Our Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) EmbraceAbilities grant team is proud to be one of seven Special Education Resource Leads (SERLs) within the CA Statewide System of Support. Our project goal is to build capacity by providing support for systemic, continuous improvement to County Offices of Education (COEs) and Local Educational Agencies (LEAs) to include students with disabilities, more specifically, students with extensive support needs. During the first year of this grant project, we visited several sites within 17 COE-operated Regionalized Special Education Programs. We collected data via classroom walkthroughs, student, family, and staff interviews, and surveys to identify best practices and opportunities to support programs from a systems perspective. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching shared an article, Building A Culture Of Improvement In The Context Of External Accountability. In this article, they shared the idea of a team embracing the mantra of “possibly wrong and definitely incomplete.” Our team utilized this mantra in our journey with our SIL coach, Beverley Jenkins. We want to share how we developed a Process Map that laid the foundation for our team to determine best practices and opportunities in supporting students with extensive support needs.
