“Mt. Diablo Unified provides school transportation to a significantly higher percentage of special education studentsthan most school districts in California.”

That one doesn’t even elude to the “districts reviewed by FCMAT.” It suggests that FCMAT has surveyed ALL school districts in the State in order to know what “most” of them do.

I’m trying to decide if they do sloppy reviews, or sloppy reporting. Or, is it just sloppy cover-up after their backs are against the wall.

You make a good point that FCMAT has omitted reports that do not agree with its overly broad finding. And its response only includes seven districts that it can point to to substantiate its claims about “most districts.” Some of FCMAT’s claims specified “most districts reviewed by FCMAT,” but others did not, leading readers to believe that dozens or even hundreds of districts were being referenced.

Even if FCMAT has only reviewed 50 districts, seven would not constitute “most” of them. For FCMAT’s statement to be accurate, it would have to admit that it has only reviewed about 10 districts. This is nowhere near the kind of comprehensive analysis that FCMAT’s vague language appears to imply occurred. How reliable is such a small sampling? Is it reliable enough for MDUSD to made radical changes to its transportation practices, without a more comprehensive survey of districts?

And why is there still no answer to the extremely relevant question: What other districts cluster special education students?

I believe Gilaspie suggested to Theresa (in July) that if she wanted comparisons she should go find past FCMAT studies herself. Maybe he told Mills to do the same?

Why are these comparisons suddenly available to Mills? It isn’t sudden. She has had a couple of months to research, find a handful of districts that appear to back-up the district’s “injected” comparison statements.

Remember the fiasco in July? Theresa posted the proof that FCMAT relied on NO comparative data from its own files in its reports. At that time, Gillaspie indicated that they had not actually looked back in their files for “comparisons.” When prodded by Theresa, (and trying to not through Lawrence under the bus) he could only suggest that Poway was about 10%. I suspect that was the only “comparison” and was probably based solely on having the Poway Transportation Director on his panel.

The district injected the comparison statement per Gillaspie’s responses to Theresa and only now, under district orders, Mills has created “back-up.”

Although I have never heard of anything like this happening in MDUSD, I did note that the end of this story mentions that the district has also had ongoing problems picking up students and dropping them off on time. That, unfortunately, does sound familiar.