Special education services are inundated with excessive documentation, which only translate in unwanted bureaucracy, delay in services, poor decision making, and high turnover of staff. Documentation and processes must support decision making in order to provide the right level of services and support our children need, want, and deserve.

As parents, we are the recipients of such inefficiencies and our children are the victims of the related waste of resources, that could be all re-allocated to increase special ed equipment, staff training, staff hiring, etc.

As such, I am requesting regulators and the Minnesota Department of Education to REDUCE the PAPERWORK to a 50% of what exist today, and to AUTOMATE processes leveraging TECHNOLOGY in order to EXPEDITE decision making. 

Did you know?

• It takes on average 4-6 hrs to prepare each IEP documentation
• Each IEP is anywhere between 8-15 pages long
• There are approx. 128,064 students receiving special ed in MN (according to MDE stats 14-15), which represents 512 - 768 hrs of IEP paperwork and 1MM-2MM pages of paper
• Each progress report requires additional documentation and the re-issue of the entire IEP in case of an amendment (8-15 pages per amendment)
• Evaluations could take anywhere between 30-40 hrs 
• Stand alone evaluations for transition or functional behavioral assessments are not permitted by MDE
• No attempt to streamline documentation and processes has occurred since 2013!