Robla reports rise in special-education identification, expands inclusion supports

Janet Horowitz, the district’s director of special services, told the Robla School District Board of Trustees that 331 students — 16.4% of the district’s preschool-through-sixth-grade enrollment of 2,018 — were eligible for special-education services in 2024–25, up from 12.6% the prior year.

The increase, Horowitz said, follows statewide trends and may reflect pandemic-related learning and socialization impacts: “A lot of that, in my personal opinion has to do with COVID,” she said. Horowitz also flagged a particularly large rise in students identified with autism, especially at the preschool level, and added that some preschool students later no longer meet the eligibility criteria after additional early intervention.

The update is significant because the district is shifting from a model that relied more on pull-out special-education placements to one that emphasizes inclusion and push-in supports in general-education classrooms. Horowitz said Robla has moved to hire inclusion staff and coaches, contracted for districtwide professional development in Universal Design for Learning (UDL), and enrolled sites in coaching and classroom walkthroughs to support teachers.

Key details Horowitz gave to the board include: the district’s total enrollment of 2,018 students; 331 students eligible for special education (16.4%); state average cited as 14.3%; a rise in autism identifications concentrated in preschool; and recent operational changes that returned 15 students to their home schools. Horowitz described program shifts in service delivery — more speech-and-language-only services for younger students, greater use of push-in instruction and fewer students in self-contained settings.

Horowitz said the district expanded staff more than originally planned: instead of one inclusion specialist for preschool–third grade and two independence facilitators, the district added two inclusion specialists and six independence facilitators. She said those hires allowed the district to implement inclusion at five sites and return students to neighborhood schools.

Horowitz described outcome measures the district will use to evaluate inclusion efforts, including teacher pre- and post-surveys on attitudes and comfort with inclusion, classroom observation and anecdotal progress. When Board President DeLuis asked, “What sort of data are we looking at to determine the, the success in that in that way?” Horowitz described a pre/post teacher survey and cited individual student results — for example, a student who moved out of a self-contained classroom and later scored at grade level on math without accommodations, and another student who is “currently performing at grade level in math and nearly grade level in English Language Arts.” She also read a case summary from an inclusion specialist documenting behavioral gains, increased participation and academic progress for a kindergarten student.

Horowitz said the district’s CDE-monitored targets show improvement: students spending more than 80% of the day in general education are “slightly above” the target, and students in self-contained settings (less than 40% general education) dropped from a high of 31% to 18%. She reported only two students placed in nonpublic separate settings across the past two years.

Partnerships and funding cited in the presentation include contracts with Changing Perspectives and consultant Sam Drazen for UDL and inclusive-practice training; a philanthropic gift from College Futures to support the Drazen contract; monthly Playmakers inclusive-sports sessions with peer mentors; Sacramento County Office of Education (SCOE) professional development; an Inclusive Early Education Expansion Grant for preschool inclusion; and training through WestEd’s Beginning Together program. Horowitz said one inclusion specialist is pursuing an inclusion-facilitator certificate through Beginning Together.

Board members asked how the district will measure programmatic impact beyond anecdotes. Horowitz said the district will run post surveys in May and track IEP and classroom-level indicators; she also offered to return with end-of-year goal outcomes.

The presentation closed with Horowitz inviting trustees to observe inclusion work and with the board expressing support for the direction and interest in future outcome data.