Executive Summary
UHS SCHOOLS ROAD MAP TO SUCCESS
“STEERING A NEW COURSE, CHARTING A NEW DESTINY”
SCHOOL YEAR 2008
This year, the senior leadership staff and campus principals with their
staff engaged in a planning process to assess our current service model in
order to improve the quality of service to our students.
This process included careful data analysis and review of our current
practices. We developed measurable outcomes based upon this analysis to
guide our new direction. A region wide strategic two-year plan was developed
to specifically address the revision of our service model. This process and
journey is one we are excited to share with our districts, parents, staff
and most importantly, our students.
A challenge of UHS-Schools has been providing a consistent behavioral model
across all of our campuses. The behavior intervention and academic programs
for each campus, while founded on the same basic principles, independently
evolved based upon the particular strengths and skill sets of staff for the
individual campus. In addition, the No Child Left Behind legislation and the
resulting Response to Intervention paradigm, has mandated that students with
problem behaviors should be identified and appropriately served to lessen
the need for continuing or extended non-public school placement.
One of our first steps to address this challenge was to establish criteria
for evaluating standardized, exemplary behavioral and academic schools and
programs across the United States serving students similar to those
attending UHS-Schools. In order to evaluate the potential of a potential
service model utilization across our UHS-School system, a select group of
our clinical and administrative staff visited some of the sites reflecting
these best practice strategies. We selected the very best of those programs
and began our system implementation in January of 2007.
The Girls and Boys Town (GBT) Specialized Classroom Management Program was
selected to address the behavioral needs of our students with emotional
disturbances. Initially, selected UHS staff was identified to receive
training, coaching and consultation from GBT staff from Nebraska. Eight of
our staff became certified GBT trainers in May 2007 and GBT training was
held across our campuses. This current school year (FY07-08), we were able
to shift our dependence from the national GBT trainers to training and
coaching by our UHS staff. This fall, all campus staff have received
formalized training from our own GBT trainers. Each campus serving students
with emotional disturbances has implemented the GBT program, thus
standardizing our practice model across all of our classrooms. The
additional implementation of the GBT monitoring and evaluation processes
will allow us to determine the program’s success and effectiveness over time
at each campus and for each student. This outcome data will also allow us to
present our results at national venues and regional conferences and to share
with you quarterly in our newsletter.
UHS-Schools has also continued to expand the academic services provided to
our students. UHS teachers utilize the same curriculum that the referring
districts use in order to facilitate a student’s success when they return to
a district classroom. In addition, UHS has created a menu of additional, or
supplemental, curriculum choices in order for teachers to better serve their
students. This menu includes, but is not limited to:
• REACH
• Rewards Intermediate and Rewards Plus Writing – Sopris West
• Corrective Math
• Touch Math and Touch Money
• Horizons
• Language for Learning
• Essentials of Algebra (pilot program)
The successful return of a student to the district classroom is a goal for
all of our students. To facilitate that, UHS-Schools has begun a pilot
project to locate a select number of UHS-classrooms on public school
campuses. The utilization of the public school campus as an additional
location for our non-public school classroom has enabled us to provide our
educational services in a less restrictive environment while maintaining the
structure and support that the student requires to be successful.
To further strengthen the academic and behavioral components of our
classrooms, UHS-Schools have hired twelve exceptional Board Certified
Behavior Analysts (BCBA’s) for our campuses across California. The BCBA’s
are assisting with staff development, Hughes Bill compliance, functional
behavioral assessment and analysis plans as well as positive behavior
intervention plans. UHS now has a standardized curriculum for staff
orientation and training, standardized curriculum and data keeping forms,
and a staff-training calendar for this school year. The addition of the
BCBA’s and our expanded and standardized staff training will help to ensure
that quality services are a hallmark of our classrooms.
In addition, we have implemented a web-based assessment service, Edusoft,
which is a state of the art assessment service that will enable our teaching
staff to provide on-going assessment and evaluation for each student across
time, site, and teacher. In addition, teachers will be able to create simple
tests and curriculum based measurements based upon the California state
standards and other published curricula. Again, this will help us provide
and track the quality of our educational services to each student.
Four of the UHS campuses are now providing center-based, non-public agency
services to students with developmental delays and autism spectrum
disorders. Our certification as a non-public agency will allow us to further
strengthen the services we offer to students with autism and other
developmental delays who are not part of our school program.
As you can see, 2007 has been an exciting year, one of reflection,
analysis, program revisions and development. Our goal is to provide the most
effective educational and behavioral program to meet the individualized
needs each of our students. Our commitment is to best practice
interventions, on-going monitoring and evaluation. This commitment will help
keep our focus on our students and their progress. In this way, we look
forward to fulfilling our objective to seek the never-ending possibilities
for our students.
Betti Colucci
Regional Vice President
UHS Schools