Frontline Blog

If you feel like you’ve just gotten a handle on the complexities of billing for Medicaid in schools, there’s good news and there’s bad news. Read the Blog

Some people who previously tested positive for COVID-19 are now showing symptoms like tiredness, fatigue, difficulty thinking, concentrating, headache, changes in smell, taste, dizziness, or fast beating or pounding heart, usually appearing about a month after that initial positive test. This condition is being referred to as “Long COVID.”

An online search for “teacher shortage” will quickly return 435,000 results. Each day yields more headlines about school districts who struggle to hire enough teachers — more than half of school districts we surveyed in 2016 said they were experiencing a shortage.  

COVID-19 created extraordinary circumstances in education. Closures and remote instruction isolated students, required novel IEP implementations, and raised significant questions about whether student needs were appropriately met. Those extraordinary circumstances raised extraordinary questions about school legal exposure under conventional legal requirements.

Unexpected school closures happened so quickly in the early days of the pandemic. Managers of Section 504 programs faced — and still face — a great deal of uncertainty because closures and hybrid learning don’t change the fact that schools are responsible for preventing discrimination and providing the appropriate supports for students with disabilities to ensure they enjoy equal opportunity to access education. However, making sure students receive the services they’re entitled to during a global pandemic isn’t easy and introduces a lot of questions from a compliance perspective.

In today’s culture, schools do more than just educate. They are outreach centers, health care providers, and community leaders who are integral to connecting families to services. Much of this is rooted in the development of schools as health care providers and Medicaid outreach organizations. 

School districts need to monitor student progress to assess student outcomes, submit mandated state and federal reports, and in many states, claim Medicaid reimbursements. But progress monitoring can also be used to help identify and support requests for additional staffing needs or pinpoint professional development gaps.

Is your IEP system helping you live up to the promises you’ve made to students with disabilities ― or is it inhibiting student progress and adding work and frustration to your plate? As with any complex system, getting a clear view of what is working well and what could be better can be a challenge. The bottom line is that your IEP system should work for you, not the other way around.

A school’s ability to provide special education remotely — including services like occupational therapy, physical therapy, and speech therapy, among others — is critical during the COVID-19 pandemic. And not just to meet school obligations under IDEA and Section 504, but because providing these services makes a huge difference in the lives of students.