80% of COVID compensatory service funds remain unspent.

Most Pittsburgh Public Schools students who are owed educational support services they could not access during the pandemic have not received them and some families may not know the services are available, despite outreach via the district’s website, Facebook, mail, and email.

When schools shut down in 2020 and students were educated using worksheets the teachers sent home, students with disabilities missed evaluations and services they were legally entitled to receive. To address that loss, districts are required to provide “COVID Compensatory Services” (CCS), additional services to make up for missed educational supports.

CCS applies to students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) or 504 plans, both of which are federal protections that guarantee students with disabilities access to a free appropriate public education. The plans ensure students are educated, even if they need accommodations such as specialized instruction, speech or physical therapy, extra time to complete classwork or tests, or behavior plans.

In the agenda review questions and responses document attached to the agenda, district staff detailed that students were evaluated during the 2022-2023 school year to determine how many compensatory hours they are owed, and the district maintains a spreadsheet to track those hours. The district has tallied it owes students more than 600,000 hours of missed services, an average of about 300 hours per child with special needs. However, not all families were aware that these evaluations took place or that additional services were available.

According to the same response document, the  district plans this spring to make robocalls to families of students who have used less than 15% of their allotted CCS hours.

Board directors Eva Diodati and Yael Silk were unsure if families are made aware of the compensatory services they are owed during required annual renewal meetings for 504 and IEP plans.

The board is set to approve several summer programs intended to provide compensatory services this week, including:

• Summer camp at ASCEND Indoor Climbing
• Speech therapy through East End Therapy Services, LLC
• Online tutoring with Huntington Learning Center
• Summer camp at Kamin Science Center
• A “Remarkable Readiness and Employment” Summer Forum with Ruths Way, Inc.
• Adaptive music summer camp with You Be You, Inc.