Special Education Workload Management

Marisha (00:01.4)

Hello there and welcome to the special ed leaders podcast. Today we have a very special guest, Marin Boothby. She is the CEO and founder of Boothby therapy services. And I've had the opportunity to have some really incredible conversations with her. She is such an innovator and problem solving problem solver in the SLP space. and I'm really excited to dive into,

some of the things that she's been up to, especially her workload calculator. think that's a really interesting conversation for district administrators to hear about. and so like I said, Marin's the founder of Boothby therapy services. she also consults with school districts and helps them navigate changes. and this little bio does her no justice. So I'm going to turn it over to.

Maren Boothby (00:57.091)

you

Marisha (00:59.214)

So that she can just share a little bit of her story with us before we dive into some of the other things she's up to, including the workload calculator. So hello, Mary.

Maren Boothby (01:11.951)

Hi, it's great to see you and thank you so much for that nice introduction.

Marisha (01:17.783)

That's great to see you too.

Maren Boothby (01:19.023)

I'm excited to share about our workload calculator and tell you a little bit about what we're doing at Boothbee Therapy Services.

Marisha (01:26.7)

Yeah. And so I'm really curious to hear just more about your story. So you started off as an SLP and then like, how'd you end up here as the founder and creating all these solutions?

Maren Boothby (01:43.639)

Right. So when I was a new SLP, my passion was brain injury and stroke. And I actually started working in a rehab setting. And I really did love that. But I did feel a little bit burdened by some of the pressures of working with insurance companies and constantly working to get approval for my clients to have more units. And that that just became more and more of a burden over a few

years that I was working in the rehab setting, the productivity requirements were high, and I thought to myself, there's got to be a better way to do this. Meanwhile, I was living in New Hampshire. We had a dearth of speech pathologists available to work in schools, and I was receiving phone calls from a tiny little school all the way through the National Forest in New Hampshire saying, hey, can you come help us? And I decided, you know, I can, and there's a better way to be a speech pathologist, and I'm going to do that. So I left the medical setting.

I headed into schools, I was excited about working with kids, and I thought, I'm going to do this the right way. So I have to thank the folks at Waterville Valley for introducing me to special education and all of the supports they gave me as I learned how to become a school-based SLP. So I did that. Shortly after that, I was then in a full-time capacity working in schools. I did that by myself for a few years, and then about three years later, there was just so much demand, so much need.

people calling me all the time and my husband Christopher Boothby who's also one of the founders of our company said hey we need to start employing some other people so we decided to do that and that was the beginning of Boothby Therapy Services as a larger group of really you know passionate SLPs and providers who are all about helping children succeed.

Marisha (03:35.83)

I love that. And where is Boothbee Therapy Services at now? Like what does the company look like?

Maren Boothby (03:42.753)

So we've really grown. We're in our 25th year delivering school based services in New Hampshire and Maine. And about eight years into our company, we bought an occupational therapy services company and really dove into that. And we have found over the years that our school partners are really looking for one stop shopping for their contracting needs. want their jobs are so

complicated. They want to have a provider and a partner that they can trust. So over the years we've expanded to also provide school psychology services, teacher the visually impaired, orientation and mobility, counseling, school psychology, I think I said that, and special education teachers. So it's just been this really awesome partnership as we've just tried to become the comprehensive solution for our school partners.

Marisha (04:41.624)

That's amazing. And you do way more than just offer people to fill the roles. Because you are, like I said at the beginning, I've just been so impressed in our conversations. You are such an innovator and problem solver. And you have some really creative solutions when it comes to supporting staff development and workload and other problem solving.

But can we chat a little bit more about the workload calculator and how that came to be? Like what led you to develop that and kind of what does it look like?

Maren Boothby (05:17.455)

Absolutely, that is one of the things that I am most passionate about and I'd love to share that a little bit with you and your listeners. It really started for me in 2002, that was early in the time that we were delivering services on a bigger scale in New Hampshire and that was the year that ASHA published their workload caseload position and that position basically states that SLP caseload

assignments should really be based on workload, not on the numbers of kids so that you're actually taking a look at what the needs of the students are. So at the time, my primary concern was making sure that I was staffing, I was making sure that each of the contracts that we were serving had enough time, not just to see the kids and deliver their direct services, but also to make sure that the SLPs were able to

develop IEPs, attend meetings, do new referral evaluations, triennial re-evaluations, and to do all the compliance work that's needed, the Medicaid documentation, the quarterly progress reports, and all of those things. So the ASHA workload caseload position is fantastic. It's detailed. They provide lots and lots of tools, but those tools are somewhat complicated, right, to apply on our own. So

So I started taking apart the Ashley workload caseload analysis and I made a spreadsheet on Excel, you know, and I was trying to figure out how do I plan all this time. And eventually it got to be our own proprietary software which we call the Data Driven Needs Analysis or the Data DNA for short.

Marisha (07:14.368)

I love that. so, can you tell us a little bit more about, so I guess we have a pretty good idea of what the workload calculator tells us. It looks at all of the aspects of our role and kind of what to expect. And what are the benefits of calculating that? what problems does it solve and how could that benefit a school district?

Maren Boothby (07:40.239)

Absolutely. I mean, I really feel for directors of special education or student services because they are running a huge special education program with all the related service providers, the school psychologists, the special ed teachers. They have so many things to comply with. Most of them are not themselves speech pathologists. I wish I had a dime for every time someone said, I'm not a speech pathologist, but... So what they need, especially

especially special Ed administrators are they tend to have more special education teachers in their districts and in their buildings and they have OTs or speech pathologists for example. Meanwhile, we're in the business full time. All we do is related services and special education. So the benefit for a district is they're able to dial in on what exactly are the needs

needs of their speech and language caseload or of their occupational therapy caseload, for example. So it's not, it begins with how many kids do we have? But then it goes on to look at, what are their services? Are they individual or are they group? How much group time can we reasonably plan if that's not already prescribed in the IEP? And then which kids are due for triennial reevaluation? Are we doing trimester?

progress reports or we're doing quarterly progress reports. What does the compliance look like in our building? What does the Medicaid documentation do? Do I need my speech pathologist to be team leaders and do 30-day reviews for my Medicaid to schools program? Do I need my speech pathologists and occupational therapists to also do duties? Do they need to serve on committees? What's the time requirement? Now, it's difficult to

to even identify what all those needs are, never mind plan for that time and see what is that? Is that a three day a week job? Is that a five day a week job? I'm not sure. So the great thing is we can take all that data, plug it into our data driven needs analysis and put out, hey, this is what the job looks like. This is the number of hours you need per week. This is the number of hours you need for the year. The places that I have found it to be most helpful is when districts are looking at a significant change.

Maren Boothby (10:09.629)

either they're adding a building or they're consolidating buildings so they're moving from having like five elementary schools down to four so they have tape they have staff that they can reassign or perhaps

if they are adding a program like a preschool program or an intensive needs program. So it's a tool that really helps them dial in what the needs are and it gives them data that they can speak to their stakeholders about, their business administrators, their superintendents, and their school board members.

Marisha (10:40.43)

Yeah, and I think that's probably one of the biggest hurdles is just like whether you're hiring an employee or a contractor or working with a company and just knowing exactly what you need. So if you have this calculator and it gives you a report of, this is exactly what we need, then we're much more likely to be set up for success. And we know what to expect.

Maren Boothby (11:04.431)

Exactly, and there's a high level of accountability for special education administrators too. From this data DNA, right away it generates a budget. So, you know, they have a good sense of what their costs will be.

and gives them the data that they need to be speaking to, again, the business administrator, superintendent, school board members, and so forth. And importantly, talking to SLPs like us so that when they make staffing decisions, they can say, yes, I've planned for this time. Yes, I've looked at the progress report writing time. I'm confident that there's time for you to do this job with excellence.

Marisha (11:53.23)

Yeah, and I've heard a lot of, just in my conversation with administrators, it sounds like there can be a revolving door of contractors. And do you think that the inappropriate, like incorrect calculation of workload is a huge factor in that retention?

Maren Boothby (12:14.128)

I think you're absolutely right.

A lot of times I feel like some of our school partners, they're coming for the first time to us with an emergency. my gosh, I have an unanticipated vacancy. I have someone who's out on medical leave or has a leave of absence. Help me. It's a desperate situation. I need to meet the needs of these kids. That's no one wants to be in that situation, of course, right? But that's the world we live in, like we're all people and emergencies happen. What we

is when we have this kind of ongoing relationship with the district so that we can plan ahead. And what we find is even when our company is maybe doing 20 or 30 percent of the services in a district versus, you know, some of our clients will have 70 or 80 percent of their services contracted, we can look at the total resources in the district. Hey, let's look at all of your speech paths across the district. Where are the caseloads upping?

and flowing. I'm sure you've seen this yourself, right? Like there's a bubble of kids in fourth grade. Like you've got this giant group of kids, right? And you need more resources. But meanwhile, maybe your middle school SLP has fewer kids that year. Perfect opportunity for her to come down and help that elementary level SLP. How does that look? What parts of the job are easy to break off? That's where again, the data DNA can really provide some guidance because it may be, hey, that

new referral piece would be a perfect piece to delegate to the helping SLP because there's not already an existing relationship with the primary SLP at that level and so on and so forth. There are just so many ways to look at it and when you have all the data in front of you it makes the staffing decisions just easier.

Marisha (14:13.602)

Yeah, and it's a great problem solving tool in optimizing our current resources.

Maren Boothby (14:21.261)

Absolutely.

And, you know, in the process of looking at caseloads to create the data-driven needs analysis, we're able to also get a gauge on some real key factors that impact efficiency. So, for example, in New Hampshire, we need to prescribe whether the services for kids will be group or whether they'll be individual. But in Maine, that's not required. We don't do it that way. It's kind of to the discretion of the provider and based on the student's schedule.

There are some advantages to that approach, but an administrator wants to ensure that an appropriate amount of group services being provided for a lot of reasons. One is efficiency, but it's also less restrictive than those individual groups. you know, taking a look at that and the percentage of time that's going to be delivered in a group setting also really drives efficiency too.

Marisha (15:19.342)

And do you offer supports to your, like do you find that especially, because if we're using the same calculations for a CF versus an SLP who's been in the field for 30 years, do you find that some SLPs have a hard time? Like in terms of experience or other factors?

Maren Boothby (15:37.199)

you

Maren Boothby (15:42.639)

You've got to take in all those factors and they're factors that are related to the provider and they're factors that are related to the building culture as well, right? So I mean the data-driven needs analysis has several kind of, what do we call it, it's some standard planning allocations of time planned in. So for example,

We might typically plan 15 minutes to write a progress report that includes rating scale and a narrative. But if you're in a school that only requires rating scales, then that could be done in 10 minutes. Or if you're in a high needs program with medically fragile kids or kids with autism or kids that have some kind of behavior needs, you may need more documentation so you have the ability to customize the planning time.

maybe to be like 20 minutes for example for a progress report and the same thing can be true as you said for the different providers You know really experienced people are going to have a ability to fly through the work in some levels Whereas a new one not as much and even for I've talked to so many directors who know their providers and their SLPs and they say hey I know that this person really needs extra time for you know preparing their advice

or their IEPs or this person's participation in our meetings is really essential. I want to make sure they're there for the whole time instead of just reporting out at the beginning. So we can customize all of that.

Marisha (17:20.43)

And it sounds like your company does a really great job with staff development. Do you have strategies or supports in place to help optimize SLP's productivity and matching the timeframes in the workload calculator?

Maren Boothby (17:38.167)

Yeah, well, so yes, I think that professional development and consulting work with our school districts is one of my favorite things. And it's kind of led to some of our very best kind of partnerships and relationships. I say we're full time in the business of delivering related services and things like, for example,

identification criteria when you're identifying kids as having a speech and language disorder. Of course, that varies from state to state. Some states have a very, very well defined criteria and some states have a more open criteria. So how do you achieve consistency across your district with how those decisions are being made? It's such an essential role for the SLPs and it has such a massive impact on

caseload numbers and cost for the special education budget. I guess that would be the one thing that I would say to a special ed director is if you're not 100 % sure that your speech and language pathologists are identifying students as being eligible for speech language impairment with consistency and accuracy, that's the biggest, easiest thing to look at in terms of efficiency and making sure that we're giving the service

that kids need to the kids who need the services.

Marisha (19:09.698)

Yeah. And that can be, so I've had a lot of conversations on the podcast with, like attorneys and just kind of the legal side of special education. So that's critical for, productivity and all of that, but it's also huge in terms of compliance and avoiding litigation and due process and all of that, which is a huge productivity and budget.

Maren Boothby (19:37.622)

Absolutely.

Marisha (19:39.296)

sink too if we end up going down that route.

Maren Boothby (19:42.893)

Yeah, absolutely. mean, you don't want to over identify nor do you want to under identify. One of the strategies we've come up with is a decision making tree. So to make it as visual as possible to lead a team through the process so that, you know, whoever's at the table, parents, case managers, advocates can understand the decision that's being made and that SLPs who are maybe new to the role have something to kind

fall back on and guide the conversation.

Marisha (20:15.66)

Yeah, and that's invaluable if the SLP or the OT or whoever the provider is, if they're appropriately trained in that, that can have huge impact for districts.

Maren Boothby (20:28.289)

Absolutely. I find that especially at the preschool level it's even trickier for the identification decision and you know we have so many little ones now at least in the northeast we're certainly seeing just a huge need among our three four and five year olds for sure. So getting that eligibility criteria dialed in is super important.

Marisha (20:56.652)

Yeah, well, I think there is, can see so much value in appropriately calculating workload and just the benefits that that can provide to a district administrator and having that clear data to.

Maren Boothby (21:06.145)

the board.

Marisha (21:12.394)

share with the team and justify their decision making and then also just setting up the providers for success and ultimately I think all of our goals are ultimately to provide the best possible services for our students and this is such a great way to make sure that we're doing that.

Maren Boothby (21:30.815)

It is, and you know, as you go through the year, this is something we do for every SLP and every provider in our company. It's a great tool to guide how people are spending time. So when you have somebody who's new to your building or new to the role, it's a chance to say, hey, let's take a look at that data DNA. How much time were we allotting on a weekly basis for your testing time, for your therapy time? Well, let's go take a look at your schedule. is that, do you have a

evaluation time, you know, reserved in your schedule? Do you have time for, how much time are you scheduled for therapy and how does that compare to what we planned for? And it really can show us where things can get tightened up and give some really valuable guidance to how the whole year unfolds.

Marisha (22:22.094)

Yeah, that's amazing. I love how, cause it sounds like that consulting piece is kind of baked into the work that you do with districts. And so that's, don't, I feel like that's probably not super common.

Maren Boothby (22:32.771)

Yeah.

Maren Boothby (22:38.263)

Yeah, we're kind of on a mission to kind of share what we know and what we've developed so that people can use it. I mean, we've got these tools. If they need to be customized based on a district's location and state regulations or their own particular, you know, policies, we can do that. But man, I just like to get them out there and share them the eligibility criteria, the dismissal criteria, how to identify young preschoolers and for sure the data DNA. And I think most of the SLP, you know, SLPs,

Marisha (22:40.014)

.

Maren Boothby (23:08.247)

to about the data DNA, they just love knowing, hey, all my time is planned for, I have the time I need to do my job with excellence.

Marisha (23:16.768)

And it makes it really, cause I know I've had roles as an SLP where it was kind of unclear exactly what the expectations were. So this is a great way. think SLPs, especially really like just from the SLPs that I know, they really appreciate that clarity and like knowing what the expectations are is really empowering.

Maren Boothby (23:38.231)

Right, that organizational streak is a mile wide in us, in SLPs.

Marisha (23:40.966)

I love it. this is amazing. So is there anything else that you wanted to share around workload or Google consulting or the problem solving piece?

Maren Boothby (23:56.963)

You know, I just love that you gave me a chance to share what we're working on. I appreciate that our providers are using SLP Now and the tools that you have to help them be more efficient with their lesson planning, which is something that's important to make sure that we're having those quality lessons and the data that your tool provides is really helpful as well. yeah, you could get me on a roll going about consultation topics and working with special ed directors. have a lot of

respect for them and empathy for the challenge that they're facing in our public schools. But it's great to have that partnership. So thanks for sharing.

Marisha (24:39.168)

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. if a special ed administrator is listening to this and is super inspired and feeling like they could benefit from consultation or services, what's the best way for them to learn more?

Maren Boothby (24:55.683)

So.

I would definitely direct them to our website at www.boothbetherapy.com and we have a special tab that's for school partners and they can go and there's a on that menu data driven needs analysis or data DNA page that they can find more about it. And we would love to do an initial consult and even a demo for them to, know, hey, let's, let's look at one of your schools and see, see what, see how the tool works for you and try it out and then see if it's something

that they want to use on a broader scale.

Marisha (25:30.03)

Well, thank you so much for being so generous with your time and expertise. This was super helpful. And yeah, thank you to everyone who joined us for this episode as well. I hope you have a fabulous rest of your day.

Maren Boothby (25:46.169)

Thank you so much for having me.