CEA-Advisor_February-March-2023-issue_no-ballot_web

FEBRUARY – MARCH 2023 CEA ADVISOR 7

TIME Hayes: The amount of time spent on one IEP equals the same amount I probably have spent doing three or four. It has become the most negative experience of my total teaching career. Stokes: I spend about two to four hours after my family goes to bed writing evaluations and progress reports and answering parent emails. It’s unsustainable, and it’s causing teachers to burn out and leave the profession for other careers. Fragoso: At the beginning of the year, it was taking me about three hours to complete one IEP. At the present moment, it is probably taking me 2.5

ADMINISTRATORS WEIGH IN In a letter to Education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker this past fall, school superintendents expressed deep concerns about CT-SEDS and asked for a pause in the program. “To say that our districts are experiencing a myriad of problems with utilizing the CT-SEDS system would be an understatement of the highest magnitude,” their letter read. “Teachers who could previously utilize our existing systems for IEP document preparation very efficiently...now find themselves spending upwards of 10–20 hours to create an IEP document, with multiple visits to various locations looking for information on how to solve problems encountered in using the technology, and calls and emails to a help desk that often go unanswered in any meaningful way.” In fact, in the early rollout of the program, wait times for a callback ranged from seven to nine days. “This is particularly frustrating,” the letter went on, “because we know that there was a pre-rollout pilot program where many of the problems we are now seeing were previously identified by the pilot districts, and yet, those problems do not appear to have been addressed before beginning the statewide rollout. We simply do not have the time available to us to take on the massive task of solving all of the problems that we encounter, and the very act of trying to solve these problems is resulting in a severe exacerbation of existing staff shortages as teachers and staff decide that they no longer wish to try to engage with this process and choose retirement or other careers over these frustrations. “The scale of the problems that we are encountering is massive. Many districts have scores of IEPs that cannot be finalized due to some issue with the CT-SEDS program, and so the IEPs remain in ‘draft’ form.” In an attempt to resolve these issues and provide clearer instructions, the SDE issued a series of manuals and emails. “There are currently 17 of these manuals, and the information is scattered over various locations and platforms, rather than all being located in one, easy-to navigate FAQ section or other technical assistance format,” superintendents pointed out, adding, on the subject of help desk support, “Days and sometimes weeks pass with no substantive response or assistance in solving our problem or directing us to the location where the answer can be found.” This is in sharp contrast to the previous system, which not only provided instant access to a searchable online directory for solutions to technical problems but also had a help line staffed with knowledgeable people who would walk users through solutions on the spot. “As you know, there are very tight timelines in the special education regulations that require that we provide a complete copy of the child’s IEP to the parents no later than five school days following the PPT meeting,” administrators added. “We are not able to meet this requirement when it takes us weeks to get a response…” Poland: I was chosen as one of the building experts to take part in the four-hour remote training over the summer. After that training, I in no way felt like a building expert. TRAINING Stokes: Teachers have attended the online sessions available through the state with questions about specific scenarios. The typical response from trainers at the beginning of the sessions has been, “We are not talking about specific circumstances in this training.” This has caused immense frustration and forces teachers to have to work out of school hours to watch webinars and YouTube videos in order to learn how to use the platform on our own. There has been no time provided during the school day for professional development on how to use this system with fidelity. Vita: The four-hour workshop we went to in August was a brief overview that made the whole system appear seamless and well-thought-out, which in fact it is not. It did not prepare me in any way to actually work with the system. Seeing slides and having someone breeze through an explanation is not training. We never got to interact with the system until faced with an actual IEP. I was the first one in my school to have to use it, and everything I learned about CT-SEDS I learned on my own, by trial and error.

TECHNOLOGY Stokes: I’ve received countless emails from my administrator and colleagues about not being able to access certain features of the CT-SEDS digital platform and having to wait for technical assistance. Some glitches require us to enter and re-enter information that disappears when switching between screens or after it has been ‘saved.’ The result is delays in mandated paperwork, which can put us out of compliance with state and federal laws. Fragoso: One of my biggest frustrations with the program is the five-minute timeout feature. If I’m interrupted while working on an IEP and forget to save, my work is gone. (After Fragoso’s comments at the State Board of Education meeting, this important fix to the five-minute timeout was made. See below.)

hours. Some teachers have spent over ten hours on a single IEP. Zabroski: Anyone who relies on this program to produce IEPs is constantly running into issues with completing our work,

spending unreasonable amounts of time inputting

information and having to correct where and how that information appears. After one of my peers spent close to an hour-and-a-half working on an IEP, everything she had entered in CT SEDS appeared to be saved, as she had clicked all appropriate ‘save’ icons. The next day, she went into the same IEP to complete it. (Incidentally, an hour-and-a-half would have been all it took to complete an entire IEP in the platform we used previously.) She found that none of the information she had entered was there. She shared that she sat in front of her computer and cried. I’ve heard stories like this from my special education peers in multiple districts. Vita: It takes forever to complete an IEP, especially with all the glitches and issues. And progress is taking more than twice as long. I've done about six IEPs so far, and I've had to contact the help desk for half of them. We should be compensated by the state for the amount of time we are spending on this system, which is taking us away from our planning and time working with students. Richards: I’m spending at least 10-12 additional hours outside of work weekly on current caseload students and new referrals on CT-SEDS. It's ridiculous. I have been teaching 30 years and doing special education in Connecticut for 20 of those years, and I have never had a workload like this before. It is my intention to retire from teaching after this school year. “It has become the most negative experience of my total teaching career.”

Zabroski: Even our first professional development was fraught with glitches. Some teachers were unable to log into the system at all, portions of the platform did not function the way our trainers were told they would, and it became painfully clear that the state was pushing out an underdeveloped program that didn’t work as advertised. The day of the rollout, administrators reached out to the CT-SEDS ‘help desk’ and received a response essentially saying the help desk was overwhelmed with requests and would provide an answer when they had time. I clicked a button in CT-SEDS in an effort to print a page of an IEP, and it deleted everything contained in the fields on that page, right in front of my eyes. I frantically searched for an ‘undo’ icon, but there was none to be found. All of this took place after school, and it took over 45 minutes to rectify. For one page. Poland: I know that each time there is a change of software, there is a learning curve during which IEPs take longer than usual to write because you are learning the new system as you go. But to be clear, with CT-SEDS it is so much worse. I have yet to complete an IEP from beginning to end without glitches, strange situations, and lag time between when a PPT is held, issues are solved, and the IEP is finalized. Brown: As I have become more comfortable using the system, it has gotten easier, but there are constantly errors; for example, I created three PPT invitations, and two out of the three would save my name or contact information related to the section about sending procedural safeguards. I have also had issues with student exceptionality being wrong, leaving me unable to finalize IEPs on time because I’m waiting for our data manager to make changes. Hayes: The wording and setup of many of the tiles is not user-friendly. In the accommodation section alone, you have to input every single one individually that is applicable to each student. I have lost material I worked on numerous times. I held a PPT in September that I didn't input correctly, and no one seems to know how to correct it. D’Orazio: I recently hit the wrong choice for one of the multidisciplinary documents, and it deleted everything that had already been completed as well as everything completed at PPT 1, rendering the student who was found eligible to be no longer eligible. How to fix this is still being figured out by the district and state tech support. This meeting was two months ago.

“Some teachers have spent over ten hours on a single IEP.”

Curcio: I’m a speech-language pathologist. Something that used to take 30 minutes is now taking me two or three hours. We are technologically proficient, so it’s not that. If we don’t have a workable system that allows us to do our jobs, ultimately it’s the kids who lose out. D’Orazio: The time to complete an IEP has quadrupled, and the sequence of working through the document is not user-friendly. It is like working through a matrix you are never really sure is finished.

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