KNOX COUNTY, Tennessee — UPDATE: The Knox County School Board of Education has approved KCS including a Student Success Accountability Officer and a resolution for special education.
The Student Success Accountability Officer is responsible for providing assistance, training and leadership related to the education of students with special needs.
Additionally, a contract on providing special education aides and support staff between ESS South Central, LLC and KCS was approved Thursday night. This will go into effect immediately.
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Knox County Schools announced a new special education plan starting January 2024 during a work session Tuesday night — the "KCS Way for Special Education."
This plan comes after superintendent Dr. Jon Rysewyk started a special education task force, which made a plan of five suggestions for the school board to implement in their special education department.
Those suggestions included creating a new code of conduct so teachers and administration have a uniform set of expectations. It also suggests adding support for special education teachers to have more resources, including more aides and assistant teachers.
KCS did its own interim report on its special education plan and found parents wanted more communication and a "student-first" mentality. In a presentation, a KCS leader said the school district intends to work with the special education department to make systems ensuring decisions "are made by those closest to the student."
The presentation also said KCS would "reimagine Central Office support for special education teachers, students and families."
Staff would also personally check their progress on improving special education by attending IEP meetings and "manifestation determinations," as well as visiting classrooms.
"We didn't want to just sit and wait," said Jason Myers, the KCS Assistant Superintendent of Student Success. "We did sit and wait in Region Five, and we're not going to sit and wait now."
He said over the last six months, the task force created a policy allowing private practitioners to support students in the classrooms and established "modification resources" to improve inclusions. He said they also implemented a new process for improving the LRE rate and improved support for reading intervention.
He said the KCS Way for Special Education would be a roadmap to establish high expectations for staff and implement "clear customer service and communication guidelines." It would also improve IEP experiences for families, and provide clear expectations for staff training, support and professional development.
He said the task force also plans to work with the Office of the Ombudsman and Special Education Family Liason to find opportunities to improve communication with families and support them more.
Included in the plan are contracts for more aids, speech and language pathologists and school psychologists.
The task force also plans to identify outside partners for technical assistance for staff training, inclusion and behavior support. To assess existing systems, he said they would also launch an input portal for school leaders and teachers to gather data from groups and identify needs.
The task force will also ask KCS to approve funding for a Student Success Accountability Office. The role would report to the Assistant Superintendent of Student Success and provide insight on legal trends and best practices. The person would also collaborate with leaders on any possible legal issues.