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The Examiner U-46 News Feed

Group provides update to U-46 regarding audit


By Seth Hancock
  The District Management Group (DMG), formerly District Management Council, updated the Board of Education in School District U-46 on Monday, April 24 of its findings over the first year of a three-year contract to do a scheduling audit for special education.
  A year earlier, the board had approved the contract costing $72,500 a year, but concerns raised by board members Phil Costello and Jeanette Ward at the time, both of whom voted against the contract, appeared to be accurate after the update.
  Last year, DMG’s CEO John Kim said part of the audit was to find efficiencies in order to cut costs in U-46, but he couldn’t provide any examples of that being done in other district’s DMG has worked with but rather gave theoretical ways they could find efficiencies.
  The update on April 24 given by Sebastian Florez, a senior associate with DMG, led to unanswered questions while lauding the district for expanding its size.
  Costello said that “I’ve seen a lot of convention and just intuitive type of thinking” but “when we were first introduced with this, we were talking about efficiencies.” He asked: “I guess I felt myself thinking that a lot of our instructional cabinet and principals and district officials could have done this intuitively. What’s the value-add that you bring here because I guess I’m not seeing it right here?”
  Florez did not answer that but rather U-46 CEO Tony Sanders did as he said Costello was right about efficiencies being a goal of the contract, but “what I asked DMG to prepare for you tonight was a 30,000-foot view.”
  Sanders added: “I think in the long run we can be more efficient within our operations, but what they’re coming back with was, we never entered with the expectation they were going to come back with one specific thing, and so what they came back with was really the result of their data analysis and what they heard from our principals and teachers.”
  What DMG heard from the principals and teachers, those who directly benefit from expanding operations and services offered, was that the district was doing a good job by providing “additional supports” and expanding programs, such as dual language, and adding new programs, such as full-day kindergarten.
  “It was really impressive to see that all of this was going into implementation all at once,” said Florez who also praised the hiring of more social workers and providing equity training to staff.
  DMG gave five recommendations, three of which Florez listed as priorities.
  The three priorities included ensuring a “dedicated organizational structure to oversee consistent implementation across the district” of the multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS), “provide additional instructional time for all students who struggle in order to master grade-level content” and expanding “social, emotional and behavioral supports” for students. The other recommendations were to use “staff with deep content expertise and training” for students with “mild-to-moderate special needs and other struggling learners” as well as “expand the reach of speech and language pathologists, through refining entry and exit criteria and through thoughtful scheduling.”
  Ward questioned each of the recommendations including “how many additional staff, if any,” would be needed for the first priority and “how much additional instruction time are we talking, and does that mean teachers or the staff put in the extra time or is additional staff needed” regarding the second. On the second, Florez recommended “at least 30 minutes of additional instructional time per day” for elementary and 60 for secondary.
  Florez said on additional staff for the first priority “none at this time. Actually the good news from our diagnostic is that we recommend a central office leader, and that was something that U-46 already had put in place.”
  Sanders said in regards to the additional instruction time: “I think that depends on how we go about tackling that issue…. We’d have to do that collaborative with our teachers certainly. But at this time I do not know if there would be a cost built into this. Typically what school districts can do is build their schedules differently and try to accommodate the same result without increasing staff.”
  On the third priority Ward asked what services are recommended and Florez answered: “We recommended looking at social workers and guidance councilors to see if that is an area the district would like to increase their time spent with students.”
  Ward echoed Costello’s concerns stating: “I think we need to be cautious a little bit that the program going forward focuses on increasing efficiencies and not expanding staff or making teachers work harder. If we’re going to require more time from them, then let’s take away some other things.”
  Florez replied: “I look forward to delivering that in partnership with the district because that’s our intent.”
  Board member Sue Kerr asked how to implement these priorities to which Florez said “that’s a really important step of the process… where we start to think what will work for U-46” and suggested developing work groups to focus on each initiative.
  Board member Traci Ellis asked why some of the five recommendations had been “cut” for the three priorities, which Sanders noted the definition of priority saying “I don’t know that there really was a cut…. It really was what do we need to address first.”
  Board member Veronica Noland said she’d like to see more focus on MTSS implementation at the elementary level. She said: “I feel like I don’t see enough here with regard to elementary…. I often feel like we are waiting too long to do these interventions, to provide these services that students need.”
  Sanders said: “There’s a lot more documents and a lot more things underneath this that the board does not see, but certainly we’ll keep the board apprised of our work moving forward.”
  The next phase of the three-year contract according to Florez is to “help the district create a vision for change and communicate to stakeholders.”

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