In Texas, the number of students that qualify for Special Education services has increased by 37.59% since 2013.While, on one hand, those numbers show how dedicated Texas educators are to identifying the specific special needs of their students, it also means that, since 2013, thousands of parents across the state of Texas have had to sit in a cold meeting room while a stranger stares at them from across an empty conference table and tells them, “Your child has a disability.”. As educators, it can be easy to get caught up in the excitement of finally having answers for your students. We think to ourselves, “finally, I can have the tools I need to teach this student in a way that makes sense to them!”. Unfortunately, our excitement for our students can make us forget that for the parents, those 5 simple words can cause a monsoon of emotions. Hearing that your child has a disability of any kind is heartbreaking for a parent. To learn that your child may struggle in life or may not have the same opportunities as their peers due to no fault of their own, can make parents feel overwhelmed, lost, hopeless, and guilt-ridden. Bad news can be described as any information that negatively alters someone’s view of the future. Information such as, “Your child has dyslexia”, “Your son has a processing disability.", or “Your daughter is significantly delayed.”, is often viewed as not just bad news but catastrophic and life-altering. Educators know that a diagnosis or a disability is just an obstacle, not a sentence. However, over the course of their career, an educator may work with hundreds if not thousands of students, we see the light at the end of the tunnel. For many of our parents, the student they entrust to our care, is their only baby, and to them these conversations can feel like the end of the world. In Texas, the number of students that qualify for Special Education services has increased by 37.59% since 2013.While, on one hand, those numbers show how dedicated Texas educators are to identifying the specific special needs of their students, it also means that, since 2013, thousands of parents across the state of Texas have had to sit in a cold meeting room while a stranger stares at them from across an empty conference table and tells them, “Your child has a disability.”. As educators, it can be easy to get caught up in the excitement of finally having answers for your students. We think to ourselves, “finally, I can have the tools I need to teach this student in a way that makes sense to them!”. Unfortunately, our excitement for our students can make us forget that for the parents, those 5 simple words can cause a monsoon of emotions. Hearing that your child has a disability of any kind is heartbreaking for a parent. To learn that your child may struggle in life or may not have the same opportunities as their peers due to no fault of their own, can make parents feel overwhelmed, lost, hopeless, and guilt-ridden. With a whirlwind of emotions swirling in their minds, parents and families need to feel safe, comfortable, and understood.  The SPIKES protocol for breaking bad news emphasizes the importance of the setting when delivering bad news. The protocol calls for comfort, limited noises and distractions, an element of respect for the weight of the conversation that will occur. We have mastered the empathy, expertise, and compassion needed to help parents through the journey of receiving information, processing the implications, and planning for the future of their student. However, budgets don’t allow us the opportunity to create the safe space and environment that our families need and deserve for these difficult conversations. An environment that allows us to present data and findings to our families in a professional manner, a table that we don’t have to fear will tip over and chairs that don’t put educators in danger of descending during critical points of the conversation. We do our best to create an environment we can feel proud to bring our parents into, but over the last few years it has become more of a patchwork quilt of office furniture. These improvements have the potential to impact our entire campus community. Our conference room is where we facilitate 504 meetings, special education ARD meetings, behavior conferences, and CPS interviews among many other different types of collaborations with our staff, students, families, and community members. Currently, 20% of our students receive special education services, that does not include the 12 special education evaluation requests that we are beginning the 2025-2026 school year with. The families of those students will all spend time in our conference room at some point this school year. Our hope is that we will be able to present them with the warm, professional, and comfortable environment that they deserve in order to continue allowing us as educators to be a valued member of the team that has the privilege to care for their student’s education and future. 

This project addresses the first step in providing a positive impact on student learning, collaboration. A campus conference room is the epicenter of collaboration between a student’s family and campus teachers and staff. Having a conference room that provides a safe and comfortable environment for educators and parents to have difficult conversations and make integral decisions in a student’s learning shouldn’t have to be a privilege for our community, it should be a right. If we are lucky enough to have our project funded, we would be able to replace our current conference table with one that fits the space, is equipped with the tools that are needed to present data to our parents in a professional manner, and provides neutral meeting ground for a common goal. In addition to a new conference table, funding our project would also allow us to purchase all new chairs for the space as well. At this time, our seating is unpredictable at best. An administrator unexpectedly sinking to the lowest elevation their chair allows, in the middle of a tense initial ARD meeting, does not exactly evoke an overwhelming feeling of confidence for a parent. This project may seem miniscule to some, but to those who feel that way, I implore you to reflect on a time that you received difficult news, perhaps you received a diagnosis from your doctor. Try to recall the environment you were in when you received the news. For many people these days, that news comes from a computer screen during a virtual appointment. That experience is isolating, frightening, cold, and lonely. Nothing like the feeling of gathering around the dining room table with the family that you have chosen to help your child learn the foundational skills that will carry them through life and developing a game plan to meet their needs. The Crosby ISD mission statement communicates a district wide goal of producing citizens that are capable of learning and applying those learned skills to any situation that life throws their way. All students are capable of learning—what too often fails them is not their ability, but the way we choose to deliver the message. I often wonder how many times a parent chose to wait on granting permission for an educator to provide instruction in an alternative way that would be more conducive to their student’s learning because the environment in which they were presented the information and their options did not match the intention and capabilities of the campus staff. How many times has logic and intuition told you that discrepancies like that make someone untrustworthy? Our goal is to provide education that meets the varying needs of ALL students so that they have the best opportunity possible to go forward in life with all of the tools they need to make the world accessible to them. Achieving that goal starts with the relationship we build with the families at the start of their journey.