A Year of Warnings, and the District’s Strategic Plan Proves Them Right

To the Editor:

Over the past year, The Citizen has published three of my letters about Fayette County’s Exceptional Children’s Services (ECS) Department. Each one was treated, at the time, as the complaint of one frustrated parent. The Fayette County Board of Education’s 2026 Strategic Plan finally confirms, in the district’s own words, what those letters said.

The Citizen, October 23, 2025 : the staffing crisis. Fayette County BOE Doesn’t Understand the Assignment I wrote that the Board “doesn’t understand the assignment.” There were 17 open ECS positions on the county job board. At its October 20 meeting, the district acknowledged that many ECS paraprofessional roles were being filled through outside staffing agencies. I wrote that posting jobs and waiting for applicants “is not recruitment. It’s theater,” and I urged the district to adopt what other Georgia districts already use: retention stipends, career pathways and a stable, district-employed workforce.

The Citizen, February 3, 2026: shooting the messenger. Letter to the Editor : BOE threatens law enforcement – over emails At the January 12 work session, district leaders complained about “excessive emails” from parents and floated involving other agencies and law enforcement. I asked the Board what was driving those emails, and whether staffing shortages, service delays or systemic barriers in ECS were the real cause. I wrote then that treating persistent questions about IEPs as a threat instead of a warning sign has the priorities backwards.

April 1, 2026 the evidence: Letter to the Editor: Glazier Says FCBOE has Special Needs Shortcomings. I cited Georgia Department of Education data showing Fayette had 30 special-education due-process hearing requests, about 15.1 per 10,000 students, more than double Gwinnett County’s rate. By March 31, open ECS positions had more than doubled, to 35. I called for an independent audit of ECS, more resources and training, family-centered dispute resolution and enforced anti-retaliation protections.

Now read the FCBOE 2026 Strategic Plan. It calls for hiring itinerant teachers in high-need areas, and it names ECS first. It calls for studying retention supplements for hard-to-fill ECS positions, including TRIAD, Mainstay, ACCESS II and GOALS. It sets a target that at least 68 percent of students with disabilities be educated in the least restrictive environment for 80 percent or more of the school day. It promises family input and accountability reports.

Those are the shortages I described in October, the “systemic barriers” I asked about in February and the problems the data showed in April. A year ago I urged retention stipends. The plan now proposes retention supplements. A district does not write incentives for “hard-to-fill” positions unless it knows they are hard to fill. The concerns were not wrong. They were early.

The vacancies have not gone away. As of October 12, 2026, two months into the school year, the district’s job board lists 22 open ECS postings out of 59 total district postings, more than one in three. They include 13 paraprofessional positions, four ECS teacher positions (including a lead teacher), a speech-language pathologist, an occupational therapist, a social worker, a counselor and a bookkeeper. That is down from 35 in March, and I credit the district for that progress. But it is still more than the 17 I reported a year ago, and 22 open positions in October means children whose IEPs depend on staff who have not been hired.

Then there is Mainstay, and here the plan gets it exactly backward. Mainstay Academy is Fayette’s program in the Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support, or GNETS, the statewide system for students with emotional and behavioral disabilities. For a decade, the U.S. Department of Justice has been in federal court against the State of Georgia, alleging that GNETS unnecessarily segregates these children from their peers and gives them an inferior education. That is not a parent’s complaint. That is the federal government’s.

Other districts heard the message and acted. Cherokee County left GNETS in 2010. Gwinnett, Fulton and Atlanta Public Schools began pulling out for the 2024-25 school year and now use the same state funding to serve those students in their own programs. A federal judge ruled in 2025 that local school boards, not the state, control how GNETS money is spent. Fayette’s Board cannot claim its hands are tied. Every year Mainstay stays open is a choice this Board makes.

Instead of ending that choice, the strategic plan proposes paying retention supplements to keep Mainstay staffed. That is spending public money to preserve the very model the Justice Department has spent ten years trying to dismantle. Fayette should withdraw from GNETS, close Mainstay, and move that funding and staff into our neighborhood schools, where these children belong. Warehousing children is never the answer, and no strategic plan should pretend otherwise.

A strategic plan is a promise, not a result. In October 2025, I asked the Board to publish monthly staffing data. I am still asking. At least every quarter, the Board should publish:

1. Open ECS positions by role and program, how long each has been vacant, and which are true vacancies versus “standing” postings.
2. The number of ECS positions filled by long term substitutes or temporary agency staff versus district employees.
3. Whether retention supplements were approved, for which positions, and their effect on turnover.
4. Progress toward the 68 percent least-restrictive-environment target.
5. The number of due-process requests, state complaints and mediations filed against the district.
6. Publish the number of OCR complaints.

I also ask the Board to hold a public work session within 90 days on a written plan and timeline to leave GNETS and serve every Mainstay student in a home school. And I renew the requests from April: an independent review of ECS, family-centered dispute resolution and a clear, enforced policy protecting parents and staff from retaliation when they raise concerns.

Three letters. One year. The district has now put in writing that these problems are real. The parents who sent those “excessive emails” were not the problem. They were the early warning system. The Board should start listening the first time.

Chip Glazier
Peachtree City