Originally published by Paul O'Neill, Counsel, Barton Gilman LLP; Co-Founder and Senior Fellow, National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools
In consultation with many schools, I have developed the attached rubric for programs to use in planning for the summer and coming school year despite the chaos and uncertainty of the COVID-19 crisis.
This Excel sheet has several parts. It provides a tab for each of three time-frames - Current School Year, Summer 2020, and the 2020-2021 School Year. There is also a top sheet that automatically populates with actions entered into each of the other tabs and serves as summary of actions planned across the timelines.
Each of the time-frame tabs prompts you to grapple with 5 broad categories of concerns:
- Operational
- Instructional
- Financial
- Governance
- Outreach & Support
Within each category are more detailed considerations that break down specific areas and sub-areas that should be addressed in planning. For example, the Instructional category includes a Special Education subcategory that includes the following challenges to address in the school's planning process:
- Services provided now vs. deferred as compensatory services (for reopening)
- Equity issues regarding access to equipment and services during distance learning
- Teletherapy
- Remote evaluations
- Remote due process hearings
- Assessing deficits due to closures
- Assessing compensatory services needed; Calculating and assigning costs; creating a plan for
- delivery
- Special education staffing
- Additional challenge
- Additional challenge
The final two are placeholders - schools should treat this rubric as a template to be customized and adapted as needed.
The rubric also calls on users to assign a priority level, owner and due date for each challenge, and asks them to identify important considerations that must be factored in for each challenge. Most importantly, it requires the user to identify action steps for every challenge (these will automatically also appear on the top sheet showing all time-frames). Click here to access the document:
Updated