Special Education During COVID-19: Defining, Implementing & Sharing Best Practices
At Creative Minds International Public Charter School, we provide our students with high-quality special education services grounded in inclusive practices. These services are delivered in the general-education classroom and are supplemented with a continuum of small-group and one-on-one services that meet students where they are.
When we switched to remote learning in March, our director of inclusion, Amita Lathigra, was committed to making sure that high levels of support continued, despite changes in the day-to-day circumstances of our students and families. She says, “I started thinking of our families and all the changes they were going through.”
First Steps
The first step was staying connected with families. Amita kept conversations flowing through regular emails about our intentional communication plan, our desires to be flexible and accommodate families’ needs, and, as she says, “our love for their children.” This outreach allowed our team to quickly set up related services for students, even as modes of delivery were changing.
Related services such as speech, occupational, and physical therapy are the foundation of students’ lives, and Amita knew that “our students would not be ready for learning without them.” She and her team saw students thriving in new and unexpected ways as the students engaged in therapies online, growth that she attributes to parent and caregiver participation and to the more focused sessions that can happen away from the distractions of the school building.
Community Alliances
As a long-time special education leader, Amita has strong relationships that bring opportunities to share her work beyond our school. In May the Special Education Cooperative invited her to participate in a DC Public Charter School Board webinar, where she presented the Creative Minds service plan, our holistic approach to distance learning, and the thinking behind our approach. Her appearance drew inquiries from other DC charter schools that asked to review our plan and requested support in crafting their own plans.
In April, Amita joined a Special Education Cooperative working group, along with leaders from DC International School and Inspired Teaching and special education attorney Lauren Baum. Group members worked together to determine what Free Appropriate Public Education means for students with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The outcome of this collaboration is a FAPE worksheet, with guidance on developing a distance-learning plan for students with disabilities, that has been shared with charter schools in DC.
On June 17, in partnership with the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, the FAPE working group presented a compensatory-services worksheet and guidance to more than 100 DC-area special education leaders during a webinar. OSSE hosted the webinar and endorsed the working group’s efforts and guidance documents. View the slides from this webinar.
On July 9, in a webinar hosted by the Deputy Mayor for Education, the Special Education Cooperative working group presented guidance on the importance of tiering recovery plans for students.
“The coronavirus outbreak has pushed schools to think creatively in how to serve students with disabilities, and we are thrilled to lead the charge in DC,” Amita says. “Guiding schools in how to create distance-learning plans that are robust and meaningful for students is exciting work. I love sharing my expertise in DC and look forward to continuing to build leader capacity across the city.”
To learn more about the Creative Minds plan for special education services during the COVID-19 pandemic, please email Amita Lathigra at amita.lathigra@creativemindspcs.org.