SPS fails to meet RC-CAP Special Education deadline OSPI capitulates illegally extending deadline one more year.

As I predicted last October, SPS and OSPI have colluded to deny FAPE to thousands of special educational students. OSPI has agreed to grant Seattle public schools another year to meet the most important part of the mandated corrective action, IMPLEMENTATION of  fixes for the identified service implementation violations.

I find this egregious and illegal, but OSPI claims they elevated SPS compliance status from the worst level 4 to level 3 based on SPS's timely implementation of Citizen Complaint district focused corrective actions.  My idea of improvement is not same as SPS or OSPI and it's extremely difficult to  understand how any competent compliance auditor would think an increase of 400% in Citizen Complaints while under the nose of the OSPI and DOE auditors equates to an IMPROVEMENT.

In fact several successful citizen complaints have reveled some schools with wholesale failures to provide services to any special educational students. It's truly eye opening to read that the 23 citizen complaints filed in the last 300 days is the highest yearly count ever for any WA state district, shattering the old record of 14 back in 2004 also held by SPS.  Add in a half a dozen Civil rights violations , Due process filings, out of court settlements and you have a bureaucracy light years away from compliance.

Shame on anyone who reads this and does nothing, you don't need to travel to Ferguson or Baltimore
to experience injustice or get your PC social justice fix, just visit your closest SPS building.

Please let this guy know how you feel!

Doug Gill, Assistant Superintendent | Doug.Gill@k12.wa.us | 360-725-6075 

Seattle Public Schools’ Special Education Department has completed a series of activities with
set timelines that are listed within the Revised-Comprehensive Correction Action Plan (RCCAP).
As of May 4, 2015, thirty-nine of the forty activities within the RC-CAP were completed
with the one remaining activity on hold while Seattle Public Schools completes the budgeting
and staffing process for the 2015-16 school year. The RC-CAP was intended to address the
systemic root causes of the on-going compliance concerns of Seattle Public Schools. The
completion of the activities outlined in the RC-CAP, including the improvement of the Special
Education Department’s central office infrastructure, stabilization of leadership and
establishment of policies and procedures, demonstrate the foundational steps towards
systemically improving SPS’s Special Education Department.
The next step is to provide evidence that the activities linked to the RC-CAP are implemented
and sustainable throughout the District over time. OSPI has provided SPS with a Memorandum
of Understanding (MOU) (see attachment) intended to replace the RC-CAP so the steps are clear
on how SPS can demonstrate substantial compliance. The MOU is comprised of six Evidence
Standards focused on central office operations (1) and regional school site visits (5). OSPI will
perform an assessment of each Evidence Standard when SPS determines that it is ready for
review. OSPI’s verification of each Evidence Standard will be equal to an amount not to exceed
$500,000. Successful completion and verification of all six Evidence Standards by June 30,
2016 will lead to the full release of the current withholding of $3 million in federal Individuals
with Disabilities ACT (IDEA) Part B Funding. Resolving the IDEA Part B fund withholding
for the 2014-15 school year would be the first step in removing the District from its current
status as a “high risk grantee.”