50th anniversary of IDEA with Kevin Bean, HUSD Director of Student Services

Listen in as Student Services Director Kevin Bean discusses the impact of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act on students in Healdsburg Schools.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to Hound Tracks, where we bring you real conversations with the people shaping Hillsburg's public schools. I'm Chris Vandenouvel, Superintendent of the Hillsburg Unified School District. Each month we'll share stories, insights, and updates from across HUSD. Let's get started. This school year marks the 50th anniversary of IDEA, which stands for the Individuals with Disabilities Educational Act. That is the law that was put into place to allow for specialized services for students who have learning disabilities or other things that are impacting their learning in school. And part of that celebration for us is talking today with Kevin Bean, who is our director of student services. And under that umbrella, he is in charge of special education for our school district. Mr. Bean is actually a lifetime Hillsburg resident, was born in Hillsburg, went through HES and graduated from Hillsburg High, went on to get a degree in chemistry from Humboldt State, and had an interesting career trajectory where he started out as a chemist and then went back to school and became a paraprofessional and then found himself becoming a special education teacher before ultimately becoming an administrator, a job that he's been doing for 11 years or so. Coming to us most recently from Roseland in Santa Rosa, where he was director of special education. So Mr. Bean, how is it being named Mr. Bean, by the way?

SPEAKER_00 1:23

It's lots of fun. I'm sure. It really is. And I find that both kids and adults love to use that name. Almost no one calls me Kevin. Yeah. And half the time in the grocery store I call myself Mr. Bean as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Well, Kevin, it's great to have you with us. So, first question for you is a big one. When we say equity and access in public schools, what does that actually mean for students and families here in Healsburg Unified?

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Well, that's a great question. And I and I'm glad that we're leading off with that. With the 50th anniversary of IDEA, what it was really promising was equitable access for all people, regardless of disability. And locally, what we see is a full continuum of services that we have to support our students with disabilities here. What we have we strive to serve students in the setting that's most supportive of their progress and as close to the general education program as possible. So we work hard to with families and students. We try to bring a caring and compassionate demeanor to everything that we do because we understand how complex this can be and how stressful it can be for families. And so we want to make sure the families feel part of the process, that they feel like their voice is heard and that their concerns and the child are at the center of all of our conversations.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

No, I like that. It really encompasses the fact that there's not a one size fits all, right? So we really are tailor-making services for each child based on what they need to be successful in school. So okay, next question. You your department oversees a wide range of supports as we're tailor-making and making bespoke programs for people, right? Can you share a few examples of how we help students who need extra academic, behavioral, or emotional support?

SPEAKER_00 3:03

Yeah, for sure. It's it's a little bit different at each site. So at HES, for example, with our littlest kids, TK through two, you know, we see more challenges these days around emotional regulation and academic success that comes with that ability to be emotionally regulated. And so at these sites, our teachers and paraprofessionals meet students where they are, they accept them for who they are, and they treat them with dignity. As we get up through the upper grades, upper elementary grades at Fitch, we have a little bit more of a co-teaching or push-in type model that we're working with. We've expanded that program this year, and our special education teachers are going into the classroom, working with their gen ed teachers, and collaborating together to get better outcomes for our kids with disabilities. As it turns out, if we pull kids out of the general ed setting, they oftentimes end up lacking the instruction that they need in math and in language arts that can help them be better prepared for state testing and other kinds of forms of measures around their progress. At the junior high, they're working really hard to expand on that same kind of model. And they're doing a lot of great stuff with code teaching and support pushed in just in time for students when they need it. They also have directed studies, so they have a place for kids to go to kind of work on their executive functioning skills, like meeting deadlines and keeping track of assignments, and also to be able to have some time to get some extra support on reteaching the lessons that they they might have struggled with in the in the Gen Egg class. By the time we're in high school, we do a lot more push-in support with paraprofessionals. We've also begun doing some co-taught sections this year, and that we've been seeing some some great success in that area as well. And our goal really is to make sure that no student drops out of high school because they were denied access to the curriculum based upon their disability.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Awesome. What role do families play in this process in the IEP, which is individual education plan or 504 plan process? How can they make sure that, or how do you make sure actually that they are included in the decision-making process?

SPEAKER_00 5:14

Well, so that is actually one of the key elements of the IDEA was the concept of parent involvement. And back in the day, prior to IDEA, oftentimes the parents were not consulted in what was going to happen to their children. Instead, the children were placed by institutions in institutions, and that was kind of the end of the conversation. So we really emphasize and in some ways over-emphasize parent involvement. California is a particularly strict state for parent involvement. It actually has an increased uh an increased amount of parent involvement that's on California because we actually get consent every year for every IEP, and any changes we make to the IEP requires parent involvement. We are tracked on this. We have a metric we report out every year on how many IEPs that we have that had parent involvement. We're always at about 100%. So it's very rare that we have a parent say that we didn't involve them in the in the overall plan. We try and get those parents involved right from the beginning as well. Through our cost and SST process, we have the parents involved, particularly as the SST begins to happen, because we need that parent involvement to understand what kinds of things are happening at home in the community and at school so we can get a sense of maybe there are things that we're not seeing at school that are happening at home that might impact the school, uh, the school progress as well. So we keep parent involved with that right through the initial referral and then the IEP meeting to talk about eligibility.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

And and I'll translate for the listeners. So Claustor SST, those are site team meetings when when students are not performing at grade level or not progressing how we think they should be, we will hold a meeting together with educators to talk about the student and what potentially is inhibiting them from doing better. And then we align services around that, get a hold of the parents, get them involved in the decision making. So before a child ever becomes part of special education, usually there's a process like this to try to get them help beforehand and to see what we can do to help them. So it's all very aligned, and parents are involved at every level. All right. Is there a moment or student success that reminds you why this work matters? We all are in this for the kids. You know, what what are the what are the things you remember?

SPEAKER_00 7:34

So it's it sometimes can be hard to talk about a specific story or a specific student in a public way because one of the aspects of IDEA is also confidentiality. But but what what I will say is that generally speaking, whenever I look into the eyes of a parent who's just been carrying a lot of stress around what's happening with their child, or a lot of stress around maybe feeling like they haven't been heard, and they reach this point where they know that actually we care about their kid, that we do want to listen to them, that that the things that are important to them are important to us as well, if only because they're important to that parent. And so we're able to really see that shift. And and for me, that's one of the reasons I do this work, is because I don't feel like any parent or any student should feel like they don't belong, or that that they're not cared about, or they're not just as important as any other any other kid. And and the when that child's success starts to feel like everybody's success and the attitudes of the people in the community start to shift, that's when we kind of move toward the promise of IDA, really, which was which really was inclusion, really was making sure that people with and without disabilities have the opportunity to to be together in the same spaces in the same community. And we move from just being tolerated to truly being accepted by the community. And and that that's the kind of thing that that makes me feel good about this when I go home at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Yeah, and even more like an integral part of the community, right? Like, and and I think Heelsburg's kind of a special place for that because it we do a really good job. And when I say we, I mean the parents and the students, everybody, of making sure everybody feels included, more so than other districts I've worked at for sure.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

Yeah, and I think for me, as a high school administrator in my past, like it and still today, because I'm up on the graduation stage, it is always so gratifying to be shaking hands with the graduates and you know these stories, and the kids who've got major obstacles to their learning or whatever, when they're walking across that straight stage, just like feeling proud of them. In fact, I'll shake hands and say, I'm proud of you, good job, you know, but really mean it. So, like that that's along the same lines, yeah. Anyway, okay, kind of a fun one. Okay, you grew up here. I did. Tell us a favorite memory from being a student in the Hillsburg schools. So the lots of memories.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

I was a I was a band geek. In fact, as none of us are surprised, by the way. I know. I was sort of the king of the nerds. I got elected band president in my senior year. We love band kids.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

We're not saying they're nerds, that's a disclaimer, but you know, back in the day. Yeah. But these are my people.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

We used to have about 50 people in the band back in those days as well. So it was a big organization. In my freshman year, the teacher of the time, Louis Sabrana, he would take us every year to the Halloween parade that occurred at Sonoma State Hospital over in Glen Allen. And as a freshman, as you know, 14 years old, I had never in this town really seen a person at school with a disability because most people with disabilities were institutionalized at places like Glen Allen. It's Sonoma State Hospital. And that was true around the state, and this would have been in the early 80s. Early 80s, I hate to say it. You're dating yourself. I'm dating myself. And so there was this trip we went, and and everybody was a little nervous, but but Lou was Mr. Sabrana, he was the kind of guy he did stuff for the community, and that was part of the community, and so he was going to do it. So we all went out in a school bus, and I was playing the bass drum at the time. And so there I was standing at the back of the back of the band with my big bass drum, and it was almost as big as me because I'm not a big guy. I still wasn't in high school either. So I had this big bass drum, and a guy came over to me who who clearly had what I can now reflect back on is he had Down syndrome. I did not know this at the time, but he came up to me and his eyes were wide and he had a great big smile, and he grabbed the beater out of my hand and started banging on the bass drum. And I had no idea what to do. I just I just looked, I stared, and then eventually a couple of people from the from the facility came over and they just checked in with him, gently, kind of handed me the bass drum beater, and off he went. But that's awesome. Yeah, it was a great, it was a great moment, but it was one that that really stuck with me because when I began in my 40s, uh late 30s to work with students with disabilities, I had some major realizations about the significance of that event as far as for me and growing growing up as an adult, but then also for that student and other students like them who now would be here on our campus or at an adjacent campus, but anyway, in a program and around peers and other people that they could potentially interact with as opposed to just being in an institution. And so that it really cements for me this this feeling of what of what we're trying to do in the United States and for kids with disabilities. So anyway. And we've come a long way. We've come such a long way, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

I mean, you it's not quite 50 years for you, but in terms of IDEA, it's it's it's been good. So for sure. Kevin, thank you so much for being with us. And and to the listeners, if you like what you heard, be sure to follow us and share the episode with your friends and family. We'll be back next month with more insights from across our schools. Until then, take care and thank you for being part of our school community.