On February 2, 2021, PCG Manager Sophia Thwaites co-facilitated the webinar, Conversations with District Leaders: Building and Sustaining Racial Equity with Luis Versalles, Director of Pre K-12 District Partnerships at Courageous Conversation. Sophia and Luis were joined by Instructional Facilitators Cassandra Davis, EdD, and Amelia D’Costa, from the Equity and Diversity Department at Broward County Public Schools. 

This fall, PCG’s Education team in New Jersey was honored to partner with NJ Spotlight to publish a series of articles about rising to challenges in education as schools pivot between remote and hybrid instruction.

In January of 2018, Broward County Public Schools (BCPS), the sixth largest and most diverse district in the country, partnered with PCG to offer an equity-focused professional learning program featuring the online course Courageous Conversations about Race with Glenn Singleton. Courageous Conversations about Race provides a framework, tools and strategies for productive interracial dialogue about race and directly supports improvements in culture and climate.

The fourth blog post in our ‘back-to-school’ series highlights several best practices of evidence-based progress monitoring that educators can apply to virtual instruction to ensure ongoing progress monitoring continues regardless of the learning environment, be it remote, blended, or in-person. According to author Jennifer Meller, “Such monitoring can, and should, be used broadly to provide feedback to all students but is critically important for students with IEPs to meaningfully update goals, accommodations, and services.”

The third blog post in our ‘back-to-school’ series explores the need for districts to implement a multi-tiered approach to social-emotional learning (SEL) during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent recommendation from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). Author Lauren English-Mezzino acknowledges that while many districts are familiar with a tiered approach for academics, integrating SEL into a multi-tiered system of support—whether instruction is fully remote, in person, or a blend of the two—may present new challenges for districts.

Over the summer, state education agencies required local school districts to create “re-entry plans” to outline how students can safely and equitably return to school in multiple learning environments. These plans primarily focused on supporting the majority of students but offered minimal, if any, support on the unique needs of students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). That’s according to an article authored by special education subject matter expert (SME) Matthew Korobkin that was published by eSchool News on September 25, 2020.

The Connecticut State Department of Education (CSDE) recently partnered with PCG to develop a new statewide special education data management system. PCG will support CSDE’s project from start to finish providing system design, development, data integration, implementation, training and then support.

Today, PCG is excited to announce a new suite of K12 Space Education offerings with The Aldrin Family Foundation. According to Dr. Andy Aldrin, CEO of The Aldrin Family Foundation, “The first crew to explore Mars are in America’s classrooms today.” Through this partnership, we are providing Space camps, robots, gigantic Mars and Moon learning maps and a unique Space Education curriculum that can be taught in classrooms, virtually, or in a hybrid approach to locate and inspire students across America.

To help educators navigate the unprecedented times of a global pandemic, we recently launched a series of ‘back-to-school’ blog posts featuring actionable insights and free resources developed by a team of special education subject matter experts (SMEs) at PCG. This blog series is based on PCG’s Special Education Reentry Checklist and each post aligns to a core theme from that checklist: Health and Safety, IEPs and Instruction, Communication Planning, and Budget and Finance.

The 2020-21 school year will be unlike any other experienced by American schoolchildren and their teachers since the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918. Although the Spanish Flu gives us a glimpse of some lessons learned, when it comes to Special Education, we have no playbook to follow.