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Special-education director details compliance process and staffing pressures tied to vendor reliance
Summary
Heather Morgan told trustees the district uses mediation and corrective actions to resolve special-education complaints, highlighted legal vulnerabilities (timelines, missing IEP participants, unclear FAPE offers) and described staffing gaps driven by high turnover among paraprofessionals and contractors.
Director of Special Education Heather Morgan told the San Mateo-Foster City School District Board of Trustees that legal compliance and staffing are the district's top operational challenges in special education.
Morgan walked trustees through the complaint and settlement process under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), saying typical complaint resolutions include compensatory services, private-tuition reimbursements and occasional financial settlements after mediation. She said the Office of Administrative Hearings hears disputes when mediation fails and that hearings are rare because of cost.
On common compliance vulnerabilities, Morgan listed strict timelines (which do not pause for district closures), missing required IEP team members, lack of interpreters and unclear offers of a free appropriate public education (FAPE) as recurring issues that can create settlement exposure even years after the underlying events.
Trustees pressed the director about the district's use of nonpublic agencies (NPAs) and outside vendors for paraprofessionals, speech/language and occupational therapy services. Morgan said the district is intentionally reducing the number of vendor partners to improve consistency but remains dependent on NPAs for some positions the district cannot staff internally. She described acute turnover among paraprofessionals and vendors: "after any holidays ... we could have up to 40 resignations on a Monday," a pattern that leaves the district scrambling to fill one-to-one positions and undermines continuity of support in classrooms.
Morgan described internal strategies to reduce compliance risk: designating school psychologists as compliance officers to manage timelines and required participants, sharing an "IEP at a glance" summary with site teams, training on legally compliant note-taking, random IEP audits and corrective-action plans where needed. She also said technology improvements (integration between the district student information system ARIES and the special-education case system S) now let office staff see whether a withdrawing student had an IEP, reducing missed-notice errors.
On service documentation and oversight, Morgan said the district uses a service-tracker aligned to minutes and frequency in IEPs, and that case managers (typically capped at about 28 students) are responsible for documenting services and progress reporting. She said the district is monitoring trends in settlements and financial impact to identify problem teams and prevent repeat issues.
A public commenter praised the district's progress but asked for continued attention to continuity of reading programs from elementary into middle school. The board thanked Morgan and adjourned the study session; no formal policy vote or new budget authorization was taken at the meeting.
