Board seeks to fast-track special ed study
Review expected to cost $100,000, will identify needs
GREENWICH — The Board of Education is moving forward quickly with a study of special education services in the Greenwich school district.
Superintendent Toni Jones told the school board Thursday night that she intends to go out to bid with the $100,000 review and audit of the entire department by July 10. Bids will be accepted until July 31, and a choice will be made in August.
She hopes the work will be done in the fall, with a report delivered to the Board of Education in November.
The review will look at costs, the delivery model, results and the referral and include interviews and focus groups with staff, families, students and community members.
The study has been “a long time coming,” school board Chair Peter Bernstein said. But he has expressed concern that the $100,000 budget is not enough.
“This needs to be accurate,” Bernstein said. “This is not a report we’re going to stick on a shelf and take no action on. We really are looking for those best practices. We really are looking to see how we stack up against them. This is a risk assessment, and we really haven’t done that in a long time.”
Board member Christina Downey called the proposed timetable “fabulous” and said getting a report by November should remain the board’s goal.
“That’s the only way we’re going to be able to incorporate any (of the findings) into (next year’s) budget,” Downey told Jones. “It’s a great plan . ... We’re all anxious to get it done thoroughly but also expeditiously.”
Board member Peter Sherr said the review has to be more than just a punch list of items. He said parents have told him that Greenwich, and other school districts, use models for special education based on past thinking. There are more current models for special education delivery that should be embraced, he said.
And that connects, Sherr said, with the need to look at the district’s costs for special education and how that money is spent.
“I think we need a review that comments on what is the benchmark, state of the art of today in addressing kids who have special education needs,” Sherr said.
Jones pledged that the study will focus on whether the district is offering the best programming for all of its students.
“I am really hoping (the consultants) will have that expertise to share with us,” she said.
Board members stressed the need for the study to be truly independent: There must be no connection between the reviewer hired to do the evaluation and Mary Forde, the district’s chief of pupil personnel services, who oversees the special education program.
“There should not be anyone who is involved in this special education review that could possibly have a conflict of interest with Mary Forde,” board member Meghan Olsson said. “I think that’s very important.”
District staff must be told that “cooperation is expected,” Bernstein added, because the results will help the district better serve students.
Jones agreed that there should not be a conflict of interest with of the district’s administrators.
“We want people who are going to come in and give us an independent review,” she said. “Absolutely that’s part of the (bid) process. We will make sure they are independent and that they know special ed. We will make sure we have a firm that has done this work before and it’s not just an offset from educational consulting. … We want a process that will have integrity to it, and we haven’t worked with them previously.”
The district is examining its special education services as an increasing number of students are sent out-ofdistrict for school — with the district mandated to pay the tuition. Many parents have said the district fails to meet the special education needs of their children.
The district ran a deficit of $1.2 million in the current school year because of the high costs of special education services. That deficit was ultimately addressed without an additional allocation of town funds — due to savings from the coronavirus shutdown. But the district could face another deficit in the 2020-21 fiscal year that starts July 1.
In January, parents of special education students brought their concerns to a public hearing with the Board of Estimate and Taxation. They called for more funding and improved delivery of services as they aired frustrations that are getting louder within the parent community.
The BET ultimately listed the special education study as a capital project, meaning the $100,000 budgeted for it cannot be spent on anything else and marking it as a priority for the town.