Taschner: Well you know, we’re currently…and I think the public can see… that we’re trying to look at the people that we have right now and trying to reorganize to keep them and to make sure that what they’re doing is pointed specifically toward children. I think that was evidenced with…Mrs. Marcus. She was working between a number of buildings and it was clear that she had a skill set that would be really helpful if it was concentrated in one building. And so we did that. I think Caln will be…much greater for it. The same is true, I think in special education. I think it’s really hard to be a director of…you know, all of the high schools, I’ll use Mr. Krakower…and then 6 – 12 special education, you know? [laughs] I mean just that in and of itself…you know most districts have you know, as I said, a pretty large administrative staff that we’re not in a position to have yet but in the future, we will need to continue to add people so that we can…continue to provide increased services and support for teachers and…and principals. But for now, we’re trying to put that at the building level. So we will be working to dedicate 1 person to special education…just 1 person who will do nothing but look at that overall programming of special education. And I know that there have been people that have said, ‘This person should be special ed,’ or ‘That person should be special ed.’ But what I’m certain about is that the certification…again the K – 12 certification provides people an opportunity to be someone who is in charge of special education programming. And I think the people that we have…people in the district that have shown a lot of dedication to special education in helping children and families and I know that’s not going to change. So I’m hoping to, in the next couple of weeks, to be able to say, ‘Okay now we have this part done. We have these buildings filled.’ And in the meantime Jason Palaia is still the director of elementary education & curriculum instruction 3 – 5 and special education k – 5…he has been doing a dual job.
The Times: Also regarding special education, students who are new to the district who require autistic support, emotional support or life skills are now being placed in their home schools, while students who have been placed in other schools will be given the option to stay where they are or they may return to their home school. Will there be dedicated classrooms for these students to receive the level of support they require and what does a typical day look like for them?
Taschner: This is a great question because…a student’s day looks like…whatever their IEP says it should look like. And I just put something on my blog about ‘I is for Individualized’ you know? The individualized education program is just that – so even though 2 students may have a similar classification, their educational programming could look very different. So…what it will look like for a student is really dependent upon what the document says and what the IEP team has decided it will look like. And that we don’t know…sitting here with you, without a specific name of a student, which we wouldn’t talk about anyway, it’s dictated by the decisions that a team made for that student. So if a team made a decision…the team makes the decision as to what is the service that is going to be provided, who is going to provide it, how much…how many times is it going to be provided, where is it going to be provided. Those things get decided by a team of people of which the parent is a part. And that’s how it’s supposed to be. And whatever the IEP says, is what’s going to happen. That’s…that’s the law, that’s what we’re supposed to do for children and that’s what we’re going to continue to do for our children.
Children having the opportunity to attend their neighborhood school is a wonderful thing. And we want every child to be able to go to school and to be in class with…and to be in the lunchroom or whatever portions of the day their IEP team says they’re going to be…with the same students that they play after school with. I think it is the…hardest…situation sometimes for students is when they play with a certain group of students after school all day [laughs] right? In the evening and in the summer and then they have to attend a different school with different students…ride a longer bus ride. And we are…what I am committing to parents of students with disabilities is to say, ‘What are the services that you need and we can provide them in you home school. So that you can be a part of your neighborhood school as well.’ Because it’s not just the students, the parents as well, right?
The Times: Right. Having said that, are you bringing in more teachers and aides to cover the students in their home schools as well?
Taschner: Every student that already…there’s also a misconception about more…but every student that already has aide support, it doesn’t change. [laughs] Because if the student moves to a different location, the support moves.
The Times: Yes, if the student has a one-on-one aide, of course that aide will move.
Taschner: Right, the support moves. Every building…whatever the….if the support is listed in the IEP then that is the support they have to get. It’s going to come because we have to do that. And we want to do that. We want to do more than it says in the IEP but that’s…you know, the services that are outlined in there…we’re going to continue to provide that. And sometimes that means increasing staff. And the district has…the community and the public and parents have watched me increase staff…it has not been without careful consideration, it has not been without difficult choices of having to change this in order to get more teachers…you know because there is only a certain amount of money and we’re trying to balance the best education we can provide for our students…and we’re balancing that with the tax increase and the tax burden for people that are living here. And that is no small task when you look at the financial situation that the school board inherited. It is not one that is…that many people would be excited about jumping onto a school board to handle. [laughs] And so I applaud them for their efforts…and I will…they question things, they’re engaged…they say no to certain things, they say yes to certain things…all of that in trying to say, ‘Let’s make sure we can provide the best education possible without increasing the tax burden to where people can’t live here anymore.’ So that is one of the things we have taken into consideration. But for students that need more support, we’ll provide more support. And we’ll continue to do that and that is not going to stop, regardless of where they go to school.
The times: What do you feel an appropriate student to teacher ratio is and how do the students with special needs factor into that?
Taschner: I will say already the district has levied a large amount of aide support…for students in the district. Larger than in many districts I’ve been in. So I think the district is to be applauded for the amount of resources that they say we want to provide for our students.
In terms of what’s the optimal class size ratio, it’s an interesting question because I’ve said this before, not that class size is an indicator of student achievement because we don’t…the research doesn’t necessarily support that. There’s probably one seminal study…one research study that I can think of off the top of my head that was done actually in Tennessee. And it was a longitudinal study in which they said, ‘If in kindergarten…the time that class size really matters is in kindergarten and first grade.’ And I think the number…it was a pretty low number. And if that’s done in kindergarten and first grade, it can have a lasting impact all the way through the high school years. If you don’t do that, it’s less important. Now that’s academically speaking. But there are other considerations in terms of the desks we have [laughs] right? Just fitting 30 of them in a room [laughs] is really prohibitive right? Because what happens to the learning environment is [laughs] nobody can move around because the classrooms are only so big. So…in terms of the physical space, when we can have fewer students in there, it changes a little bit of the physical learning environment. In addition to that, when teachers can say, ‘Alright, I’m going to be working with four groups in a week, as I rotate through small group work and understanding my students. That is more manageable than if I have six groups.’ And certainly as a teacher if I have 20 – 25 students, I can know them and spend more time with each of them in the course of a year, than if I have 35 students. And I think our students…our teachers have done both. They’ve done 35 and they’ve done 25. My goal is to make sure they stay in the new class size range, where we are…with the exception of Rainbow where we are out of classrooms. So we’re going to be looking at that for next year.
I think it shows some of the confidence that people are starting to have in this school district because our enrollments are…we’re starting to see people come and say, ‘Wow, this is a great district, this is great learning, this is a great physical learning environment, this is a great space, we have great teachers.’ So…the number is not as important but in terms of the academic research but in terms of having enough space and teacher contact time with students can increase if the class sizes decrease.
The Times: What safeguards are in place if discipline problems with students occur and impede the learning for the rest of the class?
Taschner: Well let me go back a minute because…somewhere the conversation started to change. In terms of programming for next year…other than students being able to attend their home school, there hasn’t been any change…there hasn’t been any significant change in programming. So we have students that are receiving their services with their general education peers and we have students that are not. And we have students that receive services that aren’t even in this district, that go to school outside of this district. So none of that has changed from last year. I think that part of that conversation comes because…you know one of things special education has long been a passion of mine. And it has been my greatest pleasure and my greatest passion to serve parents and students with disabilities. And…and part of that has been, I think…a dedication to…not trying to change students. I believe that classrooms belong to students and that we should change classrooms to fit the needs of students, not try to change students to fit the needs of the classrooms. So people have heard me talk about that on a much broader platform than Coatesville. Which I’m…I’ve been very proud to do. You know, I had the opportunity to sit on the Gaskins Advisory Panel or the Bureau Directors Panel on Least Restrictive Environment is what it was called but it was the Gaskins Advisory…and it was my great pleasure. I met parents who fought so hard to have their children be a part of classes and met roadblocks of people saying, ‘No you cannot be in school here and no, you cannot come to this class. No, you cannot be in this high level class.’ And I watched parents work so hard for that. And it was always my desire as a principal to..to open up the access to students with disabilities or under-represented students who didn’t have opportunities that, by law, were already afforded to them. And I will continue to fight that fight. Now, I also believe that IEP teams make the decisions based on the information that they have for students. And that is what happens in the district. And parents are an integral part of that decision making. So there are times when parents say, ‘Ugh, you know, I feel like at this point, my child needs this’ and the team says ‘We saw that too’ and the team makes the decision. And that’s what we’re going to do for students. That’s how it works out. But I’m never in a position where I think we should deny children access to classrooms when parents are working so hard…to have their children be included. Now that doesn’t come without support so the IEP team has to say, ‘Wait, if this is going to happen, we need more support.’ And then they write that support into the IEP to make sure that the student has the necessary support. There is a great supplementary aids and supports tool kit that PaTTAN has developed that helps an IEP team go through that process to say, ‘What about this, have you tried this,’ and here are supports that outlines them and gives them a great basis upon which to make sure students have what they need and the teachers…are able to help service them in the best way. So none of that has changed. The only thing that will change is we will increase the level of service that we provide for students with disabilities. That…that will continue to increase…so that our students are served and served very well.
The Times: Services for speech therapy, occupational therapy and physical therapy have been outsourced for a number of years. This year, RFPs went out early in the summer for quotes for contracts but no company has been hired yet. Is this true?
Taschner: Well, there’s a couple of things that have happened…One, the district in the past…as far as I can tell and I’m relatively new but as far as I can tell, there has not been a process by which…in the past few years any additional…opportunities were taken to do a request for proposals. And so when it was brought to my attention that the contract was going to expire this year, I wanted the…the team of people who are working special education and pupil services to do a request for a proposal. For a couple of reasons. One, it’s the level of transparency that we’re trying to promote in the district. Two, it’s fiscally responsible. And three, I don’t think it’s easy for us to make a good recommendation to the board and to explain that recommendation if we haven’t gone out to see what services are available. And so the team worked hard and they did that…and that’s a process, right? Because you leave it out for so many days and it comes back and they called references on each of the…they first had to narrow it down so they had 7 people respond and then they narrowed that down based on the quality of services people put in their proposal that they were going to offer, and the cost of those services…and then started to call references…you know? How has it been going with this person, with this group providing services? Do they staff it all the time? What’s their percentage of staffing? Is everybody they send certified? And they went through that and they are coming back with their recommendation to the board …and asking each of the people, are you prepared to staff us from day 1 of the school year. That’s another thing that you ask when you are going through the process.
The Times: Right, because you have all of the IEPs in the district that have to be honored by state law. With just over 3 weeks before the start of school…
Taschner: Be assured that part of the process they’ve been going through is with each company saying, ‘Are you prepared from day 1 to be able to staff us?’ To which people have in the affirmative, have said ‘Absolutely.’ So…and those companies know that they’re in that final round so they’re prepared…and ready to take us on. So they have a presentation that they are going to do at the committee meeting, to explain to the board, ‘Here are the people that we looked at, here are the costs, here are the benefits, here’s what the references said, and this is why we’re making the recommendation that we’re doing.’ So…that will be on the recommendation for the committee meeting…so what happens is today, when the recording secretary gets back, we’ll continue to work on the agenda items…in conjunction with the board and then that…will…we usually post that Friday in anticipation of the meeting on Tuesday.
The Times: So that will be discussed at the committee meeting and then will it go on the agenda for the next board meeting to officially be voted upon or will it be done at the special board meeting, following the committee meeting?
Taschner: That’s up to the board. Because we’ve…what we’ve done is also put a board meeting after each meeting so that…for two reasons. One, we did it originally because it was a way to provide additional transparency on the bills list. So that we’re approving bills twice a month…so that there’s not such a long time for vendors and waiting to get paid. So think about it…if I have to cut the bills list and time it to get it to the board, that’s a week before the board meeting. And then if it goes through committee, then it doesn’t go until the next…it could be 5 weeks until someone gets paid…which is a long time. So we started doing the double meeting so that we could approve bills in a more timely fashion, which is good for vendors and it’s good business. And it gives the board the opportunity to review a shorter amount of bills and to be able to ask more in depth questions, which they are doing, about the bills that they see. So they get to choose…on…next week, if they feel they need more information, they may say ‘We’ll send this through to the committee’ if not, they may say, ‘You know what, in the purpose of timeliness, we’d like to move this forward now.’ But as you work with vendors and they say ‘Look, this…the board committee moved this to the board for a full vote,’ usually the people say, ‘Okay we have a confidence that we believe we’re ready and this is going to happen.’ But that will be up to the board to decide next week.
The Times: I know we’re pressed for time; I just want to ask 2, maybe 3 more questions.
Taschner: Sure, go ahead.
The Times: It has been said…
Taschner: [laughs] A question that starts with it’s been said is never a good one. [laughs]
The Times: It has been said, that in an effort to lower suspension rates, principals have been told not to suspend students. Is there any truth to that?
Taschner: That is not true.
The Times: My question was going to be, does that mean less discipline in the district?
Taschner: No, that’s not true…you know the principals, first of all, I think…I have a group of principals that understand that suspension does not address the root cause of behaviors. So I think they understand that…people will see from our suspension rates that clearly, that has not been the case. There have been a number of suspensions this past school year, of which we are neither proud…because that’s not the goal, to have kids out of school. But the goal is to create safe classrooms, to create safe learning environments where students are engaged in what they’re doing. There are different reasons that a student may not be. Some may be due to trauma they experienced outside of school. It may not be in the home, it may be outside the school in general, it may be difficulties they are having in school. And our job is to figure out which it is and then to provide the appropriate services and help to change that. Sometimes…because of a safety issue or whatever, there needs to be an immediate break while the team gets together to say, ‘Let’s figure out what’s going on.’ And we need a day to convene, to talk to the parents, to figure out what we’re going to do differently.
The principals are coming…the secondary principals are going to, at the committee meeting, have a presentation for the board on some alternatives to discipline…I think the White House just had a forum on school discipline, interestingly. I think it was on the…on the news. But there are some different alternatives to saying, ‘How do we really change the behavior and still create a safe learning environment?’ And sometimes, there are things that interfere with learning, that you have to take care of those first and the learning will come after that. But you have to take care of this right now. And some of those are things we can do in school with the personnel we have and sometimes it needs a more critical level of intervention…for a short period of time or for a long period of time. And our job is to…differentiate the difference between the two and say, ‘What are we going to do, to really get a different…behavioral outcome for students?’ So that school is a good place for everybody to be. So you’re going to hear about that at the committee meeting. And I think the…the principals have done some pretty innovative work in some of the things that they are trying to put together for students and some very different outcomes…you know, the root word of discipline is disciple, which is about teaching and so I think they really tried to look at it. ‘How can we use…how can we do some teaching to change some of these behaviors?’ And there are some big behaviors that are different, that need a very different intervention…we’re not talking about those. But I think people will see from the suspension numbers that no…[laughs]…it hasn’t been that no one has been suspended this year.
The Times: It has also been said that you want failure rates to be lowered and of course that should be the goal of every superintendent. Will that be due to a lowering of standards or…
Taschner: Failure rates…the discussion of failure rates was generated at the board meeting, it was not generated…by me. We are focused on student progress. We are focused on student learning and looking at specifically, what do students know when they come, what is it that we’re trying to teach them, have they learned it? If not, we go back and reteach them.
The Times: So not from lowering standards…
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