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Town Hall

October 19, 2011

Walcott downplays SESIS issues at first town hall of school year

by Geoff Decker, at 1:08 pm

A new special education data system isn’t as bad as its critics say, Chancellor Dennis Walcott told Bronx parents Tuesday night.

The chancellor acknowledged that the Special Education Student Information System was earning “mixed reactions” from educators, but he downplayed concerns that it was a “systemic” problem.

The web‐based system was created to track information about students with disabilities and is being rolled out this year, to massive complaints. Over the summer, SESIS was blamed for leaving some special needs students without school seats. Now, teachers are saying the system is extremely burdensome to use. As a compliance deadline approached last week, the union blasted the DOE for its “total incompetence” in managing the system rollout. In a separate email, UFT Secretary Michael Mendel called SESIS a “systemic problem that is affecting almost everyone who uses it in almost every school.”

Walcott voluntarily addressed those concerns and others last night at a meeting with District 7 parents in the Bronx. It was the first of many town hall‐style meetings that Walcott will host this year in accordance with a law that requires the chancellor to visit each of the city’s 33 districts in a two‐year period.

At this meeting, held at The Laboratory School of Finance and Technology, Walcott answered questions about budget cuts, school closures, absent teacher reserve deployments, and class sizes. He brought SESIS up on his own.

“Obviously, with any new system, there’s going to be bumps along the way,” said Walcott.

He attributed UFT complaints to individual teachers who weren’t trained on how to use SESIS and said the DOE planned to conduct more in‐school training sessions.

“A lot of the concerns I heard sounded more individual than macro itself and systemwide type of concerns.”

Walcott also promoted the upcoming “Parents as Partners” week, which begins Oct. 24 and will include a special Panel Educational Policy meeting on Tuesday. The meeting will feature a presentation by David Coleman, who authored new common standards that the city is rolling out over the next several years.

 

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  • SickofBloomberg

    Well, evidently in the DOE under Walcott we can make monstrous problems disappear by just saying they don’t exist.  Let me try it:  There is no budget problem in NYC so schools can get all the money back that has been cut.  Did it work Walcott?

  • quasimodo

    I suspect that either Mr. Walcott doesn’t know anything about or use SESIS, regularly interact with anyone who does or else he’s flat out lying.  

    From the SESIS program itself and its horribly opaque and disordered interface, sporadic downtime, inability to accept some inputs, the scattered and unfocused documentation, the weekly update bugfixes and functionality changes, the complete lack of access for many charter school administrations,  the non-existent communication with users, and the apologetic explanations of the helpline attendants it is absolutely, incontrovertibly, indisputably riddled with ‘systemwide type of concerns’ from a USER’S perspective.To be fair, it may be that from an ADMINISTRATOR’S perspective it’s a slam dunk.  There haven’t yet been huge cost overruns that we’re aware of or contract scandals getting front page ink, a significant number of users are on board and the system looks like it may actually turn out to be a bit better than other attempts to implement computer database systems in the DOE.  Unfortunately, comments attributed to Mr. Walcott above portend an attitude that overshadows and undermines whatever incremental progress is being made.

  • http://bubbler.wordpress.com/ Mark

    Walcott’s got this one totally backwards. The problems related to SESIS are much deeper than the program itself (which is a move in the right direction, if completely unsupported and rolled out with no training whatsoever), and they most definitely are systemic in nature. Special education in this state, but most especially in this city, is a complete and utter mess. Only those who are not working in special education or have children with special needs thinks its working the way it should (meaning in a sane and structured manner).

  • Ellen

    He’s got it backwards…24% of the students with disabilities graduate with a diploma
    of that number only 8% are considered ready for post secondary education or career training
    160,000 students are classified with special needs and compromise anywhere from 12-17% of a school’s population while in the real world only about 10-12% of any population, from birth to death, are considered to have special needs (that includes anyone’s aged relative with dementia or a wounded vet as well)

    any employee with a code can access the IEP, but not a parent

    and lastly, but for me most importantly, parents and other advocates told the DOE that the training was inadequate in March of 2011

    so he’s got it backwards:  he is defending a computer system and sacrificing a student…
    but he’s got an out…..
    bbbbaaaaaaddddd teachers!

  • Anonymous

    what did he say about class size?

  • Queens SPED

    Thank you!

  • Pearl

    SESIS runs my show.  Seriously.  The amount of time it takes on my antiquated computer is laughable.  The random, yet frequent accidental log outs mock me as I labor over the bright yellow unfinished boxes I have yet to “check.”  On any given screen there are 10-20 drop menus…each time………I check one……………….I am forced……….to wait………anywhere………from 30…………………..to 23239877097864 seconds……………………………..to move on…………………..to the next one.  I did not become a teacher to perform data entry duties for hours on end.  

  • Joannt1002

    So glad I am not the only one to feel this way.  I am a psychologist who spends most of my day in front of a computer entering data very very slowly.  And the stress of knowing how many children are losing services because SESIS for some reason does not recognize certain things is overwhelming.  It is the reason I will retire at the end of this year.

  • can’t wait to retire

    Joanne1002 and Pearl, at least you have computers, as antiquated as they may be on which to enter your data. people, such as myself, who travel from school to school each day do not have even the luxury of a computer on which to enter the data.  But, as with everything else in this city, it is not related to test grades, therefore it is not important.

  • Anony

    This past May & June while trying to contact the SESIS help desk I was hung up on, refused to be issued a ticket number to track progress on my issue…how disrespectful.

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