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Manor ISD special education leaders report progress: evaluations, dyslexia services, CPAC and corrective actions
Summary
Special education staff told the board they serve nearly 1,100 students, completed corrective-action work with the Texas Education Agency, increased timely evaluations and expanded professional development and family engagement efforts.
Dr. Christopher Harvey and special education staff presented a multi-year overview of Manor ISD’s special education program on Sept. 15, reporting program changes, compliance work and academic-area trends.
Dr. Harvey said the district serves “about almost 1,100 students” with special education services and provided a breakdown of eligibility categories and service arrangements. He reported 237 initial referrals in a prior year with 225 evaluations completed that met timelines; he said the remaining referrals did not qualify. The presentation highlighted a weekly referral review process (involving speech-language pathologists and psychologists), increased professional development, weekly photo reviews of classrooms to identify trends requiring support, and monthly family-engagement meetings and a reconstituted CPAC (district parent advisory council) to increase parent outreach. (Presentation: transcript blocks beginning about 5818 through 7049.)
Dr. Harvey said the district had submitted corrective-action work to the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and that most corrective items were removed; one item remained pending but staff believed they had met the requirements. He described improvements in dyslexia services, including implementing the Reading by Design curriculum, training dyslexia teachers, and moving dyslexia work into the special-education division. The presenter reported dyslexia-service compliance approaching 99.97% and said the district planned additional training and onboarding to ensure full implementation. (Special-education highlights: transcript blocks 6280–6836.)
Trustees asked for disaggregated MAP and state-test breakdowns by special-education eligibility, and staff agreed to provide more detailed reports. Board members asked for trend data on dispute-resolution activity (complaints, OCR notices, settlements, due-process hearings), and staff agreed to compile multi-year trend data for trustees and to deliver additional reports and campus-level breakdowns as requested. The trustees also discussed ARD/IEP facilitation capacity: the department has seven ARD facilitators working across campuses with two vacancies at that time; staff said they were managing scheduling and meeting timelines and that district staff were stepping in as needed to maintain compliance. (Q&A and board requests: transcript blocks 7020–7928.)
Dr. Harvey and team described standardizing IEP-implementation processes, linking procedures and manuals to the principal handbook and moving to a district-wide walk-through reporting system (software named “Bullseye”) so coordinators and principals can submit and aggregate walkthrough data. They outlined ongoing campus-level observations and targeted instructional support, including before- and after-school “clinics” to provide teacher coaching and student intervention.
Ending: District special-education leaders reported progress on corrective actions, program standardization, dyslexia services and family engagement, and agreed to provide trustees with requested disaggregated data and trend reports at follow-up briefings.
