The Special Education System a Growing Texas District Needs

Greater Compliance + Time Saved

Special education staff possess a deep understanding of their most common tasks. However, as Darlene notes, there can be gaps in comprehending the broader process. Frontline supports the ARD process in several unique ways:

• Compliance checks at each stage. Because it is designed specifically for Texas, it requires that each step be completed in order. For example, an evaluation cannot be scheduled before a Review of Existing Evaluation Data (REED) is completed because a REED is necessary to inform the evaluation itself. Also, certain fields are required for different types of documents, and staff must complete all required fields before they can lock a document.

  Cleveland ISD also began using Frontline’s Service Management solution this year. Requiring service providers and paraprofessionals to use the system to track their services has resulted in increased compliance. Darlene shares, “Our compliance in tracking service time has been majorly improved. I would say it’s a thousand percent better.”

• Training resources and immediate feedback. Compliance checks and built-in requirements also help special education staff learn the correct process, offering insight into missed information or missed steps. “In a sense, it indirectly teaches you the appropriate ARD process and the steps to the process, so as you learn the system, you learn what is needed,” Darlene says.

  “When I first started, I had a clerk who used to correct my mistakes,” she continues. “I caught her at it and said, ‘Look, if you always correct my mistakes, how am I ever going to figure this out and learn it?’ Now we have an immediate feedback button for everybody. They click the button, they get immediate feedback, they go correct it.”

  As the team learns the forms in the system and what is required, the entire process flows more smoothly, Darlene explains. “Once users get ahold of the system and they understand, it is very structured and routine and people generally like it. There is a lot of success in seeing that ‘passed compliance’ button. When that window pops up, you get lots of applause. ‘Yay! I passed compliance!’ Diagnosticians and teachers really like that, to be able to solve their own errors independently and get something accomplished.”

This all adds up to less time spent correcting mistakes and double-checking documentation. “Somebody’s not having to look up 1,400 kids’ paperwork all the time,” says Meredith, noting the team will do spot checks but is confident that Frontline will help ensure compliance. This frees her up to focus on other parts of her job. “It is really a time saver on the compliance side….Over a year, it is probably weeks of time. It is a huge time saver.”

Easier Collaboration + Better Student Support

In the past, working with general education teachers and others who needed students’ paperwork meant distributing hard copies of documents or accessing multiple pieces of software. Now, the team can configure permissions in Frontline to allow the right people to collaborate and access the documents they need. And because the district also uses other Frontline solutions for Human Resources, Finance, and Technology processes, teachers are already somewhat familiar with the interface. “Everybody has access to go in and find that paperwork, whereas before, we might have had to put it in different things, there were copies handed out. Once we have taught them how to access things, they are readily available,” says Meredith.

ARD teams also find the system useful as they work with parents and students. During IEP team meetings, they project documents onto the screen and work through them together. “At the secondary level, we are showing accommodations. We are having the kid look at it, having the parent look at it at the younger levels, and saying, ‘This is what we are proposing. Do you have other things you want to add? Here are some things that we have.’ We show them the list. And when you get that buy-in from a student at the secondary level, you get buy-in from the teachers because it is not about stepping into a meeting and having the paperwork completed. It’s, ‘This is a team, and we’re creating a document to help a student.’ You get more buy-in because everybody is involved in it,” Darlene explains.

Robust Support

Frontline’s Learning Center is filled with videos that help users navigate and use the software. Darlene says this is very helpful when users run into an issue and need immediate help. “I can easily send those just-in-time videos out for people that were hired late.” This is especially handy for staff who are hired late in the year and missed the beginning-of-year training. This lets Darlene spend less time helping people understand the system and more time helping them work through issues related to working with students’ education.

When a software issue arises that requires Frontline customer support, Darlene knows that she’ll receive help quickly through Frontline’s live chat. “You get an almost instant response out of the live chat.” Shannon Wallace agrees: “[Frontline’s] team is extremely responsive to users and district level staff in answering questions and correcting issues.”

Meredith says she is confident that Frontline will continue to meet Cleveland ISD’s needs as the district grows. “When you increase more than a hundred percent of your population in five years, you have to have somebody who is going to be there to support on the back side. I definitely think it is a system that will move with us as we continue to add kiddos here.”