Work group urges digestible technical assistance, behavior supports and new pipelines to recruit and retain special educators

Participants split into breakout groups and reported convergent themes about what educators need and how to keep them in the classroom.

Betsy Perry, a 30-year veteran special education teacher from Montgomery County, said many teachers are "traumatized" by post-COVID increases in challenging behavior and urged more training and restored supports: "It's behavior, behavior, behavior... we have multiple staff that are on leave because of concussions and serious injury from some of these issues." Group reports and whole-group discussion stressed that behavior-management training should be practical, ongoing and include coaching rather than one-time lists of directives.

Several groups prioritized Universal Design for Learning and co-teaching skills as foundational cross-cutting competencies for general and special educators. Participants proposed a range of preparation and staffing strategies: a five-year teacher-prep model with concentrated clinical practice and incentives; dual-certification paths or area-of-concentration options (particularly for secondary content areas); growing paraeducators into teacher roles; and paid residencies or apprenticeships through CTE programs.

Speakers repeatedly pointed to workplace culture and visible leadership as central to retention. Suggested short-term steps included reducing paperwork through clerical supports or redistributing case-management tasks, expanding induction/mentoring and targeted mental-health supports for staff. On recruitment, speakers recommended earlier pipeline work in high school, scholarships/loan-forgiveness tied to service in local LEAs, and better-aligned HR job descriptions so qualified candidates are not screened out by overly narrow minimums.

The work group noted a numerical context for urgency: the transcript states MSDE records indicate the state has "over 5,000 conditional teachers" and that roughly 21% of those were serving as special educators. Members flagged that as a data point worth validation and urged MSDE to include conditional-teacher data in workforce planning.

Groups agreed to surface these suggestions as concrete recommendations for the interim report and to supply meeting notes and takeaways to MSDE prior to the report-draft circulation.