Empowering Every Student: A Spotlight on Special Education with Dr. Cassandra Doggrell, Dr. Mallory Eyles and Ms. Ashley Pattison

Discover the essential role of Seneca Valley's Student Services Department in supporting students' academic, social, emotional and physical well-being. This episode highlights the wide range of special education programs and resources available to ensure every student receives the support they need to thrive.

IN THIS EPISODE, WE WILL REVIEW

• A general overview of SV's Student Services Department
• Types of special education programs that are offered
• Student counseling services across the district
• Transition programing and community partnerships
• How students and parents can access resources and support provided by the Student Services Department 

SPECIAL GUESTS
Dr. Cassandra Doggrell, Director of Student Services; Dr. Mallory Eyles, Assistant Director of Student Services and Ms. Ashley Pattison, Special Education Supervisor

Dr. Cassandra Doggrell began her career at Seneca Valley in 2010 as an Autism and Emotional Support Teacher at Rowan Elementary. She has held various administrative positions, including Principal of Haine Middle School and Assistant Principal at Evans City and Haine Middle. Before returning to Seneca Valley, she spent five years at Upper St. Clair School District as Director of Student Support Services and Special Education. Her research and practice interests include comprehensive mental health systems in schools, students with autism, students with emotional/behavioral disorders, and inclusionary service delivery models. Dr. Doggrell holds multiple degrees, including a doctorate in Educational Leadership from the University of Pittsburgh.

Dr. Mallory Eyles has been working in the Seneca Valley School District since 2011.  She has filled a variety of roles within the district including School Psychologist, Assistant Principal at Rowan and Evans City Elementary, Assistant Director of Special Education and currently, Assistant Director of Student Services. Dr. Eyles received her Doctorate in Psychology from Duquesne University. 

Ms. Ashley Pattison began her career at Seneca Valley School District in 2008 as a learning support teacher and later developed the district’s elementary life skills program. She has served as a special education teacher, behavior specialist, and currently works as the supervisor of special education, overseeing programs for students with exceptionalities. She holds a Bachelor’s in Elementary Education from Elizabethtown College, a Master’s in Education from the University of Pittsburgh, and a School Supervision Certification from Slippery Rock University.

Transcript

FULL TRANSCRIPT (with timecode)

00:00:02:27 - 00:00:10:14
Jeff Krakoff: Welcome to Voices, a national award-winning podcast brought to you by the Seneca Valley School District. 

00:00:11:01 - 00:00:33:16
Jeff Krakoff: This is Jeff Krakoff. Today we're going to talk about the student services department at Seneca Valley School District. We've got three guests today. Cassandra Doggrell, who's director of student services, uh, Mallory Eyles, assistant director of student services and Ashley Pattison, who is special education supervisor. Thanks for joining us today. 

00:00:33:21 - 00:00:34:27
Ashley Pattison: Thanks for having us. 

00:00:35:02 - 00:00:49:12
Jeff Krakoff: So why don't we just start with Student Services department, right. It's it's the name of the department. When I hear that, I'm not sure what that means. Exactly. So tell me about what you all do under the umbrella of Student Services. 

00:00:49:14 - 00:02:05:15
Cassandra Doggrell: Absolutely. We are proud leaders of the student services department here at Seneca Valley. And students are the heart of our district, and they're the reason that our school systems exist in the first place. Everything that we do here at Seneca Valley revolves around supporting our students and helping them grow. Seneca Valley is a very student centered district. We put the students at the forefront of the decisions we make, and we are the lucky ones who get to see that work come to fruition across our K-12 school district. And with that in mind, this Student Support Services department is really the backbone of the systems of support for our students within our schools. We are dedicated to ensuring that all students receive the supports they need to succeed and to succeed academically, yes, but also to succeed in all areas of life. Our department helps to ensure that supports are implemented to address academic needs, physical well-being of students social and emotional development too. 

00:02:05:17 - 00:04:07:08
Cassandra Doggrell: We do this in multiple ways and in a very multifaceted departments, and the way we make our work meaningful for students is through personalizing their interventions, specializing their services, and tailoring their programs to ensure they have the resources they need to not only succeed, but to really thrive in their education. Um, we work together with our teachers, our support staff, our administrators, our parents and the community to help identify barriers to learning and then to problem solve those barriers and either remove them or help to minimize them. So we create an environment where all students can succeed at the end of the day. I think that what really makes our department special is that type of work we do. It is an incredibly meaningful type of work, when we partner alongside our staff in the district, our students and our community. It's something that I feel is magical to see and experience another human having success and to be part of that story and part of that journey with them is where the magic happens here at Seneca Valley. And we, I think, get that opportunity to see students beyond who they are in the classroom, but really have that opportunity to look at them as individuals and understand what their strengths are, what their needs are, what their challenges might be, and also understand what their dreams are and help them meet those goals and those guideposts that they have set for themselves along the way is truly, you know, honestly, it's it's a true honor, and I feel it's a privilege to be able to lead the work here in the district alongside Dr. Eyles and Mrs. Pattison. And I think with great confidence, the three of us can say Seneca Valley is a is a special place where magic does happen for students. 

00:04:07:10 - 00:04:29:29
Jeff Krakoff: So, Cassandra, I can see how passionate you are. And I can see just from looking at the faces of your colleagues, how passionate they are about this. You mentioned, um, supports, resources, programs just to help listeners better understand. Can you give me some examples of the types of things you do to support and assist students? 

00:04:30:03 - 00:05:40:20
Cassandra Doggrell: Sure. And, um, whenever I get this question, I have to go through this, like mental ticker list to make sure I don't miss any one facet of the things we do. And behind the scenes we have this built out matrix. It's almost like "who's on first" between the three of us, who provides the type of support in these areas. So I'm going to offer some of the programs that we support. And Dr. Eyles and Mrs. Pattison  are going to add to that also. But one of our primary functions of the department is to support special education. And we, um, the three of us have start started out many moons ago in that realm. So we do have a deep passion and understanding of that piece to our district, and we believe very much in supporting students who need that extra layer of special education. So they need that special instruction. They need accommodations to learn, and they need services to meet their their potential. And we at Seneca Valley, we have about 13, um, well, it's actually closer to 1,400 students who receive special education. So that's about 18% of our school district. 

00:05:41:08 - 00:06:18:05
Jeff Krakoff: So that and that type of special education support, it's a wide spectrum of things. Right. You know, I think, you know, one question I had as a parent when my kids were in school were you think special education, you kind of have a paradigm in your mind of what special ed means, but there are so many students that need a little bit of help, need a lot of help. A very different services. But, you know, if we could just talk about the the whole range of things you do that fit under that special ed, what kinds of things do we do here at Seneca Valley? 

00:06:18:07 - 00:08:02:29
Ashley Pattison: So I think, um, you know, in terms of special education programs and resources from the district lens, we want to ensure that all students with disabilities are able to be instructed in their least restrictive environment, um, with the appropriate supplementary aides and services. Um, we are working to make sure that they have that free, appropriate public education and that we can meet their needs to the best of their ability. So we offer a wide range of special education services. Um, and we oversee those services. It could be from, um, working through contracts to secure the appropriate supports and services we need. We work with the Midwestern Intermediate Unit to get hearing services for our students. Vision support services. um, dysphagia consultation. We have some students who are working on some of their basic functions with feeding. So we work to provide those services to them. We contract through Hope Learning Center to provide occupational therapy and physical therapy for our students that have fine motor and gross motor needs. Um, you know, we really, uh, support the student as a whole where they're at to make sure they can access their education. We provide, um, American Sign Language interpreters to our students who maybe need an interpreter to support them in accessing the curriculum or nursing on the buses. If we have students who have, um, seizure, um, medical needs, then we support with nursing services. So we really look at the whole of the student and then determine what supports and services we need. And then on top of all of that, we have special education programming that we offer and provide. So it's a lot. 

00:08:03:01 - 00:08:05:21
Jeff Krakoff: Tell me a little bit more about the programming you offer. 

00:08:05:25 - 00:09:24:00
Ashley Pattison: Yeah. So we offer services at an itinerant level, a supplemental level and a full time level. We also support students in finding and accessing an appropriate outside placement. Should our district not be able to provide the level of support that they might need. That's more for students that have like a low incident disability, where maybe their medical and cognitive needs are greater than what we can manage as a public entity on our own, but we support them as their local education agency. They are still a part of our district. We attend all of their meetings, um, in terms of itinerant level support services, at a kindergarten through sixth grade lens, um, we provide emotional support and autistic support to our students on an itinerant level. And that's where teachers will support students pushing in to their general education classrooms, helping to break down different behavioral or academic barriers they might be experiencing, as well as pull students out, um, a few times a week, maybe to work on socialization skills or, um, to really focus on some of those executive functioning and on task behavior skills in a smaller space, and then practice them in the general education classroom to provide learning support services to our students that can be in an itinerant level or a supplemental level. 

00:09:24:06 - 00:10:42:27
Ashley Pattison: And really they're we're looking at, again, what's the right amount of support that we can provide students. We believe in inclusion, meaningful inclusion for all of our students. So we want our students to access their general education curriculum to the maximum extent possible. And we really look at the data behind how they're progressing on their goals to tell us what that just right amount is. We have co-teaching, where a learning support teacher and a general education teacher are collaborating together and supporting all students needs. And then we also offer supplemental and full time autistic support, life skill support, multiple disability support to our students that have a higher level of need, and that typically occurs through our multiple support classrooms, where it's really a home base that students will go to with a special education teacher and paraprofessionals, and then they'll go out for various parts of their day in the general education setting. So really, whatever we as student need is what we provide. Um, and I can say one of the best things about Seneca Valley is that from the top down, we have leaders who believe in what's best for kids. And, um, we rarely say no. We we do whatever we can to try to help students be successful. 

00:10:42:29 - 00:11:06:21
Jeff Krakoff: Yeah. It sounds like you have everything to support the complete child or student if it's a young adult, right? It could be physical, emotional, learning, anything that might be in their way of performing a classroom. You're there to help. I do have a question. What about counseling and mental health resources? Does that fit under the umbrella of student services as well. 

00:11:07:02 - 00:12:05:15
Cassandra Doggrell: Yes, we are right there in that line of work. We do support counseling services across our district. We do have 23 counselors K-12. We're very fortunate to have that amount of counselors have a presence in our in our district. And that relationship that students have with their school counselor is one that's really critical and one that I always encourage to be developed because a school counselor, and the way we utilize them here at Seneca Valley is to provide, you know, individual supports to students, group supports to students, and also they provide classroom based lessons. And they are of the mindset that they're also teachers and teaching counselors at times in their in a child's educational journey. So our counselors are all hands on deck to support that personal development of a child, along with supporting academic needs too. 

00:12:05:17 - 00:12:52:00
Jeff Krakoff: I was going to say, you mentioned about 18% of the student population is receiving some type of help, resources, services. I think that's just a good point, that again, it can be almost anything, right, that a student or parents need help with. But if I'm a parent, you listed so many things right where you can help a family or a student. Um, how do they learn more and get to know all the. Because I'm sure in this quick conversation there's probably a whole lot more we haven't even talked about. But how do they find out about everything you can do to help and support, and what steps do they take if they say, yeah, we need some support. 

00:12:52:02 - 00:13:41:10
Cassandra Doggrell: I would encourage our families to reach out to the building level administration or their counselors first, which can help guide them to know what type of supports, because we do, again, um, have mental health supports. We have supports for students experiencing homelessness, or who are in foster care, or who need some connection to social services, so kind of depending on that type of need. Building administration and counselors can reach out to any of the three of us, and we'll get in connection with that family. That would be, I'd say, the the most way, you know, the best way to customize what supports a family might need. We also do have our departments built out on the Seneca Valley website, where you can locate the different types of supports and the different functions of the department as a resource too. 

00:13:41:12 - 00:13:49:00
Jeff Krakoff: Okay, so start the building level an administrator, a counselor, student services department information is on the website. 

00:13:49:09 - 00:13:59:09
Cassandra Doggrell: And our contact is there too. So we're always an email, a phone call away. And we will. You know, we always attend to parents who are reaching out in need of help. 

00:13:59:15 - 00:14:06:25
Jeff Krakoff: Is there anything else you'd like to share with listeners about everything you do in the Student Services department? 

00:14:07:06 - 00:15:25:19
Mallory Eyles: I would like to share one thing. Um, so we talked a little bit about elementary programming. Uh, K-6. We also have extensive programming for our secondary students who are in grades seven through 12. Um, we have a focus on transition programming. So all of our students, uh, have individual plans that we're looking towards what will they do after high school and making sure they're equipped for that. So we have partnerships with the community. Um, we also have some opportunities on campus for our students to practice vocational skills. So currently we're working with um, 22 community partners, where our students will go out into the community and work on vocational skills with job coaches and transition specialists. Um, so that's something a little bit unique to our school district. Um, as compared to some others. We also have, um, what's called the Raider Roast on campus, which is a coffee shop. And we also have Seneca Square, which is a smoothie shop where our students are working at and developing some of those skills. Um, we also have a class called CHS Foundations of Special Education, and that's where our students work alongside their peers to facilitate inclusive opportunities for those vocational readiness skills. 

00:15:26:05 - 00:15:57:07
Jeff Krakoff: All right. Well, thank you so much. So with us today, Director of Student Services Cassandra Doggrell, assistant Director of student Services Mallory Eyles, and special education supervisor Ashley Pattison. Thanks for all the great work that you, and I know there's many others in the department throughout the district that do. And if you're a parent or a student who needs some help and in any way that that fits everything we talked about, please, you know, reach out to somebody in the building, check out the website and learn more. 

00:15:57:22 - 00:15:59:21
Jeff Krakoff: Um, thanks so much for coming on today. 

00:15:59:28 - 00:16:01:21
Cassandra Doggrell: Thank you. Thanks for having us. 

00:16:01:23 - 00:16:03:21
Jeff Krakoff: All right. Have a great day.