Parents of children who receive P3/SETSS do you realize...

↑ seeker ↓

Wed, Sep 04 2024, 10:34 am

amother IndianRed wrote:

Please do. We can do with some clarity

I'll try to take a stab at it.

Very vague approximate timeline of what happened as I experienced it as a professional in the field:

1980s-90s - P3 exists but I don't know if anyone knows about it. I'm not in the field yet.
P3 is the right of the parents to hire an independent provider if the DOE does not provide services that the student's IEP/IESP mandates.
DOE sets a rate of $41 an hour for one student, $62 for a group of two, etc.

early 2000s - People become more aware of P3. Savvy parents get providers to service students at home after school.

maybe 2005 ish? - Early agencies emerge to match up parents with providers. The first one I knew of actually serviced Catholic schools more than Jewish. Rates are a joke at $25 an hour but you can get a caseload without knowing people, and they handle the DOE for you.

DOE systems are a pain with faxing this and mailing that and sometimes you don't get paid if the secretary spilled their coffee on your mail or something. Between that and getting a full caseload in one school, it may be worth the $20 an hour especially if you're just starting out.

2005-2010 - P3 has trickled into schools through a combination of parents, providers, and agencies forging a path. Yeshiva schools (along with Catholic etc) have figured out that they can use this program to get a full resource room setup paid for by the DOE. Most are using independent providers.

Everyone seems fairly happy. $41 an hour isn't bad in 2010 for something where you can set your own hours (and you get more for a group). Providers learn to roll with DOE shtick, you have the CSE on speed dial to remind them to do their job like pay you. Parents are getting their kids extra help in school without paying anything. Schools are getting their students helped without having to nudge the parents about finding tutors.

Schools start needing to put one of their staff members on top of coordinating providers and cases so you don't have a wild west of people coming and going and pulling kids here and there. It's worth hiring someone; they would have paid a resource room director anyway and at least they're getting the providers free.

Around the same time I think? Not sure exactly when.
Enhanced rate becomes a thing. Parents with money, connections, resources have long been suing the DOE for various things, usually for tuition to specialized schools. Now we have parents looking for specialized providers. For example, if your kid has dyslexia, the DOE doesn't know or care. If you have money, you get a private evaluation, and then get a lawyer to tell the DOE that your kid needs a dyslexia specialist, otherwise they are not getting an appropriate education.

That's where enhanced rate comes in. Your lawyer goes to impartial hearing with the DOE and says the $41 an hour P3s are all recent graduates with generalized degrees. This child needs a dyslexia specialist, and dyslexia specialists charge $200 an hour. You need to pony up that $200 otherwise we will sue you for not providing this child with a free, appropriate public education. By the way, you're also on the hook for the private evaluation because your people didn't do what this child needed.

This works great for parents who can afford the up-front cost until the DOE reimburses. Which is not the case for most people.

2010 ish sees the gentle rise in agencies facilitating this. They get a lawyer who specializes in this and can push through one case after another, lawyer charges less because of scale, both of them are good enough at knowing which cases will win that they can afford to make the case knowing that the DOE will pay back.

Enhanced rate catches on because it's hard to find providers to work for $41/hour. For the most part, you can profit better by taking a group, which pays more. But what about kids who aren't able to group? You have:
1. The only kid in the class with an IEP. Who are they going to group with?
2. The kid whose behavior is terrible and even the excellent teacher can't keep them from dragging down the group.
3. The kid who's so miserably behind that no one else in the group is at a compatible level and they really need 1:1 support.

So now you get agencies appealing for enhanced rate for individual service. Instead of saying "I can only get a dyslexia specialist for $200" they say "I can only get a provider to see this specific child for $200."

By 2015 or so, word is out about this and they're saying
Parents: My friend's kid is getting a personal provider focused all on their needs, why can't my kid get that level of attention?
Providers: My colleague is getting paid twice as much as me for less work? I am not doing this $41 thing anymore. I can barely support my family on that anyway.
Old/some agencies: KK we got you, tell me again why this kid needs individual service, we'll write it up and find someone to come to your school.
New/other agencies: OMG the Dept of Ed is giving out free money let's go.

2015-2020 - the more you do this, the more it becomes true. If the starting line was "I can't find a provider at the regular rate" well now you REALLY can't because everyone wants enhanced. If the starting line was "My kid needs individual service because there's no one to group him with" well now that's true for everyone because even the school that has 3 IEPs in the same class, if two got enhanced that leaves the other kid with no one to group with.

Throughout, you have more schools using agencies, enhanced or not, because it's much easier for them. Because of the scale they operate at, agencies can work the DOE like a well-oiled machine. The school where I started out working as an independent provider used to have one of their administrators calling the parents 100 times to coach them through getting their ducks in a row at the DOE. Hello Mrs. Schwartz? Just checking if you got your P4 form yet. You don't know? Can you check your pile of mail? It's not there? OK, you need to call the CSE admin. Yes, today please. Here's the name, number, and what you need to say. They didn't pick up? OK can you call them again now? Oh they need you to go sign stuff in their office... Yes I know you have a job and this is a headache but your child is starting to act up in English because he can't read. I can't get you a provider until we have your paper... hello? hello? OK Miss Klein please send Shloimy back to class and have him count the ceiling tiles again while we figure out who can help him without having to get paid.
It was also on the school person to figure out this system including things that change so that they could direct the parents appropriately.

I was skeptical about the whole agency thing, I felt that a little grassroots resistance might keep it from getting out of hand, but at some point the school just said we are giving everything over to the agency because we can't deal anymore. And I got a pay increase so I didn't really mind even though I still worried a little about the house of cards falling like it is doing now.

As both a parent and provider I saw there were a couple of types of agencies:
Some took the enhanced rates and used it to provide a higher level of service. They did professional development events for providers, had supervisors reviewing weekly session notes (did I mention that the $41 DOE gig involved zero oversight? You had to submit a progress report once a year) and had consultants on staff who you could call in for things like the kid who didn't respond to regular motivational techniques.
Others were more focused on the business end. They said things like "just sign here and all will be good." If you sent in your paperwork regularly you basically didn't hear from them. I have no idea if they were telling the DOE untruthfully that they provided supervision and expertise, or if the DOE just didn't ask and didn't care. I'd believe the latter easily.

I believe that there were sectors in which a lot of fraud happened. I validate parents who feel that their child was pulled for services for someone else's profit rather than the child's best interest. However, it's terrible to paint the whole industry with that brush. EVERY SINGLE provider I have ever met is in this job because they love children and want to help them succeed. I have literally never had a P4 colleague (I have worked in at least 5 schools in this capacity) who was not ehrlich and trying to do their best job. Two of the schools I worked in were independently wealthy and had no need for agency kickbacks, and as far as I could tell just genuinely cared about getting each kid what they needed. Another two schools were not wealthy but I worked closely enough with the special ed coordinators to be quite sure they didn't get anything monetary from the agencies, what they got was facilitation and headache removal. The fifth (well actually first but fifth on this list) one was back in the $25 an hour day, I really don't think there was enough money going around to involve any hanky panky. The agent I worked with there was an individual who seemed normal enough.

2020 - I don't know, people like to blame COVID for everything, but as far as I could see the agency racket didn't really change. A lot of providers just took off because unemployment paid better than any enhanced rate. A lot of kids became future special ed cases because they didn't learn properly. The biggest change is that it prompted huge inflation in living expenses shortly afterward that made all providers desperate for enhanced rates.

2022 or 23 - The DOE FINALLY realizes it's wasting a huge fortune on lawyers and impartial hearings, and makes it simpler to get enhanced rate just by having providers and parents fill out a form. The rate they're offering for this automated amount is lower than what agencies were getting before, but it's fine because you don't need the agency to get it so you can keep it all. But most people stick with the agencies because they're not ready to learn a new system, the schools are happy to have everything streamlined, why rock the boat. The agencies can still continue to pay fairly and turn a profit because if they need to pay less to lawyers, and they also continue to appeal for higher rates for their cases - they don't need to use the automated system because like before, they have the scale and the clout to be special.

2024 - Cutting out the lawyers and hearings isn't enough, now the DOE has had enough of enhanced rate altogether. They acknowledge the problem with not being able to get providers at their 1980s rate, so they raise the base rate to $85. For the most part, providers are reasonably happy with this. It's comparable to what they were getting from agencies, and sounds simple enough.

But this isn't going over so smoothly. Schools don't want to go back to having their own people deal with all the headaches; they want to keep the agencies. Parents don't want to go back to having their kids grouped, even though it should work out ok for most kids. Agencies don't want to stop making nice profits, though it seems most of them feel it's time to cut their losses and pivot to a different service model (I bet they were ready for this. I was waiting for something like this to happen for years. If you were still able to search past posts by author, you'd see, if you have the patience to scroll past a bunch of yom tov roasts and stuff in between.)

Most of all, it isn't going smoothly because the DOE can't just do this like mentschen. The same way they were stupid throughout with having all these services with no oversight, trying to pay 1980s money in 2020, letting the agencies walk all over them - they're stupid in rolling this out as well. They changed a bunch of policies all at once, made it effective immediately instead of giving anyone any time to plan the next steps, the right hand doesn't talk to the left so each district rep is telling their providers something different, and they did this all smack in middle of the summer when people already thought they had September set up and nobody is in the offices to talk to.

So a lot of kids are starting this school year not knowing whether/how/with whom they're having services, a lot of providers are starting this school year not knowing whether/how/with whom they're working/getting paid, the DOE gets to enjoy spending all their money on migrants because nobody gets paid until this all gets figured out, and imamother armchair pundits think it's all good riddance because providing kids with an education is a game of monopoly and the other guy just went bankrupt. News flash: Nobody won.

I feel like there's things missing or out of order here but I've spent more time than I should trying to get it all out.

ittsamother

Wed, Sep 04 2024, 1:38 pm

seeker wrote:

Thank you, Seeker! That was fantabulous, educational, AND an entertaining read! I really liked getting the full scoop and all the background info. I used to work as a P3 for several years but I never had all this knowledge about it. Thanks for taking the time and headache to write this all out!

Sunshine3

Sun, Sep 08 2024, 6:17 am

seeker wrote:

Thanks so much for taking the time to explain this so clearly