LTE - Not So Fast ISS…
The purpose of this communication is to raise questions regarding your February 21, 2008 article ‘Parents worry as I-SS loses therapists, struggles to hire teachers‘.
I know one of the therapists to whom the article referred. She is my wife of 8 years. She is a wonderful spouse, an excellent mother, and a passionate SLP (Speech Language Pathologist). In addition to her genuine concern for special needs children, she has the crafty intelligence, objective reasoning and tenacious work ethic to be arguably one of the best therapists around.
From all accounts, I’ve heard she’s also rather pleasant to work with – and she’s pretty.
Throughout her 7 years in ISS, she’s consistently gone well beyond the extra mile to be successful in her profession, which is worthy of praise in any work environment, but deserves even more credit in the public school system, a system with the odds stacked against its success and effectiveness.
My wife has given her time and energy during late evenings and weekends for years. She accepted a meager salary well below her potential in the public sector as trade-off for the fulfillment she finds in helping children communicate, and the purpose of the system as a whole.
Throughout 7 years of hassle and headache, she maintained a positive outlook. Her only occasional complaints consistently revolved around the “blocking and tackling” of running any organization successfully – communication, competency and execution.
Whether it was being constantly inundated with excessive and redundant paperwork (still not effectively automated or digitized even in our age of relatively affordable IT solutions), or having to walk to the office to use the office phone for her many daily phone calls despite the fact that there was a functioning phone in her office which the system refused to activate, she kept her attitude positive, and her intent focused.
The amount of paperwork that SLP’s are assaulted with is truly unbelievable. Manual data-entry regarding children and their specifics is often required redundantly amongst and within different departments. And by manual, I mean pen and paper… sometimes even with a specific requirement for ink color. Many times a submitted form will be returned for violation of very subtle technicalities, all in what seems to be an organized attempt to achieve acute progress by means of obtuse labor. If effective therapy were appropriately gauged by the number of forms the therapists complete, this system would be very highly ranked.
The administration mandates new regulations and guidelines so frequently that therapists are always guessing if their latest paperwork will be returned for failure to meet newest specs, specs which were likely not communicated effectively. Shortages in the time or energy required to clearly communicate the purpose and justify the burden of additional red tape can be mitigated by having the therapists keep turning forms in until they are acceptable.
Clunky and inadequate software “solutions” are half implemented, often times not replacing the same data requirement on paper, but in addition to it.
These are just a few of the hurdles I’ve heard mentioned. Yet, despite what seems like every attempt by the system to render her impotent, my wife stayed in the game.
A year ago, we found out we were expecting our first child, and my wife, being the planner that she is, immediately began to plot out our schedule and finances. In the spring of 2007, nearly 6 months before the birth of our son, she requested to move to an 80% workload. Human Resources agreed.
Fast forward to the early Fall of 2007 – Our son was breech within 8 weeks of his arrival, so his birth date was planned. The date was conveyed to ISS immediately to help administration make arrangements to cover her caseload. ISS had many months advance notice to plan and accommodate for her absence. Yet, some children still missed services due to maternity leave.
When the time came for her return, administration changed its mind. An 80% workload was no longer an option. We were disappointed both by the change of rules and by administration’s neglect to even discuss the matter. Over the next 6 weeks, several emails and multiple phone calls to the director of HR regarding her leave went completely unanswered. The lack of professionalism displayed was astonishing. To this date, outstanding payroll issues have yet to be settled.
The systematic balking on previously agreed upon terms was not an isolated occurrence. This change was implemented across the entire speech department. Rumor circulated that the goal was to fix their budget woes by squeezing therapists out. When the HR office was asked point blank about their intent to lower the therapists head count, they conceded as much. However, they lamented the task of “firing the last one hired” and opted for the more underhanded approach of altering working conditions to the point where therapists would resign.
This validates the claims by the Superintendent that “not a soul was fired”. Technically this is true, failing to withhold contractual obligations either by blatant reneging, or by passive-aggressive complacency is very different than an old-fashioned firing. The former requires much less objective accountability, if any.
Four SLP’s resigned immediately due to the contractual dissent. An additional SLP retired. HR made no plans to replace these therapists. Instead, their caseloads were reallocated amongst the remaining SLP’s. In the resulting chaos, one SLP was assigned responsibility for more than 150 speech students. She too resigned. An SLPA also chose to forego the fun, and another SLP resigned this week.
Currently, there are more than 950 students receiving speech services, just a few more than the 650 cited by our Superintendent. Despite the loss of so many therapists, ISS is not advertising for a single therapist opening at the time of this writing.
With regards to the subject of therapists getting burned out, what do they expect?
Burnout is almost certainly due to excessive paperwork and caseload sizes. The caseload is the bigger burden which affects them negatively in two primary ways. First, they hardly have time in a work week to schedule and conduct the minimum amount of therapy sessions needed. Therefore, they have no other option but to bring home the oppressive administrivia mentioned above. Secondly, despite what seems as the systematic intent to minimize individualism, kids are different, and kids have different needs. Some kids need therapy once a week, some need it more. Some kids can be seen in a small group, but some children continue to need individual therapy. ASHA (The American Speech-Language Hearing Association), the licensing body for professional therapists, suggest guidelines pertaining to caseload limits that lend themselves to effective therapy. Before ASHA’s standards became more subjective, their recommended headcount of 40 students is nearly half of my wife’s average yearly caseload during her stint with ISS. When this guideline has been mentioned, it is readily dismissed due to the fact that it’s not the law. Perhaps the superintendent should consider this fact as a contributor to what he cites as the inefficiency of the Speech Therapy Program. Effective therapy, which should be the goal of the system, is achieved only when the child’s needs are addressed in a manner specifically designed for him, not just by herding kids in and out of the therapy rooms just to say “everyone has been seen”.
Apparently, the combination of ‘lots of paperwork’, ‘lots of kids’, and ‘not enough therapists’ still left the administration grasping for answers. So, they spent a portion of what could’ve been another therapist’s salary to pay a ‘consultant’ to come lend his expertise.
Dr. Holliday’s consultant felt the speech department was “not as efficient as it should be.” Specifically, my wife was told “too many children were being seen individually or in groups of 2-3”, and “Group sizes needed to be increased.” These recommendations were made without walking through the door of her classroom, without learning anything about her children’s needs and without hearing a child on her caseload speak. It’s my understanding that the consultant was recently brought on board as an ISS employee, trouncing one more therapist at the sacrificial altar of administrative funding. I’m not sure how more management will achieve more therapy sessions.
Before the enlightening insights of the ‘consultant’, my wife’s main concern was that her therapy did not meet its potential effectiveness because of the unrealistic demands of her caseload. Now, she was being told she had to spread herself even thinner.
After years of loyalty to the system, a “Teacher of The Year” award, and undoubtedly changing the lives of many individuals, the system rewards her by backing out of their workload agreement, blatantly ignoring her calls and emails regarding the agreement, and telling her she just hasn’t been seeing as many kids as she needed to. This barrage of incompetence broke her will to further endure the system.
My wife did not feel compelled to add her insight to the publicity of this story. I did. I’ve seen her work too hard to let the casual dismissal by ISS go unchecked.
In the interest of full disclosure, I do not support socialized education in any way. My perceptions of Government in general and Public Schools in particular lead me to expect such chaotic management and creative misdirection. This saga doesn’t strike me as noteworthy or exceptional – just par for the course.
However, even an avid supporter looking objectively at this situation should see the obvious dysfunction. My wife did support the system, and she was in it for the long haul. However, ISS has now taken exactly the kind of person they need to survive and strangled every ounce of motivation from her. She’ll now channel her energy and expertise into the private sector amongst therapists that the same school system will inevitably hire as contractors to fill the void at a much higher cost to tax payers.
Parents have the moral obligation to prepare their own children for existence as rational productive individuals. This obligation entails the right to make voluntary decisions pertaining to education as they see fit. As consumers, compulsory public education strips parents of this right by removing the invisible hand that instigates quality and value. In most areas of life, sloppiness such as failure to abide by contractual obligations, non-responsive HR, and mismanagement of funding all have consequences. Yet in this scenario, there seem to be very few - a little negative press, the loss of valuable employees, but the system goes on.
Why would we dare attempt to tease the laws of causality and economics with such a sacred thing as the education of our children?
