Aspen School District seeks to improve education on special education protections, protocol

Aspen School District leaders are exploring ways to inform families of the district’s special education policies while still protecting the privacy of students.

Jill Pidcock, executive director of the Arc of the Central Mountains, was asked to speak at the school board’s Feb. 21 work session to discuss ways the school district can protect and value its students with disabilities and their privacy. The Arc of the Central Mountains is a nonprofit that advocates for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. 

Pidcock and the Arc of the Central Mountains advocates for students and families in seven Western Slope school districts. In the past few years, Pidcock has received increased calls from families in the Aspen School District who say there is a “culture that is not very understanding or forgiving, or in a position to be able to take on understanding or learning what is a disability,” she told the school board.

“In the past couple of years, we have had a lot more calls for advocacy from families who are in the district, and it ranges from academic support and understanding the IEP (individualized education program) process to behavioral issues,” Pidcock said. “Now, what we’re seeing much more is a community-based culture that is affecting how our families are being treated.”

“It’s not just happening in your school district, but the ripple effect is cultural,” she added.

In an interview with the Aspen Times, Pidcock declined to provide specific incidents in which families told her their students were treated poorly or singled out for having a disability, citing privacy laws that she highlighted in her presentation to the school board. But she and Superintendent Dave Baugh pointed to last year’s swatting incidents, which they said sowed fear in parents who may now be concerned for their student’s safety during even minor behavior problems during the school day.

The district must toe a thin line in these situations. Members of the school board and district leaders discussed how to explain IEPs, threat assessment protocols, and other safety protocols the district has in place for behavioral issues that may appear to pose a threat to others while not violating the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) or the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). 

District leaders are looking for ways to ease a heightened sense of fear among parents while not discriminating against students with disabilities. The first step is further education, many of them agreed.

“Right now, we kind of have to acknowledge what’s going on in our country, and the perception that parents used to have that their children were safe in school, for the most part, has eroded,” said Stacey Weiss, vice president of the school board, during the Wednesday work session. “The school district has worked very hard to improve safety protocols… but what that looks like to community members and to parents and to the school community is sometimes hard to square with what you see on the news that is happening in schools all over the country, and parents are terrified.”

School Board President Christa Gieszl used an example during the meeting of a student throwing a chair. In that scenario, even though the student may not intend to harm other students, parents may fear for their children’s safety and be more reactive. 

But the school cannot share information like a student’s IEP details or disciplinary actions with other parents in an attempt to ease fears and reiterate that the student is not dangerous to others. Under FERPA, it is illegal to share information about a student that could potentially identify them.

Pidcock noted that students who have behavior problems are not always students with disabilities, but she is concerned that most of the focus lands on those students in those instances.

“I feel like recently that those lines have gotten blurred in an effort to have other families feel safe about their children,” she said in an interview with the Aspen Times. “There is an opportunity to be able to potentially do some general training for families, and I’m sure they’re doing it right for behaviors at large, but when it comes to special education, there are steps that are taken as things escalate, and when they escalate then it’s an opportunity to be able to reestablish what needs to be put in place to support that student.”

In Colorado, school districts have an average of 10-12% of students in special education programs, Pidcock said. As of the October 2023 statewide student count, 14.4% of Aspen’s student body has a disability, she said. According to the Kids Count Data Center, 12.3% of Aspen’s student body had a disability in 2022. Data on the website was not available for 2023, but the percentage of students with disabilities has steadily increased in Aspen since at least 2013.

“Less than 15% of kids are even on IEPs and most of those kids are not having behavioral disruptions to the whole school,” said school board member Sarah Daniels during the work session. “There are 85% of parents that don’t understand the process and aren’t in the MTSS (multi-tiered support system) and they do not know what that looks like and what that means. If you want to change the culture there has to be some education around that for everyone.”

“No people are coming at this in a hateful way, they are coming at this uneducated and with fear and they are their own kid’s advocate,” Daniels added.

Pidcock wanted to start a conversation in the school district in hopes of advocating for further training for district leaders and families in the IEP process and to protect students with disabilities from discrimination.

The Arc can help school districts identify specific trainings and initiate conversations about how schools can better serve their students with disabilities. It also works with schools to build IEP teams for students.