Fort Bend ISD’s special education department reported an improvement in addressing evaluations, an issue that put the district in noncompliance for special education services last year.

In a nutshell

At the Oct. 21 FBISD board of trustees meeting, department officials outlined what steps they’ve taken to address this backlog of evaluations and future plans to remain ahead of the curve in the new year and to continue enhancing services.

“One of the things I think we’re really trying to do is begin to operationalize the multiple special education audits we’ve had over the past five or six years and really bring those into practice,” Chief Academic Officer Adam Stephens said. “We’re really excited because we’re going to pivot from being reactive as a special education department to now being proactive.”

The overview


Deena Hill, executive director of student support services, said the department faces various areas of concerns, including:
  • Delays in transportation routes and routing times
  • Tackling initial evaluations and re-evaluations
  • Communicating with parents in a timely manner and providing customer service to partner with parents
  • Fidelity of implementation due to new or inexperienced teachers and inconsistent case management
  • Balancing the number of students receiving special education services in classes
Additionally, the Texas Education Agency notified FBISD in August 2023 that the district was out of federal compliance for the 2023-24 school year for initial evaluations and eligibility determination meetings, Community Impact reported. However, district staff tackled the evaluations and were notified in August 2024 the noncompliance was corrected, officials with FBISD’s Department of School Leadership said in an email.

Digging deeper

The department also made progress on re-evaluations, which are broken into two categories that require different types of testing: Review of Existing Evaluation Data and a general re-evaluation, school leadership officials said.

When beginning the 2024-25 school year, the department had 2,099 overdue re-evaluations, district data shows. Since then, the overdue re-evaluations have decreased more than 75% to 507.
In August, FBISD contracted with additional vendors who specialize in providing evaluators to assist the department in completing the overdue re-evaluations, school leadership officials said.


With this change, the department is on track to complete overdue re-evaluations by June 30, Hill said.

FBISD must submit data to the TEA in July regarding all initial evaluations completed as well as the compliance status for each evaluation, school leadership officials said.

What’s next

Trustees said they were pleased to see the department “moving in the right direction,” and looked forward to future updates.


Department staff said in addition to staying on track with evaluations, they plan to gain feedback through conversations with parents, stakeholders, students and community members. The department also plans to form a Special Education Task Force.