Pleasant Hope R-VI Saves Time and Embraces Staff Growth with Euna Special Education

Key Challenges:

• Staff sizes are growing and teachers are learning to manage their new caseloads.
• Attracting high-quality candidates is difficult.
• Without a digitized special education management system, processes would be inefficient.

Key Results:

• Within 8 hours or less, new teachers are efficiently and confidently using the system.
• In 10 minutes or less, student data can be transferred from Pleasant Hope R-VI to another district.
• Staff have insight into their tasks for the next 30-60 days at a time, giving them the ability to prioritize their work.

About Pleasant Hope RV-I

Pleasant Hope R-VI, a Missouri school district, serves over 700 students—128 of which have Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). A customer of Euna Special Education for seven years, Pleasant Hope is making great strides towards their goal of creating the best learning environment possible for their students.

Special Education Coordinator Mike Ryan is one of the new staff members at Pleasant Hope R-VI this year. He and the growing team are laser-focused on increasing compliance, operating more efficiently, and ultimately learning and growing in new processes to maximize educational opportunities for their students.

Challenges

Pleasant Hope is on the upward trend in growth right now and they’ve expanded their bandwidth across their special education department—but it was no small task.

“With every district, attracting high quality teachers is a challenge.”

Being a small school district, Pleasant Hope especially struggles with this issue due to competition from larger districts in the area. However, one attractive selling point Mike hears from candidates is the district’s use of Euna Special Education. The familiarity of the system has helped them to hire excellent, motivated staff to grow their district.

With all the new staff they’ve brought on in the last year, they’re faced with the challenge of getting these workers up to speed. From onboarding new special education teachers and a new special education coordinator, they’ve hit the ground running.

This staff’s willingness to learn and grow paired with the support Euna Special Education provides has helped them make great progress toward program improvements. An added benefit is most of the new staff came from districts already using Euna Special Education, which made for a smooth transition.

Before Euna Special Education, Mike imagines their special education department would look a lot different. The lack of visibility and oversight into their department would cause convoluted processes, missed deadlines, and their work to be far less effective.

“It’s really going to cause you to not be efficient or effective, and [students], who are our hyper-center focus, are going to feel the blunt because of [the lack of technology].”

Mike noted that a special education management software is beneficial in more ways than one. The ease of use for staff means that students are seeing the benefits.

The Solution

Technology is vital for staying on track with all the requirements that go into special education, from remembering dates of evaluations to sending forms to parents.

“I know [paper and pencil] used to be the way before, but we live in the 21st century now so I don’t think that’s a good process to use because there’s just so many variables.”

Pleasant Hope has been able to effectively meet the needs of the students and they have a clear picture of where they need to go because of the centralized data in Euna Special Education.

“For me it’s a no-brainer. I don’t know why you wouldn’t choose [Euna Special Education] because of its usability and it’s always updating and changing with the state compliance pieces.”

Keeping all your student information in one place while simultaneously being able to work in that system to write IEPs is a game changer. You can reference historical information in the Review of Existing Data (RED), previous evaluation data, and past IEPs and goals to create a more informed annual IEP and tailor the document to the student’s needs.

Results

With the special education sector changing and requiring more of staff, Mike said it best: “in the day that we’re in, time is of an essence.”

That’s why the district uses a special education management system that gives them a multitude of time-saving features. This year specifically with implementing new staff members, they’ve found that getting the staff up and running in the system was easy.

According to Mike, the user-friendliness of Euna Special Education has been a huge help in getting Pleasant Hope’s new teachers to speed. In 8-hours or less—if staff give a really detailed lesson—new teachers can navigate functionality and perform required tasks in the system.

When it comes to all staff using the system, they’ve been able to cut down on the time normally spent creating annual IEPs. The tabular layout in the system allows teachers to work through the IEP start to finish in a single location with the guidance of a step-by-step process and error checkers.

Mike estimates time spent per annual IEP is four to five hours—far less time than they’d spend using a paper process or a decentralized software solution.

Transferring student data in the system is easy too. Department staff can complete transfers in four to five steps and it populates all the required data from the students’ former district—and vice versa. It takes department staff less than ten minutes to transfer student data to their new district.

This is a game changer—it has not only sped up the process, but it’s also created a more seamless data transfer between districts, leading to less data loss and confusion. In the end, this benefits the student greatly as it gives each district the visibility they need into student data.

Visibility is key in all areas of special education. With every district’s process being different, onboarding new staff and managing caseload timelines is difficult. With a software system, though, organizing and prioritizing tasks is easy since staff have the ability to gain insight into their caseloads 30 to 60 days out. With reminders of upcoming tasks, Mike stated that he can visualize what he should be working on and when he should be doing it.

All of these results culminated to improve each student’s education, and Pleasant Hope is always looking to the future to ensure they’re working hard to put the students first.

A question that they consistently ask themselves is “what can we do better in the future to best meet the needs of the kiddos?”

Mike stated that the district’s staff is always wanting to learn and grow, which goes to show how passionate they are about helping their students succeed.

Conclusion

Pleasant Hope R-VI is positively impacting their students through their growth and innovation, which is creating better outcomes for all involved—including parents, staff, and their community. Knowing that a district has quality special education staff and the resources they need to be most efficient brings light to the community and gives them hope that their children are being given an equal opportunity to succeed in their education.

When asked how Euna Special Education has benefited Pleasant Hope, Mike said, “it’s an opportunity for Pleasant Hope to have some flexibility to accomplish what’s best for kiddos and to see where they came from, where they’re at now, and where we need to push them in the future.”

Manage Your IEPs & Evaluations with Euna Special Education

Gain access to a purpose-built solution, designed to save you time and maintain compliance with features such as:

• IEP & Evaluation Templates
• Text Libraries
• Error Checkers

Learn more about how we can transform your special education process—book a demo with one of our experts.