Organizational Dysfunction in our School District

Nydia Basham
Jorge Gonzalez
Elizabeth Munoz
Sonia Lerma
11/26/15
Professor: Dr. Erasmus Addae
ORGL 4341 Management Theory I

Introduction
McAllen ISD houses the Regional School for the Deaf (RSD) program.
They specialize with students who are deaf and hard of hearing. In
special education the teacher is responsible for creating lessons
specialized and modified to meet the students needs called an
individualized education program (IEP). Aside from that, they are also
liable for documenting the students progress according to their IEPs.
These IEPs are discussed and approved by a process called
admissions, review, and dismissal (ARD) meeting. There is at least one
meeting held for each individual student throughout the year.
Sometimes the student might have behavioral issues, test
modifications, and other situations that conflict with the students IEP
so in order to enforce new strategies an ARD must be conducted.
During this meeting a committee consisting of teacher, parents,
coaches, therapists, school nurses, counselors and other people who
work directly with the students come together and discuss the changes
being made on the IEP. During this meeting they see if these changes
and accommodations are appropriate and for how long these changes
will be in effect. Because an IEP and an ARD are law binding, the
process to keep proper documentation, contacting the people, setting
up the meeting, and facilitating the meeting is long and grueling. This
process happens with each and every one of the students and a

teacher can have a case load anywhere between five to fifteen

students.

Problem
Because Regional School for the Deaf cannot afford to hire a person to
just focus on IEPs and ARDs, the teacher is having to carry the weight
of both teacher role and the IEP/ARD keeper. This has placed the
teacher, in the RSD program, compromising position of not being able
to teach because there are overwhelmed in documentation and
paperwork because these IEP/ARDs also have deadlines. In most
cases, the teacher is found behind a desk full of paperwork, while the
paraprofessionals are left to do the teaching. Excessive and
nonproductive bureaucratic record-keeping and formal action-planning
overhead imposed on educational first-responders is interfering with
and undermining the care of, educational advancement. Therefore
futures and life outcomes of these Deaf students in the RGV are greatly
impacted by being neglected the opportunity to good quality
education. These reduced outcomes force a great deal more tax
expenditures than need be spent and divert already scarce care-giving,
remedial education and even legal intervention by the state. There are

few incentives in place to reduce this diversion of tasks to the first

responders by higher level bureaucratic staffers.

Significance
Teachers are not teaching because they are doing paperwork and so
paraprofessionals are left with the task to teach. These
paraprofessionals are not properly trained, are underpaid, and
ultimately, the ones who suffer are the students because they are not
receiving good quality education. Possible solutions would be to have
the program hire a full time person who will only focus on the
paperwork such as IEPs, writing up ARDs, setting up ARD meetings,
and conducting the ARD meetings. The teacher will now just be part of
the ARD committee and be a participant rather than the facilitator of
the meeting. The paraprofessionals will not be able to do the role of
assisting the teacher rather than being the teacher. This way
paperwork will be filled and filed correctly, the teacher can go back to
doing what she was originally hired and to do and the Paras can assist.

Research goal
To find a middle tier go-between to both maintain records, so that first
responders (teachers) to the needs of our special needs children can
focus on the childrens needs and not be distracted from their critical
tasks by record-keeping and formal action-planning, but can remain

dynamic engaged with and effectively relating to the childrens

educational and other needs. While an assessment of the needs of
special needs children is rightfully kept in the hands of first responders,
they should not be distracted from making these judgments and
implementing these by a record keeping tasks that can be easily done
by others in consultation with them.

Purpose
The purpose of this study is to find out what record keeping and actionplan tasks can be better relegated to support staff in consolation with
first responders, and how this might be effectively implemented.
Research questions
1. What precisely should be the tasks to be performed by support
staffers specializing in records and action-plan documentation,
from the perspective of first responders to special needs
children?
2. What documentation tasks are not appropriate for support
staffers?
3. What funding is available for this initiative or could be diverted
towards it?
4. What support staff, with what training, are best suited to these
documentation tasks?
Literature Review and Synthesis of Evidence
McKee 2014 expresses how a mission and a vision alone are not
enough when it comes to running an organization. Everything needs a

strategy including organizations, leaders, and employees. "Today a

strategy is an organization's overarching plan that articulates its
direction, approach, major area of focus, and major goals." It seems,
when it comes to special education, that the mission is a trained
educator to teach the children, and the vision is to see them learn and
succeed. But how can these children learn when the teachers are not
teaching? Instead our children are learning from paraprofessionals who
are not qualified to even teach, due to the overload paper work given
to the teacher who is qualified. Where is the strategy in that? There are
no major goals happening if the teacher can't do her job. According to
a job description at Williamson County School District, a special
education assistant provides instruction, under the supervision of the
teacher, to the students in a variety of individual and group activities
(e.g. academic subjects, social skills, daily living skills, giving oral tests,
etc.)

for

the

purpose

of

reinforcing

instructional

objectives;

implementing IEP plans, and ensuring students success in school.

(Page 2). If you notice on their guide line it says supervision of the
teacher. The assistant is somewhat treated like a student herself. She
cant teach or do anything without the main teacher being present or
attentive. Tom Malnight is a professor of strategy at IMD and he
quotes, "think in terms of "what must we do" as opposed to "what can
we do." By defining what must we do to achieve our mission or longterm goals, a path to achievement can be developed by choosing

actions that are necessary, as opposed to actions that are easy and
convenient." (McKee 2014). Malnight points out how choosing actions
that are necessary are obviously a must for a mission to succeed. For
children to learn, don't they need their teachers to teach? In the
handbook of Park Hill School District on page six they have dos and
donts. The donts were stated not to take over a teacher if she is ill.
They are not to teach new skills or concepts. They are not to
communicate with parents about progress or discipline issues. So from
here you can see it's an obvious necessity for teachers to teachers and
not the assistants. Organizations need to realize that a strategy helps
its mission to bring their vision to life and for once not break rules from
policies nor handbooks. Let the assistants do their job as described and
the teachers so their own by helping children instead of writing papers.
Project Plan and Methodology
A survey will be created and emailed to a sector that will include at
least fifty school teachers in the IEP. This is to see the percentage of
teachers that state that they need assistance and that would benefit
from a record keeper. If the information proves to be in favor of hiring
a record keeper, a thorough analysis of the budget would be reviewed
in order to see if there is the possibility of hiring a for that position. If
the funds are not available in the current budget, an increment in the
budget will be asked for, in the next fiscal year, to incorporate the new
employee. After hiring the record keeper, he or she will be trained in

the record keeping by the teachers and a plan to meet weekly will be
created to overview the work done by the record keeper and to see the
progress of the students.

Resources Available
CSEF Survey
Emails of Participating Teachers
Budget Report
QuickBooks
Employee Scheduler
Employee Plan of Action

Conclusion
By giving teachers more time to teach, they can have more one to one
interaction with students and that will enable students to score higher
in their standardize tests. The best way to give the teachers more
time with the students is to hire a person to take care of the record
keeping of the IEPs and to conduct ARDs. Surveys conducted by
teachers will prove that they are indeed in need of assistance and that
a person hired to take care of IEPs and ARDs would be beneficial for
the students, the teachers, the parents and the school districts
involved. This new employee will help teachers have more time with
students and thus will help students score higher in their standardize

tests. Higher student scores means higher funding and more

opportunities for our students.

Potential Impact for Management and Organizational

Leadership
Due to low standardized test scores, caused by the lack of
teacher/student interaction, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) has
been cutting funding to local school districts. The TEA believes that
there is a correlation between low scores and the effectiveness of
teachers and their strategies. The lack of funding will make the tasks
of teaching and keeping records, ultimately impossible for teachers to
carry out by themselves.

Timeline
Week
Week
Week
Week
Week
Week

1
2
3
4
5
6

Week 7
Week 8
Week 9-12

Detailed Plan, Collection of Emails, Create Survey

Administration of CSEF Survey
Collection of Survey and Analysis
Analyze Budget and Request Funding if necessary
Request approval for hire
Post Hiring Ads at local Workforce Agencies and School
Websites
Initial Interviews
Final Interviews and Hiring Process
Training New Employee

References
McKee, Annie. "Chapter 5." Management: A Focus on Leaders. 2nd ed.
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2011. 157. Print.

CSEF Survey
http://www.csef-air.org/seep_instruments_teacher.php
2014 Accountability System. (2014, September 14). Retrieved on
November 20, 2015, from
http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/account/2014/faq.htmlhttp://ritter.
tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/account/2014/faq.html
2014 Accountability Rating System. (2014, December 3). Retrieved on
November 20, 2015, from
http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/account/2014/index.html
https://parkhill.k12.mo.us/UserFiles/Servers/Server_62416/File/Human
%20Resources/Teacher%20Assistant%20Handbook%202014-2015.pdf

http://www.wcs.edu/wpcontent/pdf/JobDescription/SpecialEducationTA.pdf