EVERETT — A recent internal investigation of Everett Public Schools’ Special Services Department has cost the district nearly $55,000 in legal fees.
Because of the privacy issues that come up when students are involved, and assertions of attorney-client privilege, much of the activity has happened outside the public eye. This has led some to speculate what the investigation found.
The school district provided some documents to The Daily Herald in response to a public records request and offered other information that addressed some of these concerns.
The investigation was launched in response to complaints that two special needs students weren’t receiving the services they are entitled to under the law.
Those sorts of complaints are commonplace and make up the largest proportion of complaints against schools reviewed by the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.
What made these complaints more complicated — and brought in the lawyers — were allegations by some school staff that they were bullied and retaliated against by two department directors.
As a result of the review, one student’s services were restored. The accusations of bullying and retaliation were deemed to be unfounded. Meanwhile, a 60-plus page report on those students’ cases has been sealed. Costs so far have reached $54,881 in legal fees. That doesn’t include staff time devoted to reviewing the cases.
In addition, the director of special services for the school district since 2004, Kristine Larsen-McDowell, went on leave in the spring and retired on June 30.
Schools Superintendent Gary Cohn would not comment on the circumstances surrounding Larsen-McDowell’s departure, citing employee confidentiality.
But Cohn said the core of the larger conflict dealt with how district staff handled special needs students’ Individualized Education Programs, or IEPs, the system of documentation and reporting of student needs, services and evaluations.
IEPs are put into action and evaluated by a team of specialists in the schools, including psychologists, speech and language pathologists, occupational therapists and physical therapists.
Documents provided to the Herald show two school psychologists filed complaints that the IEPs for two elementary school children were not being followed.
The psychologists also alleged that two of the district’s special services directors pressured them into changing their recommendations of the students’ needs. They complied, overriding the IEP team recommendations.
The psychologists reported they had no choice but to comply. They feared retaliation otherwise.
The OSPI reviewed the two students’ cases and determined that one of the two students had been wrongly denied services.
That student was awarded compensatory services, Cohn said, amounting to extra hours with specialists.
Given the sensitive nature of the complaints, the district also hired attorneys to review the findings, Cohn said.
“We decided we needed to review the facts,” he said.
The complaints against the two directors alleging unprofessional conduct were reviewed by the Northwest Educational Service District.
In May, the educational service district ruled that one of the directors used poor judgment in providing guidance to the school psychologists. It also found there was no flagrant disregard of policies or standards and no evidence of retaliation.
New leadership
The district has undertaken a reorganization of the special services department, along with others. One reason is the district’s increasingly constrained finances. There also was an opportunity for Cohn to improve relations between the district and school staff.
“You’ve got to do so with the intention of improving performance and realizing that revenue is decreasing over time,” he said.
The new executive director of special services, Becky Clifford, was hired on an interim basis March 16, when Larsen-McDowell went on leave.
Clifford becames the permanent executive director July 1. She previously worked for the Seattle Public Schools as a special education consulting teacher, project manager, director and interim executive director of special education.
A new associate director, Heather Lechner, also started work this month. She is a former assistant head of school for The McDonogh School in New Orleans, and has taught in both special and general education.
Clifford also grew up with a younger brother who was learning-disabled and another relative with Down syndrome, so she knows a bit about the frustration many parents of special needs children feel.
“Some parents are grieving over it, they feel they are the child’s one advocate to get what they think the child deserves,” she said.
Clifford’s primary goal is to improve systems and processes in the special services department so that the school staff are getting the resources they need. This should lead to better communication between administrators and the school staff, she said, especially when it comes to decisions grounded in the legal mandates for special education.
“People on the ground, their heads shouldn’t be buried in legal jargon,” Clifford said, referring to the teachers in specialists working with students and parents.
Clifford learned an important early lesson in communication while working for the Seattle school district. She helped create a system to deliver services to students in their neighborhood schools, rather than having the students travel to another facility.
She didn’t, however, marshal enough support from the ground-level teachers and support staff to overcome their natural resistance to major changes when they had a large investment of time and resources into the existing system. As a result, the initiative never gained momentum.
The restructuring in Everett will mostly affect staff, and streamlines the reporting chain based on whether the school is in the north, central or south part of the district. This replaces a flatter management structure which had some school staff reporting to multiple administrators.
“Anything we can do that makes it easier for the staff, or gives them clearer expectations, it allows them to be more at ease and be better at working with the community,” Clifford said.
Parents will most likely see the changes manifested in smoother handling of their children’s cases, although it may take time.
“It takes three to five years to make changes, and I’m communicating that to everybody,” Clifford said. “But you will see incremental change.”
Chris Winters: 425-374-4165; cwinters@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @Chris_At_Herald.
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