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Breaking Down Myths: The True Cost of Inclusive Education

Tim Villegas1h 5min

Tim Villegas

00:00

Tim, hello, inclusionists. My name is Tim Villegas with the Maryland Coalition for inclusive education, and you are listening to or watching, think inclusive, our podcast that features conversations with people doing the work of inclusion in the real world. I've got a very short intro for this episode, two guests. The first is Jamie Sowers of blazer works, a former director of special education, principal and educator who has a great conversation with me about the cost of inclusion. Does it actually cost more money. So that's number one. Number two with Jessica Bowman of the University of Minnesota, we are going to be talking about some of the research that she has published around separate school placements for students with extensive support needs. I'm not going to be wrapping up this episode with any reflections this time, but I do want to leave a couple calls to action for you. Number one, if you have not already listened to our podcast series called inclusion stories, I'm going to put a link in the show notes for you. It's a five part documentary podcast series that features stories of families and school systems fully committed to inclusive education for their children and for their students. Take a look at that. I'd love for you to listen and let me know what you think. You can always email me at tvagas@mcie.org, the second thing is, we are really trying to build up our YouTube channel subscribers. So even if you prefer to listen to the episode on Apple podcast or Spotify or another podcast player, I am going to put the link of our YouTube channel in the show notes. I would love it if you clicked on that link and hit subscribe, so we can boost those subscriber numbers and hopefully gain even a larger audience. I'm really pleased with how the video component of this podcast is going and I'd love to see it grow, and the only way it's going to happen is if we get our listeners and the people that watch the podcast to subscribe. So thank you so much for doing that. And finally, before we jump into my interviews with Jamie and Jessica, I want to tell you about our sponsor for this season, IXL. IXL is an online learning and teaching platform for kindergarten through 12th grade, and it's used by school districts all across the country. It's a way for educators to keep track of the progress of their students based on the learning plans that the teacher has designed for each learner. It's a robust tool, and if you want to learn more about it, go to ixl.com/inclusive that's ixl.com/inclusive Okay, when we come back my interview with Jamie Sowers, that will lead directly into you. My interview with Jessica Bowman. See you on the other side. You

Tim Villegas

03:48

Jamie Sowers, welcome to the think inclusive podcast.

Unknown Speaker

03:52

Thank you so much for having me excited to be here today,

Tim Villegas

03:56

Jamie, before we hit record, you were commenting on my Dodgers regalia. So anyone who's watching on YouTube will know, like, what is this guy that works for the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education wearing Dodgers gear? And so I just want to say we're recording this in the middle of the MLB

Speaker 1

04:17

playoffs Well, and that's originally your neck of the woods, right? Yes, yes,

Tim Villegas

04:23

I am originally from Southern California. Are you in you're in California, right? Jamie, I'm

Speaker 1

04:29

not actually, I'm in Denver. But our team, and see, here's a segue to the team that I'm part of. Our team is fully remote and all across the United States, so we have a handful of team members that are in the LA area, so I hear about the Dodgers all the time. I did

Tim Villegas

04:46

root for the Orioles. I still do. I went to an Orioles game this year, and I don't feel any I don't feel like I'm stepping on anybody's toes, because they're in American League and National League. Everything like that. We don't have to talk about baseball forever, but Jamie, really glad you're here. We're going to be talking about a topic that I really wanted to dig into, but I just didn't feel like I had the right guest. Let's just get started. Did you want to just say who you are and where, like, where you work, and stuff like that. I am going to introduce you in the intro to the episode, but if you just want to just say, Hey, this is who I am. Yeah,

Speaker 1

05:28

great. So I'm Jamie Sowers. As I said, I currently live outside of Denver. Originally born in Delaware, got into education. I believe we're 22 years now, but I stopped counting, because that also means I'm getting older. Started as a high school special education teacher, worked as a classroom teacher various different settings, all within special ed for about 10 years before I got into leadership, done everything from special education coordination building level principal, and then, most recently, before I left to join this blazer works team that I'm currently part of, I was a special education director in Santa Fe New Mexico district about 14,000 students, so medium sized district, been around special ed For a long time. By no means an expert, but it's not only a passion area of mine, but part of my professional duties as well, to stay up on everything from law to funding sources, current funding streams, concerns, inclusivity, you name it. So really excited to be here and dive into this topic.

Tim Villegas

06:41

Fantastic. Yeah, thanks for giving us a little bit of context about your background. So our topic, I'd like to bust a myth right here and now, a barrier that we hear at MCIE over and over again from people about pursuing inclusive education in a district is funding so we know we don't have enough funding. Inclusive Education is going to cost too much money. What can you tell us about how funding is related to providing special education services in an inclusive way, where students are not segregated in special education classrooms.

Speaker 1

07:23

Sure. So where I would like to start is to kind of break this into two areas. So number one, I don't want to say that the people that are saying that there's not enough funding are incorrect. I think most people that work within the realm of special education will say that the federal government has never funded special education through idea where it was intended to be funded. And so that part holds true. Now the second part of it, we know we only have a finite amount of funding. Now, what are we going to do with it? That's the area where I really want to speak to inclusive practices, inclusive education. And I'm going to oversimplify this, and I also want to say I am happy to have follow up conversations, whether it be on your show, again, anybody wants to have, you know, a conversation. It's pretty easy to find me and so what it really comes down to? To oversimplify, let's just say you're a district and you've got 1000 students receiving special education services. Every state's a little bit different. Because why would we make it similar? Because that would make it too easy. But you know, on a serious topic. There is reason behind that. Going all the way back to our Constitution, states have autonomy and can have their individual practices for how they have to carry out a public education. Where the federal government comes in is, of course, under IDEA once again and a free and appropriate public education. So the federal government holds some standards. States have to meet those criteria. Of course, they can go in above and beyond, but they can't loosen any of those criteria. And so going back to my oversimplified example, you have 1000 students that are receiving special ed services. Each one of those students has separate needs, hence the individualized portion of special education. So all of those are written into that respective students IEP that directly is going to impact the level of funding that that student receives. And so my argument always has been, it's based on what the student needs. The funding is there, albeit we can all agree, I shouldn't say all, most of us can agree it's not enough funding, but that funding is going to be the same regardless of that. Now, there could be some small nuances based on the setting, you know, the amount of the day, but my argument. Has always been you can still have the same level of services in a more inclusive or Least restrictive environment, and the kid is not only then benefiting from all those services that are going to be in their IEP, regardless of where they're educated, but now, with the benefit of being around their general education peers, having access to grade level curriculum and another topic that is equally important is what those general ed peers are gaining from going to school and being in the same classes with The students that require a little bit more support. And so if you think about it this way, so people, your listeners, will say, Oh, that's great. That sounds wonderful in theory, but how does that look at application? So as I stated earlier, my background was a teacher, so I'm not a related services professional. I like to joke that being a special ed director and now in the team that I'm part of, for example, we have eight SLPs on our team, speech language pathologist, I like to say that I've hung around enough with those related services people that I can at least speak their language. So within the school environment, we really want those people providing the services to their students again in that least restrictive environment, the absolute best place that you can have an SLP, a speech pathologist working on social communication, is ready for it in a social environment. What more social environment there is there than a general ed classroom with 25 to 30 kids, class size. That's another topic for another day. But again, we are so stuck in this clinic mindset of the SLP is going to walk down to Miss Jones classroom, get Jamie, take Jamie down to the speech room, and it's going to be SLP and Jamie, and the SLP is going to tell Jamie, and we're going to work through social communication, and then the SLP is going to hope that Jamie goes back to the classroom and practices it. So I always say, eliminate all that. SLP. Welcome to the classroom. Let's work on these skills, and then we can role play. Then we can see how it works out, you know, and you can fill in the blank for any of the related services that are typically going to add to the level of service that a student is receiving, you know? And so now let's remove related services for a second and just talk about academic supports. So the argument for a more restrictive environment, well, that student's going to need multiple paraprofessionals to make sure they can access the material. I say to that that's where planning and preparation comes in, and that's where having a really collaborative team really benefits. That where, you know, we can also argue, and I think most of us agree teachers need more planning time, but within the planning time, they have one of the few good things that came out of the pandemic was the ability to utilize shared docs. I know they've been around forever, but let's face it, we didn't really start using them until we were forced to. And so you can collaborate and plan lessons for those students that meet need more intensive instruction without ever speaking face to face, you know, and an example again, because this all sounds wonderful in theory. Well, how do I apply that? Well, most schools have some kind of rule about lesson plans need to be done the Friday before, you know, the the week upcoming general ed teacher shares that with the entire team. Special Ed teacher looks at what the plans are, what the tasks are, modifies for the student. Special Ed teacher is going to be in that classroom or somebody else on the team anyway, but you've already done the planning, so they're going to be in the classroom to offer those supports anyway, but you've already shared within that, that Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, what you're going to be working on, what the modified assignment looks like as well. And so, you know, again, oversimplified, but really just to start with a base level of where this can happen, how it can happen, there's that. So I've just given a lot of examples follow up questions. What are your thoughts on that? Where do you want to go from here? Well, I

Tim Villegas

14:28

was thinking as as you were talking about the SLP, the model, right, of having an SLP to, you know, pull a student out and go to the speech could, you know, the speech room and stuff like that. I was a former special education teacher in a segregated classroom. And, I mean, this is like, not even to say how many grade levels are in a classroom, you know, like I used to teach a kindergarten through fifth grade classroom. So, you know. Know, at six grade levels, but it would be myself, the as just the adults in the room. Myself a nurse, two to three paraprofessionals. I mean, that's a lot of adults and like, just think about this. Like how much it cost to pay all the adults in that one classroom. So the teacher to student ratio, it was really low. But there's a lot of downtime in that kind of classroom, and so I wonder, if you know, since we're, since I, I want to, I want to frame this in as a as kind of a staffing cost discussion, like, is that a, really an efficient way to use staff? Because you have, you have a school district that has a number of these, you know, special education classrooms, and sometimes they're regionalized, you know, so you have a school and certain students are being bused to that particular school because they have a particular program. Maybe it's an Autism Program, or maybe it's a behavior program. And so you have a large concentration of these, of these learners that have a have a particular label, and you have all these adults, and it's supposed to be from the district's perspective, I've heard is that while we're consolidating services, it's easier for us to provide services. So I heard you mentioned it it when you were talking about the delivery of services, have you noticed, like, what is more efficient? Because it seems to me that having a large number of adults with a few number of students is not as efficient as if you were spreading the students out and providing the services in general education.

Speaker 1

17:07

Sure, I think the easiest way that I can clarify that and make some sense of it, I guess, is it's not necessarily that you're going to save any money being more inclusive, but there's no reason that you need to spend anymore. So let's use your example there, you know, and without having access to every step choose child's IEP, there's no way for me to know what's in there, but, but using your example, which is very common, you know, you've got a group of kids that all have some pretty intensive needs. Therefore, they might have medical needs, whether it's a G tube feeding, something like that, requiring nurses, probably a physical therapist that's spending a lot of time at least in that school. So you use that, and my model to make that more inclusive, is instead of that classroom being the where they spend the bulk of their time with all of those adults and those students make that classroom the homeroom. So everybody comes there in the morning, all the adults come in. You check in, you get all your supplies and equipment, make sure everybody has but then you disperse out. And so in that model, you're not necessarily saving any money, but it doesn't cost you anymore. And so yes, you have to be creative with scheduling. And yes, maybe the two kids that require the nurse are in the same class periods, or if they don't need direct supervision, just the nurse in really close proximity, then you're putting those two kids in adjacent classrooms. The point of it is you can do it, and you can do it without spending any more money. It has to be a priority. And I say this, I've been on some other podcasts. I've been fortunate enough to write some articles. I say this all the time, and I'm redundant in it, but when you're building school schedules, which is probably the worst job there is when it comes to being a school administrator, when you're building the school schedule, you have to look at special education first. You have to because there are so many moving pieces to make sure every student is getting their minutes met all of that again. I don't want to just be throwing stuff out there. I'm here to support that's part of what my day to day role is. So you know, you can always contact me if you're a new administrator, or even a seasoned administrator, and you're like, I want to do better by my students that have IEPs. I don't know where to start. That's what my job is because it is a lot of work. But if that's really what is your North Star, to make sure that you're operating either an inclusive school or an inclusive school district, you have to look at all those kind of things. And again, to get back to that concrete example, you've got that classroom that becomes the hub we might come. Here for small groups. Maybe some days, if you've got students that are very prone to physical injury, maybe you bring the kids back there and the adaptive phys ed teacher comes to that classroom to do a small group phys ed. So those students are still getting it, but they're safe, but then they go to the general ed PE and they're able to participate with what is within their abilities. And so there are ways to do it where you still have that model, you've got the extra staff, you've got the nurses, you've got the pair of professionals, but instead of being hunkered down in that one room for seven and a half hours a day, they're out and about and everywhere in the school. Yeah, yeah. And

Tim Villegas

20:41

that I'm reminded of, there's, there's a school in Washington, woodenville, Washington, called Ruby Bridges, and I was very fortunate to it's an elementary school, and I was very fortunate to visit during the production of our podcast series called inclusion stories, it's a fully inclusive school, and I was talking to the principal, Kathy Davis, and we were taking a tour and and she was saying, when the school was built, they had particular classrooms that, Like the architects built, that were designated as special education classrooms. They had a swing, they had a bathroom, stuff like that that would logistically that are typical in a special education classroom. And she was adamant that like these are not the special education classrooms. They are spaces that anyone can use we are not going to house kids in these rooms for, like you said, Seven and a half hours a day, but if there are spaces that people need, then we can use them. And so I really like that idea. And it kind of goes to what we were talking about, Jamie and like, and I want to bring it back to, like a dream that I had when I was in the in the classroom. It's like there's nothing magical about this one particular space that many districts have, many schools have, where it's the special ed classroom you can make, you can make a space in a school anything you want, you know, to meet the needs of your learners, right? So it, it's it. It's like, sometimes we get stuck as like, well, we can't use that room. We can't do, you know, this activity or that activity in that room. That's the, you know, ABC room, XYZ room. And so it's really, you know, not only should we have kind of like an all hands on deck approach with our staff, but also, like an all spaces belong to everyone, attitude as well, which I think what you were talking about is, you know, let's not make it weird that we have this, you know, particular space. And if we need it, we need it to, you know, to take care of medical needs or to take care of, you know, a particular small group or whatever, as long as it's for everyone,

Speaker 1

23:22

sure. Well, and I love that. And going back to cost, and taking it beyond special education, I would love to see a place where we're designing schools with a lot of these multi purpose rooms. So there is no reason in almost 2025 that we can't have a room that has a secure closet for medical needs for students that require it, that then is repurposed seventh period for the chorus room that is repurposed after school for the drama rehearsal. And, you know, it's that and, and sometimes I, I will. I don't want to call it shock examples, but I'll, I'll say things that illustrate to my point, and one that made me think about this, when you were talking about the classrooms recently, and I think it's actually in Washington, DC, one of the first flagship Starbucks open that was designed specifically to be fully accessible without any modifications, like built from the get go. And so I've had some some conversations with people that ask about inclusivity in schools and all that kind of stuff, and they'll use terminology like the special ed room. And I'm never trying to shame anybody, but just to get it's, it's, it's that bias that we don't even know we have. We're so used to it, and for so long, they've been called the special ed rooms. And so I'll just say, Well, did you hear about that new Starbucks? No, what do you mean? Well, they just built this new Starbucks, and nobody's running around calling it the special ed Starbucks. It's just Starbucks. And. So it's kind of a bold statement, but it really helps to just, it's, it's kind of like that, you Oh, I get it. And again, it's not that somebody is thinking from an anti inclusion mindset. It's just what they're accustomed to. And, you know, I think in our work of really trying to make the world and schools a more inclusive place. One of the things that I really try to live by is we have to meet people where they are, and 99% of people are pro inclusion. They're just they've been brought up in that system. It's hard. Change is hard in any occupation industry, but especially education, and so it is. It's those little things of just breaking it down, like, No, there aren't Special Ed rooms and general ed rooms. There's a lot of rooms in the classroom, in the school that everybody has access to. How do we make sure everyone is accessible to all learners? Yes,

Tim Villegas

25:58

yes. And also, I'm having my Starbucks here. So another product placement. I've got Dodgers product placement and Starbucks product placement. Not neither of them are sponsors, but, you know,

Unknown Speaker

26:12

not yet. I mean, not yet,

Tim Villegas

26:13

but, well, tell us a little bit about blazer works. How does blazer works assist school districts? You know whether that's staffing or whether that's something else? Sure, let us know about it. Yeah,

Speaker 1

26:33

yeah. I like to tell the story through an origin story, because I think it resonates with people and makes the most sense. So blazer works started as a managed service provider. You don't even need to know what that is, but essentially a conglomerate of various education staffing agencies and streamlining that process. So again, if you're a school district, you've got 1000 students with IEPs, you need to outsource some of your staffing. You come to blazer works. Blazer works, think of it almost as an insurance broker. They're working with multiple different companies. So blazer works is going to take that time away from the school district being burdened by it. And blazer works is going to reach out to the multiple staffing agencies saying, hey, school district X needs five SLPs and two special ed teachers. So that was the origin, and then growing on that, really meeting the needs and wanting to be in a place to assist school districts. We developed the advisory and service arm, which I'm the I'm fortunate to lead that, and was fortunate to start it almost three years ago, and so there are 40 of us now around the country, everything from former special ed directors, speech pathologists, occupational therapists, school psychologists, school nurses. I could keep going. Think of us as a super sized multi disciplinary IEP team that's put in place to help not only school districts with their special ed programming professional development, but then individual and small group mentorship as well. So you know, we work frequently with new graduates that are new to Special Ed teaching. Fill in the blank, SLPs that just finished their clinical rotation year, and they're in what's called their their first year, their clinical fellowship. So we do a lot of support for them as well. And really kind of our unwritten mission statement is to to make sure that everybody that has decided to work with students with disabilities has the support they need, so that they can feel empowered, so that they can stay in their role and really just focus on helping kids,

Tim Villegas

28:49

and so the your your organization, company, can can support any district that wants, that wants to there's no sort of like line in the country where you're like, Oh, we're really only working with the western states or eastern states, or anything like that. Any district in the in the United States can reach out to laserworks. Is that right?

Speaker 1

29:16

Sure, any public school district that includes charters, you know, they're public schools as well. I will say the only state that we're not actively working in is Hawaii, and we're really sad about that. So if anybody listening happens to live and work in schools in Hawaii, it's not because we don't want to, if we just have not had any connections yet with Hawaii schools.

Tim Villegas

29:39

Okay, great, great. And so for for those that are listening there, trying to understand how blazer works, could support them. Let the recently, oh, I went to the the CEC conference in San Antonio. This was this year in 2024 and there were a lot of vendors in the exhibition hall that were talking about special education staffing. And the reason why is because, in general, there's a shortage, right? There's a shortage of teachers that are qualified to, you know to be that the quote, unquote, special education staff in a school district. So how does, how does blazer works, help with that problem for a school district,

Speaker 1

30:37

sure, we like to think of ourselves as a staffing solution for educators, by educators. So you know, and when I was a special ed director, I worked with a lot of these vendors, so I would never say anything ill will about any of them. They all have their strengths. What's unique about us is that we are not only sourcing the educators, but we are then supporting them directly and supporting the entire district that they're working for. So to give you another concrete example we have been working there's a huge demand for paraprofessionals in schools all around the country, and unlike special education teachers, the requirements for a pair of professional aren't as in depth. And so a lot of times, going back to Starbucks, we really should do you a sponsorship. This is a real example. A lot of people that are entering into the school workforce as a paraprofessional worked as a barista. You know, good money with tips, really bad hours, a lot of times, no benefits. So when you work for a pair of as a pair of professional, you've got set hours and you've got your benefits. However, school districts say we're really short staffed, and we don't have the personnel nor the infrastructure to provide all the training to take somebody that was literally making lattes three weeks ago, and now they're going to be working with some of our most vulnerable students. Here comes blazer. Works in the advisory team, so we have a five part on demand, LMS, learning management system. Introduction to being a paraprofessional course, one of the things I'm most proud about this summer, we just launched a team within our team that is comprised of seven former Special Ed teachers. Their sole responsibility is to train and support paraprofessionals. And so now when we go to a school district, we can say, not only are we going to help you with the staffing part. We're going to help with the training part, and hopefully, you know, it's it's too new to really have longitudinal data, but hopefully we're also going to help with your retention. And I say this a lot, I should see if I can trademark it, but I say all the time, recruitment starts with strong retention, because if you've got a happy workforce that likes where they're working, they feel empowered, supported, they've got a good work life balance. Word of mouth is still one of the best drivers, whether it's social media or actual word to word, you're going to tell people, Hey, if you're interested in working in a school boy, you need to check out where I'm working, because I have such great support. I've got a principal that believes in me, and so that's really what we're trying to do.

Tim Villegas

33:30

Yeah, yeah. You should put that on a t shirt. Jamie, yeah, with a Starbucks logo, with a Starbucks logo, exactly. Yeah, that. Hey, listen, Starbucks. If you, if you're listening, just go ahead and reach out. We'll figure something out. We'll figure something out. Let's make it happen. Let's make it happen. Exactly what are districts prioritizing right now? Like, like, it sounds like it's paraprofessionals. Is there a also a strong need for special education teachers? You mentioned SLPs, like, what's what's the priority? It's

Speaker 1

34:03

all of the above, I would say. And I'm trying to generalize across the whole country. And of course, there's pockets, I would say. And I know this for a fact, there's a huge shortage of school psychologists. It's a pipeline issue. You know, there just aren't enough. Whereas speech language pathologists, we could always use more. But it's not necessarily a shortage of the people. It's that they have so many different arenas that they can work within. You know, they can work in a clinic setting. They can work in skilled nursing homes, hospital so shortages in all areas for various needs, special ed teachers, unfortunately, all of the research shows that they are leaving the field faster than our colleges and universities are training new ones. So we have a lot of work to do there, specific to what school districts really need. They are. Really focusing efforts on behavioral issues and mental health, and so that's part of the reason why you see a huge demand for paraprofessionals. And then that responsibility and need to train those paraprofessionals specifically, not necessarily so that they can carry out all of the services, but that they at least know what to look for and get the students where they need to be to receive those services. So almost think about it in an emergency room scenario, where you've got triage nurses that are meeting the patients when they get there and really assessing their needs, and then they help. They're almost the conduit to, oh, this person needs the or immediately this person needs that we're seeing school districts utilize paraprofessionals in a lot of different ways to be that front line of making sure every single student's needs are met. Yeah. No, that

Tim Villegas

35:56

makes sense. That makes sense. I would like to know why this work is important to you. You know, like, what, what is your why? Jamie,

Speaker 1

36:16

That's a deep question. How much time do we have? No, my, my, my somewhat simple why. I went to college to be a physical therapist, and I was not the most mature of 18 year olds academically and spent more time other places than in the classroom. And my first summer job, I got a job working at a summer camp for kids with disabilities. And full disclosure, I did it because I was going to get to swim and play kickball, and I absolutely fell in love with working with kids that were kind of deemed the underdogs. You know, they they didn't necessarily fit in. They hadn't felt a lot of success either in school or in the community. They were the kids that many times, didn't get to play Little League baseball, and I saw the joy in them feeling part of something, and it clicked. And so I finished my college, shifted my major to behavioral science, got a master's in special ed, and probably the hardest there's been two times that I've had really hard career decisions to make. One was leaving the classroom into administration, and a mentor said, just think you're going to be able to impact more people. That will, in turn, impact more kids. And then secondly, when I left the public sector to come and work for blazer works, and it was the same thing after after some serious reflection, I realized that with this position, I would have a platform where I could be on shows like yours, where I can potentially be reaching educators across the country. You know, I can tell you, just in August and September alone, blazer Works has delivered professional development to over 2000 special educators. You know, small number, but that's 2000 more than we did two years ago. And so just really excited about that growth, and that's what keeps me going, is knowing that there's now 39 other people that share the same passion. And in my head when I'm having a tough day, I just visualize this web that keeps growing and growing and growing, and eventually we will blanket the entire United States so there is zero special educators that don't have access to the level of support that they need to feel like they can change a child or children's lives.

Tim Villegas

38:43

What's your general sense with the districts and the schools that you work with? You know, you mentioned it a little bit before, about, like, everyone's pretty much pro inclusion. You know, like, I feel like it's very, very rare to find a special educator or general educator that that is like, Absolutely not. These kids need to be in separate, segregated environments. It's more that they don't feel equipped, right, which is what your organization is directly, you know, trying to, trying to help with is supporting educators.

Speaker 1

39:27

Yeah, you're spot on. I would add with that, you know, I think, and good luck getting adults to admit this. But I think a lot of it is fear of failure. So when you're talking about inclusion, you need to have the general education staff on board. They're all on board. They're scared. They're scared to fail. They want to welcome that student with open arms and have every single support piece in place to make it a welcoming experience, a really enriching experience, not only for the student that is. Coming into the classroom, but all of the general ed peers, and as a system, we are failing those general ed teachers because we're not giving them the tools so that they feel confident and comfortable welcoming those students into their classroom. It's not that they don't want to. They want to. Yeah, just but, you know, as adults, we want to do a good job. And teachers, again, generalizing, but teachers are perfectionist sometimes to a fault.

Tim Villegas

40:31

Yeah, yeah, for sure, yeah, they don't want to. You know, it's like, it's like teachers, it's like a it's like doctors being really bad patients sometimes,

Speaker 1

40:44

yeah, yeah, no, it's a great analogy. It's true. And, you know, I think the other thing that I would add to that, and there's work to be done here too, is we have to find a way systemically to take some of the duties off of the building leader, off the principal, having been a principal before, you are literally playing Whack a Mole all day long, and you don't have enough time in your day to give all the teachers what they need. And so we've got to find a way. And you know, funding is part of it. Restructuring what administrative roles look like is another way, but you've got to have that time so that extra planning, preparation and training can be done to make sure that it works well. And a lot of times, what happens is, and this can be true in pretty much any regard of life, we look at something, and if the task seems too monumental, we shut down and put it off. And I also think for a lot of schools, when they look at again, going back to that bias that we may not even be aware of, we've got the special ed classrooms, well, it's not great, but it's working okay. And that's the way we've always done it. When we look at that transformative shift to where it needs to be, it looks like climbing Mount Everest, for somebody that's never climbed a 500 foot mountain. And so it seems so monumental that we, you know, we throw it in the closet and shut the door how, you know, how I clean my house, and so it's the same kind of thing in schools.

Tim Villegas

42:24

I think, I think that's a I think that's a really good analogy, and I a great example, because it can seem like too much at times. Which is why, you know, which is why you know, organizations like ours exist so that we can break it down and go in, like a phased approach, or in small steps and just to kind of get on the road. And that's also why the districts that are moving towards inclusive practices typically have a partner. So whether that is, you know, MCIE, or sometimes it's a university partner, depending on the state, you have a university that is helping with this transition, or some sort of external partner that is guiding you through this process. Because it's hard to do it internally. It's hard to even if you know there is a change needs to be made, you still have to have the added energy to actually make the change.

Speaker 1

43:35

Yeah, and it takes continued, continuous, follow through checking in. You know, I made the analogy about sports to somebody and and in schools, we think that we can go in and do a professional development or training on one day, and then whoever delivered that training leaves and never comes back, and then it's up to everybody else. So now make a sports analogy, so I think Dave Roberts is the manager of the Dodgers. So Dave Rogers, yeah, he shows up on the first day of spring training and says, This is how I want you to pitch, and this is how I want you to hit, and then never comes back. You know, never follows. And so we do that in schools, and we think it's okay in schools, yet no other industry again, do we do this? Like, I'm just gonna show you one time, and then you're on your own. But we do that in schools,

Tim Villegas

44:32

yeah, yeah. Or we expected to. We expect it to work, right? We expect that to be enough.

Speaker 1

44:41

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know about you, but I haven't found much in life that you can put a little bit of effort into and get a great return. And the same thing goes into making our schools more inclusive. And again, I'm not at all trying to say that people don't want it. I don't think there are. Resources there, where we currently sit at the end of 24 to truly make it happen.

Tim Villegas

45:07

Yeah, yeah. Any stories from your work at blazer, works that would be like a good example of maybe creative solutions to staffing or professional learning, anything that comes to mind.

Speaker 1

45:24

Yeah, there's a couple of things. We have had a lot of wonderful feedback of we, we've put together a training that involves multi disciplinary members. So, you know, an SLP, an OT, it might be a school psychologist. And really the whole, the whole focus of this training is around collaboratively working as an IEP team for more inclusive practices and and more continuum of services around goals, so that everybody is really dialed into what that kid needs. And then, because the ultimate goal is to get the kid to be able to generalize those skills in all areas of life, not just in school. And so we've had a ton of good feedback. And what we always recommend in that training is lean on your community partners and start talking to transition agencies, even if the kids are in elementary school because it takes a whole community, and so we've had a lot of great success with that. We've had a few pockets around the country where school districts are working really hard to bring students back that were educated in a separate school, out of district, sometimes out of state, and tremendous willingness to do that and work really proactively, instead of, you know, my the worst thing that can happen is you have a meeting on a Thursday and reintegrate the student on Monday without any planning. And that happens. And so, you know, we've seen really good measures of proactivity where districts will start talking. I mean, we're working with districts that are going to be bringing students back in January. And, you know, as we record this, it's it's october 11, and so that planning started in August. And so those are the kind of things that really fill our cups and give us hope that we are seeing this. You know, everything from smaller, when I say smaller, not smaller, to the student or the school community, but in the grand scheme of things, you know, more inclusive athletic programming and really getting kids involved in some way or another, and and having more accessibility in all areas of school with the extracurriculars instead of no this is what we have, and this is all we have, you know, being open to and again, the community is there. The community wants to help with this. You know, we need to come together, because these individuals are going to be members of our communities forever, and they're going to be great citizens that are working in our businesses and everything else. So it's not it's never too early to start.

Tim Villegas

48:20

What if people want to know more about blazer works? Where can they find out more information?

Speaker 1

48:28

The easiest place is blazer works.com. There is a tab at the top for clinical advisors. When you click on that, you'll you can get to all 40 of us. You can also contact all 40 of us individually, and it's broken down by our geographic location and also a discipline. So let's just say you're a school psychologist working in a district in California, and you really want to move the needle in your district, you just search by that and you'll see our California school psychologist, and you can reach out to them directly there.

Tim Villegas

49:04

Fantastic. And you know, any message you want to leave to educators, as we wrap up this conversation,

Speaker 1

49:14

you're doing really hard work, but the most important work ever, I say this over and over. In fact, our advisory team gets so sick of me saying it, and it's so cliche, but you really have to put your own oxygen mask on first. As educators, we don't take care of ourselves enough because we are givers by nature, and so you can't provide the best service for other people if you're not taking care of yourself. So whenever this podcast releases, whatever day of the week it is, make sure you set aside time for yourself. Go do whatever fills your cup, and you get to decide what that is, whether you're into yoga, watching movies, walks in nature. There is no definition of what it needs to be. It needs to be what recharge. Just you

Tim Villegas

50:02

awesome. I'm encourage everyone to take a look at blazer works and see what they have to offer. And so, Jamie, are you ready for the mystery question? Bring it all right.

Unknown Speaker

50:18

I love a good challenge. What do you got for me?

Tim Villegas

50:20

Here we go. The mystery question is, it's just as I have a stack of prompt cards that I've been working through for the last couple seasons, and we both answer the question. So, Jamie, do you like to plan things out in detail or be spontaneous? I can get that. There we go. Do you like to plan? Are you a detail person, or are you a fly by the seat of your pants person?

Speaker 1

50:50

It's funny, because in my day to day life, I'm not super detailed, but if it's something like that, I have to plan meticulously.

Unknown Speaker

50:58

Yeah,

Unknown Speaker

51:00

I wish I was more spontaneous.

Tim Villegas

51:04

This is an interesting question, because I'm definitely more like, like, go with the flow type of person, but when I became a teacher, I realized that I couldn't be that way, so or or like it would, it would be really bad if I was like that. And then there were certain things like you said about lesson plans, you know, which I was like, awful at. But I did it again. I got better at it the more and more I did it. So I would say I probably could turn on the detail oriented part of my brain for certain things, and certainly for for my this job, you have to be, you know, in communications together, be detail oriented. But if it's like, you know, something that's more fun and more like, I'm just gonna go and wander around, or I'm gonna, you know, take a take a hike and go wherever, wherever my heart wants to take me or Whatever, then I'm definitely more spontaneous. Um, my my wife, likes to tell this story. It's not about me, it's about her father. She went at on a she was out of the country on, like, a mission trip for, like, for her church, and came back, and it was like, the day she came back, her dad was like, Okay, we're going on a cross country road trip. And like, like, he would be the kind of person that I would say, is that spontaneous, like, deciding at the very last minute we're gonna do something, and we're not gonna just, you know, like, Oh, what do we want for dinner? It's like, No, we're going to do something big. We're going to go across the country, and we're going to take this trip, and we're just going to throw everything in the car and leave. So I'm not like that.

Speaker 1

53:13

Yeah, I mean, I wish I was like that. Meanwhile, I would be the one that would have Google Maps up, and I would already have my destination for the day planned and be scouting out places that we could stay that night, that are in a safe neighborhood, that are not too expensive, but

Tim Villegas

53:29

you know, right? Exactly, exactly,

Speaker 1

53:34

awesome, as they say, the grass is always greener,

Tim Villegas

53:38

right, right? Exactly. Jamie Sowers, thank you so much for being on the think boosted podcast. We appreciate it.

Unknown Speaker

53:44

Thanks again for having me.

Tim Villegas

54:01

Will you just say your name and your role, and then we can talk about, we can just get into the research.

Jessica Bowman

54:06

My name is Jessica Bowman, and I am a researcher at the Thai Center at the University of Minnesota. Awesome.

Tim Villegas

54:15

Welcome Jessica. Jessica and I have known each other for a while, but you sent me, or I think I saw this on Facebook, you let everyone know about some research. And the title of research paper is called separate school placement for students with extensive support needs and the potential impact of locale and charter school enrollment. And I was intrigued, because something I've been curious about is the vast disparity of the enrollment of separate schools like across the country, and especially how it really. Relates to students with extensive support needs. I thought this was really interesting research, and so I'm wondering if you could let us know what question was this particular study attempting to answer. So

Jessica Bowman

55:14

basically, this study was a follow up from a study by Anderson and Brock that was published back in 2020 the title of their study was called being in the right place at the right time, and that explains the whole idea behind this, that students with extensive support needs, depending on what state or town or city they live in, with the exact same characteristics, could be placed in vastly different placements and be more likely to be placed in separate schools. And they mentioned they just looked at six states in their study, but they mentioned the importance that they thought for future research to address the locale of the separate schools and then the issue of separate schools that are charter schools, so we kind of just picked up right there, and that's what we were looking at, is how does locale and charter school enrollment contribute to separate school placement across the nation? So

Tim Villegas

56:16

was there anything surprising that you found out when you were looking at the data for this study.

Jessica Bowman

56:23

So when we looked at the data for this study, we found, first of all, how messy the data are. We essentially found that we divided up the states by states with high placement into separate schools, states with medium placement and separate schools, and low placement in separate schools. And essentially found that states with high separate schools, high placement in separate schools, had significantly more separate schools in the suburbs compared to states with low placement. And the way we defined that was states with high placement in separate schools meant that they had more than 10% of students with extensive support needs in separate schools. The national average is 5.9%

Tim Villegas

57:10

so I think I'm not sure if I'm going to include this in our recording, but I'm pretty sure Maryland is, is like one of the top ones? Is that right? Do you remember that? Yeah,

Jessica Bowman

57:23

yeah, the high placement it ended up actually they were along the east, like the northeast of the nation, all kind of clumped together. So that's certainly an issue, and probably an area for future research is just finding out, like, what is going on in those high placement rate states?

Tim Villegas

57:42

Well, let's so, since I don't want to single out Maryland, even though that is a fact, let me ask you this in a different way. There are certain areas of the country that seem to have a higher concentration, did you notice any part of the country that had a higher concentration of students with extensive support needs in these separate schools. Definitely

Jessica Bowman

58:04

one of our original submissions of the study, and actually, I think this is included in a report on the Thai Center website, is we had a map of the nation, and depending on placement into separate school, states were shaded a certain way. And so you can clearly see that states on the East Coast slash northeast of the nation are there's a bit of a group over there with lots of student with high placement of students with extensive support needs in separate schools.

Tim Villegas

58:38

And so what I'm hearing you say is there's certain parts of the country, especially like the Northeast east coast, that within those communities, there's a higher concentration of separate schools in the suburbs versus other areas, right?

Jessica Bowman

58:53

Yeah, versus the other states, lower rates.

Tim Villegas

58:59

Did you go into any analysis of why that may be?

Jessica Bowman

59:05

No, we didn't do any further analysis because this is just the data set that we were working with, but certainly it gives some pretty clear next steps, I think. And our team has kind of chatted about it as we were writing up the implications for future research and our study and things, there's definitely some more questions that are raised.

Tim Villegas

59:29

What about what? Why was looking at charter schools important? Because you said something about sometimes these charter schools are actually separate schools.

Jessica Bowman

59:43

Yeah, so in my experience, I worked at the state level. I was a teacher, and now at the University, and working with several states I see, you know, there's quite a few charter schools that at least advertise that they serve students with disabilities. Um. Maybe even students with a specific type of disability and and just with us, kind of seeing this issue in our everyday lives, and then also looking at research, and there's just nothing. There's no research on separate Special Education charter schools. So, but those data do exist in the federal data, and so we just kind of wanted to look around in it and see what there was. We were pretty surprised at how few schools were designated as separate Special Ed charter schools. And so we're not entirely certain about how meaningful those findings are, because we think that they're massively underrepresented, okay?

Tim Villegas

01:00:47

And there's probably no way to know whether a charter school was more inclusive in having students with extensive support needs. And you know, learners without disabilities or learners with maybe low in low incidence disabilities or high incidence, sorry,

Jessica Bowman

01:01:06

yeah, so I should say that these data, and for these data, we actually looked at, I think it was a separate data set, or maybe it was just a different part of This data set. I should know this, but yeah, we essentially looked at those counts across, not necessarily how inclusive or not those schools were, but we looked at the number of separate Special Ed charter schools within a state.

Tim Villegas

01:01:36

Okay, what would you say is a big takeaway from this study,

Jessica Bowman

01:01:44

I think one big takeaway for me was pretty much what Anderson and Brock found, that you know, you can be a student with a disability and go into one state or go into another State and present similar strengths and needs, but where you live can really determine whether you're placed in a separate school? Another big Can I share one more? Yeah, of course. Okay, I presented this research at the CEC conference, and I had some district administrators come in and they noticed their state on the poster, and their state just happened to be listed as a low placement state, so they were under the National mean, under 5.9% placement of students with extensive support needs in separate schools. And they said there's no way that this is actually true, and here's why they said, we actually do have separate schools, but they don't show up in the federal data, because they're still considered part of a regular school. They share school leaders and everything, but they're a separate building, and that own the in the building is only students with disabilities, and several schools may share this building, so it's kind of a cluster site on its own, but those aren't considered separate schools. So it just kind of pointed out to me the issue with the charter school data, how messy This is and how it's maybe defining these things much differently from state to state, the difficulty in really finding meaning in the data when it's not super reliable is difficult.

Tim Villegas

01:03:34

That is really interesting. I'm thinking of like district 75 in New York City. I don't know if I'm getting that right, but there's like a special education district within New York City public schools, and how I forget who I was talking to, but it was like the school within the school. And I'm sure that that practice, like you said, is happening all over the country, but you wouldn't know it looking at the data

Jessica Bowman

01:04:02

exactly. And Minnesota has those two. They call them intermediate districts, and so I don't quite understand how those data are represented. And so, yeah, just further kind of shows that there needs to be some sort of oversight or guidance, or something about how these separate schools are designated. It seems like at least for the charter schools, they kind of self classified in a way. So this is really difficult.

Tim Villegas

01:04:38

Jessica Bowman, thank you for your time talking about your research. Thanks

Jessica Bowman

01:04:42

for having me. Tim.

Tim Villegas

01:04:59

You. Tim, welcome back. Thank you so much for listening or watching. Think inclusive time for the credits. Think inclusive is written, edited, designed, mixed and mastered by me. Tim Villegas, and is a production of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education, Original Music by miles. Credits, additional music from melody, thanks for your time and attention and remember, inclusion always works.

Tim Villegas

01:05:32

MCIE, you.

00:0000:00