Public school leaders in Baton Rouge are looking to pay a prominent Boston-based consulting firm up to $150,000 to help it figure out how to exit heightened state scrutiny of its special education services.
In spring 2024, State Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley designated the East Baton Rouge Parish school system as a “high-risk district,” triggering additional oversight from his agency, including regular on-site visits as opposed to just reviews of paperwork. And in an apparently first-of-its-kind move for Louisiana, Brumley hired Roxane West, a veteran north Louisiana educator, to serve as his “special master” to ride herd over East Baton Rouge’s special education division.
Brumley pointed to a series of detailed complaints from parents outlining recurring problems, giving four examples:
- lack of prior written notice to parents about special ed issues affecting their children,
- failure to approve parents’ individual evaluation requests,
- questionable alternate assessment decisions, and
- concerns with the provision of services.
Brumley opted not to set an end date for this heightened scrutiny.
About 10% of the school system’s 38,000-plus students have disabilities that qualify them for special services.
As the school system begins its second year of “high risk” status, Superintendent LaMont Cole is looking to the Boston-based Public Consulting Group to help it refine its improvement plans.
“I’m looking for a comprehensive analysis of all of our special education services to determine whether we are providing high-level services to all of our (special ed) students,” Cole said.
The proposed contract calls for the consulting firm to spend the next year poring over district data and talking with school personnel to identify short and long-range improvement goals. It would also develop ways for the district to implement these changes and track their effectiveness.
Without discussion, the parish School Board gave unanimous preliminary approval last week to hiring the firm. It’s expected to give final approval when it meets on Sept. 18.
The Public Consulting Group, formed in 1986, works in a variety of public sectors, including education. The firm has a lot of experience with special education.
“This group has a reputation for evaluating services in districts around the country, making recommendations that have been shown to help districts get better, so that’s what I want for us as well,” Cole said.
Cole said the firm caught his eye because it has previously trained district special education teachers ways to improve instruction — the district spent about $90,000 last year on the firm — so he knew its personnel would already be familiar with East Baton Rouge.
The past work with the firm, though, was paid for with federal funding. The new contract’s up-to-$150,000 expense would come from district general operating funds.
Ted Beasley, a spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Education, said while it was not the state’s idea to hire the Public Consulting Group, the agency has used them before as well. He said East Baton Rouge remains a “high risk” district.
“While there have not been any changes to their status, EBR has been very receptive to our special education supports,” Beasley said. “We’re continuing to offer support and plan to provide additional monitoring in the fall.”
This is not the first outside group brought in to size up the parish school system’s special education shop.
In 2022, the Council of Great City Schools conducted a critical, special ed audit. From 2022 to 2024, the department received help and coaching from the PROGRESS Center, an arm of the U.S. Department of Education focused on special education.
Indeed, one of the Public Consulting Group’s first tasks would be see the extent to which the school system has followed through on past recommendations from the Council of Great City Schools and the state Department of Education and identify where the district is falling short.
Here are other tasks:
- Conducting surveys, interviews, and focus groups to see how people perceive the district’s services currently and how families are seeing any improvement in how well district educators communicate and respond to their concerns.
- Build and test ways of monitoring special ed classes, such as walkthroughs, data reviews and reviews of Individualized Education Plans, or IEPs.
- Developing new working tools such as progress dashboards, checklists and status trackers.
- Determining what kind of training teachers and school leaders need in the future.
The Public Consulting Group team would be led by Jennifer Meller, a veteran consultant for the firm, who spent 10 years with the City of Philadelphia public schools, including two years as operations director for its office of specialized instructional services.
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