Burbank Unified hires consultant to help refine its special education department
The Burbank Unified School Board agreed last week to hire a consultant firm to help officials create a special education master plan, citing a “critical mass of concerns raised by parents and community members,” according to a district report.
The district will pay Oakland-based Pivot Learning Inc. about $70,000 to help facilitate the plan, which officials hope will provide clarity on how they should staff the special education department, train its employees, outline goals and better serve students overall.
Sunita Batra, the district’s director of special education, said one concern is tied to staffing.
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She pointed to the high workload of occupational and speech therapists who participate in Individual Education Plan, or IEP, meetings for up to three hours.
“I think we also need to look at what is humanly possible. Do we also need to look at adding additional staffing?” she asked the school board.
Larry Applebaum, the board’s president, acknowledged her concern.
He said he hopes Pivot Learning Inc. will report on the current status of the special education department to give officials their opportunity to “celebrate the good,” he said, and “address the bad.”
“Some of the concerns that have resonated in my inbox over the years is with regards to items that are put into IEPs that somehow end up falling through the cracks,” Applebaum said. “We hear what is being said, we recognize that at the end of the day, the people who suffer are the children, and none of us are happy about that.”
Representatives of Pivot Learning Inc. will begin holding focus-group interviews next month to gather input from key stakeholders.
By January, the consultants will share their findings about the program to establish a vision to draft a plan and present it to school officials in April.
“I’m very hopeful that we can come up with a system with things that are better than what we have right now,” said school board member Roberta Reynolds.
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Kelly Corrigan, kelly.corrigan@latimes.com
Twitter: @kellymcorrigan
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