james baldwin academy self-study report

149 Pages·2014·1.18 MB·English

by  Lenovo User

JAMES BALDWIN ACADEMY

SELF-STUDY REPORT

2275 ARLINGTON DRIVE
SAN LEANDRO, CA 94578
“ALL MEANS ALL.”
2013-2014
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Executive Summary............................................................................................................................... 3

Chapter I: Student/Community Profile And Supporting Data And Findings ....................................... 5

Chapter II: Progress Report ................................................................................................................ 38

Chapter III: Student/Community Profile ............................................................................................ 54

Chapter IV: Self Study Findings ......................................................................................................... 63

Chapter V: School-Wide Action Plan .............................................................................................. 138

References ......................................................................................................................................... 147

Appendix ........................................................................................................................................... 149

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In the vibrant, chaotic and ever-changing life of a school, engaging in deep and prolonged reflection is
no easy task. What’s more, it has always been difficult to rely on existing structures to analyze the
effectiveness of the school services offered by Seneca’s James Baldwin Academy. At its core, James
Baldwin Academy defies many of the criteria traditionally evoked in undertaking such an analysis. As
a nonpublic school, Seneca’s James Baldwin Academy serves students in grades 1st -12th, all of whom
receive special education services and therapeutic supports to address emotional and behavioral
disabilities and confounding learning differences. Despite these challenges, our thorough examination,
both through this self-study process and throughout the years, reliably suggests that James Baldwin
Academy is a good, even exceptional, place for kids. Its dedicated staff members work tirelessly to
bring life to the agency’s values: Love and Compassion, Hope and Courage, Respect and Curiosity,
Joy and Unconditional Care.

Yet, while the marriage between the behavioral, therapeutic, and academic programs at the school
allows James Baldwin Academy to respond adeptly to the needs of the whole child, it has also
surfaced conflicting priorities. The school’s initial desire to undergo the Western Association of
Schools and Colleges’ accreditation process was a response to this tension. Already a good place for
young people, in order to become an equally good school, James Baldwin Academy recognized years
ago that the work ahead hinged on identifying and implementing plans for instructional reform. WASC
provided the launching platform.

Returning to the WASC process six years later, we were eager to measure the progress we have made
toward this transformational change in our identity as a learning institution. As such, we engaged our
entire staff in this inquiry process and invited students, families, district personnel and community
providers to join us as well. This renewed energy revealed both areas of strength and continued areas
of growth. To be sure, the work completed to date is worthy of celebration. Also indicated, however, is
a sustained focus on academic targets in order to carry the work forward and, ultimately, create a
school where all students flourish academically, regardless of challenging behaviors or overlaying
social-emotional difficulties. Returning always to Seneca’s core values – Love and Compassion, Hope
and Courage, Respect and Curiosity, Joy and Unconditional Care – the school’s ability to fulfill its
mission in ways previously unimagined now pivots on creating a thorough and thoughtful action plan
that helps drive practices in the years to come.

As it did years ago, we trust that the visiting committee’s analysis will spur many of these changes and
allow us a perspective on the school’s progress that a self-study alone could not. We are excited to
share our work, are looking forward to incorporating additional feedback as we strive for improvement
and are hungry for the opportunities that lie ahead.

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CHAPTER I

STUDENT/COMMUNITY PROFILE AND
SUPPORTING DATA AND FINDINGS

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CHAPTER I: STUDENT/COMMUNITY PROFILE
AND SUPPORTING DATA AND FINDINGS
WELCOME TO SENECA
Seneca Center opened its doors in 1985 in the basement of a church in Oakland, California. At the
time, the agency was no more than a small, six-bed residential unit and an accompanying nonpublic
school classroom. The goal was simple: provide unconditional care to clients with severe emotional
and behavioral disabilities, many of whom had been displaced repeatedly from school and home
placements due to the same aggressive and disruptive behaviors for which they were initially referred.
Recognizing that the needs of vulnerable youth change rapidly, Seneca has expanded this mission over
the years by striving to provide a full continuum of services to support youth in a variety of settings.
Once housed in the basement of a church, Seneca Family of Agencies (SFA) now spans California and
employs over 1,000 staff members statewide in schools, community and residentially-based services,
foster and family placements, and short-term crisis stabilization facilities.

Within this continuum of care lies a network of five nonpublic schools (NPSs), canvassing the San
Francisco Bay Area from Concord to Fremont. The schools’ primary goal is to actualize the agency’s
mission of unconditional care; there are many schools and organizations that champion learning for all
students – at Seneca, we strive to ensure that “all means all.” While students are referred to Seneca’s
nonpublic schools for a variety of extreme behaviors, all share a common characteristic: a pervasive
history of unsuccessful experiences in previous school settings. The schools’ first goal, then, is to
create a successful school environment for them here: one filled with the joy of learning and the
supports they will need along the way. The school programs aim to provide an environment that draws
out students’ strengths and teaches them strategies to cope with personal challenges, thus affording
them the opportunity to succeed within this setting and beyond. To achieve this, small classrooms with
high staff-to-student ratios pair a standards-based course of study with a therapeutic milieu and a
structured positive behavioral intervention program.

The five schools are located throughout the Bay Area and share several similarities as well as some
distinct qualities. As nonpublic schools, each of Seneca’s campuses serves students from several
different districts, all of whom qualify for special education services. While most of the students live
within a twenty-mile radius of the home site, some come from neighborhoods thirty or more miles
away. Together, Seneca’s five nonpublic schools serve approximately 210 students. They do so in
classrooms with no more than 15 students each. As part of their school week, students also receive
individual, group and family therapy, and case management as well as and psychiatric consultation and
speech therapy, if appropriate. Every classroom is staffed by a special education credentialed teacher,
three Bachelor’s level classroom counselors and a classroom therapist who facilitates daily community
meetings and weekly group therapy sessions.

That Seneca’s James Baldwin Academy in San Leandro mirrors its sister schools within the nonpublic
school network is no accident. Upon employment, all new Seneca employees from Orange County to
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Marin – regardless of position or program – receive two weeks of training in Seneca’s philosophical
grounding and its approach to working with a unique population of students. Yet, despite their
similarities, each program operates distinctively, individualizing its services to the very student being
targeted. Seneca’s James Baldwin Academy is no exception.

SCHOOL DESCRIPTION
Currently, James Baldwin Academy serves between 75 and 85 students in grades 1-12. The school is
located in a safe, suburban, residential neighborhood atop a hill with a scenic view of the San
Francisco Bay. It is a small, bright and well-maintained campus, where colorful murals adorn the
school building and student work is proudly displayed. Classified as a day treatment program, James
Baldwin Academy serves students only when their mental health needs pose such a barrier to their
education that they cannot be served successfully in a less restrictive environment. At the end of each
day, students transition home – be it to the care of a biological parent, an extended relative, a foster
family or a non-Seneca group home – though many receive additional mental health services in order
to help them find success in these environments as well.

Seneca’s James Baldwin Academy is certified by the California Department of Education as a
nonpublic school (NPS), a privately operated, publicly funded school that specializes in providing
educational services for students with needs so exceptional that they cannot be met within a public
school setting, per their Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). Most students have had prior
experiences with more than one public agency, including Mental Health Services, Social Services,
and/or the Probation Department, and almost all have experienced multiple school placement failures.
Our NPS is designed to serve students who have not been able to learn in the traditional school setting
due to behavioral or mental health challenges. Seneca’s high staff-to-student ratio enables our staff
members to provide the interventions and therapeutic support that allow students to maintain safety
and access their education.

Within the school’s five classrooms, our credentialed special education specialists blend rigorous
standards-based instruction with a targeted focus on students’ specific IEP goals. Simultaneously,
students’ mental health and behavioral needs are attended to throughout the day using a variety of
behavioral and relational interventions, including one-to-one assistance, milieu counseling, positive
reinforcement, behavioral prompting, conflict resolution, consistent rewards and consequences, skill
building and crisis intervention.

As a corollary to the work within the classrooms and – many times – as a primary vessel for
developing the regulatory and relational skills needed to live healthy and productive lives, all students
receive weekly individual, family and group therapy by a board-registered therapist or social worker.
This clinician further provides case management in order to support students and families in leveraging
existing resources from within the community.

To boot, some students receive additional services, including reading remediation, speech therapy and
occupational therapy to address needs presented by their disabilities, while others benefit from
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adjunctive services from Seneca’s broad continuum of care, including therapeutic/behavioral coaching
at home, school or in the community and access to mobile response counselors in the event of a crisis
after school hours. Concurrently, others may require ever more intensive and individualized
interventions. Although the school’s existing intervention infrastructure is robust, for students who are
not successful, Seneca’s multidisciplinary team of staff create increasingly personalized learning
environments in service of our promise that, at Seneca, “all means all.”

COMMUNITY SERVED
Referrals to Seneca’s James Baldwin Academy are generated by school districts throughout Alameda
County, through the IEP process. Students must meet specific criteria to be eligible to attend our
school program; as few options are available within their immediate communities, we regularly
provide services to families within a wide radius. In serving such a wide geographical area, our school
confronts a variety of community factors ranging from street violence in Oakland to pharmaceutical
drug abuse in suburban neighborhoods. Similarly, our community stakeholders are far and wide,
presenting an engagement challenge detailed later in this report.

Every student at James Baldwin Academy has been identified for special education through the IEP
process. Most have also undergone a secondary assessment process through their county’s mental
health department to determine what level of need their disabilities necessitate. While the bulk of our
students qualify for services with the primary handicapping condition of “Emotional Disturbance,” we
do serve a variety of disabilities within our school.

Students by School District Primary Eligibility Criteria
Alameda Other
9% Fremont Health
Impairment
3%
11% Specific
Pleasanton Learning
Oakland
Dublin 2% Disability
21%
1% 11%
Berkeley
San 3%
Speech or
Lorenzo Hayward
Language
12% 25% Emotional Impairment
Livermore Disturbance 2%
76%
4% Castro San
Valley Leandro
9% 11%

EXTERNAL POLITICAL/ECONOMIC INFLUENCES
Seneca has not been immune to the school budget cuts within the state of California; on the contrary,
these cuts have impacted our school program in a variety of ways. As school districts began
responding to changes in levels of funding, we noticed a stark and almost immediate change. We were
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no longer receiving as many referrals and were more heavily impacted by the implications of poor
attendance, particularly in the High School classrooms. Eventually, the shrinking student body and the
need to remain viable necessitated that we close two classrooms over the course of a 6th month period
beginning in the second semester of the 2012-2013.

On October 8, 2010, Governor Schwarzenegger used his line item veto to cut 133 million dollars from
AB3632, the assembly bill previously responsible for funding educationally-related mental health
services to students with disabilities (specialeducationadvisor.com). Previously, AB3632 had provided
funding and infrastructure for the therapeutic portion of services offered as a part of students’ Free and
Appropriate Public Education through the IEP process. While these services were no longer to be
funded through the state, school districts still maintained responsibility for providing all services
delineated in a student’s IEP, and therefore the financial responsibility shifted back to schools. This
change has had a significant impact on school district budgets and the process by which students
qualify to receive mental health services as part of their education.

When the change initially occurred, there was much concern and anxiety statewide over how this
would impact districts’ ability to serve students with exceptional mental health needs. Through this
period of transition, however, we have found the opportunity to partner with the districts we serve to
investigate new and innovative options for serving students. In addition, we have been able to make
changes to our practices to help offset the cost for districts, such as investigating direct billing to health
insurance providers to draw down funds available to students through alternate channels or assisting
families in registering for MediCal where appropriate.

A secondary impact of this change has been in the level of students we currently serve. Because
school districts are now largely responsible for the cost – and the higher the level of service, the more
expensive – many students who had previously been receiving or may have been referred to
residentially-based services are now being placed in our school program. While we have found it
difficult to show this clearly in our data, we do see a correlation with this change and an increase in the
acuity levels we now serve.

Over time, each Special Education Local Planning Area (SELPA) has decided to handle this change in
a different manner. Some SELPAs continue to contract with their local county to determine
qualification and provide case management services as needed. Other SELPAs have decided to provide
these services internally rather than contract with the county. We continue to adapt our methods to the
various needs of the SELPAs we serve.

SUMMARY OF SERVICES
Special education programs throughout the country strike a difficult balance in attempting to meet the
various, pressing needs of their students. Seneca too exists in the paradox of addressing the immediate
– often acute – behavioral and therapeutic concerns of students without losing focus on their long-term
needs, perhaps most importantly, on their learning and academic success. Ultimately, however, only
by granting its students the opportunity to obtain the academic skills necessary to succeed across
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settings can the agency reach its mission of helping young people escape the cycles of failure and
trauma that have produced many of their challenging behaviors in the first place.

With this tension in mind, James Baldwin Academy’s services span the academic and the social-
emotional, focusing on the minutiae of students’ days within our building and on big picture strategies
for connecting them with support far outside our walls.

ASSESSMENT
The purpose of Seneca’s assessment services is to guide action. To this end, our staff, beginning at
intake and continuing until the student is discharged from the program, provide ongoing assessment of
each student in the context of his or her ecological situation. Assessments conducted by staff are
formal information gathering processes that make it possible to provide family members with useful
data—and recommendations—from which they can make decisions about their lives. Bilingual-
bicultural staff personnel help with the assessment of bilingual-bicultural youth and families.
Assessment not only identifies areas of concerns, but also the strengths, talents, successes, and
supportive resources enjoyed by the student and their family. Comprehensive assessment of students
include, as needed: psycho-educational testing, formal and informal teacher-administered academic
testing, IEP progress monitoring and benchmark assessments, the Measures of Academic Progress
(MAP) school-wide assessment model, statewide testing parallel to that of the public schools,
psychiatric and psycho-pharmacological assessment, psychological testing, medical and dental
screening, family assessment, and therapeutic milieu assessment. This information proves useful in
developing a comprehensive IEP and treatment plan.

SERVICE PLANNING
Individualized service plans developed through the child and family team decision-making process
articulate actions and activities that build upon the identified strengths of each student and family,
focusing on the development of greater competencies in family, school, and community function.
Students, family members, county case workers, probation officers, CASA workers, lawyers, and other
people who play a significant role in the student’s life are encouraged not only to attend and participate
in mandated IEP meetings, but to be involved in ongoing treatment planning as well.

EDUCATIONAL SERVICES
Educational services at Seneca are highly individualized and, for many students, the rich educational
environment of our classrooms provides an opportunity to accelerate their academic development as
well as participate in extracurricular activities. Upon intake, it is the goal of Seneca’s nonpublic school
for the student to graduate with a high school diploma and to transition to a public school setting.
Within a month, an assessment is completed to determine the student’s educational needs. These
include academic testing with the Wide Range Achievement Test, Fourth Edition, and for our high
school students, an evaluation of transcripts analyzing the coursework necessary to fulfill graduation
requirements. Students are then offered classes based on their individual needs and course availability.

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Each class at Seneca’s James Baldwin Academy is designed to address the duality of state content
standards and students’ IEP goals, which often, by necessity, address skills covered in earlier grades.
To this end, each teacher has been trained in Understanding by Design (1998), a framework for
structuring units rooted in the state content standards that are based on essential questions that lead to
enduring understandings. Within this structure and with the aid of state and district adopted curriculum
identical to that of the public schools, our teacher team builds in opportunities for differentiation and
targeted instruction.

In recent years, school leaders have looked closely at how to best use technology to further address the
challenge of helping all students access the curriculum. We have piloted a number of programs with
varying levels of success. In the Fall Quarter of the 2012-2013 school year. Our High School science
teacher heightened student engagement in Science by providing instruction to our 11th and 12th grade
students using a Chemistry ‘techbook’ designed by Discovery Education. This year we have expanded
this pilot to include offering hybrid learning in Biology and Physical Science. We are working closely
with Discovery Science to gather data to measure the efficacy of using the ‘techbooks’ versus
traditional textbooks. Last Fall Quarter of the 2012-2013 school year James Baldwin Academy also
adopted a pilot program called TeenBiz3000 by Achieve3000 (www.achieve3000.com). The pilot was
intended to provide instruction at each student’s individual reading level. Our theory of action was
that by targeting skills at students’ zones of proximal development, we could accelerate learning and
mitigate some of the age-old challenges of multi-grade, mixed-ability, special education classes
(Vygotsky, 1962). Unfortunately, based on pre and post assessments and surveys of the students who
participated in the pilot, the benefits did not outweigh the cost of using this particular program. This
school year math teachers have begun to integrate Khan Academy (www.khanacademy.org) into their
instruction and even more recently, we have adopted an online typing program. Typing Pal teaches
students fundamental skills, which will enable them to access the rest of the technologically based
programs and interventions, as well as prepare them for future schooling and careers.

In addition to all of the technology teachers use to optimize instruction, ranging from projectors,
document cameras, laptops, the computer lab, and on-line programs, we continue to seek ways to
develop in this area. Through our Title I funding we recently received a delivery of 15 iPads. We look
forward to getting iPads into the hands of our teachers and students in order to further address skill
deficits in Mathematics and English Language Arts skills, as well as to promote the advancement of
our students who are performing on level with same-age peers.

Over the years at James Baldwin Academy, literacy has been a key area of focus. Students come to us
with a wide range of learning strengths and difficulties. As a school that promises specialized
academic instruction, it is essential that we have well trained and highly qualified teachers to provide
instruction in all academic areas. When it comes to reading remediation, teacher training is even more
imperative. On site we have teachers trained in a variety of reading intervention programs including
Language! by Voyager and Seeing Stars by Lindamood-Bell. Our academic schedule is designed to
provide targeted and intensive reading interventions in small groups and one to one.

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