School District 99 Parents Concerned About Special Education Gaps, Long-Time Teacher Resigns in Solidarity
Belen Rodriguez and Michael Vargas sit outside the main entrance to Goodwin Elementary in Cicero, Ill. on May 20, 2024. Efrain Soriano/Cicero Independiente
By Efrain Soriano
Editor’s Note: Names that include an asterisk(*) are pseudonyms for sources due to fear of retaliation.
For many parents, the Cicero School District 99 Board of Education meeting on April 10, 2024 was a joyous occasion. The meeting began like many others, with an opening performance by a music class from Warren Park Elementary. There were smiles and cheering from every corner of the gymnasium as the 3rd grade students danced and sang along with their teacher.
Those students that performed left the gym shortly with their parents after their performance. While the rest of the nearly 50 attendees, who were teachers, parents and students, stuck around for the remainder of the meeting.
There were also presentations from various departments at District 99 (D99) outlining the many accomplishments of students and teachers throughout the month of April.
When the time came for public comment, Liliana Ortega, a tenured teacher from Goodwin Elementary who has served Cicero students for 18 years, was the first to speak.
“Cicero 99 claims we move forward together in our motto, but it seems as though our IEP population keeps getting left behind! When LBS1's[Special Education certified teachers] are split between 2, 3, and 4 classrooms, how can we in good faith say that we are honoring our students' IEP minutes? … When will the board take our families and students seriously? I can’t in good faith keep working for a district that doesn’t put all of its families first, which is why I will be resigning at the end of this school year. I’ve dedicated 18 years to this district and refuse to continue to stand by and watch you, D99, continue to fail our families,” said Ortega, giving her full statement directly to the board.
Ortega’s emphatic statement and public resignation sparked loud and supportive cheers from the crowd. During the meeting, the board members and superintendent Aldo Calderin did not respond.
According to Ortega, the district has failed to provide the support she, and many other teachers, require to provide essential services to students with individualized education programs (IEP).
Liliana Ortega reads a book to her Kindergarten class at Goodwin Elementary. Photo provided by Liliana Ortega.
When Cicero Independiente asked Aldo Calderin to comment on Ortega's claims in her statement and her resignation through email, he wrote, “Thank you for your inquiry. The district cannot discuss personnel matters, however, it is not an uncommon practice for a teacher in education to service multiple classrooms specifically when the services are based on students' needs.”
In an interview with Cicero Independiente, Ortega stated that the shortage of special education-certified teachers has become so severe that administrators from the Special Education Department began asking teachers to volunteer their dedicated planning time to step into other classrooms and help fulfill IEP requirements, a process known as “internal subbing.”
“There were a couple of teachers that volunteered their time but it only lasted a couple of weeks and to no fault of their own. You know, every teacher is overwhelmed with the caseloads and our job to begin with. So the fact that they volunteer their time was so nice. But they stopped coming because again they have their own special education students to teach and plan for,” said Ortega.
Cicero Independiente also asked Calderin to comment on the district's efforts to recruit, hire and retain special education teachers. He listed a variety of partnerships with nearby universities such as Northern Illinois University, Concordia University Chicago and Depaul University.
You can find a list of all the universities and career fairs in which District 99 has participated here.
“The District also has an ongoing partnership with Golden Apple, which provides the District an opportunity to interview and hire wonderful scholars. In addition, as part of recruiting efforts, District 99 entered into an MOU with the Cicero Council to allow for a $5,000 signing bonus for newly hired LBS1 teachers, multilingual teachers, social workers, speech language pathologists and psychologists as a result of the teacher vacancy grant which the District applied for and received. The Human Resources Department has also attended the following job fairs as well, including the addition of international recruiting efforts which are supported through the aforementioned teacher vacancy grant along with the VIT (visiting international teacher) partnership which District 99 entered into an agreement with through the Illinois State Board of Education,” wrote Calderin in an email.
Following Ortega’s public resignation at the meeting, five other parents and concerned members of the community expressed their frustration with what they claimed was the district's negligence regarding students with IEPs and disabilities.
One of the parents who shared their concerns was Belen Rodriguez, accompanied by her son Michael, a kindergarten student in Ortega’s classroom.
Denial of Services and Compensatory Education
Rodriguez said she has advocated for Michael’s right to a free and appropriate public education since December 2023. She alleges that the district has denied this right.
“For four months, my son hasn't been getting any minutes and they just keep telling me that they have a hard time getting employees. That they're going to hire someone and that they're going to let me know,” said Rodriguez. “But, then I came to find out that all the parents that I talked to their kids were in the same situation but the school never let them know what was happening.”
When Cicero Independiente requested a comment regarding whether parents have reported any services being denied for students’ with IEPs in the district, Calderin wrote in an email, “The district does not deny services to any student that qualifies for them. The District follows all protocols and procedures regarding the provision of special education services to its students and a student that qualifies for services will receive them.”
Since December of last year, according to Ortega, four kindergarten students in Ortega’s class, including Michael, have not received the total minutes required by their IEP due to Ortega’s co-teacher being out on maternity leave.
“When we had our IEP meeting, I asked them ‘Michael would mention to me that his teacher is gone and you just haven't told me anything? When are you planning to let me know that my son is not getting his minutes?’” said Rodriguez.
Rachel Shapiro, a Managing Attorney for Equip for Equality who represents students with disabilities, said if a teacher is on parental leave, school districts are still responsible for implementing the IEP in classrooms.
“So, they need to have someone there to implement it and if they didn't, which it sounds like they didn't, they need to be scheduling IEP meetings to talk with parents about compensatory education services. They were supposed to notify the parents that there is a service in their child's IEP that they're not receiving,” said Shapiro.
In February of 2024, frustrated with a lack of communication from D99 leadership following an IEP meeting, Rodriguez said she had communicated with Elizabeth Dejewski, head of the Special Education Department, through email.
Rodriguez outlined three main requests for the district in an email: Provide an interim special education teacher to provide the necessary support for her son, consistent communication and updates from the district regarding their efforts to meet Michael’s IEP requirements and potential compensatory services to make up for the four weeks of denied services.
Elizabeth Dejewski’s, head of the Special Education Department, response to Belen Rodriguez. Provided by Belen Rodriguez
Soon after those conversations, Rodriguez was sent a response letter where Dejewski outlined the steps that D99 would take to address some of her concerns. Some of those steps include the “internal subbing” that Ortega mentioned, and a “summary of efforts email” sent weekly to Rodriguez describing the district's efforts to find a replacement for Michael’s co-teacher and fulfill his IEP requirements.
However, in response to the request for compensatory services, Dejewski wrote, “compensatory minutes are not required to be made up ‘minute-for-minute.”
“Our responsibility is to continue to monitor progress toward IEP goals. Compensatory services would be required only to the extent necessary to ensure expected progress toward IEP goals,” wrote Dejewski.
Cicero Independiente fact-checked Dejewski’s statement with Shapiro. She stated that although the district was correct in saying that IEP minutes did not need to be made up “minute-for-minute,” compensatory services are still required and highly individualized to each student. This could result in students receiving even more than the total minutes denied by the district if deemed necessary to put a student back on track.
“The law allows students to get what's called compensatory education services, which are services to put the students back in the position they would have been in if they had received the services they were supposed to get,” said Shapiro. “ It is sort of an individualized mushy concept. Each student needs to be looked at individually to determine, did they regress, did they not make progress on certain goals because of the fact that the school district did not provide the student with a free appropriate public education.”
Empty Progress Reports Approved by District 99
According to Rodriguez, in the past 4 months she has not received adequate progress reports for Michael in Math and Reading, the two subjects Michael should receive daily minutes from a co-teacher.
Progress report for Michael dated December 21, 2023 shows that a Special Education teacher is required to provide assistance in Math and Reading. Both sections that should outline progress toward goals are empty. Provided by Belen Rodriguez.
“I haven't been told for two semesters now if Michael is meeting his goals,” Rodriguez said. “They haven't notified me because they don't have a special teacher that would tell me, 'Michael is behind in this and we need to work on this or Michael is not learning this and we are already at this level.’”
Elementary school teacher Liliana Ortega backed Rodriguez's statement, stating that it took weeks of asking supervisors to find out how progress would be tracked for students’ who are currently without a special education teacher.
“In the end, I got a verbal answer that basically they were going to be sending out these progress reports and the special education teacher section would be empty. It would just say ‘No progress or report at this time.’ So, those reports went home like that,” said Ortega.
Without these progress reports and adequate support for Michael in this crucial developmental time, Rodriguez said she fears that her son won’t be set up to succeed in the following grades or that he will be labeled a “problematic child” instead of receiving the support he requires.
“If the school is not giving you the support, imagine that the child reaches second grade and then they start to say ‘the child does not behave well’ or ‘the child does not pay attention.’ No, that is not the problem. The problem is that from the beginning, they are not giving the child the education he deserves,” said Rodriguez.
According to Ortega, she said the lack of support and communication from District 99 is not unique to Belen and her son. Ortega’s co-teacher that served Michael also serviced the 1st grade classes in Goodwin Elementary. The scope of IEP services being denied by D99 has yet to be seen, she said.
“Now, this isn't the first time, this is only the first time that I've been able to speak up about it. And this is the only time that it's affected my class personally, but within the district, the Special Ed Department has gone through so much turnover throughout the years,” Ortega said.
Language Accessibility Concerns for D99 Board Meetings
Belen Rodriguez helps her son, Michael Vargas, climb down from a playset outside of Goodwin Elementary in Cicero, Ill. on May 20, 2024. Rodriguez said Michael requires more assistance due to being on the Autism spectrum, and she has had to help Michael more and more with homework since his co-teacher left. Efrain Soriano/Cicero Independiente
Rodriguez said that she will continue to advocate for Michael’s right to a free appropriate public education at board meetings and hopes that other parents will do the same.
She also expressed her frustration to Cicero Independiente with the lack of accessibility at board meetings.
According to data from the Census Bureau, 80% of people who live in Cicero speak Spanish at home. At the same time, according to the Illinois Report Card, 58.8% of the student body of D99 are English learners.
With Cicero being a predominantly Spanish-speaking community, the lack of translation services in public meetings has posed a significant barrier for parents seeking justice or updates about district-wide decisions.
“We go to those meetings and they don't have someone to interpret. They don't invite us either, they don't have anyone to translate for us and besides, they don't want us to know what is really going on,” Rodriguez said.
Erica Gomez*, a program assistant in District 99 and a parent of three children who attend D99 schools, shared a similar concern with Cicero Independiente following the April board meeting. She pointed out that D99 leadership has traveled to Puerto Rico in recent years to recruit bilingual teachers for their dual language programs. Still, she would like to see the district put the same effort into serving the Spanish-speaking parents of the school district.
“So, I hear the parents saying, ‘What are they talking about? I don’t see a translator.’ There are a lot of things that are not being fed or promoted to the parents. I feel like the board meeting is something parents need to be aware of,” said Gomez.
When asked to comment on language accessibility concerns at Board of Education meetings, superintendent Aldo Calderin wrote, “The district provides board agendas in English and Spanish both on paper and electronically. Any member of the audience that requires assistance has been provided assistance in Spanish when requested.”
According to records available on BoardBook, which the district uses to publish its agendas digitally, the Board of Education agenda meetings have been available in English and Spanish since August 2023. The Spanish versions can be found under the Extras hyperlink of any given regular board meeting. However, no live translation services have been provided at board meetings this school year besides Calderin translating some parents' public comments into English.
What Options Do Parents Have?
Michael Vargas sits on his favorite obstacle at the Goodwin Elementary playground in Cicero, Ill. Efrain Soriano/ Cicero Independiente
Although the end of the school year is over, this does not limit the ability for parents to request any compensatory services for any services denied this school year. Rachel Shapiro said parents, or guardians, have two years to request compensatory services, from the time they knew or should have known about the fact their child is missing a service.
“There's still plenty of time for parents to advocate for that and maybe services over the summer,” Shapiro said. “Depending on their kid’s situation, they could advocate for that during the summer if they feel like it would be overwhelming for their kid to be receiving too many extra services during the school year.”
Shapiro said that Equip for Equality encourages parents to attend an IEP meeting first and request compensatory education services for denied services. However, if that’s unsuccessful, another avenue for parents could be to request mediation. Mediation is asked for through the Illinois State Board of Education, but both the parent and the district must agree to mediate for it to happen.
“If the school district agrees to mediate, the Illinois State Board of Education appoints an impartial mediator whose role there is solely to try and help the parties come to a resolution of their disagreement,” said Shapiro. “Certainly parents are welcome to call our helpline if they just want to get some advice as to how to go about this. But mediation is a much more parent-friendly process.”
According to Shapiro, she said if the school district refuses mediation or the parties can’t come to an agreement, then a parent is put in a situation where they have to file for due process.
“In that situation, a hearing officer is appointed and they effectively act as a judge. They hold a hearing which can be multiple days and is not a particularly parent friendly process. Then that hearing officer will decide how that student was affected by the denial of the free, appropriate, public education. And then how many hours or what types of services the school district should either provide or pay for someone else to provide to make up for the lack of services to that student,” Shapiro said.
In spite of Michael being denied services, and his Kindergarten teacher’s resignation, Rodriguez feels her anger is better placed on district leadership whom she believes is to blame for the shortage of special education teachers.
“It makes me really sad that Liliana had to quit because she is basically giving up on the district because of the way they are,” Rodriguez said. “[The district] is not going to be able to replace someone that has that education background and wants to teach our kids. And because of them, we're letting good teachers leave our district.”
If you or any other families you know are experiencing issues with your school district denying services outlined in an IEP or compensatory education services, we encourage you to fill out the Equip for Equality online form or contact their hotline at 312-341-0022.
Efrain Soriano is the Youth and Schools Reporter for Cicero Independiente and a freelance photographer in the local area.
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