While SEAC seeks to be responsive to immediate needs that families bring to meetings, we have also identified big topics and areas of concern to work on with district leadership over time to improve. Reach out to seac.leaders@corvallis.k12.or.us if you want to learn more about our work in any of these topics.

Navigating special education services can be challenging for many families: technical jargon and acronyms, rigid legal and administrative processes, IEP meetings with large groups of specialists and unfamiliar faces, immense amounts of data and test scores and standard deviations, all on top of the emotions that come with advocating for a child with disabilities and learning differences. SEAC is working with district leadership to identify ways to improve families' experiences on their children's IEP teams. Examples of these efforts include:

• Providing educational content during SEAC meetings on technical terms common in special education so that families feel more empowered in discussing different components of their children's IEPs;

• Asking all case managers to reach out to every family at the beginning of each school year to introduce themselves, explain their role as the case manager, and open lines for ongoing communication;

• Sending families drafts of their IEPs before meetings so families can come prepared with questions and feedback;

• Holding empathy-based listening sessions during SEAC meetings where families can offer insights on ways to improve the process (eg, requests for IEP team members to be more trauma-aware of what kinds of experiences some families have in raising children with disabilities).

When SEAC moved its meetings online and into the evening in the Fall of 2020, we opened up new channels for more diverse voices to inform our work. Adding Spanish interpretation to these meetings invited a group of families whom SEAC had previously failed to welcome. The stories and concerns raised by Spanish-speaking families of children accessing special education have highlighted broader, long-standing inequities that we are asking the district to take clear and specific actions to address. We submitted this letter to district leadership on February 7, 2022 with the following requests:

• Contract with a community-based consultant to pilot a culturally- and linguistically-specific support program to help Spanish-speaking families navigate special education services (see our draft proposal for Familias Unidas Para Inclusividad co-created with families, community organizers, and members of DELTA parent leadership, with school staff consultation).

• Provide all district interpreters (of all languages) with culturally- and linguistically-specific training to translate special education language, acronyms, processes, and related disability and education concepts.

• Break down silos and bring coherence to the ways schools support families by providing school-based social workers, health navigators, and liaisons with training about special education processes so that families can bring IEP-related concerns to staff with whom they have existing relationships, and those trusted staff members can facilitate relationships with the IEP team or be available to support families at IEP meetings.

• Engage in a series of listening and learning sessions to understand the needs of families from other BIPOC and immigrant communities as they navigate special education services, with the longer-term goal of informing the potential creation of a SPED Equity position.

In response to the letter and other advocacy efforts, the district has committed resources to create a new classified position to help Spanish-speaking families with children with disabilities navigate special education processes at Lincoln and Garfield Elementary Schools. The district has also posted two job openings for bilingual special education teachers. District interpreters are completing a six-week training program on interpreting for IEP meetings, and case managers are getting trained on how to better use interpreters with families. Special Education district staff are developing training for family support teams, to be offered next year, with the invitation for SEAC to collaborate on the scope and sequence on the training.

Summary coming soon!

Summary coming soon!