In order to select the candidate for Arlington School Board who will receive the Democratic endorsement for the Nov. 2nd general election, the Arlington Democratic Committee will hold their School Board Caucus through an online ballot from May 17th to May 23rd. Two candidates, Mary Kadera and Miranda Turner, are running for the seat now held by School Board Chair Monique O’Grady, who is not seeking re-election.
Please note that Arlington SEPTA is a non-partisan organization and does not endorse specific candidates or political parties. School Board candidates run as independents in Virginia and cannot be nominated by a party in a primary, so you will not find School Board candidates on the ballot for the June 8th Primary. As in previous years, Arlington Democrats run an endorsement process for this office. (Learn more at https://vote.arlingtonva.us/Elections
2021 School Board Candidate SEPTA Questionnaire
Each year Arlington SEPTA asks each School Board candidate the same set of questions and shares their unedited answers for your information. Please note that candidates were asked to return their responses by May 2nd, so some answers may be based on information that has since changed.
Click on each question below to view responses from each candidate listed in alphabetical order by the candidates’ last names. Or to see the full set of each candidate’s responses here:
Mary Kadera’s SEPTA Questionnaire Response
Miranda Turner’s SEPTA Questionnaire Response
Question 1: Describe your experience working with or on behalf of individuals with disabilities.
Question 2: What do you believe to be the most significant issues or challenges within APS relating to students with disabilities?
Question 3: What steps should APS take to improve the identification, education, overall welfare, of students with disabilities in Arlington?
Question 4: What will you do to end segregation of students with disabilities in APS?
Question 5: What is your knowledge of and opinion of the accessibility issues in APS facilities and what recommendations do you have to remedy this?
Question 6: How familiar are you with APS’s 2019 Program Evaluation for Students with Disabilities and Those Receiving Interventions? How will you ensure that commitments to the recommendations made in this evaluation move forward as planned?
Question 7: What are your views on APS’s site-based management model and what changes, if any, would you make to it?
Question 8: APS has announced their plans for the fall, asking families to commit to one of two models by April 30th. Do you see any potential pitfalls for special education in this plan and if so, how would you address it as a school board member? How should APS address the needs of students with disabilities who cannot safely return to school buildings during the pandemic?
Question 9: How should APS ensure that students with disabilities receive adequate recovery/compensatory services?
School Board Candidate Questionnaire Responses by Question
Question 1: Describe your experience working with or on behalf of individuals with disabilities.
KADERA – My work with/on behalf of students with disabilities extends back to my time as a classroom teacher, right out of college. My preservice training unfortunately did very little to prepare me to teach students with disabilities, outside of educating me about legal/compliance issues.
I was fortunate to have the opportunity to co-teach a high school inclusion English class with a veteran special education teacher. I was also fortunate that in this school, we followed what I believe to be best practice in inclusion: that is, we had dedicated, daily time to plan together and track student progress, and we were equals in the classroom, sharing responsibility for the success of all students. From my colleague, I learned many valuable strategies for working withstudents with disabilities.
During my time in the education division at PBS, in the early days of the Internet, I learned about 508 compliance and was introduced to Universal Design for Learning, attending training provided by CAST.
For the past 13 years, I’ve worked with a variety of local and national education nonprofits to research and advocate for policies and practices that improve teaching and learning. In the course of that work, I’ve had the opportunity to contribute to and promote a number of programs that benefit students with disabilities. For example:
- Edutopia’s “Schools That Work” series, which included a profile of Meriden, CT schools (see in particular “Redesigning District-Wide Special Education Services” and “The Sensory Room”. (A fun fact about the sensory room video—this was actually an outtake that didn’t make it into the original video profile of this school district. Edutopia posted it on Facebook for World Autism Day, were it immediately generated more than 3 million views—now 17 million andcounting!)
- School visits, case studies, and white papers I developed for the Astra Center for Innovative Education that identifiedand promoted ways to include and support students with disabilities. See for example this brief I wrote which features the “student bridge” program in use at two high schools in Tacoma, Washington, and this blog post written by a colleague after we had visited a public elementary school in Brooklyn with incredible staff collaboration and inclusion practices.
TURNER – I have been involved in return-to-school advocacy and, through this, have developed an understanding of the unique challenges virtual learning presents for many students with disabilities. In particular, I have worked to advocate on schools issues alongside parents of autistic children, children with Down’s Syndrome, and children whose IEPs were not being fulfilled during the pandemic. I suggested and helped form a sub-committee devoted to helping these parents in our group coordinate with each other, to share information and connect them with resources within APS including the Parent Resource Center, and to make them aware of their rights under state and federal laws. This was particularly important to me, as parents often say they feel helpless and isolated in trying to address their children’s needs, and even more so during the pandemic. I also advocated for return dates for our Level One students, and urged APS to provide in-person instruction for all such students as consistent with Virginia guidance.
Question 2: What do you believe to be the most significant issues or challenges within APS relating to students with disabilities?
KADERA – In talking with disability advocates and studying the 2019 Program Evaluation for Students with Disabilities and Those Receiving Interventions, my takeaways on the biggest issues are as follows:
- Inconsistency in how ATSS is implemented across schools (e.g., frequency of meetings, use of intervention blocks, consistent approach across schools to behavior management, lack of progress monitoring and recordkeeping)
- Inconsistency across schools in IEP and 504 identification, meeting practices, delivery of services, andcommunication with families. It shouldn’t be the case that parents have to lobby over multiple school years to obtain necessary evaluation and services for their children. This means only those parents with the time and advocacy skills will be successful.
- It should not be the case that availability of qualified staff limits the frequency or types of services provided to students with disabilities.
- Elevated risk ratios for certain student populations, particularly Black and Latino students. These students are also at greater risk of suspension and less likely to be taught in the least restrictive environment.
- We’re not meeting our goal for inclusion of students with disabilities in general ed classrooms. All staff need high-quality professional learning on inclusion best practices—this can’t be optional for general ed teachers. We need to design master schedules so that inclusion teachers have time to co-plan and share responsibility for the success of allstudents.
- A lack of accountability at the school level for ensuring high-quality, consistent service to students with disabilities and their families. (For example, in principals’ performance evaluations and in their 90 Day Progress Plans)
- Gaps in academic achievement (as measured by SOL scores). Even more concerning is that fact that at certain grade levels and subject areas, pass rates for students with disabilities are declining.
- Better understanding of twice exceptional students and how to support them in schools; how to ensure that students with disabilities are not counselled out of advanced coursework.
TURNER – The delivery of special needs services at APS is, unfortunately, uneven across the school system. Some schools deliver excellent services and are quick to identify students with special needs and provide appropriate supports, while other schools struggle in these areas. As we see in many areas, APS operates as a system of disparate schools rather than a cohesive school system, and the site-based management approach APS takes here is not serving students well across the board. I would advocate for cohesion across APS in delivery of services and identification, with a top-down push to provide a basic set of parameters or a framework for each school to implement, with accountability to Central Office to ensure that it is carried out as intended. Parents should not need to wait long periods of time for evaluations when concerns are suspected and services offered should be consistent across our schools. A child should not receive services or not based on the school they attend or the caseworker to whom they are assigned. And families should not have entirely different experiences depending on which neighborhood they live in.
Question 3: What steps should APS take to improve the identification, education, overall welfare, of students with disabilities in Arlington?
KADERA – I am a big fan of the Office of Special Education’s Five-Year Action Plan. I note in particular that OSE has provided specific, quantifiable performance indicators covering academic achievement, progress against IEP goals, inclusion, progress monitoring, and accountability (as measured in each school’s 90 Day Progress Plan). I would love to see a corresponding dashboard of data showing progress against each of these measures.
I believe that accountability has to start at the superintendent level. As part of Dr. Duran’s reorganization, he must communicate to central office staff and building-level leaders that fidelity of implementation is an absolute expectation when it comes to serving students with disabilities. This should be reflected in school improvement plans, progress plans, and performance evaluations, and transparently reported and shared with the community.
I am also a huge believer that school culture really matters—we have to create environments where all children feel safe, known, and valued by their teachers and peers. I could talk about this for a really long time, but it would be quicker to point you to a short brief I wrote last year that describes some of the culture-building practices I’ve seen in other school systems; you can read about those here.
TURNER – APS should be more aggressive in identifying special needs from the earliest ages, starting with our youngest learners. Early interventions are known for their long-term positive impacts. Also, given the transient nature of some members of our population, including Military and State Department families, I would push APS to improve its ability to identify and offer services for children with disabilities coming from outside APS into the system. No family should have to start over the entire IEP process if they already have evaluations, and an IEP or IEP-equivalent from another school system.
In terms of education and overall welfare, we should be tracking our inclusion goals, including by demographic groups, to make sure we are seeing progress. Without data, we can’t know how we’re doing on our goals, and without making that data public and readily accessible, there will not be accountability for progress.
I also understand from friends and community members that the Parent Resource Center is incredibly valuable, and I would like APS to help more families be aware of this excellent resource available to them. It may also be helpful to support more “local” school-based resources or communities, such as parent groups to share localized information such as which books to read, where to find a specialized tutor, which camps are supportive, how to locate a babysitter, etc. Coordination could be especially useful to support parents in schools where the parent network may not be as strong but families could benefit from contacts across schools.
Question 4: What will you do to end segregation of students with disabilities in APS?
KADERA – To reach APS’s inclusion goal (or even to surpass it!) I believe we’ll need the following:
- Building-level inclusion goals that are included in every School Improvement Plan. Progress should be tracked and reported to the community.
- Excellent professional learning about inclusion best practices. When possible, this professional learning should be job-embedded, sustained (e.g., not a one-shot workshop), and teacher-led, as we know educators are more likely to embrace and adopt practices shared by their own colleagues.
- Regular (at least weekly), protected planning time for general education and special education teachers to co-design learning experiences.
My kids attended McKinley Elementary, which is home to a MIPA program. I saw firsthand the positive relationships that developed among general education students and students enrolled in the MIPA program in classrooms, during school events like chorus concerts and the Science Fair, on trips to the Outdoor Lab, and more. McKinley’s MIPA students and their families were known, accepted, and valued within the school community—and that’s my wish for all of our students withdisabilities.
TURNER – Students with special needs frequently learn best when included in general education settings. As noted above, tracking data on how we are meeting our inclusion goals and where we are falling short, and transparency with respect to that data, is critical. We should also examine the data by school, to make sure our schools are approaching these issues consistently and that inclusion is not dependent on being at the “right” school. I also believe that the concepts of equity currently receiving so much focus, and appropriately so, should be broadened to encompass students with disabilities, meaning identifying and removing barriers for those students and an awareness of ableism. Our new equity teams within schools should encourage open and honest discussion of these issues too.
Question 5: What is your knowledge of and opinion of the accessibility issues in APS facilities and what recommendations do you have to remedy this?
KADERA – I know that we’ve constructed two multimillion-dollar facilities within the past five years that have lacked essential safety and accessibility features for students, staff, and family members with disabilities. This is a moral, legal, and financial wrong—I say “financial” because retrofitting these buildings added millions to their overall price tags.
When this happened at Fleet, I contacted the School Board to ask how they would hold APS staff accountable for this egregious oversight. One School Board member contacted me to acknowledge the issue and ask for ideas. My husband happens to work in commercial construction and so we drafted a response together. The quick highlights are:
- Someone within APS signed change orders that removed ADA features from Fleet and The Heights. So someone within APS is accountable. My husband notes that in the private sector, that person would lose their job.
- Disability advocates are often included in the early planning stages of facility design (e.g., on the BLPC), but then it has been APS’s practice to “close the door” to community involvement once construction begins. This needs to change in order to ensure that we aren’t dropping the ball on any essential accessibility and safety features.
I am hopeful that a change in leadership, in the form of a new Assistant Superintendent of Facilities, will yield much-needed improvement in this area.
TURNER – All buildings should be fully accessible, including parking, and playgrounds should be usable by all students. The recent experience with the concerns at Fleet, ranging from accessibility to parking to the play structures and surrounding area, should be an object lesson for APS as to the issues that should be considered every time when it comes to new facilities. This will be particularly important as space is at a premium in the near future and we are likely to build up and have less available outdoor space. Fundamentally, we should have in mind all students who will or may be served by a particular program or location in designing a facility, including the 15% of APS students with disabilities and the range of disabilities that may need planned-for accommodations in and around the building.
Question 6: How familiar are you with APS’s 2019 Program Evaluation for Students with Disabilities and Those Receiving Interventions? How will you ensure that commitments to the recommendations made in this evaluation move forward as planned?
KADERA – Please see my response to Question #2 above for my takeaways from the 2019 program evaluation.
As a School Board member, I would ensure that the APS budget includes appropriate financial resources to implement the report’s recommendations and OSE’s Five-Year Action Plan.
As School Board policies come up for review, I would ensure that whenever possible we are enshrining the evaluator’s recommendations in policy.
I would want to hear regularly from ASEAC and OSE about the progress we’re making, where there’s room for improvement, and what kinds of additional support the School Board and APS leadership need to provide in order to serve students with disabilities and their families more effectively.
TURNER – A parent advocate who I have known since last fall pointed me to this evaluation and I read it in full. The key takeaway for me was inconsistency across schools and lack of accountability by schools/principals to APS. To address this, I believe APS needs to implement more structure and supervision of what happens at the school level, and we also need oversight of this at the School Board level to make sure it happens. The Program Evaluation provided ready examples, e.g., while within APS, there is an established vision for ATSS and strong support, there is little accountability across schools to encourage adoption of ATSS at the school level. APS must more directly push for consistency in these areas, and the School Board should make sure it does. Dr. Durán appears to be moving in this direction, and I would encourage him to continue.
Question 7: What are your views on APS’s site-based management model and what changes, if any, would you make to it?
KADERA – I believe that school leaders and school staff have to have a certain amount of latitude in how they are teaching and engaging with students and their families. I say this in part because I recognize that school communities have unique characteristics (e.g., the native languages and income levels of the families they serve; community partnerships they’ve created; etc.). I also remember the early days of “No Child Left Behind” when some school districts adopted “scripted curriculum” which literally required teachers to recite and not deviate from a script when delivering instruction. Not only does this take all the joy out of teaching, it prevents teachers from designing classroom activities that build on the interests and abilities of students.
That said—there need to be some non-negotiables across schools. One of those is how we identify, evaluate, serve, and monitor the progress of students with disabilities. This is an area where fidelity and consistency are critical: parents have a right to expect a consistent, high-quality level of service no matter which school their children attend, and school leaders need to know that they are accountable for providing this.
TURNER – The SBM approach provides a lot of independence to principals, but as the 2019 Evaluation noted, that can lead to a lot of variability across schools and little top-down corrective measures available to APS. This is of particular concern for students with disabilities, if school leaders don’t have appropriate training or experience in special education and the issues likely to arise, including legal requirements under federal law. Again, I believe APS needs to implement more structure and supervision of what happens at the school level, and ensure a basic level of consistency across schools.
Question 8: APS has announced their plans for the fall, asking families to commit to one of two models by April 30th. Do you see any potential pitfalls for special education in this plan and if so, how would you address it as a school board member? How should APS address the needs of students with disabilities who cannot safely return to school buildings during the pandemic?
KADERA – Since SEPTA sent me this questionnaire, APS has announced that it will not adhere to CDC guidance on social distancing in the fall. This decision had nothing to do with science, health data, or updated research: it simply reflects APS’s lack of foresight to anticipate and budget for the need for additional physical space.
I am concerned and baffled by this announcement, because it is entirely inconsistent with their approach over the past school year. “Caution” has been the watchword, drawing fire from some in the community who felt APS was being overly cautious; now apparently we are throwing caution to the wind.
What does this mean for students with disabilities? For those who have increased vulnerability to COVID due to other conditions, and for students under 12 who won’t yet have been vaccinated, it may well mean that in-person instruction is totally off the table.
Equally troubling to me if not more so is that this lack of thoughtful planning for in-person instruction may well foreshadow a lack of thoughtful planning for the virtual model, too. APS has stated that students in the virtual program will remain connected to their home schools and be served by counselors and other school staff—and yet I am growing increasingly concerned that what we’ll get is the same “seat-of-your-pants” approach thatwe’re currently seeing with the in-person model.
The School Board needs to demonstrate accountability and share ownership of this problem by voting on return-to-school plans. I believe that this would incentivize them to lean in, collaboratively problem- solve, and push for better solutions.
TURNER – I disagree on the one hand that APS currently has enough information from families about what their preferences and needs are, in order to be in a position to clearly explain what the options will be for the fall, and on the other hand that families have enough information to make this choice so early on. APS should have surveyed families this spring, rather than making them commit right now. This would have allowed APS to devise a preliminary plan for the fall based on what families’ preferences and concerns are, and then present that plan to allow parents to make a more informed choice.
I also understand that there are specific concerns for those students with disabilities that may put them at greater risk of Covid, in particular the desire for concurrent learning to maintain ties to their respective school communities and opportunities for on/off ramps to in-person learning depending on the circumstances. I was encouraged that APS will now allow switches for students with IEPs without waiting until quarter/semester end. This hopefully will provide some peace of mind to families to be free to select a model that works for them now, and also is consistent with prioritizing student needs above institutional interests.
Question 9: How should APS ensure that students with disabilities receive adequate recovery/compensatory services?
KADERA – Students with disabilities and their families deserve a clear and thorough accounting of compensatory services they can expect over the summer and next school year—and they serve that information now.
Options that APS should consider, informed by ASEAC and SEPTA, include:
- Increasing the frequency of services and/or providing services during vacation periods (APS should use federal relief funding for this purpose, instead of using it to patch the overall budget);
- Offer to reimburse families for compensatory services delivered by third-party providers; or
- “Bank” lost service hours for a time in the future where disagreements may arise about the need for ongoing services.
The first of these three is the most appropriate, in my opinion, but there could be flexibility built into the approach of families of students with disabilities desired it.
Earlier this week I wrote a campaign piece about how to support all students during the pandemic recovery period—it’s not specifically geared towards students with disabilities and their families, but I believe many of the ideas would be beneficial. You can read my recommendations here.
TURNER – I’m very concerned that there does not seem to be a concrete, funded plan for recovery and/or compensatory services. I understand APS has no plans to hire additional staff, which means our already-stretched staff will be tasked with handling a larger than typical need. To the extent we can earmark some of the federal funds to this work, we should consider hiring contract speech, OT, reading specialists to augment current staff. In addition, given the high utilization rate in our community of the vaccine and the flexibility it allows for vaccinated individuals to safely engage with children, perhaps we can leverage a more robust volunteer network this coming school year to help with the basics that require minimal training, such as reading with students who have fallen behind grade level. Our whole community is invested in the success of our youngest members, and having served as a volunteer reader myself in my child’s class, this may be an easy yet impactful way to help our vulnerable learners and bring us back together now that it is safer to do so.
I would also like to see a focus on providing individualized recovery services while allowing children to remain in the least restrictive setting as much as possible. In particular, there should not be costs to the student to take advantage of recovery services, such as the prospect of having to sacrifice electives.
Leave a Reply