Episode 11: Authentic Inclusive Education: Our Story

On this, part two of my conversation with Vera Piasecki, Vera and I are joined by Fred, CEO of New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education. Fred and Vera share a behind-the-scenes look at the steps it took to achieve this inclusive setting in the school district where Vera’s daughter Hannah attends.  

Episode Transcript

Arthur: Welcome to the Inclusion Think Tank podcast presented by New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education NJCIE. As the name suggests, this podcast will discuss inclusive education and, most importantly, why it works. 

On this episode, I welcome back to the podcast, Vera Piasecki. On the last episode, Vera shared how her daughter Hannah benefited socially and academically from being in an inclusive education setting. On this, part two of our conversation, Vera and I are joined by Fred, CEO of New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education. Fred and Vera share a behind-the-scenes look at the steps it took to achieve this inclusive setting in the school district where Hannah attends.  

Arthur: Welcome to another episode of the Inclusion Think Tank podcast presented by New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education in our last episode, I welcomed my guest Vera Piasecki, and I am happy to welcome Vera back for a part two conversation. We are also joined today by Fred, who is the CEO of New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education. And thank you both for joining me today for this part two episode 

In today's conversation, we will be taking a look at the steps that the school district where Vera’s daughter Hannah attends, the steps they have taken to better embrace an inclusive education setting. So with that being said, I am turning over the conversation to Fred.

Arthur: So again, thank you both for joining me for this very important part two of our conversation.

Fred & Vera: Thank you, Arthur. 

Fred: And Vera, always a pleasure. The steps that happened, that we learned about in the last podcast are so familiar for, unfortunately, too many parents out there who are trying to get their children included but may struggle with reluctant school personnel or different, difficult situations. Eventually, for you, this kind of came to a head where you had really no other choice except to pursue a legal option. 

Do you want to tell us a little bit about that, and what the result of that was?

Vera: Yes. Hannah had been fully included up through preschool into fourth grade, and academically, she had held her own in the beginning. As we expected, as she got older, the gap widened and it required modifications versus just accommodations.

The curriculum really needed to be modified. They felt she had to be removed into a self-contained environment. We filed a complaint with the state. The state agreed with us, that modifications could happen in the general ed setting. Immediately after we won that complaint, the district had set a meeting required to do numerous evaluations, including a psychiatrist, and reconvened a meeting very quickly. And that was in March of her fourth grade year, and on March 15th, they announced to us that not only did they not want to remove her to a resource room in her same school, they wanted to remove her in 15 days completely from that school and have her take a bus across town to another school where she knew no children. Obviously, that was very upsetting because they skipped a whole bunch of tiers of support, which could have at least kept her in her school with her friends that she'd known now for five years. 

Vera: We felt we had no other alternative than to file and so that we could stay put, so she could stay in her setting. After that, we hadn't had a lawyer up until that point, and we knew that we were now, it was beyond our capability.

And so we were able to get a lawyer and start the process of looking at expert witnesses and figuring out what our next steps were. Very overwhelming, very stressful to the family as a whole. My daughter has two older siblings who were at that point, were also in the school district and had spoken and been involved in some of our understanding challenges programs to educate students about children with different disabilities. So,  it was a very difficult time. So over the course of I believe it was the next almost two years we went through the court process.

If you had ever told me I'd be sitting up on a stand being drilled with questions from my district's lawyer, I would have laughed at you and thought that was silly, but I went through all of that and we were successful.

Vera: We won the case. In fact, the judge came back in record time within 30 days with her order, and that order required Hannah to be included in the general education setting with the appropriate supports. And one of the supports that she specifically highlighted was the need to train all of Hannah's teachers in inclusive practices.

And once that happened, I feel like our district, it was almost like a perfect storm of things that changed. So we won that court case, and at the same time, we had a change of administration that was coming in. We had a new director of special services. And we also had strategic five-year strategic planning that was happening in the district, and much to my surprise, during the strategic planning process, people stood up and made the second-highest priority behind class size was inclusion, and I didn't even stack the speakers Fred I swear to God. I was so stunned at the fact that people came up and stood in all of these sessions and made their points. 

Vera: The new head of special education when she came in, I don't even know if she was technically in the district yet, but you had somebody introduce us and she came right up to me and she said, If you don't mind, I think I have somebody that can do the training. I'd like to bring NJCIE in. And I said, OK. I mean, I hadn't researched to find it, but I went with it. She's now in middle school, and our relationship with the supports of having an NJCIE expert or consultant to support the teachers started when she started in sixth grade, and she's now an eighth. 

Fred: Continues to be fully included and is doing extremely well, and there's definitely been a tone shift. Obviously, with the teachers and everyone else in relation to her inclusion. 

Vera: yes, I think in sixth grade. I think there was a lot of investment time in training. I don't think, well, I know, because I asked all of the teachers that were involved whether they had ever included a child, like Hannah; Down Syndrome, speech impairment, physical, intellectual. If they had ever included a child, like Hannah, in their gen ed classrooms and across the board, nobody had. I think one teacher said they had, but it had failed because it wasn't supported. 

So, to have this group of teachers that have never done this before and the ending meetings and the meetings we had in between. I think there was a lot of investment up-front. I think you guys spent a lot of time, but then I discovered that the end of sixth grade going into seventh grade, well, guess what? The sixth-grade science co-teacher met with the seventh-grade science co-teacher and talked a little bit about Hannah.

So I think your involvement, meaning NJCIE’s involvement and consultants probably wasn't as intense in the following seventh and eighth-grade years as it was in sixth. But I found for the first time in my life, I went to an IEP meeting and for the first time, I wasn’t nervous about being told she was going to be removed and have to move from her friends and neighbors and carpool and everything else. 

Vera: The other thing that was really unique was that we really focused on her strengths, and we weren't just focusing on the negative and the fact that she was below grade level and all of these other things. It was just, I feel like the clouds parted and the sun is shining as she has been going through middle school. So it's been a wonderful experience. 

Fred: So it’s certainly has been a wonderful experience on our end as well.

The teachers were very receptive to all of the suggestions and strategies we might make, and were actively working to make modifications on their own. And it was really a great situation that came out of a maybe a horrible experience with the lawsuit.

But the post lawsuit period, especially for Hannah, has been fantastic. And there's our involvement in this. But really, from my vantage point, I see the lawsuit being this precipitating event for great change across the district, which you don't often see, but what I was told as far as their selection for director of Special Ed was that they were actively searching for someone who had an inclusive mindset to be the next director. That the lawsuit and the events around it had so influenced their change in mindset that they wanted to make sure whoever was coming in would lead their district in a more inclusive direction.

This is why I believe is a big reason why your current director was selected, because she has a track record of making school districts more inclusive. But the change, I mean, hasn't stopped there. They put number two on the strategic plan as becoming more inclusive for a fairly, in Jersey, a fairly large district to be fairly bold with saying, we need to become more inclusive as a district and following through by having it on the strategic plan, making inclusive ed hires and really pushing in that direction. It's really remarkable how much change the one situation your court case kicked off.

Fred: And it's been, what, two years, three years since that decision?

Vera: Yes. 

Fred: And the district has done a number of different things to help promote and make change within the district. They have signed up with different grant projects in the state focused on helping districts become more inclusive.

They are making placement changes. They are investing in training and support for their teachers of multiple buildings, and it is really remarkable how much this shifted the mindset, policy, and practices. 

Fred: Did you think that it would have this type of impact?

Vera: I don't know if we can take all the credit for the change. I had been told that my case was the impetus for looking for somebody who is more inclusive. The other thing that I came to realize during this, as a parent, Hannah was very unique in our district.

She might have been the only child with the extent of her needs being included in gen ed . So in a district back then, it had 9 or 10 thousand students. We were the ones, right? It's a very hard road, a very hard journey to follow.

And with our privacy and all of these other things, it was a journey that we kind of did quietly on our own. I didn't sit there and I had a few friends that I would talk to and bounce things off of, but it wasn't something that was broadcast throughout the community.

And when we were going through this process, my daughter, against my wishes actually put out an Instagram post talking about how disappointed she was in the district and that they tout inclusivity, and how it is important to understand different challenges.

And then they do something like this. You want to remove her sister, and that Instagram post got shared. Hundreds of times got posted on Facebook, and suddenly the community heard what was happening to Hannah. And the outpouring of these from these parents and the children, her classmates who had never been formally trained in the benefits of inclusion. 

They didn't know that they weren't walking the same road or challenges that I was. The support was just incredible. Kids were writing to the board of ED. They put together a video of pictures from Hannah from kindergarten and sent it to the board of ED.

Vera: That video actually got used in my court case because one of the claims of the district was that she had no friends in class. So we use that as a counterpoint, and so I think the community, it just made no sense to them.

So just from a commonsense standpoint, and I remember one mom looking at me and saying, why would they do this? She makes my son a better person. I will never forget her saying that to me. You know the things that he was learning just from her being in the class setting with her. 

So I think not just the formal filing, the documents going to court or whatever, but I think the whole challenge and then the community becoming informed also was part of the impetus. We want this to happen. 

I had people that didn't even have kids in Hannah's class that stood up to the board of ED meetings and spoke out against what was happening. Maybe it helped hire the right person, but it also got the community aware. So, but again, that community would not have been aware if Hannah hadn't been with them for five years. Right? Who would have known who or who would have cared

Fred: and it certainly continues to this day. We were at a parent group meeting not too long ago where we're all on the same page. There might have been slight differences here and there about pace and speed of change, but it was really refreshing to see such camaraderie and mutual respect and support.

And it's clear that we know the people in charge now are trying to do everything they can to support what the community has called for. So it is a really remarkable ending to a case involving an individual student.

And there certainly may have been other factors involved in promoting such a wide-scale change. But this has to be one of the more major ones and to see such positive results starting to form both for your daughter and for the district at large.

We don't often see that. We often hear that one person or one situation can change the world, but it's hard sometimes to find real-life examples. And I would definitely say this is a real-life example of it.

Fred: I certainly am thrilled to be a part of helping in any way that we can. 

Vera: Well, I have to say I definitely went gray during that process, Fred. But it is. I still get people be it in training sessions all over New Jersey, and I'll get a friend of mine may send me a screenshot of the case they're talking about somewhere up north Jersey or down south, And it's and it's our case not to lie, there are many times I sat there and said, Oh my gosh, what are we doing? And the stress and the finances and the time and all of those things.

But so to see the outcome benefit just more than one child. And now, following Hannah through her elementary school is another, a young lady with Down's syndrome. And I just got off a meeting with another parent who has a son with Down syndrome who's included in preschool.

And just to see those things and to hear, to sit in on meetings that are so positive, and focus on how the child has progressed. Things I never experienced because it was always talking about removing her, removing her, removing her. It really, I almost wanted to cry after one meeting because it was so positive. So still a long way to go. Sure. But when I see those changes, It makes me feel great that we were starting to head in the right direction.

Vera: And NJCIE’s  support has been great. 

Fred: We’re happy to help, but quite obviously you did the heavy lifting, as did the changes your district has made. But I thank you for the mention. 

Well, before we go, is there anything else that you wanted to say?

Vera: You’re putting me on the spot now? 

Fred: Yes. 

Vera: I think as our district goes through these changes, I think the grants that they're involved in will certainly help. And I've seen administrators where we kind of batted heads about where she should be placed and I see after them doing a self-assessment and being trained, I can see their mindset has changed and their understanding has changed. 

I'm very hopeful for the future, for the kids that follow. I still think we need a lot more parent training as well, because I think parents, particularly of kids that might be non-verbal or struggle with the issues that my child does. It's a scary thing. The concept of throwing them into a general education setting with up to 30 kids or something like that.

So, I think there's still a lot to be done, but hopefully, we'll see this through. 

Fred: Well, if you have anything to do with it, I'm sure they sure will. Well, it's always a pleasure seeing you, and talking about how great of an outcome everything is shaping up to be. And like you said, there’s still a long road, but we're on the right one. 

Vera: I think so. I think so.

Fred: Well, thank you so much for taking your time today to join us. Thank you for having me on.

Arthur: Yeah, thank you both for  having this conversation as I mentioned, a very important follow-up to our previous conversation to tie it all in together. So thank you both for your time for joining this episode.

Vera: Thank you, Arthur. 

Arthur: You’re welcome.

Arthur: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Inclusion Think Tank Podcast. This podcast is brought to you by New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on YouTube or Spotify and to follow us on social media @NJCIE, until next time.