With a special education job fair happening below their feet, the Tulsa Public Schools board tentatively dropped specific expectations for special education services in its next strategic plan.
The TPS board spent nearly three hours Tuesday debating its 2027-2032 priorities. Strategic plans are made up of goals and guardrails that inform where the district puts funds, staffing and effort. These metrics are monitored by the board and made public. They are also used to evaluate the superintendent’s performance.
In the working draft, the district’s current goals will largely stay the same, focusing on English language assessments for third through eighth grade students and graduation credentials for high schoolers. The biggest changes so far are to the district’s guardrails, which are meant to prevent negative outcomes for students.
There are two guardrails in the district’s current strategic plan: one prohibiting inequity in the district and one prohibiting corrective action regarding students with disabilities. The plan tracks suspension rates for Black students, teacher diversity levels and screening times for students with disabilities.
In its next five-year plan, the district decided to make the first guardrail more general — to ensure student equity.
“As a team, we felt like we were chasing a whole lot of goals and a whole lot of guardrails at the same time, and they had not merged,” said Superintendent Ebony Johnson during the discussion with the board. “We were feeling like: ‘Oh, we just finished reporting on the literacy piece. Oh my God, we’ve now got to turn around and report on disproportionality in the number of suspensions.’”
In the working draft, the board cut the special education guardrail entirely. TPS is currently not meeting its own expectations in those areas. The most recent guardrail report shows all measurements are “off track.”
- Only 86% of students were evaluated for special education services within 45 school days last year, below district rates in 2021. The guardrail sets an expectation of a 95% evaluation rate by June 2026.
- Long-term suspensions or expulsions of students with disabilities were nearly 2.2 times higher than the state average last year. The guardrail sets an expectation of no more than 1.5 times higher by June 2026.
- Only two-thirds of families said they received “accessible and timely information” about special education rights, process and services last year. The guardrail sets an expectation of 75% of families by summer 2027.
While the board opted to cut the specific special education guardrail, board member Stacey Woolley says a special education metric may be included under the remaining equity commitment.
TPS is still required to meet state and federal expectations for special education and disability services.
What’s next for the district’s strategic plan
- WINTER: The board will continue debating the district’s next mission, goals and guardrails in February. TPS staff will present draft measurements at the next special board meeting set for Feb. 24.
- SPRING: TPS will establish a committee of community members, educators and students to build a strategy for meeting the board’s mission and goals. The district hopes to include more students in this group than it did in 2021, said Sean Berkstresser, chief strategy officer at TPS.
- SUMMER: TPS will put the pieces together, with plans to release a draft strategic plan for public review and put it up for a board vote in August.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to add further clarify that the development of the next TPS strategic plan remains in progress. The changes the board discussed Tuesday night are tentative as noted in the story and up for further discussion as originally reported by the Flyer.
News decisions at the Tulsa Flyer are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
