about how important it is and how much families what the after-school program at their school sites. if that cannot happen, not providing a clear place for them to be able to send their children and a clear way of how they are going to get there -- i think that is really problematic. also anecdotally, i know of no family that has afterschool options at their school that chooses to go somewhere else. i know of, just anecdotally, i cannot say i know that for sure. but that is kind of, you know, it seems to me that everyone's first choice is the program at their school. thank you. goodbye. commissioner wynns: i did want to say a couple of things. we know there are a lot of people who have options at the school site who do not choose them. a lot of that is that we have had free transportation, so it was not an issue for a lot of people.

but also, i was talking to mr. david earlier today. one of the things that occurred to me -- this is again in the town of working with providers, which is not so much the job of those of you who are working on student assignments, but more the people who are working on the realignment, the single issue person, but also our program people who work with elementary schools as well as with child development. all of our people who work on partnerships with community- based organizations and city agencies. the existence of this transportation system, among other things, as well as, in my view, the way we assign people to our own child development programs that is wherever they land, as opposed to where they live or go to school, has contributed to this. we are complicit in this ourselves.

the school district is. that is the kind of stuff we ought to be working on now. there are plenty of places in noe vallate where there are places we should have more capacity on the site. that is our goal through the realignment. but also, if people knew they were not good to have this transportation, we could be working with partners to have this programs. the capacity for after school is in the neighborhood, not just after school sites are getting in a bus to go across town. people rely on the transportation system that we simply cannot afford to provide any more. it may be the most efficient or best way of doing it anyway. it is not just going to be a sendoff that is brutal. for those of you sitting here, we will align all the initiatives taken place. i think we are ready to go on to the special education item. thank you very much. thank you for this work.

thank you. >> good evening, everybody. i guess i would like to share briefly that we have got a

proposal for you about how to begin to move some of the recommendations from the audit report that was shared with you in mid september. i have a brief power point. i guess i would like to frame it before we start. essentially, you will recall that the outside of it really -- the outside audit called everyone's attention -- commissioner wynns: for the record, will you identify yourself? >> i am cecilia dodd, assistant superintendent for special education. one of the major recommendations in the audit report from the urban special ed leadership collaborative is that we begin to put a change in our thinking and focus on serving children

with disabilities in the least restrictive environment. we are not serving children in the least restrictive environment in the way that we really should be. so they recommended to think about inclusive practices and an integrated set of services rather than inclusion programs. currently, we have students with disabilities whose iqs say that they need inclusion served in what we call inclusion programs that are not located in all schools. as a way to move forward with serving kids with disabilities in a more inclusive way and a more integrated way, we are proposing that we start small, so that we can be successful, and use an opportunity while we

are looking at the student enrollment process to really look at how we enroll children and youth with disabilities and think about a way that more children can use the same process, and families can use the same process, to choose schools as they do for their non-disabled children, and that we would essentially have inclusion, not inclusion programs, but inclusive practices in all schools. the way we are proposing to do that is to start small. currently, the practice is that students whose iaps already say that they need special ed in a resource setting or rsp and students whose iaps say they

need special ed and designated instructional service -- that is children who are primarily -- speech/language is the primary disability -- those kids are already accessing the school choice process that all the typically developing per se access. we are talking about adding the kids whose iaps say inclusion. we are talking about on a small scale here -- we are talking about 100 students who will be in coming kindergarteners, 45 students who will be in coming sixth graders, and 35 who will be in coming-- incoming 9th graders. we are talking about just the transitional grades to elementary, middle, and high school.

that way we can really focus on development with principals and special ed staffs of these kids can be successful. commissioner wynns: to clarify, you are -- this is the current year. we presume there are the same number of students next year? >> exactly. we are estimating. it is always a moving target. there will be iap movements -- meetings between now and the end of the year when different students will be found eligible and different students will have services recommended. this is carving out what seems doable. it is a way to move toward a more inclusive model. it is students entering transition grades. commissioner wynns: i just want to clarify that we presume the numbers are about the same way and that is why we are going to use those numbers. >> right. one trick to this is withholding some additional spots in our

schools so that as kids need those services throughout the course of the year that we will not have to ask kids to -- who started a school year in one school to go to a different school. commissioner wynns: ok. but can you tell me how many? i mean, we will not know what schools that are choosing until we go through the process. -- they are choosing until we go through the process. how are we going to figure out how many spots each school needs to hold? >> what we do now for assignment is we do pre assignments. they submit their choices. there are students who choose different schools. we pre-assigned those students ahead of time. we usually, for kindergarten for example, if there are three

kindergarten classes, we usually assign one into the classroom. that is a general rule, given the capacity of the entire population of kids. what we are planning to do in this scenario is probably to set capacities that are specifically for inclusion students. we might go with three for each kindergarten class or we might go with the cluster, given what the population of students are presently at the school. so we would hold those seats. through the assignment process, we would have students who are inclusion -- they compete with each other. commissioner wynns: and will we tell people what the capacity is that we are holding? >> we will not be able to anticipate that immediately because we have to do an assessment before the process, before we actually do the assignment, what seats would be

available. we have a working group and a team of content specialists, and we have the program supervisors that are going to be involved in determining how we are going to be able to determine how many seats are available. commissioner wynns: i am not sure i understand. [laughter] the schools know -- we are proposing to change. right now, we use the one kindergarten class model, right? so we clearly know what -- right. so if we were to use that threat the system, we would have -- if we have 100 kids, how many kindergarten class is do we have? anybody know? -- how many kindergarten classes do we have? anybody know? if we say 1 per class, we should have plenty. the problem has always been that certain sites are popular.

people like them. they want them. under the current -- under this proposal, which would use the same tiebreakers, there would be the same -- what you are proposing, as i hear it, though you may use a different model, a cluster model -- what you are saying is you have to get these people together and figure out what school is going to use what model and how many seats would be set aside in that school. that is my question. when are we going to know that? are we going to tell people that? my second question is, tell me if i'm wrong, what i am hearing is that first that school is going to have preschool kids, the first siblings of the preschool kids, then people in the intendants area -- in the attendance area, and that would apply to all the seats except for the one set aside for inclusion. then a similar process would take place just for those

inclusions seats among the people who apply for inclusion seats. is that correct? ok. so are you going to tell them how many seats are set aside and how many people apply for it? >> the team has not determined how we are going to be able to determine how many seats at each school site. but if we decided, for example, to hold one kindergarten class three seats, there would be three seats for three glasses. depending on the capacity at that school and what the rest of the enrollment was like, we would go with that rule of thumb. what we would do that is different than what we are doing now is that we would continue to hold those seats throughout our placement process. commissioner norton: ok. so i still want to make sure i understand this. it is not like let's just use the back of the envelope calculation we just did. let's say we are talking about holding 200 seats throughout the

process, even though we would expect 100 kids. right? so we would be holding 100 seats empty throughout the process until the first day of school. or even beyond that. >> as i said, we have not determined that yet. i think there has to be a point where we would work with the special ed department to determine which seats are going to be released. that would probably be based on demand at all the school sites. "we need to anticipate is that many of the students -- what we need to anticipate is that many of the students who would be getting inclusion services may not necessarily have their iaps written by march of 2011. we often get those in may and june, but that need those services and lose the opportunity to be able to participate in the choice process. we want to make sure we do have those.

commissioner wynns: if we are holding 100 seats we are not going to use, we lose 100 potential kindergarteners who do not enter the system because those seats are left empty. that is not a good thing for us. commissioner norton: i think i am more concerned about the idea of putting general ed students against students in special education and the idea that suddenly these held over inclusion seats become the target of people who did not get what they wanted. [laughter] that really -- and if we are not going to do that -- if we are going to behind the scenes release some seats because we know we have held over to many, how are we point to make decisions about which schools the seats will be released at and which schools they want? i mean, how is that going to be made in a -- how can that not be an arbitrary decision? conversely, a decision to concentrate students at

particular schools like we do now? >> if i can respond to that, we are in a really interesting spot right now. we had to get something together so that we could have something for the school fair and for the special ed student enrollment guide, knowing that if we did not get something in place now we would be a whole nother year out from moving something. we are in a place where we do not have those answers. "we want is to do two things. -- what we want is to do two things. one is to make two decisions about how much special ed is needed and what setting should be made by the iap team. we do not want a student placement process that impedes that iap team decision making. we also want a student placement process for students to be more

transparent. we know there are a lot of concerns about what we currently have. it is a closed door, it is arbitrary, it is not based on student needs. we are really trying to pull something together that is more transparent. then we are looking at the equity issues. at the same time, what we are hoping to do is begin to think about a more equitable distribution of children with disabilities so we can work to -- commissioner wynns: i appreciate that. we all agree with all those things. we understand the motivation here. but we need to know what you are thinking about to make this practically workable. we do not want 100 and the seats. our schools -- people have left the system because they have not gone into them. nor do we want people thinking it is because of the special ed kids that i did not get into any

school that i want, that was acceptable to me. we want to make every school acceptable. we understand that. but when we say this, we're going to have to say, as you have, eloquently, "this is what we are trying to do. this is the way we should begin to approach this." but we also have to say down the line we are going to try not to be left with empty seats in school so you do not have enough money or people leave the system. this is the idea. at least, from my point of view, you need to tell us when you plan to make those practical decisions. i think better would be to say, "by this time, after we know a, b, c, and d, we are going to make a recommendation," so that people know we are not going to keep on just saying this is what we are trying to do and we are

never going to tell you what is good to happen. that is unacceptable, i think, to everyone. commissioner fewer: i just want to apologize to my colleagues and to the public that i have to leave at 8:10. my right is coming. i apologize. i do understand the thing about holding seats. but i think it is important to do. i think it is important that we have a mix of students in our classrooms. sometimes you do have to stand by those seats. if you really believe that we should have full inclusion in our classrooms, you have to. i think we have to give parents of children with iaps enough choices, and we might have to do that and relieve seats as they fill up. i do not think that -- i do not think that -- i hope there will not be the pitching against special ed and general ed. even in our immersion programs,

we hold seats back for students whose language -- we hear a lot of flak about. but it is the right thing to do. it is absolutely the right thing to do, if you have an immersion program, that you should not just have a two native speakers of spanish and chinese and the rest of them english only. if you believe in the model, if you don't have the model, but if you believe in the model you do have to set aside those seats and try to out reach and make it a better system for everyone. i know this is new and is going to be the first year doing it. i think the conversation needs to shift. we need to shift. we are looking for the least restrictive environment for students. in order to have it more equitable, the seats are being held for the students if they so choose. they would have the choice. because their needs are special, we do have to -- i think it is

sort of the -- yes. we might get flak from parents entering kindergarten. i do not know if they will flee. they may choose another school, or they may wait out because some seats may be released. that is my initial reaction to it. i think that if we say this is going to be negative -- but if we do not try something new in the direction of full inclusion for most of our students, i just -- i think this is just one step. it is a blind to what we are trying to do to bring equity -- it is aligned to what we are trying to do and to try to bring equity to our students who have iaps. commissioner yee: i weigh in with the side that we need to set aside some seats. i guess for me -- here is my

compromise. if you want to -- it will not resolve all the issues, but i think it will help. i think if we do for the student assignment -- we run it. we run those with iaps first to see how many of those students will actually be assigned to those one-seat per kindergarten. then, once you have run it, let us say that the school has four kindergarten class is. only one student was assigned to a particular kindergarten. this leaves three more seats. rather than saving all three seats after the first run, i would save one seat per school. if there is some capacity for that. those for kindergarten class is -- class es -- you are not savig any seats. it is not saving all the seats,

but it is not giving up all the seats either. so there is some capacity to bring in other kids later on. and to be truthful, most likely the schools that are in high demand will be filled. those schools that are not in high demand where there are four kindergarten classes, there will most likely be three slots there. so the impact of how many real seats we are putting aside for inclusion is not going to be the 80 or so elementary schools we have. it will probably end up to be more like 20 slots. it is not going to be 100 if you were to take that approach. commissioner wynns: thank you. commissioner norton: i

appreciate that. i think you are probably right that there is not going to be -- that the high demand schools are going to fill any way. a question to you is what would happen if we simply said that students that need a specialized -- specialized services because the have a disability in a general led classroom, if we let them go to the process and they land where they land, then we serve them. i understand the solution you are proposing is because we are afraid that we are going to get more than we can handle, i guess, then we have capacity to serve well at a particular school, but it kind of seems to me -- i do not know. maybe i am being naive, but it seems to me that wouldn't it be a good thing, in a way, if we ended up with a school that had numbers of students with disabilities that wanted to go there and a program that was -- that sort of broke out of that

organically -- would that be a bad thing? what are the patterns now? the choice programs, generally, i think you have told me in the past, for students with inclusion programs basically mimic the tourist patterns for students without -- the choice patterns for students without iaps. isn't that true? the competition for more students wanting to get into a particular school is going to -- i cannot imagine that we are suddenly going to see a run of 20 students with disabilities filling up an entire kindergarten class at clarendon because there are a lot of other people who want to go to clarendon as well. it seems to me the overall complexity and demand in the system is going to take care of the worry about there being heavy concentrations at various schools. do you see what i am saying? commissioner yee: i would -- if

we do not go with what commissioner norton just said, as part of when susan was reading out what they would research, i would really do that analysis where people are actually applying for this one year, and make some adjustments from there on. >> i would like to respond to a couple of things. i think it is important for you to know that we are going to be meeting with folks from policy and operations to make sure that whenever we come up with the we hold these schools harmless in terms of budget. with enrollment projections, if we project a certain number of kids, it should -- we need to look at these issues closely, but that is the plan. we would not want to -- i do not think we would succeed if schools' budgets are going to be

impacted negatively. commissioner wynns: i need to follow up on that. can you explain to me how we are going to do that? if we are holding in the slots throughout the year, we are going to give the schools money? how are we going to afford that? >> it is not dissimilar from the approach we take with newcomers students. i think there are some differences, but it is kind of analogous. we know that in the course of a year, newcomers students will attend -- will come into our system and will go to the everett and cisco and our newcomer pathways. we know they do not start the year at those schools, but we make an estimate of how many students will be at each of those schools by the end of the year. we establish the budget from the

very beginning, even the prior spring, with that expectation in mind. i think what is different in this case is that we would not really know from school to school what the actual enrollment would be, and we would have an expectation that systemwide it probably would be less than what we expect, i mean than the base of the projection. but for a given school, we would be similar to what we do with the newcomer population. commissioner wynns: i need to ask a question about that. first of all, we do not get kids with iaps of coming into the system who are not in the system already. they are kids who go to our schools who throughout the year get iaps and get in line to get different kinds of services and what they have had before. i am a little concerned if we are going to do it like we do with newcomers, because that is

just kind of dumb, because we already have almost all these kids with us. it is going to -- people who are managing the schools, the principleals, the people figurig out how many kids to put in each class and how to use their resources -- we need to at the very least consult with them before we do this. and i am very -- i was glad that you said that, because i am concerned that if we just tell schools we are going to leave spots and the and you are not going to get any money for those spots, that is a problem. but on the other hand it is more complex than saying let us treat them like newcomers. i mean, yes. we get a few kids who come in with iaps who are not our students at the beginning of the year, but that is not the purpose of saving spots. that is the purpose of setting up until school starts, not the purpose of saving them throughout the year, as i understand it.