The Batavia USD 101 special‑education department told the board it has moved from a compliance-era model toward integrated classroom supports, and presented work intended to address a state citation for significant disproportionality.

"What we have found is that a student sense of belongingness is measurable and it's actionable and it's directly connected to their academic successes," Carrie Ryu, the district’s director of special education, told the board. Ryu said the district’s root-cause analysis of the ISBE citation identified attendance, higher discipline rates and exclusionary practices as drivers that removed students from classroom instruction and hindered growth.

Ryu described specific steps the department has taken: embedding interventions in general‑education classrooms (push‑in rather than pull‑out models), aligning special‑education teachers with instructional coaches, refining diagnostic practices in reading and math, expanding team‑based MTSS interventions, and providing professional learning aimed at differentiating language differences from disabilities. She said the district requires parental informed consent before evaluations and at eligibility meetings.

Ryu acknowledged the over‑identification pattern is concentrated in specific learning disability for Black students and said it emerged over a multi‑year pattern that triggered the state review. "If you are a Black student coming to Batavia, you're probably 4 times more likely to be found to have a learning disability than the average Batavia student," she said, summarizing the ISBE finding and the district’s analytic results.

Board members asked whether curricular or SEL work related to belonging correlates to the disproportionality findings; Ryu said those efforts are linked and previewed a deeper belonging presentation at the next meeting from Catherine Murray and Natalie Osel. She also noted earlier professional development (including a specialist named Fong) aimed at distinguishing language differences from disorders and reducing diagnostic error.

District staff pointed to student‑level outcomes the district views as progress: a lower overall special‑education identification rate (13% in Batavia vs an Illinois average cited at about 16%) and increased rates of students with IEPs meeting MAP growth targets (presenters cited a rise from roughly 49% in 2023 to around 64% thereafter), which staff framed as evidence that integrated interventions and attendance work can improve access and growth.

Ryu said the disproportionality finding did not prompt an immediate policy vote at the meeting; instead, the district described ongoing corrective work, further staff training, family‑engagement steps and data monitoring to track whether identification patterns change as interventions continue.