The Bible is clear about God’s love for all people and the inclusion of all creation in the divine embrace. From the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis, through the prophets of the Old Testament, to the example of Jesus in the Gospels, the love of God is consistently shown to be expanding, welcoming, compassionate and merciful. Jesus particularly embodies this preference for the poor, weak, outcast, disabled and marginalized. In fact, Jesus not only heals, he also restores dignity and respect, lifting up those who are often hurt, suffering or neglected. The Gospel challenges us to spread the Good News to all and to serve all children. Serving children with learning differences is, therefore, an essential aspect of the mission of Catholic education.
Committed to this Gospel-inspired inclusivity, I began a search for resources to support educators in our Catholic schools to become more inclusive and responsive to varying student needs.
A few years ago, I acquired an IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) Toolkit from MDEC (https://equitableservicesmdec.com/publications/). The toolkit was an invaluable resource in assisting private school leaders with accessing IDEA-funded services. I used several sample letters from this toolkit to request Child Find data and a consultation meeting from a large public school district in California. This written correspondence opened a series of helpful conversations and established a paper trail that would prove to be useful later.
In the fall of 2021, I participated in Catapult Learning’s Equitable Services Institute (ESI). ESI is a national training program that assists private school leaders with accessing their students’ equitable share of federally funded services. At this ESI training, various presenters offered a roadmap for private school leaders to follow in ascertaining their equitable share and making strategic use of their funds to provide services to students and professional development for educators.
In the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego, there are 47 Catholic schools serving more than15,000 students in grades preschool - 12.
California is organized into multidistrict Special Education Local Planning Areas (SELPAs), or consortiums, for IDEA-related services.
I, like many diocesan and school leaders, faced difficulties in my communication with the SELPA, resulting in slow and inconsistent progress. Thankfully, through the help of colleagues at Catapult Learning, I was able to connect with Steve Perla, a former diocesan superintendent and founder of a consulting firm that is highly engaged in IDEA advocacy (www.theadac.com). By collaborating with Steve, we were able to schedule a consultation meeting with SELPA officials, leading to more than 20 consultation meetings and a significant improvement in our communication and progress.
Realizing that the SELPA’s own workload was time-consuming and demanding, we developed a plan that would strategically and incrementally address four crucial goals over a period of time. With patience and persistence over the course of 20-plus meetings with the SELPA, we focused on:
At first, these consultations were filled with tension, with high anxiety levels all around the table. Differences had to be aired, laws followed, policies enacted and equitable treatment assured. Slowly, with mutual respect and constant reference to the law, a collaborative relationship started to take shape. By the 20th meeting, we were colleagues working together for the benefit of our students.
Upon agreeing to provide to our Catholic school students services, the SELPA requested that we use a third-party provider, because of district staffing limitations.
Having previously worked with Catapult Learning in its provision to our teachers of Title IIA-funded professional learning, and being aware of Catapult’s reputation as a respected interventions and tutoring provider for Catholic schools, I reached out to Catapult.
Parentally placed private school students do not receive a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE). No private school student receives IDEA-funded services as an individual entitlement. This means that private school students do not generally receive all the services that they would receive if they were enrolled in public school. Thus, it was critical for us to develop a plan designed to serve as many eligible students as possible, accessing our proportionate share of available funding.
In this plan we have established a long-term goal of providing some services to all 18 Catholic schools that are located within the SELPA; however, we needed to begin with only half of these schools, due to our current proportionate share funding limitations.
To determine the services that would be provided, I sent a series of online surveys to our Catholic school leaders whose students would be receiving services. From a predetermined list of widely used services, the leaders were asked to rank said services.
Specialized academic instruction (SAI) in reading and mathematics was selected by all leaders. Catapult Learning began hiring reading and mathematics teachers with special education backgrounds.
To streamline the process, we determined that services would be provided to: (1) schools with leaders who are fully engaged in the child count verification process, and (2) schools with 12 or more eligible students. among whom are preschool - 3 students.
Due to limited IDEA funding, we decided that it would be the responsibility of school leaders to determine which students would benefit most from these services. As a result, we encouraged school leaders to critically assess whether and how their eligible students and teachers receive services via other federal programs, and if these programs (e.g., Title I, Title III) were being fully leveraged, along with IDEA, to maximize results.
After 20-plus consultation meetings with various personnel, high-quality services are now being provided to many of our eligible students on-site at Catholic schools. In addition, our schools now have access to direct services worth over $300,000 annually.
At our first consultation meeting, I did not think that this would be possible. There appeared to be too many hurdles to overcome. With the support of MDEC, ADAC, ESI, and Catapult Learning, however, I have learned that if we school leaders are persistent and focused, tremendous progress is possible.
I close by imparting to other (arch) diocesan and Catholic school leaders the following three tips I learned through my experience:
Julie Cantillon, Ph.D., is the associate superintendent, Office for Schools, Diocese of San Diego.
Julie Cantillon, Ph.D.jcantillon@sdcatholic.org