I feel very privileged to speak with an ally in the legal system, Kevin Brague. He fights for special needs children to get the services they need, as well as protected the civil rights of children in school. He offers insight into how we can engage the community to support schools as well as leveraging teaching aids. We touch on how we can use Medicaid dollars for special education resources, and how we as a society might rethink the segregation between medical and education funding to be, perhaps, shared through a wellness fund. We’re both on the same page of integrating medical clinics into the educational buildings to ease the burden on caregivers. We both share the intuition that the industrial / factory model of the economy and education is in need of an overhaul, especially given the new evidence of how environment and physiology influence a learner’s readiness and capacities. We explore how to incentivize bringing in families and communities.
Public schools fund $8,000 per year per student, and private schools’ tuition and costs can run as high as $30,000 per student per year. Though considering how much acute medical costs run for people who weren’t given adequate life skills?
Links:
Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center with Rose Anderson High School
Transcript:
keevin bybee 0:00
Welcome to the one school podcast. This is Dr. keevin Bybee. I’m a family physician exploring how we might turn local public schools into 24/7 365, safe havens for our children. By having conversations with people with experience and expertise, who might inform how a project like this might come to fruition. Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Kevin Bragg. He is a lawyer in the education sector. And I would love for him to kind of give us a brief background and how he ended up in law as it intersects with education. So Kevin, thanks for coming on today. Love to hear.
kevin brague 0:36
Thanks for having me. I’m glad to participate in this podcast. Again, my name is Kevin Bragg, I guess the background information and really comes from product of the public school system. And I started off, you know, kindergarten all the way through college and in public schools. I can’t say that that was the genesis for me picking this particular practice area, but it certainly influences it. Law school, I went, I went to a private law school Pepperdine University. And during my law school experience, I had one of my constitutional law professors. Dr. James was very interested in education. So in addition to taking my my required constitutional law classes from him, he also offered a class in in education law. So I was able to get a broad exposure to the, you know, the least the judicial forces that shape education, law, and some of those opinions and its intersection with the Constitution. And you know, what kind of rights and or diminished set of rights that students have within the school system. And so that was definitely a big interest for me in law school. And then, about the same time going with law school, my my third son was born. And he was born with a genetic condition known as VeloCardioFacial syndrome, or 22, q 11. And so within the few years of going through law school, and then the few years after law school, why we were figuring out that diagnosis and dealing with the challenges of a special needs child, my kind of naturally morphed into, well, I better study the IDE a, I better, you know, we’re going to be spending the next 18 years dealing with special education. So I did a bunch of self study and learn that. And then that, of course, kind of morphed into talking with other parents just because as a parent of a special needs child, you get involved in the community rather quickly. And it’s a it’s a relatively small community within the public school system and you, you learn, you know, what other parents are doing. And when they find out that you have some specialized knowledge. You know, they ask questions, and so I’m answering questions and and so from there, my my practice kind of grew a little organically, I specialized did a lot of special education cases. As that process went on, or the years unfolded, I had some practical realities of it’s it’s hard to make a living, doing only special education law. Because the difficulty is that you’re charging parents to get access to what should be a free education that’s taxpayer supported. And it still there was this kind of weird irony and dichotomy and in me charging, you know, a fair amount of money for kids to get the services that Congress set aside and the state adopted laws and regulations to provide for these kids. And here we are getting lawyers to get some basic educational services. So that and then at the same time, I was picking up a few cases here and there where kids are getting hurt at school. And so right now, my practice is predominantly representing students that are injured at school, as well as civil rights of students, the civil rights of students that are affected while they’re in school. And I’m not limited to the K to 12. My practice goes all the way up through graduate school students. And because some of those same rights, specifically the Rehabilitation Act of 1972, is known commonly as section 504. Those still apply to, to most every college and university because they take federal money in the form of loans and grants. So they’re, they’re required to follow that law. So that’s the big broad brush. The background scope of what what brought me into education. So over the last? Well, let’s see my my son’s in his early 20s. So dealing with this for, you know, roughly 20 years, and in Oregon specifically for more than 15 years of really focusing on education, love, I’ve been to a lot of schools.
My son has been into private schools. So I have a parent professional perspective on different school models, kind of what works, and what what can maybe be done better. And really the, I guess, 50,000 foot view of what models should we be looking at from an education perspective to really help out our K to 12 students, indeed powerful
keevin bybee 5:52
story, the others a couple of points that I want to come back to thinking about, you know, who is responsible for children who are injured, not exactly on school ground, but parry school hours. And then also thinking about how, you know, schools are probably not deliberately trying to Stonewall kids with special needs, but they’re already strapped for resources. And I can, you know, as I remember, intern year when the emergency room calls me for a new admin, like another one, and it’s not that I don’t want to do it, it’s just that I’ve already got a lot of work I’m already doing. And so thinking about, well, if the institution was more well resourced, and specifically, in the case of something like a 24/7 school, that’s more like a community center. Would that you know, you’re out of a job, only kind of joking.
kevin brague 6:52
Any time we can put some lawyers out of work is probably a good thing. If, you know, we can become a slightly less litigious society, it would certainly probably help overall. The issue, so there’s a few issues in there. The kind of the 24/7 model of a school is fascinating. And I think where I really see that the, where the rubber meets the road is just the idea of support, which is your How do you keep teachers engaged with students? And because I think that’s really, as I’ve thought about this issue, it’s really in the classroom, what’s what’s the difference between, you know, a really good Elementary School, and, you know, a, say, just a regular high school teacher, what’s the difference between those two teachers, and I think in the elementary school setting, you have teachers that didn’t, for the most part, are genuinely engaged with their students. And it’s a first name basis, they are aware of the students at that stage in life, I think, oftentimes, you get a lot of parents support, because you’ve got school functions. They’re, they’re really building a community within the elementary school. So you get parents there for Parent Night, you’ve got you know, school carnivals, you have assemblies, activities, little awards, and so you have a lot of, and then field trips, and other things that bring in parent engagement. So one of the so in the height, you contrast that with, say, the middle or high school, of course, kids, you know, we want more independence, we want teenagers to feel their own space, but what we’re losing is a lot of the parent engagement. So you have some, you know, exceptions to that, right, you got parents that are engaged in a band or, or football or sports teams, so we have some, some extracurriculars that are out there that require parents engagement, but by and large, you know, we don’t have classroom volunteers, you don’t really have parents roaming the halls or, or within the school environment. And so I think we’re missing an element of engaging on a broad community level participation in the school environment. So that, you know, kind of brings into you know, what, what does that what does that look like then for a public school? And one of the, one of the models that I kind of live to that I actually quite admire a great deal as a Waldorf model of schooling. Waldorf The Waldorf schools have a very much a pedagogical basis for the way that they approach education.
I really I actually, because I agree with it in almost every respect. I really think that they is based on child development. They are I’m address education in line with the natural development of a child, there’s more actually more parent engagement in the Waldorf system for specifically for building the community in the classroom. The teachers, you know, so much so that the teachers start a class that kindergarten, and take that class all the way through, you know, if the school goes to seventh or eighth grade, they’re with that class for eight years. So the parents know the teacher, the teacher knows the parents, they know, the family, they know, both sides really know the students, so and then they require outings, they have actually weekend trips. So the you’re building this community where the student grade, there may be an issue at home, they’ve got a trusted advisor in the teacher, but because you built a community, they also have potentially other trusted parents, and you’ve got stronger community relationships now that they’re looking at this. Okay, well, how do you do that to a public school? Um, I think, you know, that kind of model, I don’t think would be hard to really move from I don’t know that, you know, public school right now be ready to take on the, like, oh, let’s move our kindergarten teachers all the way up through the sixth grade, but, but certainly, maybe chunking, that maybe it’s a kindergarten through first or second, and then pass on to another teacher, I really, I, the elementary school, I think is is the most fertile ground for building that community, because it already in a lot of respects exists, then the issue is, how do we keep that going for the middle and middle school years and high school years when you know, puberty hits teenage rebellion, which is just a natural growth, and keeping kids engaged as they explore and push boundaries, and do all the things that teenagers are supposed to do? Some good, some bad, but where I think we can really stem the tide of a lot of our issues in the teenage years in high school in middle school is that community, because again, if you’ve looking at behavior, we school is absolutely a safe place. It is a place where I know I can either meet up with friends or meet up with friends, parents, or there’s teachers that I’ve known for years, that know my background, and can specifically address my, that teenagers specific set of needs. You know, we’ve we’ve given them a community and a resource, rather than, hey, I’ve got you know, six different teachers in any given day, none of which are going to know me because I’m one of 25 to 30 kids in the classroom, and that I see them, you know, some schools have as a bday. So I see a teacher every other day. I’m one of you know, probably five periods of one of 150 kids that they’re going to see in any given day. And frankly, there’s just not enough time. And I would be surprised to run into a teacher that would have any meaningful relationship with a kid based off of those circumstances. So I think if we can find a way to increase that community, and keep that parent involvement going, we can look at this this 24/7 school model and say, Look, if we I don’t think we have to reengineer the entire public school system. But But take a tweak, right of, hey, we want to we want to require a little bit more parent participation. We want a more activities to occur on the on the school campuses, we want more engagement between parents within the classroom. I think one of the things that I see from my particular line of work is there is this this very opaque window that blocks transparencies between the family and the school. Schools are, are reluctant to let parents into the school environment that are reluctant to let them observe or participate in the classroom and an education.
And so now there’s these, you know, like paper walls, that that really just are meant to and designed to exclude parents from the school environment. I understand. Okay, if someone can argue let me take a counterpoint to that point, which is, oh, well, there’s privacy for schools and privacy rights for students in the school environment. I think that’s a bit of a red herring argument. Because what makes us so private when you’re in a classroom of 25 kids give or take, you know, five, you know, there’s no privacy between you know, Johnny and Susie sitting on desks, you either next to or across the room. There there are some nuances there that have to do tough to get into but generally is like, Okay, if you know, it’s like, it’s like a school district arguing that there’s a right of privacy on a school bus, or school buses driving through neighborhoods on roads, people can look in the school bus and see all the kids what what rider privacy are we talking about? So I think that’s just kind of a funny, budding concept. And I’m concerned that by excluding parents and kind of the community from the classroom, we’re, we’re missing out on an opportunity to support children. And a great, I would agree with any teacher that would come in and say, Hey, I can’t have you know, three or four parents, coddling their children, and I’m trying to teach, you know, math,
keevin bybee 15:48
there’s got to be rules of engagement, like we need an etiquette. You know, I love that you’re touching on the community aspect. I mean, I really tried to instill into my patients that health is a team sport, right, life is a team sport. And from my outside perspective, I think there’s a couple of forcing functions. One of them is that we’re still trying to operate schools on the turn farm kids into factory kids ring Bell chunk, rather than an integrated, more flexible environment, both in terms of the time of day when one shows up and leaves and what you do with those hours and who you’re allowed to do it with. As a quick kind of touch point, there’s this lights on program in Newark, New Jersey, where they the school is open, Friday after the bell until 11pm. And it functions like a little bit of a community center, people are playing basketball or watching a movie, like families show up. And so I would like to think that there would be a feed forward driver towards more openness and fewer strict boundaries around things, certainly within environments, there’s going to be context dependent etiquette that right, one parent doesn’t come in and demand all the attention for their one child in a specific environment. But there’s room for flexibility there. And I’m just curious if that’s kind of what you’re touching on. And then thinking about how we can use that as a forcing function to make things even better moving forward.
kevin brague 17:23
You know, what, what makes that environment safe, like the example that you mentioned, is like, well, certainly having a teacher in the room, there’s going to be a definitive, you know, cost of having a teacher there. But having AIDS within that classroom, that substantially reduces that cost. And so then having a teacher with the primary educational purpose and having an aide, again, looking back at that elementary school model, you know, from personal experience, my wife was frequently in the classroom as a volunteer, and she would float around the classroom, if if a particular student just needed an extra a little bit of help of, hey, we’re here just to, you know, pat on the back and say, You’re doing good, and, you know, check for understanding that doesn’t require a bachelor’s degree in education, that’s just a, you know, a parent, offering a little bit of, of, frankly, emotional support. So then the, you know, but having that and then my wife would also, you know, help grade simple papers, you know, things that would almost administrative tasks that would fall normally upon the teacher she could undertake, free up the teacher to do more actual teaching, and engagement with the students while you know, simply being a volunteer. And again, bringing, you know, that’s another community member gets to know more kids in the class, those kids get to realize that, hey, I can trust this adult. She’s, you know, somewhat regularly in the class. And and then, you know, we’ve we’ve started to foster that. The, you know, I think it’s, as you mentioned, with this other school and in Newark, you know, it’s wouldn’t be a big step for our current public school, elementary schools to open up and to make themselves sinners for the community. Because if I think if you looked at any general elementary school schedule right now, you’ll find that there’s numerous nights where there’s some sort of extracurricular activity occurring on campus, you know, whether it’s stuff that people are renting out like, Boy Scout or Girl Scout program, or a Big Brother or Boys and Girls Club, and any number of other communities even just sports teams, you know, that that weird kind of flex between the public school and the private school sports teams, using fields all those kinds of things. So you These properties are being used, how can we take it to probably the next step and say, hey, what if we opened it up and said, you know, we’re gonna just this will be a safe place, we can have an aide or, you know, even if there’s a teacher or another, maybe it’s a new administrative position or a flex schedule position, where maybe someone’s there to be in a classroom and open it up for, you know, extra homework, or extra tutoring. Or, you know, we’ve got school nurses that are employed by all of our school districts, why? Why can’t they run a, a simple clinic within their, within their practice guidelines? To Hey, my kids got a cough, can you look at them? Is there something that, you know, we should go to urgent care for, you know, so just off of expanding some of the current offerings, and, again, I’ll focus on the elementary school level, you can open it up for a place for families without really much work, you can open it up for additional assistance for students that are not doing well either in the school or just have a particular challenge, and maybe need an extra few days or students that are in chronic need of help. You know, maybe they’re looking at an alternative schedule, and then you got, you know, potentially School of Nursing that can step in and fill, you know, that minor role. Look, you know, my my kid got scratched, now it’s getting read, what do I need to do?
keevin bybee 21:42
You know, as a family doctor, as much as they love seeing kids in clinic, I recognize that it’s a hassle, that parent, maybe they’re working, so they have to take the two hours off of work, take their kid out of school for that chunk of time. And you know, there’s a lot of things that could be done in the school, if we as a society decided to organize it for less total cost to the system, it’s just a matter of getting all people on board with fronting the money. You know, with all issues like you’re talking about Waldorf and individualized education and keeping the building open longer one, that usually the two bigger barriers that I typically conceive of our money, and we can come back to that one. But we’re, I’d be curious to your expertise is on in terms of legal or policy constraints? Like what would be some of the sand in the gears that people might throw at this from happening from a legal or public policy perspective? And how might we think about navigating that space?
kevin brague 22:44
I think so you’ve got to well, one firm just, you know, opening up a building more, I think the policy issues are going to find, you know, focus a lot of unemployment law. Most teachers and administrators are under a a nine month contract, it requires that they show up at you know, usually 7am, they’re usually done at 4pm they get extra contracts for coaching a sport. So you I think you would have an issue with, you know, employment of okay, what are the employment laws, you know, we can’t mandate that people work overtime, for instance, but, but you could, I mean, let me touch back thinking about this more, in a grander, historical level, you know, school districts quickly morphed in to a simulated factories, we’re going to bring you in, you’re going to punch a clock, you’re going to sit in these rows, you’re gonna pay attention for this hour and 10 minutes, you’re gonna get a break, and then we’re gonna go for another. And this is very factory oriented type of work model. What’s been interesting about the last couple of years in the pandemic, is that our work models have all been thrown out the window in almost every occupation, except for our just straight, you know, traditional factory workers that are, you know, showing up and processing, you know, meats, for example, where they’re working, you know, their their factory shifts, but by and large, our economy is no longer that factory jobs are no longer the dominant employment in the economy. Now, we have, you know, office workers and suddenly we’ve got, you know, 10s of 1000s Millions of people that were working from home. The pandemic showed us said, you know, you can be employed in Portland, Oregon, but live in Taos, New Mexico and a ranch with good Wi Fi. And so with that kind of flexibility, I don’t think it would be, you know, at all, well, at least from policy or employment perspective wouldn’t be difficult to include a second shift. Like your kid doesn’t want to get up at 7am to get his school by 805 for the first bell You know, great, then we’re going to do an afternoon shift that runs from, you know, one to six. You know, whatever, you know, there’s, there’s ways that I think we can we can experiment with or even model in other schools and that don’t necessarily keep us in that straight seven to four school hour, many middle schools in Oregon and elsewhere in the nation have recognized it. Teenagers like to sleep in. Why are we why are we starting school at at 738 in the morning for teenagers, when they typically are not even getting up till after eight or nine o’clock. So let’s start school at nine o’clock, and give them that extra hour. And they you know, and there’s been many schools that have adopted that later start. So, you know, a shift in in the provision of those issues. With cert isn’t is not would not be difficult to to do as from a policy and a legal perspective. The other kind of legal thing that I see, yeah, go ahead.
keevin bybee 26:11
Oh, you just sparked my imagination real quick. And so one thing I’ve always been curious about, you know, I would love to live in a world where we have science and evidence based policy rather than, you know, policies of convenience and momentum. And as you brought up, when do teenagers typically wake up? Like, why wouldn’t we design the learning environment, more geared towards what the actual physiologic requirements of the individual were for what you’re trying to, you know, get across to them? And so, do you have thoughts on how we, as a society can push across more evidence based scientific or, you know, biological policy, if that means anything?
kevin brague 26:57
Oh, absolutely. And this is where I think, I think we need probably a stronger push from, from maybe our pediatricians in the medical community and child development community, which is, you know, and again, I’ll point back to Waldorf when I was first introduced to Waldorf, I learned that, you know, based off of their understanding of child development, they don’t teach academics in kindergarten. Because the, you know, the developing brain of a five and six year old is not ready for reading, writing and arithmetic. You know, they the developing brain, from what I understand at that stage in life is about social interaction. It’s about relationships, it’s about building relationships, and games and, and just navigating the world. So why would we take 30 kindergarteners, plop them all down on little tables and little desks and teach him, you know, basic math and reading when they should be playing and interacting and doing what’s appropriate for that stage of their child development? I think if if, you know, if I was the czar of education, I would go back to all of the leading child psychologist, child development experts, the medical community looking at science and is like, Okay, what generally are guidelines for childhood development? Where’s the brain functioning? Where are we going to get the most out of it? So again, going back to kind of the Waldorf. You know, I remember, you know, everyone has, at least in public school, you have that that very uncomfortable semester, where they’re talking about sexual education, you know, changes in the body, all of those things, what my experience my son attended the Waldorf school for his middle school years. So we had that that piece. And what was interesting before they started that curriculum within the school environment, they had a mandatory parent meeting for everybody, everybody’s parent in that classroom. And they said, Look, this is what we’re going to be covering here are some suggested books that cover this, you may be asking, Well, my son’s you know, too young for this. It was like Well, based off child development, this is what’s happening in your children’s bodies. And this is what will be happening in children’s bodies over the next they say 18 months. So we’re going to start covering it before they actually are in the throes of experiencing puberty and we’re going to cover with you because you’re gonna wake up going you know, why is Why are my kids you know, peeling the wallpaper off the walls and why is the the decibel levels in our house now, you know, over at every night is so it goes with those, you know, the raging hormones of a teenager and then you so then the parents got the opportunity to have that discussion and bring that awareness to the forefront. And then you were kept up to date as the teacher began going into the career Calum. So, you know, looking at that kind of model, again, bringing people into the school environment to talk specifically about curriculum, to talk specifically about their kids. And again, these are kids at that point in time had been together for, and parents that have been together for six or seven years. And then having that that input, any special issues could have been addressed with the teacher individually. That curriculum could be modified a lot by the teacher and dealing one on one with their students, because there’s a inherent knowledge built up at that point of any particular student. And, you know, thinking about it, like kind of in our current environment with, you know, Florida and Texas going off the rails about what happens in the schools right now. Look at all of that policy and community and those issues being taken care of, at the level where it should be, this isn’t a state level issue. This was a local community issue with a school. So imagine taking your, your local elementary school or middle school, and having a teacher come in and bring all of you know, the, let’s see, what’s your average middle school running 900 students, so they’re gonna start talking about it, and you know, six grades we’re gonna bring in 300 students and 300, you know, 600, parents there abouts. But, you know, break it up into small sections for the teachers and say, Look, you know, here’s kind of the curriculum, what are your thoughts? This is how we’re going to do it? And you’re asking, Well, why are we doing it now, and my kid is, you know, far too
young to even learn about, you know, the birds and the bees is like, well, we’re not talking about birds and bees, we’re not saying we’re not doing identification, we’re not, you know, gives that teacher in the school a chance to explain the curriculum. This isn’t about, you know, necessarily gender identity, or sexual preference, or any number of other things that have, for some reason become highly politicized. This is about, we have a human body. And the body functions in certain ways, depending on whether you’ve got, you know, male or female genitalia, and this is what you’re going to be happening. And these are the hormones that are being produced. And this is what Child Development says about teenagers. And we’re all going to be experiencing this together over the next two years. So, you know, looking at it from for more of an objective, medically based perspective, those kinds of conversations, I think, the course one eliminate anything, we don’t I’m not, you know, Pollyanna here, but I think you can get to a level of understanding on a more personal basis, which would eliminate a lot of the fear mongering and misperceptions about what’s being taught, you know, and what is actually going on in your local school. And, and, and the price of that, to a to a parent is, we’re going to take, you know, an hour to maybe 90 minutes out of an evening, a few times during the course of an of a school year, to talk about what your children are going through on a biological level.
keevin bybee 33:34
Yeah. I mean, absolutely. Parents engagement. One concern I have I mean, I’m I have a large Medicaid population, and a lot of my patients are in families kind of strapped for that extra time to be a highly engaged community member. And so I’ve always wondered like, what what if we incentivized our families to engage in the school, you know, whether that’s a, you know, meal and daycare, but the point is, is how do we reduce friction to bring people into the school? And then I always, people tend to put the stop sign up, like, well, how are we going to pay for it? And my, my answer is, typically, we’re paying for it already, like, every diabetic foot amputation was somebody who, in their younger years, didn’t get, like an education that served them to function in the world. And so we can pay for it upfront. And that might include supporting the families financially so that this kid doesn’t grow up and lose his foot, which is going to cost the system time and medical costs and lost wages for that person not being a, quote, productive member of society, not to reduce it to that, but on some level, it’s an important piece of the calculus. I don’t know If I’ve got a specific question in there, but more, where do you go with the? How do we pay for it question? And, you know, does your experience guide that question? And what way I guess
kevin brague 35:14
we can get into a labyrinth of school funding issues with that. I’ve, at times I’ve looked at that in Oregon that the state policy and their accounting manual for computing average daily attendance, which forms the basis for the state doling out money to school districts, the last I heard and talking with a colleague is, you know, the, I think school districts generally get about $8,000 per student per year right now, for their their attendance based off of average daily attendance and all the calculations that go into that, that Byzantium calculation. So that’s, that’s about where we’re funding. Our schools right now is roughly $8,000 a year. I think there’s, there’s some room within that to grow. So just a couple of little vignettes, when I talked with specially when I was doing more special education law, I would frequently, if not always asked my clients, the parents to do what they can to get into the classroom to volunteer to, you know, bring a cup of good Starbucks coffee to the teacher in the morning, say, Hi, can I help great papers? Can I just sit in the corner and do anything for you? Can I just be a presence to help you out? Um, that, you know, that takes a little bit? You know, that’s a personal that’s a personal commitment it takes potentially takes food off the table? And what do you do when when you got both, you know, parents working barely above minimum wage jobs, trying to, you know, make rent for the next month. And now you’re asking me to take a half a day off, which, you know, great when somebody’s not eating one night this week. So I didn’t make that recommendation lightly. But it’s like, okay, well, if you can’t do that, you know, you know, most of the time you get in a vacation day here and there, you get PTO time, you know, volunteer on a on a field trip. But I think this is where the flexibility is required for the school. So as you were mentioning, what if, you know, we have those those opportunities to meet later in the evening, not during the work hours of most of our working class adults. And then you bring it in. So you have a big school meeting, but you’d bring in an aide to, to open up one of the classrooms or the kindergarten room or something so that people can drop off their children for an hour, and attend to some school business. And great, you, almost all of our schools have cafeterias. What if you just just a simple little meal or something again, to do that? Now, let’s look go back to those numbers, you know, at about 8000, you know, bucks, you know, first student in a see, compare that with some of the private schools in the Portland metro area. The Catholic school system, I think is runs a great school program for a private school. They run grants, they have fundraising, and I think that they keep their tuition, you know, mostly I’ll say suppressed, just just to serve as many as they can. My only kind of complaint with a few of the Catholic schools, not the system as a whole, but with few of the Catholic schools. Is it become really elitist? You know, it’s weird. We produce the best and the brightest, we send all of our kids to Ivy League schools, and everybody gets a scholarship because they do so well here. I you know, that’s great for private school. That’s what you’re paying for. I think it grates a little bit when you start getting too close to the precepts of the of the church itself, you know, reaching out of, you know, helping your fellow man of doing those kinds of things. But, but what it gets to even at the Catholic school system, some over the top Catholic schools in Portland, they’re in the high school level, their tuition is around 15 to 20,000 a year.
keevin bybee 39:27
Is that what they charge the family or what it ends up what their functional budget is per student? Like, what is there a difference there and what is that bigger number?
kevin brague 39:38
I don’t know how much the schools are subsidized by say, the archdiocese and how much is collected and then redistributed. I know just you can go on to any, you know, number of our Catholic schools in in the Portland or Oregon, and oftentimes, they’ll just put their tuition out there.
keevin bybee 39:58
point being that If we were to make big changes or kind of fluffy a model, we’re looking at two extra cost on some level.
kevin brague 40:07
Yeah, well, at least and then so we compare that with some of just our elite private schools, Catlin, Gable, Oregon Episcopal School, your tuition and those are running $30,000 and up a year. There’s this range here. So we have the public school, you know, say 8000 or so the Catholic school system, running 15, and then your elite private schools that at 30.
keevin bybee 40:37
I was listening to somebody else talk about how there was a an edtech founder. And he the way that he was able to break into the special ed field was by leveraging the fact that a lot of special education can get chunked under the kids medical insurance, you know, the PT, the OT, the speech therapy, stuff like that. And I guess, you know, coming from it, coming at it from a medical perspective, you know, there’s there’s should be just the wellness budget, which includes education and health care, and I guess, maybe learning from the special education model and applying a, what does this individual learner need, rather than everybody gets $8,000 Unless we fight tooth and nail to get money from their medical insurance to pay for the extra therapies? And I’m just curious how you if that inspires anything into you? How could we think about if not systemically, but at least leveraging thinking about something as medical, but even for your 50th percentile kid, getting them the services that they need, maybe from a different bucket or merging the buckets?
kevin brague 41:52
Yeah, so that’s I’ve got two answers responses to that. So one is that model that already exists and is in its spectacular ly successful. And that model exists in victory Academy. And I’ll put a disclaimer on there. I’m on the board of victory Academy and have been for a number of years. But victory Academy is a private school that serves children on the autism spectrum. One of the things that makes their model so successful is that all of the services that an autistic child would need. So you’ve got your education, you have physical therapy, you have speech therapy, occupational therapy, and ABA therapy, Applied Behavior, analysis, therapy, all of those, all of those specialists are within the school environment. So when the when a child attends victory Academy on the spectrum, the parents don’t have to go outside of the school to get speech, OT PT, or ABA therapy, it’s all within the school. And for the younger children. Since those therapies are all being provided in the school, for some of the children, those those therapies are being billed to their medical insurance, because a lot of these, thankfully, not Oregon two years ago, changed the insurance code mandating that autism be covered. And so now some of these therapies that are desperately needed at a young age for intervention are being covered. And the school is employing therapists to do direct therapy, and then billing insurance. So it takes that load off the parent. It streamlines the provision of services, and it keeps the child within the school environment so that they don’t have to leave is like that. So the contrast is when when my son was in speech therapy, in fact, when he was younger, and we were beginning all veiled his interventions, my wife at times was where she was going to anywhere from 12 to 16, doctor or therapy appointments a week. So it was you know, pick them up, you know, the afternoons were scheduled, you’d be missing some school and it was running around to this clinic, to that clinic, to this doctor’s office, to that specialist, and it just was going on and on and on. And so I know parents are, you know, in that age group are facing this. And a victory though. They go they take their kids and get them settled in. They know that there’s, you know, if there’s behaviors, they have an ABA therapist to do it. They know that during the day, they’re gonna get speech therapy on a regular consistent basis. They’re gonna get OT and PT all within the school environment. And it’s a year round school so the kids aren’t missing out on we’re not going to take a three month break with no services. It’s going to go year round and you know the service says, they wax and wane a little bit, because again, we’re talking about kids. So we’re, you know, we’re not drill sergeants, we’re kids and they need, they need to wax and wane and, and really push at times and then back off at time. So that that is one answer of, you know, looking at our public school system and, and maybe getting closer relationship with the medical establishment and taking opportunities for hey, look, we can provide these services and schools do provide some speech services they are, I think they’re diluted. Because most of Oregon has gone to a consultation model when it comes to providing services. So yes, we employ a speech therapist, the speech therapist is not actually going to give the therapy, they’re going to consult with an instructional aide, and that aid is actually going to oversee the therapy. So it’s, I think it’s a diluted, I’m not 100%, in agreement with that model. And I think if there was a closer relationship between the medical community and insurers who are, who it could be potentially billed for providing direct services from a qualified licensed speech language pathologist or occupational therapist, physical therapist, schools could see that as adding services without taking away from budget dollars. So the other fun thing with school districts, and I don’t think it’s 100%, but I think school districts get an extra several $1,000 for matching grants for kids that are on individualized education programs IEPs.
That extra special ed money in a lot of school districts just gets lumped into the general fund, it does not stay within the special education department. So again, so what what the school districts have learned is we can get this extra money, we can put it into the general fund, then by either you know, combining services going to this consultation model, or actually suppressing services, we don’t have to spend all of that money. And now we can, you know, use that money to fund any number of other projects that the school district, you know, needs or wants, you know, that I think the grossest example is, oh, the football field needs a new new turf. So that’ll come out of the general fund. And then you got to wonder, well, how much of those set aside special education dollars actually went to the football field instead of children that need services. And then, you know, because our disabled population and in public schools runs about 10%, give or take. So look at Beaverton with its, you know, 40,000 plus students, and you’ll have approximately 4000 students on IEP s. Now, the range, of course, is dramatic, right? So you’ve got, you’ve got your high needs special education, kids that have a nurse with them, 24/7, they’re in wheelchairs on feeding tubes require a great amount of care. Up to you’ve got Johnny or Susie that that had a reading problem or a math problem. Just a very slight specific disability, but enough to qualify for an IEP. But that doesn’t really require any services at all. It requires you it’s almost more like a 504 plan where, okay, well, let’s give them extra supports, let’s put them in the front of the classroom, let’s go over their homework with them provide notes more like you would with a college student than you would be required for an IEP. And then you have everyone in between that. So one of the things I think if we really wanted to start pushing towards more of a community based 24/7 School is to fix this. This little accounting function of let’s keep special education dollars in special education and serve those students and not take the money, put it in a general fund, and then turn around and tell our special education departments Well, let me you know, let us know how much money you need. And then we’ll decide if we’re gonna give you an E debit back
keevin bybee 49:28
kind of a sin with the using, like you said, the general fund rather than keeping dollars where they’re supposed to be dedicated. Certainly there’s value in having flexibility and subsidizing but you know, we’re this is the age of, you know, microtransactions I don’t see any technological are, in principle reason why we can’t get quite specific and quite detailed with this accounting. So if anybody is in educational budgeting and accounting, we’d love to hear from you on So shout open shout out. I want to be mindful of your time we’re running up to 50 minutes. You know, you mentioned, kids getting injured, Perry school time, can be a challenge. And, you know, I always think of something like that as a learning signal and not necessarily who to hold accountable or make responsible or hold blame. And I’m just curious, like, what do you think is the healthiest way to make sure kids are safe on their way to and from school?
kevin brague 50:34
So there’s a that primarily comes out of the negligence doctrine in jurisprudence. So it’s just, you know, does a party have a duty? If so, what is their duty? Did they breach that duty? And, you know, are there damages. So in taking the analogy of, you know, a simple car accident, we have a, we have rules for the road, you know, we have these big red octagonal signs that at a four way intersection, if you blow through that red stop sign, and you run into somebody else, they’re gonna look at, it’s like, well, you ran the you ran the red light, or you ran the stop sign, you hit me, I’m hurt. And you need to, you need to be held responsible for my injuries, because you cause them that that’s pretty much the same for school districts. The the issue is, in some school districts in some school districts are trying to disclaim this, or ignore this concept, which is, it used to be that school districts and still in some cases are responsible for what is called door to door supervision. When the school when that student leaves there and closes the door to their friend to their home, and walks to school is the district responsible for that, that transportation, you know, for that child getting to school safely, and the same going home is the school district responsible for that child welfare and safety until they get to their front door. Some school districts have a policy on just that it says oh, we’re responsible for students when they’re traveling to and from school, basically, or under school auspices is used in some of the policies, which basically means you know, you’re on a field trip traveling you’re on a, you know, the use of football team, you’re on the bus or you know, the cheerleading Boston, you’re going to an event, you know, the school is responsible for you, because that’s a school event that where it gets in some some schools like Portland Public have written out that policy, and simply said, Look, you know, once one school ends, and that footsteps off the school grounds, we’re no longer responsible for that, that student. I have trouble with that. Because in Oregon, Oregon’s a compulsory school state, the law says, and requires parents to send your children to school, if a parent does not send their child to school, the school can notify what’s you know, truancy officers, the police, and then they can come and site you, and give you a ticket, it’s a misdemeanor, and, and then, you know, force you to compel you to send your kids to school. If you don’t really want to send him to a private school, then you can homeschool him and sign up with a program and you still have to prove to the state that your child is enrolled in school. So if this state as a as an entity, as our government is going to require us to send children to school, then my belief is that they should also be held to the responsibility of keeping children safe, when they leave their home and go to school and keep them safe till they get home. Now, again, does that mean that we get an extra educational assistant? You know, we have crossing guards in a lot of schools? We have educational assistants, do we you know, we have school buses that pick kids up and take them to and from school? And what about those kids that you know, that are basically within a set geographic distance from their school, you know, less than a mile? Those kids you know, frequently walk to and from school? So do we, you know, does the school engage in education aid to spend an extra 15 minutes do a half hour to maybe walk a router to to make sure the kids get to their home neighborhoods or at least closer to their home? Some of the interesting cases I have is what happens when a kid’s assaulted, walking home from school by an older kid, you know, who’s who’s responsible for that in what context and maybe that’s something that we put to the community and we present it to a jury and say, here are the facts. This is what happened. Here’s the policies. Here’s what the laws held and Have you members of the jury as a community get to decide if the injuries that this kid sustained should be borne by the parents who are required to send their children to school? Or should it be borne by the school? As you know, the perhaps the cost of doing business maybe? The trouble with that is, you know, that cost of doing businesses when the school makes mistakes, is that’s borne by the taxpayers.
keevin bybee 55:31
I mean, it just highlights once again, that we’re paying for it anyway. And yeah, you know, how can we get more intelligent about how we’re deploying our resources? Like, keep it, you know, is this a more police thing? Is this a traffic thing? Is this a supervision thing, but the fact that, you know, injury to school is both a medical, educational and urban architecture problem? And, you know, how can we start to think about the integrated nature of it, and not that it’s only one person’s cancer, we can throw our hands like wash our hands of being part of the solution, I guess, is,
kevin brague 56:14
yeah. Again, more of a theoretical and high level view of it, maybe our school districts have gotten too big. Because if you look at, you know, look at, you can look at some of the biggest school districts in the nation, and the superintendents are commanding seven figure salaries. You look at Portland Public, the Portland Public superintendent, he’s well into the six figure salary range. And you’re looking at that administrative building where you’ve got wholly staff departments to do. Simple, not simple, but these big staff departments that takes up lots of taxpayer money that are focused on on one element. What if you took, you know, first I’ll pick on Portland Public, because it’s our biggest school district in the state. What if you cut that into thirds? And, you know, took away that big set of administration took some of the savings from from reducing the administrative budget, and pushed it back into the classrooms. So instead of, you know, just a teacher with with 28 kids, you’ve got a teacher and two eights. You know, where where can we take that money? Where where’s the school? spending the money? And where could it be better utilized because it’s not getting to the teachers and supporting teachers?
keevin bybee 57:44
Yeah, our towers of Babel are getting too tall and toppling are not serving their purposes. Yeah. A conversation for for a bonfire.
Unknown Speaker 57:56
Yes, that’s another. That’s a whole nother conversation.
keevin bybee 58:00
We’re right at an hour. I’m sure that you’ve got plenty of work to do. And I’m gonna go pick up my kids from school. So I want to thank you for your time and insight and willingness to engage in some fun and speculation. Do you have any closing thoughts or anything in particular that you’d like to plug or share with our listeners?
kevin brague 58:22
No, I just thank you for for having me on and allowing me to participate in your podcast.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai