Kyrene presents special-education opportunity review; district to pilot co-planning and onboarding changes in 2025-26

The Kyrene Governing Board received an opportunity review of the district's special-education program on May 27 that identified strengths and recommended specific next steps to reduce achievement gaps and improve staff retention.

Dr. Sandra Lane, assistant superintendent, and Dr. Cipe Turner, exceptional student services director, told the board they contracted an outside reviewer to analyze teaching-and-learning conditions and staffing. The external review team commended Kyrene's "strategic plan in action," a data-driven culture and strong assistive-technology support, Dr. Turner said.

The review also identified opportunities to strengthen district practice. Recommendations included bolstering the multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) through targeted professional development for general-education teachers, adopting a workload-based staffing model to align special-education resources to needs and reduce burnout, optimizing scheduling practices to prioritize instructional minutes and developing a formal onboarding and training plan for instructional assistants.

Dr. Lane said the district will prioritize collaboration and co-planning between general and special-education teachers as the next actionable step. "When children with disabilities are receiving core instruction, they are more likely to be learning core content," Lane said, explaining the rationale for integrated instruction and co-planning. She said the district will lay the foundation during 2025-26 and launch the model in 2026-27.

Lane and Turner also noted work is required to extract accurate service-minute data from the student information system and IEPs before a workload-based staffing model can be fully developed. That technical work will involve the accountability and performance management teams.

Board members praised the review and asked about outside expertise; Dr. Lane said the district worked with the District Management Group for the assessment.

Ending: District leaders told the board the guiding coalition that helped review the data will reconvene and expand membership; onboarding and instructional-assistant professional development will be implemented next school year while larger staffing-model changes proceed after data and systems work is completed.