PROVIDENCE – Parents trying to navigate the special education system will soon have a helping hand, a go-to program at the state Department of Education to help resolve disputes.
State lawmakers last session approved $450,000 for the creation of a so-called facilitated individualized education program at the Department of Education to provide parents with “early conflict prevention and resolution services” as they broker Individualized Education Programs, or IEPs, and 504 plans with school districts for special-needs students.
“It will be nice to have someone for parents to go to,” said Walter Steenbergen, whose son, Charlie, is on the autism spectrum and is diagnosed with neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder that causes tumors to form on nerve tissue. “I think we really have to take a wait and see approach with it.”
Parents have long called for a special education ombudsman
Steenbergen is among the parents who long rallied for an independent special education ombudsman to help parents of special-needs children through what can be a daunting and discouraging process. Though they didn’t get the independent watchdog they hoped for, the legislature did back the facilitator program at RIDE.
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Rep. Lauren Carson, D-Newport, sponsored the ombudsman legislation to function similar to the state Office of the Child Advocate, which serves as the oversight agency to the Department of Children, Youth & Families. Carson said she intends to ensure that the IEP facilitator program serves parents and she urged them to reach out if they need guidance.
“These are resources for parents to understand the IEP process and to support them through it,” Carson said. “I will be following up with RIDE to ensure the process is working.”
Carson worked with House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi, D-Warwick, to secure the funding in the RIDE budget.
The money will be used to hire three full-time staff members within RIDE to help facilitate individualized education programs and 504 services, both of which are intended to ensure that students with disabilities have access to a free and appropriate public education. The funding includes $400,000 for staffing costs and $50,000 for professional development and training, according to House spokesman Larry Berman.
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Funding for the program is expected to be included in the RIDE budget annually, he said.
Backed by education commissioner
The state Department of Education leaders are behind the initiative, spokesman Victor Morente said in an email.
“The agency supported the creation of the program because RIDE is committed to centering and being responsive to the needs of families. We heard from parents of an overwhelming desire to receive support throughout the IEP process and, most importantly, during the actual IEP meeting. The Commissioner, who is the parent of a differently abled child, fully understands the enormous stress that a parent may feel during the IEP process,” Morente said.
Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green appointed Jane Slade as the coordinator for the new IEP facilitator program. In the coming months, Morente said, two other education specialists will be hired to support facilitation statewide.
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RIDE is also developing training that will be implemented by program staff, as well as district special education officials, Morente said.
Parents to hold RIDE accountable
Steenbergen noted that Slade had served as the state transition coordinator for RIDE, whose office is part of the federal Olmstead settlement.
In 2014, the U.S. Department of Justice determined that the state had violated the civil rights of disabled students for generations by failing to ensure that Rhode Islanders with intellectual and developmental disabilities had the opportunity to work in integrated community settings. The State of Rhode Island entered into a settlement agreement and consent decree with federal officials.
The state has struggled to meet its obligations under the decree. U.S. District Court Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. in October ordered that it remain under his oversight through June 2026.
More: Two specialized Providence schools will close, citing staff shortages, falling enrollment
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“That raises a concern for me,” Steenbergen said.
Steenbergen said Special Education Advocacy and Reform Rhode Island, or SPEAR, will serve as a watchdog for the new program. SPEAR is among the parent organizations that for years pushed for the creation of an independent special education ombudsman.
“SPEAR wants to hold RIDE accountable,” said Kerri Cassino, a SPEAR member and parent to 13-year-old Ava, who is diagnosed with autism.
Cassino faulted many school districts for failing to have the behavioral awareness necessary to meet the needs of special-education students and referred to RIDE as an “absentee landlord” when it came to ensuring districts are in compliance with federal law.
“We are always in fight or flight. We grieve,” Cassino said. “There are not enough resources and supports.”
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Cassino worries about a child being harmed physically and mentally in public schools.
When the process grows contentious
Rhode Island will join 40 other states in launching a facilitator program to help parents and school districts to reach agreements in the best interest of the student without entering formal dispute resolution, Morente said. IEP facilitation will be a free service through RIDE to support families before and after an IEP or 504 meeting.
“We’re hoping that when it starts to get contentious, that the facilitator will step in,” Steenbergen said.
SPEAR hopes, too, that the facilitators will call out the districts when they fail to comply with federal law governing students with disabilities and serve as a voice of reason to parents when necessary.
“We’re hoping that districts will be much less likely to play chicken with parents,” Steenbergen said.
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Currently, the special education dispute resolution process entails writing a written complaint, mediation and due process hearings.
Almost 22,000 special-education students statewide
Morente said RIDE will be sharing information on the new service, which will be available to students, families and school districts, in the coming months.
According to Rhode Island Kids Count, as of June 2021, there were 21,697 students in grades K-12 receiving special education services in public schools, or 16%. That is up from 15% in June 2020. Of those, 35% had a learning disability, 19% had a health impairment, 12% had a speech/language disorder, 11% had an autism spectrum disorder, 8% had a developmental delay, 7% had an emotional disturbance, 4% had an intellectual disability, and 3% had other disabilities.
People interested in the services should contact RIDE’s special education call center at (401) 222-8999 or by email at CallCenter@ride.ri.gov .
Four Rhode Island hospitals — Newport, Miriam, South County and Westerly — received top marks in the fall report from Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit that grades hospitals on safety.
The Washington, D.C.-based Leapfrog assigns hospitals letter grades based on data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) as well as Leapfrog’s own surveys. Rhode Island’s hospitals didn’t perform much differently than they did in spring 2024 (The Miriam and Newport have consistently earned A’s the past two years), with two notable exceptions. Westerly’s A is its first since 2022. Landmark Medical Center in Woonsocket, which has received nine consecutive A grades, dropped to a B.
Kent Hospital and Rhode Island Hospital also received B grades. The embattled Our Lady of Fatima Hospital and Roger Williams Medical Center both earned C grades.
South County Hospital’s good report card was a boon to Dr. Kevin Charpentier, the vice president and chief medical officer at South County Health, the hospital’s parent company.
“It’s more than a score — it’s a promise to our community of prioritizing the highest level of patient care,” Charpentier wrote in an email.
The score was also a bit of good news amid an ongoing dispute between the hospital’s administration and its staff. A September letter sent by doctors and nurses to the South County Health’s board of trustees detailed escalating tensions between providers and management, with doctor resignations, service cuts and growing patient backlogs among the signatories’ concerns.
Landmark’s B left its CEO Mike Souza disappointed.
“We take quality very seriously and our team has already put plans in place to address the areas needing improvement,” Souza said in an emailed response to Rhode Island Current. “Our community will continue to receive great care and our expectation is that we will return to an ‘A’ grade in the near future.”
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Leapfrog aggregates 30 metrics to assess how well hospitals care for patients as well as prevent bad outcomes, like infections and falls. The grades are given to roughly 3,000 hospitals, not including VA hospitals or children’s hospitals. Hospitals that lack enough data for multiple metrics are also excluded.
Lisa P. Tomasso, senior vice president of the Hospital Association of Rhode Island, said via email that the trade group was pleased with the state’s performance. But she added that the grades, while insightful, are “not comprehensive, as they exclude factors like social determinants of health, community-level health challenges, and systemic issues like Medicaid reimbursement rates.”
But grades still hold value. Robert Hackey, a professor of health sciences at Providence College, said that “hospitals that don’t do well tend to poke holes in whatever rating methodology that’s used.”
“If you look at the hospitals in Rhode Island, for the most part, we’re performing very well,” Hackey said. “Yeah, we obviously have two low performers. It’s Fatima and Roger Williams. And there’s a common thread there. They’re both owned by Prospect and they’re both for-profit institutions, yeah. And they both struggle.”
A representative for CharterCARE Health Partners, the Rhode Island subsidiary for Prospect Medical Holdings, which owns Roger Williams Medical Center and Our Lady of Fatima Hospital, did not respond to requests for comment. Facing growing debt, Prospect has sought to unload many of the hospitals in its portfolio, including the two safety net hospitals in Rhode Island. A proposal to sell Roger Williams and Fatima to a new, nonprofit owner, received conditional approval from state regulators in June, but the status of financing required to complete the transaction is unclear.
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Hackey said it’s a bad sign when hospitals ignore questions on Leapfrog’s survey — something both Fatima and Roger Williams Medical Center did when it came to inquiries about nursing and leadership. Our Lady of Fatima Hospital’s ‘C’ grade is indicative of ongoing quality issues at Prospect Medical Holdings’ hospitals in Rhode Island, says Providence College Professor Robert Hackey. (Michael Salerno/Rhode Island Current)
Meanwhile hospitals owned by the state’s largest health care system — Brown University Health, formerly Lifespan Corporation — all performed well. Rhode Island Hospital, the state’s flagship hospital, received a B grade despite demonstrating below-average prevention rates of blood and urinary tract infections and falls causing broken hips, as well as less-than-stellar marks for hospital leadership and communication about medicines with patients.
Since 2021, Rhode Island Hospital has received C grades more often than not. The B is evidence that things are improving, said Dr. Dean Roye, senior vice president for medical affairs and chief medical officer at the hospital. The Leapfrog grades “help us pinpoint areas” to work on, Roye said. He added that a reorganization of quality and safety departments across Brown Health’s properties was another factor in Rhode Island Hospital’s improved grade.
But Hackey is eyeing another Brown property, the A-graded Miriam, for a surgery he has scheduled for December. He explained with a laugh that checking the Leapfrog ratings was one of the first things he did when deciding where to have his surgery.
“The goal of this is to have a more educated healthcare consumer,” he said.
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Above average results
Leapfrog uses the percentage of A grade hospitals in a state to determine a state’s national ranking. Almost 61% of Utah’s hospitals received A grades, giving it the top slot nationwide. The top 10 states all sported at least 40% A grade hospitals.
An A grade indicates hospitals that prioritize safety, said Alex Campione, program analyst for the Leapfrog Group, who noted that about 32% of hospitals nationwide achieved this grade. Rhode Island was over the national average with 44% of its hospitals receiving an A grade.
“Each year more than 250,000 people will die in hospitals due to preventable errors, injuries, accidents, and infections,” Campione said. “We estimate that, at the very least, 50,000 of those lives could be saved if all hospitals performed like A hospitals.”
Rhode Island placed fourth nationwide in Leapfrog’s spring 2024 scores, also with 44% at an A grade, but it was pushed out of the top five this time around by three states that rose with higher grades: California, North Carolina and Connecticut. Connecticut was the only other New England state to crack the top 10. Vermont fared worst of all, and was ranked 48th nationwide, tying for last place with North Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa. There was not a single A grade hospital in any of these states.
Grading the graders
But a bad report card might not be the final word on a hospital’s quality. A 2019 article in New England Journal of Medicine Catalyst graded the graders, and gave Leapfrog a C-, the second lowest of the four systems reviewed. The study noted that Leapfrog had a detailed framework for measurement, with a unique focus on the hospitals’ “culture of safety.” But it also relied on its proprietary survey for a good chunk of its data — a problem, the authors thought, since Leapfrog grades hospitals the same regardless of whether they complete the survey.
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Dr. Karl Bilimoria of the Indiana University School of Medicine, who chairs the school’s surgery department and leads its Surgical Outcomes and Quality Improvement Center, led the 2019 study. He wrote in an email Tuesday to Rhode Island Current that Leapfrog’s efforts still leave something to be desired.
“Leapfrog has many issues with their methodology and their general approach that persist and they have been the least receptive to improvement suggestions and the least adaptive to changes in the science of quality measurement,” Bilimoria wrote.
Asked about Bilimoria’s idea that Leapfrog is not responsive to suggestions, spokesperson Lula Hailesilassie said by email that the public is regularly invited to submit feedback on proposed changes to its surveys. Comments on the 2025 survey are open through Dec. 13, 2024.
PROVIDENCE — The application period for Rhode Island’s charter schools opened this week, giving families a shot at roughly 3,000 seats projected to be available at charter schools next year.
A blind lottery for available seats will be held on April 1. Charter schools are in high demand in Rhode Island, with roughly 11,000 families submitting 30,000 applications for 2,500 seats lasts year. (Families can apply for more than one school.)
There are about 13,000 Rhode Island public school students currently enrolled in 25 charters, some of which are larger networks with multiple schools.
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Despite the demand, teachers unions and other public school advocates have sought to block the expansion of charter schools, concerned they are financially hurting the traditional public school system. School funding follows each child from their home school district to the charter school.
In this week’s episode of the Rhode Island Report, Chiara Deltito-Sharrott from the Rhode Island League of Charter Schools talks about the future of charter schools in Rhode Island, and provides a rebuttal to comments made by Maribeth Calabro, the head of Rhode Island’s largest teachers union, in an episode earlier this month.
Steph Machado can be reached at steph.machado@globe.com. Follow her @StephMachado.
United Way of Rhode Island accepts initial donations from the Fund’s sponsoring energy companies. (courtesy: United Way of Rhode Island)
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WLNE) — United Way of Rhode Island announced the Rhode Island Good Neighbor Energy Fund has begun for the 2024 through 2025 season.
The fund helps families that need assistance paying their home heating bills but are not eligible for federal or state assistance.
Since it was founded, the Good Neighbor Energy Fund has aided over 48,250 Rhode Island homes.
United RI says any local households in the state that are in need of funding assistance for energy are encouraged to contact a local Community Action Program agency, or to call the 211 helpline for help locating a CAP agency.
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GNEF eligibility is determined on total income not exceeding 300% of the federal poverty level, and provides up to $825 per household each heating season depending on eligibility, fuel type, and need.
United RI said in addition to sponsors, the fund relies on Rhode Islanders who donate through the “Warm Thy Neighbor” campaign.
Donations can be made through the yellow donation envelope enclosed with monthly energy bills, or by scanning the QR code on the envelope.
Additionally, donations can be given through phone by texting “WARM” to 91999.
For more information, visit United Way of Rhode Island’s website here.
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