A review by five Special Education professionals from the Hawai’i Department of Education, which cited lack of accountability and major non compliance in the services provided for local SPED children, has led the Department of Education director Dr. Salu Hunkin-Finau to decentralize SPED — reassigning SPED leadership to specific high school districts “to better serve” their students.

In a letter to the Human Resources Director Sonny L Thompson last week, DOE Deputy Director Fa’aui Vaitaotolu explained DOE’s move to decentralize SPED, and asked for his support “of our request to move these changes forward to better serve this special population of students.”

The requested changes, their purpose and the reasons were outlined in her Jan. 23, 2015 letter to the HR director, although there is no record available of HR’s response.

Samoa News understands there has been a verbal directive from the Governor’s office to DOE to not proceed with this move to decentralize SPED, however, Samoa News was unable to find anyone willing to go on record or to confirm the directive.

Samoa News has also learned that the Ass’t Director of SPED, Jeanette Vasai Tilo has objected to her ‘reassignment’ and the decentralization of the division. Samoa News will report on this matter in Thursday’s issue.

LETTER TO THE DHR DIRECTOR

DOE Deputy Director Vaitaotolu begins her letter by pointing out that following the completion of the SPED review in July 2014, the DOE leadership required SPED leadership to submit immediately a corrective action plan (CAP) to address the non-compliance issues so that by the end of the school year, most, if not all of the non compliance issues would have been addressed.

“A spot review by the end of the first semester (January 2015) was planned for monitoring purposes,” Vaitaotolu said, adding “that one important recommendation provided by the SPED review report was the critical need for SPED leadership to be supportive, more visible and assist Resource Specialists and SPED classroom teachers to address the non-compliance issues on a daily basis.”

The DOE Deputy Director stated, “in other words, it was recommended that the SPED Program Directors and Assistant Director be more proactive by working out in the schools with teaching, planning, training, data collection, updating files, inputting information, reassessment and collaboration with the school principals.”

According to Vaitaotolu, by the end of December 2014 and in the most recent review by SPED Compliance Officers a few weeks ago, it was apparent that SPED non-compliance issues clearly described in the review report 2014 were still “gravely unchanged. “

“In essence, SPED leadership was still negligent in doing their duties.”

Vaitaotolu did note that the review team commended a couple of bright spots in the SPED division — where the Program Director Theresa Atuatasi, and Leilani Maifea and Mu’a Galea’i were conducting exceptional work in monitoring SPED services.

“Unfortunately their efforts and reports of the serious non-compliance SPED situations went unheeded by SPED leadership for quite sometime,” she stated.

Vaitaotolu said that based on this and the fact that previous attempts were made to help SPED leadership to become more effective in addressing the noncompliance issues, the SPED leadership was called to meet and discuss viable options on Jan.9 and reminded again that their primary responsibility was to supervise, monitor and support SPED staff in the schools to ensure all compliance issues were addressed and the students were served.

She said that each program director was informed, during the Jan. 9 meeting, that on the first day of the new semester, Jan. 26, 2015, they would clock in and out of SPED Resource Center in the High School of their assigned school district.

There they would continue to provide supervision and support to the SPED Resource Specialists and classroom teachers.  “SPED Directors will be required to meet and discuss with the school principals the accomplishments and challenges in meeting the many non compliance issues in every school,” Vaitaotolu wrote.

They were each assigned to school districts as follows: Fa’anati Penetusi to the Mid West District; Tafevalu Auemoelogo to the West District; Theresa Atuatasi to the Central District and Frances Leau to the East District.

Vaitaotolu further pointed out that on Tuesday Jan. 20, 2015 she met with Assistant Director of SPED Division, Jeanette Vasai Tilo, and the DOE Director. At this meeting, the Assistant Director was informed of her reassignment, new responsibilities, and the reason behind the move — which was essentially due to the SPED review in July 2014, subsequent efforts to correct the problems, which to date were ‘unchanged’.

According to the DOE deputy director, during this Jan. 20 meeting, Tilo was informed of the decision that effective Jan. 26, 2015, Tilo “will focus her time on planning SPED training needs and review the annual SSIP and OSEO reports prepared by SPED staff” under Vaitaotolu’s supervision. Tilo was also told at that time “to clock in and out at the Central DOE Office effective that date as well.”

Vaitaotolu further noted in her letter to the HR Director that Governor Lolo M. Moliga has a copy of the SPED review report and has been briefed about the need for the urgent changes needed for SPED to be in full compliance. She wrote that the governor “has given DOE leadership his support for the sake of the IEP students.”