provided the board with five recommendations to increase support and address deeper internal problems.The first recommendation is to establish a new code of conduct for special education employees and leadership that exhibits a “student first” mentality. The code of conduct would clearly define expectations for administrators, supervisors, mentors, facilitators, education assistants, teachers and staff and put an emphasis on internal and external communication and expectations for employees so that those closest to the students are able to make decisions and identify corrective or disciplinary actions.The second recommendation is to bring in an inclusion and structural reform expert to provide guidance on improving accessibility for students with special needs.The third recommendation is to designate someone other than the Knox County Law Department to review and evaluate cases against the district and whether or not proper legal action should be taken.The fourth recommendation is for district leadership to ask, “What is the upside,” to fighting parents who’ve filed legal action related to accessibility.The final recommendation is to establish a non-time bound council to review the district’s special education department, including the progress towards the recommendations in the report. The council should include district administrators, special education directors, special education staff representatives, parents, and outside experts.The recommendations are not legally binding and will most likely be a multi-year process once the board of education has decided what to implement.“Looking through those things and obviously when we announced that we wanted to do this, this is why. Just being honest, it’s not fun to open yourself up to vulnerability and look at potential warts and things that could be there and we appreciate and consider this is a huge help to us,” said Superintendent Jon Rysewyk. “We didn’t get here overnight, right? And so we’re not going to fix all of this stuff by, you know there’s the quick fix, websites and phone numbers and things like that can go up, but what I sense is that’s not what we’re after. And that’s not what we’re after either when we’re talking about really trying to think about how we deliver service to every student.”Superintendent Rysewyk assembled the special education taskforce to identify the issues in the district’s special education system and improve the education and resources for the students in it.It is made up of nine parents and one teacher. At least one of those parents joined because of problems she had accessing services.“My reason for accepting this appointment to the task force was that I wanted to make sure that every child with special needs in Knox County has the opportunity for success,” said parent Piper. “I also wanted to make sure that no other parent has to go through what I experienced which was waiting five months for an answer to a simple question.”