Year One Priorities in Special Education

October 8th, 2025

This summer, a new HCPSS Special Education Strategic Plan was shared with the Howard County Board of Education, staff, and families, providing a roadmap for the department through 2030 so every student, staff member, and family is well-served. The plan prioritizes a redesign of the special education program by re-evaluating staffing and personalizing instructional practices to ensure students receive specially designed instruction and have their needs fully addressed. While the plan establishes the foundation for the adjustments and improvements that will be implemented, the Department of Special Education has produced several key actions to be initiated during this first year of the plan.

Since the launch of the new strategic plan in August, special education leaders have had several beneficial conversations with staff, parents, community advocates, and employee representatives to refine the plan and uplift shared key priorities. While the plan will continue to evolve throughout its duration in response to changing needs, the year one priorities are the first step to completing the redesign of special education in HCPSS.

Here are the key actions within each of the plan’s five themes:

From Plan to Action: Year One Priorities in Special Education | 2025-2026

Theme 1: Accelerating Student Learning, & Theme 2: Cultivate Student Learning and Well-Being

Create a coaching team to embed in program classrooms and support the delivery of services, both social-emotional and instructional, including collaboration with the curriculum team to provide instructional support to each classroom.
Collaborate across the Division of Academics to refine our district-wide Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) framework and implementation structure.

Theme 3: Foster Staff Growth and Engagement

Refine the school-based special education staffing model to address concerns with workload and service to students.
Plan fall, winter, and spring Professional Learning Days for administrators and staff.
Design and implement a training model for new special education teachers, paraeducators, and student assistants for rolling implementation throughout the year as they are hired for effective onboarding for implementation during the 2026-2027 school year.

Theme 4: Implementing Organizational Improvement

Evaluate and identify specialized program need by level to begin refining the staffing models, differentiating programs, and providing additional staff and/or program seats.
Evaluate and propose solutions to support new-to-district students with IEPs.
Begin reviewing the census of students in the district PreK-12 who would benefit from a different program design than the one they are currently in. Based on the data, begin to design programming for the 2026-2027 school year and beyond.
Begin assessing the program needs of students in non-public placements to inform the creation of some initial program classrooms for the 2026-2027 school year and beyond.
Determine the quantity of rooms per program per region for the capital planning workgroup on a regional redesign for the location of programs to ensure true regional access.
Begin building an itinerant paraeducator pool to provide close adult support, program and school support as needed. These staff will be utilized in place of contracted services.
Continue to re-evaluate and restructure central office support to schools to align to their needs and be able to provide side-by-side support.
Examine and refine the Central IEP meeting process.
Refine the clinical models of existing programs and design new models for programming to begin 2026-2027.
Evaluate and make recommendations for staffing for 12-month programs to align with student and program needs.

Theme 5: Foster Family and Community Engagement

Re-establish and refine the weekly Case Review meeting structure to provide real-time support to schools and staff with dispute resolution and overall unique student situations.
Create a public facing program guide to articulate the continuum of services into the 2026-2027 school year.