Assembly Select Committee on Serving Students with Disabilities

The informational Hearing of the Assembly Select Committee on Serving students with Disabilities will come to order in 60 seconds. Good afternoon. The Assembly Select Committee on Serving students with Disabilities will now come to order. The purpose of this hearing is to educate both the public and this Committee on the current status of special Education throughout California.

And I want to say that we do this work today grounded in the certainty that all students and students of all abilities have the right to safe, affirming, and effective environments to learn and grow. And with that, I want to say thank you to our panelists who are spending their time, our Committee Members, many of which texted me and really are very interested in this topic, even though they're not able to our staff and the public.

I want to say that on behalf of the entire Committee, we appreciate your interest. We appreciate your work on behalf of California students. Today we're going to hear testimony per our agenda that's on the table over there prior to taking public comment. And once we've heard from all of the panels, all three panels, we will be able to take public comment for the topics that are on today's agenda. And I wanted to just sort of lay a foundation that special education is particularly important to me.

I've been a special educator and still consider myself a special educator since 2001 and was active in my school district up until the day before swearing in. So last December 4. And then I was also a TOSA for English learner programs. And I've been a teacher, a Department chair, a summer principal, a Member of my union's Executive board, and so many of the folks that agreed to testify today.

I want to say I'm very grateful to you and also relate to what you're going through in our school districts and the very, very important work that you do. I worked K 12 in both mild moderate and moderate severe settings, taught resource and special day class, worked in urban and suburban environments, and then in my last position in English learner programs, helped open a 90 10 dual immersion school.

And that's really where my interest grew in terms of serving students with disabilities who are also multilingual learners. And one of the most important things that I learned from this work is, first and foremost that every student can learn. And I used to have other teachers come to me and say, you teach special education. Do you truly believe that every student can learn? And my answer was always, yes, every student has the ability to learn, and it's our charge in the public schools to do that.

And I also learned that every family wants what's best for their child. And we have a lot of conversation around that. Who's the expert in education? And I always came back to this idea that it's parents and families and caregivers that are the experts in their children and that we in the public education system have to rise to meet that need.

And it's not always easy, but the folks that I worked with, I can say across my entire 21 year career, came to work every day to create classrooms where true education was happening. And it was a huge honor to work with those folks. But our system really struggles, and we wouldn't be in this room if we didn't have a system that struggles and a system that sometimes gets in the way of our best intentions.

And because of that, it's our job to think about how we're going to uplift students strengths, how we're going to honor their personhood, how we're going to provide safe, affirmative, and effective learning programs within a system that doesn't always uplift these ideals. And how, as a Legislator, myself and my colleagues can do better to support this system so that it does create the environment in which we can do these things.

And so I have to compliment our state, because back in March of 2015, there was a statewide task force on special education and a report that was published called One System Reforming Education to serve all students. And that was put back in front of me recently. And I thought, I remember reading that report, and I remember really thinking deeply about how we could do better.

And it was at that time that I was already in the English learner world and thinking about how do we better mesh these two programs. And so the Legislature has taken numerous steps to address many of the concerns, but there's still areas that we all know need a lot of work. And the three that we're here today to talk about are ensuring the right to learn, serving multilingual students with disabilities, and supporting the special education workforce.

So with that, we're going to start with sort of an overview from the LAO's office, and then we're going to go into each of our panels. And then, as I said, we'll go into public comment. I do want to welcome my colleague, Assembly Member Hoover, and say thank you for being here, and if you're welcome to address the group. If not, we'll just jump in.

I'll just be super quick. I just want to thank the chair for creating this Committee, inviting me to be a part of it. I am a parent of a child on the autism spectrum, and so the work that we do here is very meaningful, and I just want to appreciate all the panelists that are going to be here today for helping us. I'm really looking forward to hearing from you on how we can better improve inclusion and outcomes for our students. Thank you.

Thank you, Assembly Member Hoover. So our first presenter is Sarah Cortez from the Legislative Analyst Office. And Sarah is going to provide a brief overview of the status of special education throughout the state. Thanks, Sarah.

Good afternoon. Sarah Cortez, LAO, so I was asked today to provide an overview of special education in California. I'll be speaking from a handout that the sergeant has. There's also handouts over on the table. So starting on page one of our handout provides an overview of special education. So first, schools must try to meet all students needs within the General education program, and public schools must provide special supports for students with disabilities who need them.

Federal law refers to this and requires that all schools provide a free and appropriate public education. Nearly 13% of California students have disabilities affecting their education, and the share of California students receiving special education services has steadily increased since about 2010. 11 most California students who qualify for special education have a disability that fall into one of four categories. The largest of these categories is specific learning disability, which includes disabilities resulting in difficulties with listening, thinking, speaking, reading, writing, or doing mathematical calculations.

And an example of a disability in this category would be dyslexia. The next largest category is Speech and language impairments, and then the third largest category is autism. And I would note that there's been a rise in autism. Moving on to our second page, we'll discuss special education services and settings. So an individualized education program defines a student special education services, referred to as an IEP. School districts will offer students with disabilities specialized instruction and services, and these will differ depending on the disability.

The most common service provided is specialized academic instruction. This could be something like familiarizing the student's General education teacher with certain techniques designed to help the student or could be along the lines of serving a student in a special day class, which exclusively serves children with disabilities. Federal law does encourage schools to educate students with disabilities in setting along with their peers that don't have disabilities. Students must be educated in the least restrictive environment.

In 2122, 61% of California students with disabilities were educated in General education classrooms 80% or more of the school day. So these students could be receiving their services within a classroom or another common model is that they're receiving separate sessions where the teacher or therapist pulls the students out of the class to provide services. Moving along to page three, we'll discuss special education funding. So the state uses special education Local plan areas and referred to as SELPAs to coordinate services and allocate funding.

And there are dedicated special education funds that are intended to support the excess cost of educating students with disabilities. So students with disabilities, in addition to these special education funds, also generate Local Control Funding FormuLA LCFF. And so the additional funds that are intended dedicated for special education are intended to cover the excess cost of those specialized services. So the special education services are supported by a combination of federal, state, and local funds.

So the state provided in 23, 24, 5.4 billion in state funds and 1.5 billion in federal funds. And the cost of special education services generally exceeds the cost of state and federal funds provided. So the remainder of costs are typically covered with the local General purpose funding. And if we move on to page four of our handout, we talk about I'll discuss outcomes for students with disabilities. And this chart here compares outcome data.

So the top bar in each of these categories, we have the category for Math, English Language, Arch, and the graduation rate. The top bar is students with disabilities. The bottom bar is all students in California. So performance of students with disability lags behind peers in California. And then the second thing I'll highlight with regard to outcome data is with regard to the statewide accountability system.

The California Statewide Accountability System identifies districts and county offices of education in need of differentiated assistance, which is essentially additional support provided to districts or county offices of education. And it's based on performance of the student groups in multiple areas, including assessments, graduation rate, absenteeism, suspension rate. So in 2022, the most common group for students for which districts and COEs were identified was students with disabilities. So 84% of districts and COEs identified for differentiated assistance was due to performance issues with students with disabilities.

And so now that brings us to our final page of our handout. We were asked to discuss the 2015 report that focused on special education in California, and this is the report for California's Statewide Task Force on Special Education. In this report, education leaders provided recommendations on how to change the state system of schooling so it would better serve all students, and the recommendations in this report focused on things that were actionable at the state level.

The report itself is 83 pages long, so this page of our handout includes a very small subset of the recommendations included in the actual report. But I did want to highlight both some places where there were state actions aligned with the report recommendations and some places where there hasn't been or there's been very minimal state action on topics within the report.

I also want to highlight that our commentary here is not intended to evaluate the effectiveness of state actions to date or whether further state action is needed. We're simply highlighting the state actions to date. So the first recommendation I'll highlight was an increase in per student funding allocated to SElbas for special education, and there has been significant increases in the base rate for special education in recent years beyond the traditional cost of living adjustment.

And the second recommendation I'll highlight is the expansion of alternative dispute resolution resources, supports, and services throughout the state. In 2122, there was 100 million provided for supports of this nature. And then the third one is outcomes based accountability framework that's aligned to the rest of the cave 12 system. And the state action here is with regard to the statewide system of support that we just discussed, that students with disabilities is included as one of the subgroups in that accountability system.

And the last recommendation I'll highlight is the establishment of requirements for General and special education preparation programs related to mastery of content standards, evidence based strategy, pedagogy, intervention strategies, and collaboration among teachers among teachers across assignments and the state action I'll highlight here is that the Commission on Teaching Credentials adopted, teaching performance expectations aligned with this recommendation, and then topics not yet addressed. I'll highlight two here. The first is purposefully integrated professional learning opportunities for educators in both special and General education.

And then the second one is access to comprehensive and effective transition services and programs. And that concludes my remarks, but I'm happy to take questions if there are any.

Thank you so much, Sarah. Assembly Member Hoover, did you have any questions for the LAO's office?

I just was wondering, can you clarify that funding at the very end, you talked about the funding issue, your recommendation on these?

These aren't our recommendations. I'm just highlighting recommendations from the task force report. And one of the things that was recommended at the time was to increase per student funding allocated for SElpas for special education. And my commentary here is that there has been, since this task force has published this report, there was significant base increases to the special education system. So in 21 22, there was a base rate increase that moved the base rate from $625 per student to 715.

Got it. Thank you. Yeah, I missed part of it, so thank you.

Thank you.

Sir. I had one question. I noticed you said that nearly 13% of California students have disabilities, and that feels like that number has grown. I'm going to date myself, but when I came into teaching, we always used to say about 10%, and then it was kind of 11%. And I wonder if you might be able to flesh out that growth over the past 20 years. Is that the rise in autism or are there other factors?

Yes. I don't have the data right handy in front of me, but I can certainly follow up with your staff. But that year. Exactly correct. In terms of there has been the steady rise, and we're tracking it at about 2010-11 is when we see a steady rise. And this is a share of the K 12 population that is identified as a student with disabilities.

And do you by chance, and it's fine if you're not sure, but know how that compares to other states?

Not at the top of my head, but let me see if.

Yeah, I can certainly follow up with you.

No pressure.

No worries. Thank you. Thank you very much. Unless it looks like neither of us have more questions. So we're going to move on to our first panel, ensuring the right to learn. And we've got Kristen Wright, the Executive Director of Equity, Diversity and Early Intervention for Sacramento County Office of Education, no small title. David Tostin, the chair of the California Advisory Commission on Special Education, and Lisa Yamasaki, special educator and assistive technology specialist with the Yolo County Office of Education.

And you each have about 10 minutes, or up to 10 minutes to present. And we'll start with you, Kristen, and thank you for being here.

Thank you. And I think I have some slides. There we go. So I was hoping today to provide a little bit of historical context around how we got here and sort of the work that California has been doing over the past since 2015 and the task force report. And I'll say that as a sidebar, prior to my role at SCOE, I served as the state Director of special education at the California Department of Education. And so this topic is very near and dear to my heart.

And I appreciate the fact that we have a chair of this Committee that is a special educator. I don't know that I've ever had a special educator that I've seen one up on the dais before. So that's amazing. And thank you. Also Assembly Member, and it's nice to meet a fellow parent. I also have a daughter who has significant intellectual and physical disabilities who is 25 and went through the school system. So if you go to the next slide, next one.

So around 2015, as you pointed out, chair, dais, California started dreaming about what it would take. And really, the driver was a conversation around employment initially that was driven by this idea that we were a right to work state for everyone, and that competitive, integrated employment was something that California was working towards and getting rid of the sub minimum wage.

And if we're looking at those things, it would make a lot of sense to backward map into what are we preparing students with and how are we making sure, to your point, that every student has an opportunity to learn and meet their greatest potential. So we looked at the rates and all the state agencies sort of got together under the competitive Integrated Employment, which is a nice way for state agencies to start collaborating across agency to say, what is our role in this endeavor? Next slide.

And so the task force both pointed out a number of challenges and then looked at dividing it into kind of committees to see what the solutions might be. And the biggest challenge, and I think that is one that still exists today, is the prevailing ableist mindsets about there are certain children who belong certain places and that maybe they don't need to have access to their grade level standards.

And what we know now and what the states put a big stake in is the fact that, first of all, it's the law for students to learn their grade level standards, but also that we have seen that every student can learn if they're given the opportunity. And that dovetails with the least restrictive environment percentages that we were talking about earlier. And so that high school graduation rate is related to that.

The low rates of inclusion are definitely related to what we're seeing in terms of the numbers of individuals with disabilities, particularly intellectual and developmental disabilities, not working and just being at home.

So that dovetails also one of the kind of recommendations that the Lao pointed out, which is around transition programming and the need to now, as we've been addressing a lot of the other things, is thinking about what happens right after high school and that 18 to 22, and I know we're going to talk about shortages of ED specialists later, but that is also another confounding issue. So, next slide.

And so there were all these opportunities that were sort of like catalyzing these conversations that were like the perfect storm. And it was really around the policy changes, the expectations that everyone could work and that should work, and no matter what level of support they need to work, they can still work.

And a renewed commitment to inclusive education and the preponderance of research that has come out in the last 20 years, but more so even than the last five, saying students do much better when they're having access to high quality first teaching and teachers who know all the content.

And if you think about classrooms that one teacher is supposed to serve four or five grade levels, it's a very high task to expect them to be able to teach every grade level standard to every child in their class that are at all those grade levels. We did make large state fiscal investments and incentives.

SCOE actually has one from last year, which is a $2 million resource development that we received in order to create resources for the field, for parents, for the community to understand the benefits and research based benefits of inclusion and belonging for students with disabilities. Go ahead and go to the next slide.

And so that workforce innovations and Opportunity act prompted a lot of this conversation early on, and we've sort of built on that because, again, if we're backward mapping to something that we know we're supposed to do, it gives a little more impetus. Next slide. And so DOR, Department of Rehabilitation, Department of Developmental Services and CDE sort of joined hands and started to create consistent messaging across all of their departments. And that was really helpful because it wasn't just one person saying something.

It was really, this is what the state believes and expects. Next slide. And so just to make sure everyone knows what competitive integrated employment means, it's real work for real pay. California, I think, has completely eliminated sub minimum wage. And so if I'm hearing Joe Xavier from the Department of Rehab in my ear saying it's not just minimum wage, it's family sustaining wage, and that's what we're aiming towards and getting the same benefits and chances. Next slide.

So our state policy shifts with a lot of help from legislators and the governor's office and key staff. We've really done a lot in California to realize the vision of the task force report. And if there was one thing that we couldn't legislate, it was mindset. And I think if we could legislate mindset, we would be even further along than we are right now. But we have really expanded statewide support for inclusive practices, including what we have.

But there's a number of others, including the Supporting Inclusive Practices Project, which has been very successful in helping to shift not just special ed programs, but mindset across districts to be able to fully embrace inclusionary practices across all levels and abilities. And that would be one area to make sure we continue to invest in, because we need to have that visual for those demonstration sites.

Also that focus on adult and social emotional learning, I think has also contributed as well as kind of that edict that you saw in SB 692, which was every student is really a General education student.

And so to the degree we can stop calling anyone a special ed student, we also might be able to shift some mindsets around language and so that would be another piece is to really be thinking about the language that's currently in statute and the language that runs through to try to become a law to make sure that it's representing the kind of language we want to have other people share and say, next slide.

And I'll just mention too, I'm not sure if it was mentioned earlier, but California set some pretty significant targets around least restrictive environment a few years ago. And so by 2026, 70% of students with disabilities should be in General at 80% of the time at a minimum. And right now I think we're at 61%. And for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities and more significant, extensive support needs, it's much lower, very Low.

And so the one system report, I know you spoke on that earlier and I know you can go ahead and look at those things, but I'll just say that a couple key things that have happened. One is the passage of an alternate pathway to a high school diploma for students with significant cognitive disabilities. So this is not an alternate diploma, this is a pathway to get a diploma.

And so what it did was it put California in a category that many other states are already in, which means that they have diplomas for every student who comes through the system, not just some. And so there's still some work to be done around that and helping districts and schools realize what that can look like, because that is going to require a massive mind shift around what we've been doing previously. So again, our state agencies, they band together toward that common goal.

And we're in the process right now in the State of developing of the final stages, like stage three of a state IEP template that can also serve as a model of what we want to see and what we expect in the language that we want to use about students. Next slide.

I know we're going to talk about teachers in a minute, but I just wanted to mention a couple of quick things, because we know the biggest catalyst for change is with teachers and we need them, we depend on them. They're the key to everything in all this next slide.

And so really, the educator prep programs are poised to be able to pump out new teachers that have backgrounds in universal design for learning, in multi tiered system of support, in understanding behavioral supports, and not just special educators, all educators. And so that common trunk of preparation is going to be really critical. And we're seeing our universities really embrace that.

Some key features are some of the residency programs that have teachers in classrooms every day for the full year, getting that full experience of what that looks like in the classroom and the ups and downs of that, and hopefully that new generation will be able to bring a lot of this forward. Our current teachers that are in the system are also working hard to try to adapt to new math frameworks and universal design for learning principles and all those things as well.

So I don't want to say that the older teachers are not doing their job because obviously we can't do without them. They're amazing. Next slide. So just wanted to make sure to point out that there's a paradigm shift that's happened in the teacher preparation programs, and one of them is the renaming of the credentials and so moving from mild to moderate disabilities and MoD to severe disabilities and having that credential sound like something about a student to changing it to a level of support needs.

So now we have mild to moderate support needs and extensive support needs. And if you'll notice, the moderate isn't on the extensive side because there was a lot of confusion about who's a moderate student. And I suspect as a special educator, you've witnessed that firsthand and depending on what category someone put you in, really directed the path that you had, whether you would get a diploma or not.

So it's exciting that all teachers are getting the same training, oftentimes together, and because they're out in the field working together in co teaching in other situations. Next slide. And those are the new credential titles. So it went from the old to the new, and those have been adjusted as of this year, I believe. Next slide. And so where do we go from here?

I'm a big believer, and I think research also support this, is that the pipeline for Inclusive practices and inclusionary ideologies start in preschool, both for parents and for the rest of the system. And so if we can start every child off in an inclusive setting, then the possibility and the research speech to this of them being in an inclusive setting later is very much higher.

And that we also think about the amazing $4 billion initiative in community schools as an incredible opportunity to set the foundation of an expectation that those are schools that should be inclusive because they're inclusive by design. You don't create a whole child school that wouldn't be inclusive. It sort of feels like a play on words. We work to continue to eliminate those deficit based policies and practices.

And so the things that I think we're still seeing in the system that hurt the mindset or that continue to perpetuate the mindset are the systems and structures that have not caught up. And there's still some that exist, and you all have been doing a really nice job of trying to find those and take them away and then finally to lift up and highlight more examples.

Doug Reeves said that there's two reasons that teachers make change in their practice, and one is that there's a preponderance of evidence. And the second is that they can see and visualize other teachers and hear from other teachers. They don't want to hear from me or any other talking head. They want to see other teachers and believe it for themselves.

And so hopefully in the future, and I know we've been doing a pretty good job of this, is ensure that students with disabilities are called out in every state initiative. And I know there's some controversy around that because then everyone says, well, then you have to have everyone else be called out, too. And I would argue that students with disabilities are the last group that are segregated in our system. So they are in a special category, in my opinion, because we haven't really addressed that yet.

So there it is, and there's some resources in there should you want to look at them. So thank you.

Thank you for that. And we're going to save questions until after all three panelists. So David, welcome.

Chair Addis, Member Hoover, thank you so much for the opportunity to address these important topics. And what you will hear in my comments are definitely echoes of Kristen's comments in terms of the areas where we have overcome challenges and have seen significant progress, as well as opportunities for us to continue the work going forward. The initial goal of the Special Task Force Report, One coherent system where we all recognize our collective responsibility for students 2015 was, it seems like several lifetimes ago, but really did begin.

I believe the foundation for a number of actions that have taken place since then in terms of shifting our mindsets around what's possible with our public education system. Some of the highlights that I would share recognizing the diverse demographics and backgrounds of our students in the state, the work of the Imperial County SElpa to expand our capacity to meet the needs of multilingual learners who also have disabilities, California being the fourth largest economy in the state, and our goal of a life sustaining wage.

Think of the assets that we have with individuals who are able to speak multiple languages. And as we build the capacity of educators to meet their needs, how they are able to participate in the economic opportunities in our state, I want to underscore the importance of expanding the supporting inclusive practices project. Anytime we have an opportunity to engage with the SIP team and hear about their travels up and down the state.

We see what's possible in a number of communities, whether small, rural, suburban and urban, the work of shifting mindsets and finding tangible practices that can be implemented that have an impact not only on the students who are being served, but the educators providing services and the families who are partnering with our schools. Lastly, I would highlight the expansion of the Family Empowerment Centers to provide resources for our parents in various communities and as well as the opportunity to expand their support.

In my experience, we tend to look at our students with disabilities also in a silo, and look at our practices and our supports within special Ed. And our entire state system is based on local control and community input. And so having access to resources like the Family Empowerment centers that can help our families and caregivers navigate our systems only empowers the work that we can do by understanding their perspective at a much deeper way.

The Advisory Commission over the past few months has developed our strategic plan and have identified five areas that build on the task force report that we believe will carry the work forward. First is centering student and family voice, understanding the lived experiences of our families.

It's very different to look at our dashboard data and understand the areas we need to improve outcomes versus sitting down with a parent and a student and understanding what needs to happen, sometimes beginning at 4 o'clock in the morning to be prepared for a 6:00 a.m. Bus for an hour long ride to attend a school in a community that's different than their own.

And I want to be clear, not critiquing our structure currently, but just recognizing the experiences and the ask and requirements to participate of our families and students in providing our services. We want to ensure that the community school's investment is intentional and explicitly planning for the needs of our students with disabilities. We believe it's essential that we enhance the access to mental health services and partnerships with our county mental health providers.

We want to continue to expand the support for inclusive practices and important lastly or not least, improve literacy outcomes for students with disabilities. And I just again want to tie this to economic outcomes. And the state has invested significant resources to improve literacy for all students. And as Kristen said, sometimes our students with disabilities tend to be added on afterwards. How do we modify, how do we approach, as opposed to intentional planning, which would benefit all students? The Pandemic Task force happened in 2015.

One of the most significant events of all of our lifetimes, I believe, will be the pandemic that highlighted the breadth of disparities in our educational systems as well as our social systems and the lack of justice for some of our most marginalized communities. It also highlighted the absolute necessity and power of community input and family voice.

I think of a number of county offices and LEAs who were able to be responsive to the needs of our community because of the connections that were in place and the ability and willingness to listen to what those priorities were.

And so this marks a pivotal time for us as we made the most significant investment, I believe, in the state's history in community schools to ensure that we are transforming the way we approach education for all of our students, to ensure our students with disabilities are central to those planning efforts and meeting their needs.

In closing, I wanted to highlight a recent presentation that we heard at the Advisory council from the Swift Institute that really drove home the level of change and shift that needs to happen in our mindset and efforts as it relates to inclusion. And while we focus on inclusion, we also need to make primary a sense of belonging. And so I'll ask everyone to reflect on a situation where you were included but were certain you didn't belong.

The difference between being included and knowing you belong is our North Star and our goal and anticipating and imagining what schools look like if all students felt as though they belong. And school ends at twelveth grade or at 22 years old. For some students, imagine what our communities look like after education if everyone understands that we all belong. And so we look forward to continuing to support the conversation and to reach the highest ideals of the work that was articulated in the task force report.

Thank you so much. That's profound what you're saying at the end. Appreciate that. Lisa will move on to you, and then we'll take a moment for questions. Thank you for being here.

Lisa Yamasaki thank you Assembly person Addis and Member Hoover, for having me speak today about the right to learn for students with disabilities, and specifically the rightful presence for students with significant support needs to be included in their schools. I've spent the majority of my teaching career developing and implementing inclusive opportunities for students with significant support needs. I've worked at all age levels, from preschool to junior high to high school to elementary, and now at the college and university level. I have two jobs.

I currently have two jobs. I am the Assistive Technology specialist for Yola County Office of ED, and I'm also an instructor for the Redwood SEED program at UC Davis, which is California's first four year inclusive program for individuals with intellectual disability. So I'm very fortunate to be able to see and work with the whole spectrum in my two jobs. Currently thinking about today's topic ensuring students'right to learn.

I had a chance to reflect on my experiences in all the schools I visit throughout the county, as well as how I'm currently supporting educators in the classroom. I had barriers and some ideas for next steps. Some of the barriers and concerns that limit the access to learning in General education settings are within policies and practices that are still there and as well as perceptions and biases.

Special education and General education are often provided in silos and they are working parallel, or maybe not even parallel, and most of the time not collaboratively. Specialization for special education or for special education tends to create separation. So on a school campus I still will see classrooms, special education classrooms that are segregated off to the side, not a part of the whole school community, and it just creates a physical isolation.

I also see the separation in teaching credential programs where General education, single subject and special education are taking courses separately, and in few situations I've seen them where they've been combined, General education and special education teacher candidates to be learning the content that builds on a good habit to collaborate between General education and special education for a child with a disability, the segregation, the separation starts early.

There are limited opportunities for children who receive special education if they're identified at an infant age, a young age, to go into an inclusive preschool. Those learning opportunities with their nondisabled peers are so limited, and if a preschool student is in a special day class, they are typically not provided a path to an inclusive elementary experience or a secondary or post secondary experience. The ableism and bias and the attitudinal Barriers special education is a place.

It continues to interfere with what students with disabilities have access to in schools, preschool to University and college. Special education tends to focus on the deficits rather than the strengths of an individual and launching from there. There's still perceptions of limited competency and presumptions that disabilities tend to drive a student's placement. Often, students need to show their readiness to be able to participate in a General education content area.

The third big barrier that I see a lot in schools and with the special education and General education teachers is there is a lack of dedicated time during the day, during the week, during the unit to collaborate, and they need to be in the same places to collaborate. Many times, professional development is separate. Special education goes there, social studies there, math over there. The lack of that dedicated time for collaboration really impacts the lack of opportunities for students with disabilities to access their grade level curriculum.

But on the flip side, I've seen some great things I've experienced that are skills and strategies and procedures to promote success for students with disabilities in schools that are not always within the IEP process, that aren't really obvious and mandated for us to do. When there are opportunities for staff teachers to learn together in professional development, students benefit.

Collaborative Teaching Preparation in some instant county Office of ED's Teacher Preparation Program I saw special education and specialists and General education specialists come together to teach students who are in the teacher preparation program, and that was a great opportunity. They built trust with each other and felt that they could communicate when developing lessons and their activities and.

It works well when special education general education work together to incorporate the strategies that have been proven to increase student outcomes, and I have two that I want to highlight today. The two strategies would be implementing universal design for learning and using that as a framework when developing learning opportunities from the beginning.

It increases access for engagement for to present material to students in multiple modalities and give the student the opportunities, all students, the opportunity to show what they know in a form that they are most successful or feel that it is their strength. Co-teaching is another area where if two teachers were strong in the content area, special education and general education teachers working together, they could team teach and they're seen as equals in the classroom.

It's great for the two teachers to develop a relationship to be more connected to their school and promoting retention. It ends up being a win for the students, whether they be English language learners, new to the school, special education students, or the student who is so bright that they need something more to do. It's inclusive through the whole spectrum.

It's imperative to create a sense of belonging in school sites because it develops the soft skills that are necessary to be successful when students are included and feel that they belong in that site within that school community. It promotes self determination and self advocacy and increases their own motivation and Independence, facilitating relationships with peers general education special education pink, purple, green, blue that meaningful participation for the student with a disability.

It provides a greater understanding for how we all interact in a community together, for the special education student as well as for the General education student, the individuals with disbelief when they are part of a community, the school community, the college community, or the work community and beyond. It's a more enriched, robust, and loving community. Students need students, special education students and special and families of special education.

Students need the opportunities to be included and feel that they belong in leadership roles, whether it be the school's school council. Maybe it's in PTA, maybe it's in another group that's on the school campus. We need to increase the importance of them belonging on our school campuses. And then finally, my biggest skill that it doesn't fall into the IEP is building meaningful and working relationships. Whether it's with the staff and the teachers, the students, and the specialists.

We need to take time in schools to develop trust. When we trust each other, we can rely on each other. We can develop better programs, better lessons, and better learning opportunities. When we create and take time to develop and create and maintain working relationships in schools. I value inclusion. It's a student's right to learn they have a rightful presence to be educated, have access to learning opportunities in their neighborhood schools.

And I've been fortunate to be in so many students lives to see that as they grow from elementary to secondary to now, the University. I have seen the trajectory. If you are included at a young age, you have more outcomes, more possibilities in your adult life. And so I thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today about including the students with disabilities. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Lisa. Assembly Member Hoover, do you have any questions for the panel?

Yes. Thank you. And thank you again, everyone. I love the theme. I think a lot of you hit on it, know, just this idea of inclusion early means more inclusion long term, and I think that is absolutely true for so many of our students. Kristen, I wanted to thank you, obviously, for all the work you're doing in the county I represent. So, you know, I really appreciate you coming over here and advocating today.

I did want to ask you, one of your bullet points was talking about kind of reforming the IEP to be more person centered. Can you just talk a little bit about that? Because I know for a lot of families, like, the IEP is a very kind of convoluted and complicated process. So I was curious what your thoughts were.

Yeah.

So, there was a work group that happened around this IEP template that consisted of lots of different representation from parents, parent centers, and higher Ed and all these folks. And after that, there was some discussion about how do we make sure that this is balancing the compliance aspects and balancing what we wanted to be. The spirit of the IEP, which is really individualized supports to help a student be the most included and have the most sense of belonging.

And one of the things that this came from was a recognition that often, and I don't know if you've had this experience as well, but everyone sits and you look on the wall at an IEP, and you just start marching through, checking the boxes, and it doesn't necessarily feel good.

It just feels like we're marching through in thinking about how to make sure that parents could be the most involved as possible and that we're really acknowledging what you said about parents being the experts about their children and really understanding what makes them tick and maybe some things that they do at home, but really looking at who are they as a person, are the children we're talking about that they're people and what do we want for them and their future and then mapping into that as opposed to starting out.

Know, this is Shelby and this is her disability and all these things that then you're like, well, that didn't feel very good. So that's the spirit of this. And there's some very passionate folks who are working on it right now, including some advocates who are really fighting to make sure that it stays with that spirit and it doesn't get bogged down by only compliance, although compliance is going to be important as we're looking at the legal ramifications around not having compliant IEP.

Thank you. No, that's really helpful. And it's good to know some folks are working on that. And please keep us updated on that progress. David, I did want to ask you one question about, you talked about family empowerment centers. Can you talk a little bit about the services that they're providing to families and parents just so I have a better understanding?

Absolutely. So family empowerment centers are charged to support families in navigating the system. This may be an initial referral to special education, and they can provide resources to families and caregivers to understand how to navigate the system, as well as participating in various meetings with families to ensure that their voice is heard and that they have a community, potentially parents with similar needs or very diverse needs, to navigate the public process and help them maintain their voice through the process.

As Kristen was talking about person centered IEPs, and if you've been in an IEP meeting, the first thing we begin with, here's a copy of your rights. And so, just recognizing the need for compliance, and I think of other situations where we start with our rights. HIPAA.

If I'm at an emergency room, if I'm buying a home, if I'm engaged with law enforcement, and so just recognizing that that is the setting that we need to be compliant, but again, not enforcing, achieving the spirit of the relationships that are there, because I would love for my Doctor to be compliant. I really would like he or her to care about my needs and help me solve the challenges that I'm currently facing.

And so through our paperwork and also through our preparation of teachers, and not just teachers leaders, I would highlight the 21st Century School Leadership Academy, which is also a significant investment that prepares and supports principals. And so how we equip our leaders with the mindset and the language in a technical compliant, law based situation to adhere to the spirit of equity and the intent of our state.

Thank you.

That's it for now.

Thanks.

As I was listening to you talk about belonging and just sort of how far we have to go, I was thinking Assembly Member Hoover and I have got 78 other colleagues in the Assembly, 40 more in the Senate, and if there was a place you would want us to push, and this is sort of a question for all three of you, knowing that more funding is a baseline need.

So we've pretend we had that, or at least that we know that and that the other piece of this is changing mindset. But as legislators, is there the best next place to push now that so much work has already been done with the report and I'll open it up to whoever wants to.

I think with the recent legislation for funding for the CSUS and the UCS to have inclusive programs, I think that is going to be a beneficial something to look at for legislators to see that this is why we needed to start and do more in the K 12 inclusion or preschool 12 inclusion.

I would underscore how long change takes. Special Ed is roughly 48 years old in our state and we are still learning and unwinding. And it's 2023 and we have our first inclusive programs at Higher Ed, 2023.

And we're introducing the concept of inclusive programs at Higher ED, and so recognizing how much work needs to be done and how long we will be engaged in this work, but the importance of little shifts and so how we begin changing our language around students with disabilities through our statutes and our expectations, I think of the most recent, again, another significant funding the equity multiplier. What we understand of our students with disabilities is that's just one aspect of their identity.

And so the student population we are working to be responsive to with the equity multiplier also includes students with disabilities. And so as we are focused on equity, how are we intentional and expansive in our vision of who is included and what we can achieve with the resources that we're providing and to continue to be explicit around these are communities and student groups that we want to focus on as the tip of the spear in our work that is inclusive of all students.

Two things come to mind for me. The first is around something that Lisa said around rightful presence. And that idea of moving from this idea of inclusion, where you're the host and I'm the guest and I'm begging to get in your classroom, to having a right to be there to begin with, is something that I think can undergird a lot of what we're talking about.

So this idea of asking people if they want to include kids and hearing things like we're an inclusive school is sort of a play on words, because what is the opposite of an inclusive school, then? And so how do we, I don't know if it's incentivize I don't know if it's some more edicts about what we believe as a state and what we expect and then whatever else we have that's built around that. The funding that we put towards things don't support those types of efforts.

Right? So maybe I just visited Washington State. They pay more per pupil for kids who are in inclusive settings. There could be some real incentives that we look at as a state that signals what we believe in. And I think that's what people look for is what are those signals? And a lot of them come through the funding piece, to be honest. So we can say all day all kids should be included. But do we really believe that?

And is that how our funding and other mechanisms are set up?

I agree.

Well, thank you to all three of you. We really appreciate your time. This has been very informative. I've certainly learned a lot, even though I've done this for 20 something years, so very much appreciate it. And we will welcome our second panel on serving multilingual students with disabilities. And while they're getting seated, I'll just introduce our panelists.

We have Rosa Armstrong, the assistant to the Access and equity Department and multilingual programs for Palmdale School District, who also serves on the board of directors for the California Association for Bilingual Education. And we may have her colleague Jennifer Baker, legislative advocate for Cabe as well. And, Rosa, I'll turn it over to you when you're ready.

ThanK you very much. Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity. I have worked for my district for 30 years and have worked with the special education students, including English learners, for 25 years. I would like to provide your Committee with a number of the complexities students with disabilities who are also English learners face. In order to set the stage, I would like to offer some facts. Nationally, about one in 10 students who qualify for a special education also identify as English learners.

These numbers have been steadily increasing. California has 718,000 special education students who are also English learners, represent, I'm sorry, representing approximately 14% of the English language learner population. The Palmdale School District currently has 706 special education students who are also English learners. Of these students, 225 are receiving more than 50% of their General education in classrooms. We have a broad category of disabilities for English learners in Palmdale.

Our system allows our educators, as well as service providers, to monitor and report progress toward linguistically appropriate goals we have developed to support language acquisition for these students. The nature of disability can impact the services that are provided and can also impact what linguistically appropriate goals are provided for students.

The disability of our English learners include one who is visually impaired, two with a traumatic brain injury, 212 with speech or language impairments, 238 with a specific learning disability, 28 with other health impairments, three with orthopedic impairments, four with multiple disabilities, 28 with intellectual disabilities, seven with hearing impairments, five who are emotionally disturbed, and 132 with autism. We have had many positive outcomes for many of our students. Our district has been successfully in reclassifying many of these students. Unfortunately, we also have some challenges.

One of the biggest challenges is the lack of properly trained to assess students to place them in a special education. There is often a lack of resources for these teachers. We also have a problem of misplacing students in a special education. Some students that have been placed in a special education merely do not speak English well. Additionally, our state has a number of children that come from individuals migrating. Many of them are coming with a lack of formal instruction and may also be facing traumas.

We need ensure we are also meeting the educational needs while providing emotional support to help them succeed. An additional challenge our district faces when it comes to providing services to our English learner students with disability is the lack of translation services. This is a national problem as well as a California problem.

While federal law requires schools to take whatever action is necessary, including arranging for interpretation and translation services to ensure that parents can meaningfully participate in their child's education, a lack of adequate federal funding makes achieving this goal challenging. In California, mandatory translating is required once 15% of students in a district speak a language. Given the number of languages spoken in our districts across the state, many languages are spoken in schools, but translation services are not mandatory as reaching this 15% requirement is not achieved.

In addition to the lack of translation and interpreter services provided for all the families with a special education student, we also encounter situations where a translator may not have an adequate background in a special education, making it more challenging for parents who are not English speaking to fully understand and be informed of the situation their child faces, as well as the program and service options available to their child.

As our state grapples with existing teacher shortage, it also has a ripple effect that impacts our schools at the local level. Cave appreciated the inclusion of 20 million annually for five years to bring back the bilingual teacher Profession Development Program, which uses a grow your own approach to address the bilingual teacher shortage.

By allowing eligible local educational agencies to apply for state funds to provide professional learning opportunities to increase the number of teachers with the bilingual authorization on their credentials, districts significantly lack bilingual teachers in multiple languages to staff bilingual classrooms in languages such as Mandarin, Armenian, Vietnamese, and Spanish, among others. Ensuring all schools have the necessary bilingual teachers is key to addressing not only an unfilled academic and instructional need for all students, but also the teacher shortage.

It is imperative for California to monitor the number of special education teachers who have bilingual authorizations to ensure we have seen in our districts and across the state in regard to our English learners. Some of these biggest challenges we have seen in our districts and across the state in regard to our English learners who have special education needs are that there are not enough professions that are specifically trained to serve these students. We lack adequate training and materials to appropriately assess our English learner students.

We also need to provide adequate bilingual special education teachers with the professional development they need to providing a specialized academic instruction for English learners. Many special education teachers find that staying in the profession is challenging. Creating incentives and support for these teachers to continue their education and stay in this field is imperative. Student success this support additional needs to include classroom support.

Further, we need the resources to provide education and training for families to learn how to support their children and we need to ensure this support is communicated in a family's home language in a culturally competent way.

In order to better serve our special education students who are also English learners, California needs to accomplish the following structure credential programs for teachers to include more training in understanding and providing specialized academic instruction to accommodate the different disabilities provide more resources in the community to support these students provide more funding specifically for bilingual teachers to go into a special education train more teachers to properly assess students to be placed in a special education conduct through assessments to accurately identify the specific needs and abilities of English learners in special education to create tailored, individualized education plans IPS recruit and train educators who are proficient in both the students Native language and English and have cultural competence to effectively support English learners offer multilingual support services for parents and guardians to ensure they can actively participate in their child's education and IEP meetings promote collaboration among General education and special education teachers as well as with language specialists to ensure a unified approach to support English learners with disabilities.

Consider reducing class sizes to provide more individualized attention and support for English learners in special education. Invest in ongoing professional development for educators focusing on strategies for teaching English learners with disabilities. Effectively ensure that all educational materials and resources are available in both English and the students Native languages to facilitate learning. Encourage parental involvement and engagement in their children's education by providing translated materials, interpreters, and opportunities for communication.

Develop specialized support programs that address the unique needs of English learners with disabilities such as speech therapy, language development, and social emotional support. Implement a system for regular data collection and evaluation to track the progress of English learner in special education, making necessary adjustments to improve services. TABe list these recommendations will provide a more inclusive and effective educational experience for English learners classified as special education in California.

Thank you for the opportunity to share my perspective on how ensure all our special education students can be served.

Thank you, Rosa and Jennifer, I don't know if you wanted to add anything you're welcome to, but no pressure.

Thank you very much. Jennifer Baker, legislative advocate for the California Association for Bilingual Education. What I would sum up through the work that we've been researching to prepare testimony for this Committee. One of the biggest challenges is really the unfortunate misidentification because a student doesn't speak a language. There are so many cultural nuances, there are so many families who may not understand the educational system to begin with.

And when you don't understand the educational system, and as a parent, I can tell you, as you know, your parents in the room, it's complicated. And if you don't speak the language, it's even more complicated. And so many parents and many individuals and communities don't understand their roles, their rights, how to ask questions, how to find out what's going on.

And many of those cultural nuances can make it challenging to find out that their student may have been misidentified and then unraveling the layers of additional complexities that are put on a child and their family can take years to undo. So making sure that as we're trying to do the right thing, that we also don't do the wrong thing simply because a student and their family didn't speak the language.

Well, thank you to both of you. I'll turn to my colleagues and welcome Assemblymember Lackey. Thank you for being here. And just if either of you have any questions for our panelists on serving multilingual students with disabilities.

I really don't have any questions, but I would just like to say that I'm from Palmdale, so I'm very familiar with the challenges there. And I was on this school district's board of trustees for six years. And so this is not a new problem, but it seems like it's a very complex problem, and it takes a collaborative effort. But first of all, at least by those who are making governance decisions and understanding that this needs to be mitigated as best as possible.

But resources are difficult, and that's one of the realities that we have in mitigating these challenges that are in this region. And I look forward to greater success as we recognize the fact that we've got significant challenges. And I'm familiar with the board of trustees there, and I think they also recognize this. And I think they have a very engaged board of trustees. And I think that when you work together, you can do remarkable things.

It doesn't mean that the problems will disappear, but I think that they'll become more and more manageable. So I thank you for coming and for bringing this issue to the state level. Awareness, because it is a significant issue, and mixing language issues with a different kind of exceptionality is unfair, and it's a disservice to all involved. So hopefully, we can figure this out and ensure the success of students, because they deserve that.

Thank you. Mr. Lucky.

Answer my question. I just had a couple of questions. I know how common misidentification can be, and I was just looking at the statistics that you are sharing. That said, about 14% of the English learner population in California has been identified as a student with special needs or a student in special education. And earlier we heard the statewide data is around, which is really what we'd want to see, right. Is that it's not higher for one than the other.

So I was actually encouraged by some of these figures. But then I also know from personal experience how easy it is to misidentify. And I'm wondering if you have seen particular practices or if Cabe in General has model practices or model programs that we and families and people in the field can be pointed to that are increasing appropriate identification of multilingual students with disabilities.

I can speak on behalf of Cabe and especially Palmdale School District. We are really working toward that goal, and we have included this year the families. We had also given some professional development, not only for teachers, but we have a lot of Par educators that can help us with this so we have included all of them in the professional development.

And we're also working to try to effectively increase the amount of parent engagement because we're finding that is such a key tool, that level of parent engagement. And so we really take to cart the question that you've asked, and what we will do is work to chew on the conversation even more and bring additional information for how we might be able to increase that parent engagement, specifically around serving our student population that also has a disability.

And then thank you for that. Thank you both. And I would be very interested to see if there's model programs out there, model practices out there. I think it would be helpful for the field even to have. I was thinking about what the last panel said around we need to continue to increase our model program so people can see this in action rather than a list of instructions. The other question I had is what you're seeing in the field to solve the translation issues.

So it used to be you would get a sibling to come into a meeting, right. And we kind of hopefully have ended that practice across the State of using family Members to come translate. But then when I was in the school district, we turned to a telephone translation system, very expensive, but they had 14 or 30 numerous languages. And so I'm just wondering what else you've seen.

I also did the training for our interpreters to make sure they understood the practices that were appropriate and they weren't ad libbing or giving their own opinion during meetings, which is a challenge also. But what else have you seen in the field that's working in terms of interpretation and translation?

I'm going to speak in where I work, which is Palmdale School District. We currently have interpreters in Spanish. And another topic is the American Sign Language, which is very important. And we have in Tagalog, a Hindi, ASL. We do it in English and Spanish, and those are the most requested in our district. Consequently, we outsource services via contractors, and that could be about $7,000 per IEP. But we are trying to train our staff in the different languages.

So we are reaching to universities and we are reaching to. There is, and I'm not going to make any advertisement with the Southern California School of Interpretation. And they are really helping us.

Improve.

In that aspect, because the special education is not only somebody that can translate from Spanish to vice versa, but you'd also know the medical terminology, and that's where we encountered the problem. But we are working on it. If you want to add.

Absolutely. No, I think she hit the nail on the head.

I was just thinking about all the tools we've learned during COVID with remote access, and if we can find folks who may not be sitting in the room that might be able to help us in other ways. But I want to thank you both for being here. Thank you for your time, and we very much appreciate it. We're going to move to our final panel, which is supporting the special education workforce. And as our panelists are coming up, I'm going to tell folks who they are.

We're going to have Annie Chou with the California Teachers Association, Tara Deg, parent educator with the Sacramento County Office of Education, and Dr. Plaxton Hennings, the Executive Director and Superintendent for the Temecula Valley Charter School. And we want to welcome all three of you. You have about 10 minutes for your testimony, and we really appreciate your time here. And Annie, I think we'll start with you.

Great. Thank you so much. Annie Chou is a legislative advocate with the California Teachers Association. Thank you for inviting me to speak. I was asked to speak more broadly on special education workforce, since you have two very qualified educators that are the actual experts that can draw on their day to day experience, but wanted to start giving you a baseline understanding of who special ed teachers are. I think it was spoken to on an earlier panel, but there's multiple types of credentialing.

There's a multi subject credential, which is basically like a second grade teacher, single subject thinking like a high school chem teacher and then education specialists, which are your special ed teachers. All credentials require, and this is an extreme summary, a degree from an accredited college and University, relevant coursework, passage of CBAST or CSET, and a completion of a Commission approved teacher prep program.

And then it was also touched on before, but there's also specialists within special ed space, mild moderate support needs, extensive support needs, deaf, hard of hearing, visual impairments, and early childhood special education. This is all to say that special educators are very much specialists. Their credentialing and authorization is specifically for students within the special education space.

And what that also means is that a special educator, more so than any other educator, are tasked to work collaboratively with their colleagues to ensure that special students, and students with IEPs get the education they need and deserve, which was also spoken to in an earlier panel.

What was also stated was that co teaching has been an extremely successful model, but want to touch on the points that it does require buy in from both special Ed and General Ed teachers and for them to work collaboratively to ensure student success. It requires bandwidth, grace, flexibility to be able to collaborate and change lesson plans. And this bandwidth comes with additional time to prep meeting to work with a special educator.

And a lot of our local unions have successfully bargained additional lesson planning times to ensure collaboration and co teaching, and it's shown that it helps not only students with IEPs, but all students. Unfortunately, this isn't a luxury that all educators are afforded. It requires a lot of resources to ensure success and teacher shortage and COVID has impacted our ability to do this.

Educators are already acutely aware of their limited time and are asked for flexibilities when schools went full remote and educators are struggling to manage workload. And because of that, very few educators are volunteering to co teach. But if districts were planning on offering more time, more collaboration time during work schedule, I think more educators would be more willing to adopt these co teaching models. And I just brought this up, but wanted to move towards teacher shortage.

So we talked about this a lot in the Legislature, we hear about it in the news, but there is a very acute teacher shortage and this is both a supply and a demand issue. CTC has an annual report that they prepare on teacher supply, the most recent one being released on April this past year on 2021 22. Teacher supply. The CTC has reported that there's been a decrease in new credentials during fiscal year 21 22, after a seven year increase.

There were nearly 220 thousand new teaching credentials issued in 2021, but only 16.5 thousand issued in 21 22, which was even below 2017 numbers. When this is disaggregated, there were only 4000 education specialist credential issued in 2021, 3600 issued in 21 22. On the demand side, the same study showed that estimated teacher hires reported in school districts there was a huge drop during COVID very obviously, and are now bumping back to pre hiring to pre COVID levels.

Of the 22,000 teachers hired in the 2223 school year, 4000 of them were special educators. So that was a lot of information and a lot of data. But I think the takeaway that I want to highlight is that there has been a drop in supply of educators and there is only a very finite amount specifically of special educators.

There were 3.6 thousand education specialist credentials issued last year, but there were 4.2 thousand spots filled, which means that there is definitely, definitely a supply and demand issue.

Like I said on the onset, there's been a lot of discourse on teacher shortage and the Legislature can probably do many, many hearings on that, but wanted to highlight that CTA did do our own internal survey of our membership last year and found that four of 10 teachers were exploring leaving the classroom and 20% of those of teachers said they were leaving the classroom in the next three years.

Among the factors that were cited were burnout, political attacks on teachers workload and pay specifically for special educators. In addition to the co teaching example, feedback that I've gotten from my Members include lack of support in the classroom and resources for ongoing training workload issues, whether that be class size or caseloads, and then funding and litigation, which kind of goes on both sides of the issue, right?

There's limited funding which you've already spoken to towards special ED, but then lawsuits are also taking money away from student support and teacher training. And a side note to that, while there is litigation, the IEP that is being litigated, that student isn't being served as well. So there's just a lot of issues within that space. And then I think the last point that they brought up was just a lack of collaboration with and from school districts on all these above issues.

I think it was spoken on previous panels as well. There's a dire want to serve these students and there's a lot of change happening, but a lack of input asked of teachers and specifically of special educators. Special educators of canary in the coal mine and often seeing and speaking out first on issues in the classroom, since they feel the pinch most acutely, but are often overlooked because they're a much smaller subsect of the educator population. And one last point about how the Legislature can help.

I think that the Legislature has shown and demonstrated eagerness to address broad issues within education. But often, much like within my own membership, special education is overlooked or misunderstood. Either laws don't ask for input specifically from student populations and from teachers that serve these student populations, or there's piecemeal legislation working to address specific needs of various subgroups within our special ed space. This creates further disparities and increased cost pressures and implementation burdens on our education system.

I ask that when we do form legislation that we ask for input from students of color, students with specialty needs, unhoused students, LGBT students, ELD Students, and teachers that serve those populations. When creating policy to look at to address issues in equities more broadly within our education policy, it's shown time and again that when we uplift all these student populations, it uplifts all our student populations.

I appreciate that there is now a specialized teacher within the Legislature and look forward to continued conversations with you and with the Committee on how to best support our teachers and students on this very critical moment. Thank you for your time. You need to correct the record, but they do have a former education teacher.

I'm sitting right here.

I apologize, Mr. Lackey, but very, very happy for both of you guys to be within this space and helping me and us in this very important time.

We'll say first to arrive to the hearing. Thank you so much Annie, and let's.

Move on to Tara. Hello, my name is Tara Degg. I am a para educator for Sacramento County Office of Ed or SCOE and have been working there since about 2014. I currently work with students with the most significant needs, ranging from medical to behavioral needs, and I have the joy of teaching middle school. I started doing this work in my 20?

S and instantly fell in love with both the population that we serve and the district I work for, and I'm also the current chapter President for my local union for CSCA. I'm here today to discuss some of the successes and challenges that I have seen in my experience in the classroom, and I believe there's been many of both.

We recently negotiated and expanded both hours and salaries of those working in the classroom, and this has been monumental for us, for it allows us time to collaborate with not just our teachers, principals, but also our speech therapists and PT and OT. When I first began my work with SCOE, our work time was the minute the students arrived to the minute they left, and we didn't get any time to collaborate with the other staff Members who are so important to the success of each student.

Extending the hours and compensation has helped us take a whole child approach to our teaching, and we receive more in depth professional development on how to cope with emotional needs, behavior management, and so much more. While we have had an increase in this training, I feel there's still more to be done and approved upon. The day to day activities of a para educator are extensive and ever changing. I start the day preparing breakfast with rares from student to student.

Some students I need to tube feed, others I need to blend their food up or cut it up. I'm responsible for administering medication either via a pill or liquids taken in a G tube. Each year we have to review the training on these procedures that is given by our school nurses. I also manage behavior needs, toileting and provide one to one group instruction, and that takes up a great portion of my day.

The day often does not end when the bell rings and many times buses run late, parents are stuck in traffic, or an emergency bathroom visit requires us to stay late to continue the care and safety of our students at SCOE. Each classroom does have an annual budget for the purchase of adaptive equipment and supplies to help with our curriculum and communication. This has been a great help to us to keep our students engaged as well as support their unique needs, but we could always use more.

There's always upgrades that would greatly benefit our students. We also assist in standardized testing of our students. Often the testing is nonaplicable for most of our student population. While the testing materials have improved, it's still not suitable for the population I work with. Some of these students are nonverbal, have significant cognitive disabilities, and cannot operate a computer, and it prevents them from understanding and taking these tests.

They are distracted or the material is overly complicated or doesn't quite match the curriculum that we use throughout the year. It's also become clear that more professional development is needed as we've fallen behind in understanding new classroom management techniques. While we've been moving in the right direction, I feel that it's not enough for what we deal with. I have recently returned to the classroom after being out on an injury for almost three months.

This injury, I felt, could have been avoided had we had the staff that were more trained. The makeup of my current classroom staff is mostly contracted employees. I am the only SCOI para in my classroom. The contracted staff do not receive the same level of training as I do. Some of my training includes CPR, Proact, and CPI. While districts have been getting better at supplying us with more training, it does not help if the contracted staff do not have the same level or standards of training.

While I appreciate there is someone in the room, it doesn't help as much as you think it would because staff or jobs that are contracted out don't have the training and experience that I have. We really need more permanent staff. Contracted staff are paid significantly more than myself or my coworkers, but they are responsible to their employer and not to the district. They aren't committed to this profession and many of them aren't committed to the children they serve.

While temporary, filling and opening in one of our classrooms, we have the contract para educators because we are currently faced with numerous staff vacancies. When the staff is injured or sick, there's no one to cover these positions. But our students are entitled to their education and need properly trained staff. They depend on consistency and routine to be able to focus, learn, and grow.

And let's be clear, the recruitment and retention has been a major challenge for us because the wages paid to people who work in our positions are comparable to the wages paid in fast food workers. Our jobs are less flexible and the hiring requirements mean it often takes months to get through the hiring process. Also, for many reasons I've described, people are leaving the profession in droves.

During our most recent negotiations, we conducted a salary study and found most para educators are below a living wage for the area. The average cost of rent for a basic apartment in Sacramento is more than I make in a month. I live in the Yuba City and work not one, but four jobs to make ends meet because my career path does not allow me to work just one job. When the price of gas goes up, my ability to pay my other bills goes down.

And I would love to live closer to my work, but I can't afford to do so. With all that I have presented today, I want you to know this. The para educators I know and work are exceptional people who care about our students. We work incredibly hard in physically and emotionally challenging environments. We take every opportunity to build the skills and techniques we need to be successful in our classrooms, and most of all, we want our students to thrive and succeed.

What we are asking for is better pay, benefits, working conditions, and training that benefits both staff and students. So taking on this work doesn't come with a vow of poverty. What we need is respect and recognition that taking better care of us and our classrooms is the key to getting better care for our young people. Thank you.

Thank you, Tara. And we'll move on to Dr. Plaxton Hennings. Welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you for allowing me to speak this afternoon. I began my early career as a pediatric neuropsychologist, doing both clinical and teaching and research work in that field, which certainly laid the path for my work later on with students with disabilities as I transitioned into working in the K-12 environment. I've spent the last nine years in Special Education Administration, and so that's really the lens that I'm going to be speaking from today.

I have been the Director of Mental Health and Psychological Services for a large school district in Southern California, coordinator of SELPA, and most recently, the senior Director of Special Education in Desert Sands unified prior to taking my current position. So really coming at it from a lens of a long time of working with special education and really trying to staff and serve our students from that administrative perspective, as you've heard many successes today in serving our students.

Perhaps the greatest barrier as an administrator to continuing to promote the academic and personal successes of these students is ongoing staffing challenges faced by traditional public schools, charter schools, and alternative education sites. I want to take a moment to highlight the overwhelming challenges facing administrators as they attempt to recruit, retain, and mentor certificated and classified personnel which serve and support our students.

To provide some context, it is important to recognize that many students with disabilities require supports and services from numerous highly specialized service providers, including speech and language pathologist, occupational therapist, physical therapist, mental health therapists, psychologists, and school nurses. However, rarely can a local education agency hire all of these specialized personnel to meet the services requirements in every student's individualized education plan. For the administrator, there are several mechanisms which seem to exacerbate the gap between students needs and staffing.

First, having been formerly a college Professor and then seeing it on this end, recent college graduates and individuals entering the workforce over the past eight to 10 years seem to be seeking something different in their work environments. They desire flexibility, maximizing time off, offering opportunities to work remotely. And notably, the priorities of many of young adults entering the education workforce are different than generations which came before them.

Historically, individuals entered the field of education, as did my parents, and planned to stay there for 35 or 40 years. Now, what we see is that fully funded medical benefits, job security, retirement, and a professional community are not necessarily the priorities of many of the young people entering the profession. As an administrator, I've personally been a part of recruitment teams which travel throughout California and the United States, attempting to recruit qualified staff back to my district.

The lack of interest in traditional education jobs, both in California and across the country is staggering. Even when there is an interest, the number of higher education programs targeted at preparing specialists for the field of education is minimal. For example, there are only five school nurse credentialing programs in the State of California, two in Northern California, one in Central California, and two in Southern California. And yet, we are chronically short of school nurses and many nurses do not even realize that this is an educational opportunity.

Employment for them Even with full employment rosters, chronic absenteeism is not just an issue characterizing students in our state, but the education workforce. I was thinking, as Tara was talking, that, for example, para educators provide such a valuable one to one support for our students with significant disabilities and medical needs.

However, they are also a group of employees that are most likely to have inconsistent attendance for many of the reasons that Tara referenced before you, but also because of the many opportunities that they are offered outside of the field of education. Finally, as it relates to classified staff, I would be remiss to fail to mention that the increase to minimum wage makes it difficult for school districts to compete for classified staff with other industries.

LEAs need greater resources to offer more competitive salaries to recruit and retain highly qualified staff. Shifting focus I want to take a moment to discuss our special education teachers. Identifying and retaining highly qualified special education teachers is an insurmountable obstacle facing personnel departments across the state. Furthermore, when candidates are hired, many are not prepared for the incredible legal pressures involved in simply writing an individualized education plan and managing students with significant needs. This leads to high levels of burnout and poor retention of new teachers.

Although inclusive practices are in fact increasing and spreading throughout the state for individuals with disabilities, many sped teachers express that they still find themselves marginalized on their school campuses. However, perhaps the most detrimental force impacting the retention of teachers and for that matter, special education administrators, is the highly titious environment plaguing the practice of special education in the State of California. Instead of a focus on building and maintaining high quality programs for students, we are often focused on preventing and managing litigation.

The environment can often become very hostile toward teachers and administrators, and in some cases we are even experiencing threats of physical violence upon ourselves and our staff. Despite great strides in the alternative dispute resolution and parent engagement in the IEP process, these types of interactions cause intense emotional distress to employees and create, at best, disengagement from work and at worst, employees who want to leave the profession or transfer to non special education roles within the field of education.

Developing senior level Special education administrators is challenging when their compensation does not reflect the emotional and psychological toll of the job and is often outpaced by nonaministrative, certificated positions in summary, relief is needed to address nuisance lawsuits in special education, protect education staff from the abuse, bolster the ability to recruit and retain staff, and open additional training programs for special education disciplines as a whole.

Furthermore, training programs should be targeted towards onthejob skills, such as writing an IEP or managing behavior in a classroom, rather than passing high stakes tests, which, instead of serving as gatekeepers, serve as a barrier to individuals entering the field of special education.

Thank you.

Thank you so much to the three of you. I want to specifically thank Tara because I taught middle school, and it takes a special person to spend time in middle school, but also, I couldn't have run my classroom or our special education Department without the Paris who were there. And just, of course, appreciate the teachers and the administrators. It's that team that makes this work is super hard, but it's having that team on campus that makes it possible.

And so I want to appreciate everyone who's here today. I just have a couple of questions. I think top of mind. A couple of you talked about litigation, and Dr. Plaxton Hennings, you just mentioned some things that have been helpful, but really, for all three of you, are there pieces you see that the Legislature could do to help cut down on litigation?

I think it's very essence, tort reform is going to be very important to that process. It is very rewarding for attorneys to engage in special education litigation, because school districts, as they are trying to practice risk management and trying to practice and balance the time that we are spending in litigation, oftentimes find themselves settling cases.

And when we settle those cases, oftentimes we put ourselves in more severe staffing shortages, because often the demands that we settle for, whether we believe they are legitimate or not, and certainly that process is apparent. Right. It's an important part of the parent process. But what ends up happening ultimately, is we end up with settlement agreements with parents that demand hundreds of hours of services, thousands of dollars of services for which we don't have the staff, oftentimes to provide those services to begin with.

And then we have the burden moving forward of again providing those services. We also often find that we spend hours in the room managing litigation instead of actually out mentoring teachers and being in classrooms and making tweaks to programs to better them for students. And so I think one of the things that has to happen from a legislative perspective is it cannot be inherently rewarding to file against school districts, particularly in a frivolous manner.

Anything to add from either of you? Okay. And then the other piece I was wondering if each of you could elaborate on is just that recruitment and retention you mentioned, pay is not enough, benefits aren't enough. There's a number of things that are happening in the field, and it just doesn't seem to be enough. So what else is there that you see that would be helpful? And for all three of you? I know, Annie, you didn't say pay is not enough.

So I'm not going to lay that one on your shoulders, but would love to hear from all of you of what else can we do on the teacher's side and the para educator side on recruitment and retention.

I think all three of us pointed out on teacher training. Right. I think it is important to have the supports to make sure that teachers are prepared going into the workforce and then also supported while with tools to manage their classrooms. I think we all touched on that bit. And I think going off of your previous point, too, and about litigation, it's just.

And what I had said about just pressure within the classroom, I think that there needs to be a way to take some of the anxiety from parents, from the district, from the public, off of teachers. And how can we best support teachers and make sure that it isn't a scary profession to be in a classroom. Right. School Board meetings look scary. Classrooms look scary. We're talking about violence in schools. But I think we need to also focus on the positive aspects when recruiting teachers as well.

Instead of just how hard and difficult and terrible it is to be a teacher.

I would love to see us consider and really look at the practical aspects of our training program. So again, having worked in higher Ed, much of which we spend our time on is theoretical information, which is important, and it's important to have that context.

But I have sat in a room where you were trying to train a brand new teacher on how to write an IEP and watched a brand new teacher walk out of that room and say, I can't do this because that's the first time they've ever been exposed to an IEP.

And I think it's really important to think about how do we offer practical skills along with the theoretical skills that underlie the profession so that when they walk into that first day of orientation, we're not surprising them when they walk into the room and they have that first difficult student that wants to spend their day under the desk. Right. That's not the first time that they've had and run that scenario.

I also really believe that one of the things that we can certainly do as it relates to para educators, there's certainly many issues here as we talk about, really the broad spectrum of staffing across special education. But I think one of the things that I would love to see us creatively do is create career pathways, particularly for para educators.

When we look at our community college system, when we look at a number of our systems, a lot of our para educators that come into it have degrees or training in our community college system or even bachelor's degrees that really have nothing to do with the field of education or the work they're going to do. So they're coming in with a strong educational background, but it is not necessarily related to the work that they will be faced with when they walk into that classroom.

And I think a creative way to address that would really to be, to be able to create career pathways where we have people like Tara that has identified that as kind of their life's work. OK, here's a pathway and a mechanism by which to do that.

Yeah, I have to agree with both of them. And one of the biggest things that I fight with in my classroom is you're just a para educator. And it's a phrase that I hate with a burning passion, and I get it from both parents, administrators, and so on. But I think having a more inclusive team in the classroom and building upon those relationships will help improve. And mainly the training. Right now, ScoE is getting a lot better about it.

We have more inclusive training, and we are getting the same training our teachers are getting. We're learning about safes, and we're learning about how these programs work to build ourselves up. And we have a program to help us become teachers. But I would like to see more.

Well, thank you to the three of you. Very much appreciate. We're going to move on to public comment. And so while we're transitioning, want to thank everybody who gave public testimony today. Excuse me. Want to thank everybody who came and shared their own testimony, all of our panelists today. And if there are any Members of the public that would like to participate, we're going to make our way to this microphone, and maybe we'll keep public comment to about three minutes each.

I don't see too many people in the audience, but want to be mindful of everyone's timeline. Thank you. And if there's other folks, you're welcome to sort of line up.

Hi there.

My name is Stephanie Coleman, and I've been in education for about 20 years, served as an Ed specialist for more than 15 years, and I've served in lots of different roles as an ed specialist and worked at the district level. I've also taught at the college level at SAC State. And what I've learned over many years is that words matter. Probably the most important thing that I've learned is words matter. The words that we use matter. Students are not special education students.

They're students who also have disabilities. And this gets confused. And as this gets confused, we begin to lose sight of things. We lose sight of pretty much everything else. They are students, therefore, they should be taught as students. We should expect that all students should be taught with best first instruction amongst their same age peers, learning the same standards aligned curriculum. If they need supports, they need supports just like any other student who would need supports.

And if they happen to have a disability, then we will support those needs because they have a disability, but they are a student who has a disability. We don't have special education teachers because we don't teach special education. We have education specialists who provide support and services needed by students who happen to have disabilities. They have exceptionality and need supports and services in order to thrive. Special education in itself is kind of a misnomer.

It denotes a separate form of education for a separate group of students. This othering ideology is detrimental to the hard work that generations of people have done to break down barriers that impact the access for each and every student to have meaningful inclusivity and belonging, belonging in their home school environment, in communities that know and care about them and that they feel like they are truly an important part of.

And if we are to truly move forward for rightful presence like we heard about today, we must acknowledge that the words that we use, the words in legislation, the words that we say, the words that we have, other people hear and speak, that those words have meaning and those beliefs underpin all the things that matter. And they matter to students. And students are first and foremost students that just happen, in this case, to have disabilities.

I'm the old lady with the actual paper. Thank you for giving us this time. I'm Dr. Aven Stamer. I'm the Director of the Center for Excellence and Developmental Disabilities at the Mind Institute at UC Davis, and I'd like to express my support for the California Autism Professional Training and Information Network. Captain I'm not a Member of captain, but I had the opportunity to study the scale up of special education autism practices and Captain's role in that through funding from the Federal Department of Education.

They funded us because Captain is a model program for other states and they wanted to see how it worked. So we conducted a study, pre pandemic beginning with SELPA directors down to paraprofessionals and teachers, and we surveyed over 2500 educators, including 1500 direct service providers, about the readiness of their districts, Selpas, and schools for providing autism practices. We gathered more detailed information from about 250 teachers about their use of evidencebased practice in the classroom, and about half of them had been trained by captain.

We compared those to teachers and paraprofessionals who had not had that opportunity. Those trained by Captain reported better quality autism classrooms, higher evidence based practice knowledge, and felt more competent using those practices. This is important for training others and talking with parents about their child's services. We also learned that providers trained by captain had higher fidelity to their practices, which means they use the evidence based strategies with higher quality. This is important because research tells us that that fidelity is related to student outcomes.

Teachers trained by captain also used these practices more consistently with more students, both with and without autism. Quality indicators like these mean that more students were getting higher quality services when their providers were trained by captain. Additionally, greater implementation support in a district predicted higher autistic student academic outcomes and was related to lower school district suspension rates, especially in high poverty districts, which means that training from Captain may help ameliorate some of the disparities we see in student outcomes.

Captain funding was not renewed by the California Department of Education this past year, so I worry that the impact of the network is being minimized. So I'd like you to consider the ongoing support of this California resource. Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Lisa Young and I'm with the Placer County SELPA, also speaking in support of captain. As previously discussed, autism is the fastest growing disability condition impacting children, one in 20 children in California. So educators need to know how to most effectively support these students'use of evidence based practices like visual supports or modeling or peer based learning, as I'm sure you implemented in your classroom.

And so we know that captain is a nationally recognized model that's here in California to support this effort, but again, not renewed for funding. We worry that the impact is being minimized and then the momentum that we've been building to work with fellow school districts is what will lapse. Your support would mean that educators and students that they serve would continue to benefit from these evidence based practices.

Disseminating through captain the goal resulting in increased community inclusion job opportunities which moving toward greater inclusion opportunities both in the school district and without, and fulfilled lives for our children's young people with autism. It also impacts when teachers feel effective. It reduces burnout and they're more likely to stay in the field. So I want to thank you for the consideration.

Is there anybody else that wanted to give testimony? I think everyone in this room has spoken. So I want to thank our staff for being here to thank all of you for coming, and we're going to conclude our hearing and adjourn. So thank you so much.