Inclusive Education in Faith-Based Schools: Practical Strategies for Supporting All Learners ~ 1323

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
Inclusion is everyone’s responsibility. So it really does start with building the knowledge and skills of the classroom teachers to ensure that everything that they’re doing in tier one—what’s the phrase? You can’t tier two your way out of bad tier one instruction.

Crystal Brooks:
Rigor is more than memorization. It’s more than just regurgitating facts that students can ask their AI for now or their smartphone. So rigor looks loud, it looks messy. It looks like students collaborating. It looks like classrooms that are student led and student directed. Mm-hmm. Where students learn agency and self-advocacy.

And when we see classrooms like that, we’re like, this is a rigorous environment where students are given what they need to meet the high expectations that are set.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
But also, through that faith lens, it’s not just us who get to be the gatekeepers and say, we will welcome you, we will allow you into our space.

Right? It’s we have so much to learn from you and the benefits that everyone in our community and the children that you’re going to be friends with.

Tim Villegas:
Hi friends. Welcome back to Think Inclusive, real conversations about building schools where every learner belongs. I’m your host, Tim Villegas. Today’s episode is about what it really means to say yes to inclusion in faith-based schools, especially when there isn’t an IEP mandate, the building isn’t accessible, and leaders are trying to figure out where the money, training, and support are supposed to come from.

This conversation is grounded in the real questions educators are asking and the real constraints they’re navigating every day. Our guests today are Colleen McCoy-Cejka and Crystal Brooks, co-founders of Inclusion Solutions.

Together, they partner with schools across the country to build inclusive communities rooted in mission, belonging, and strong classroom practice. Colleen brings decades of experience as a teacher, principal, assistant superintendent, and curriculum director in Catholic schools, working closely with dioceses and school leaders on systems change.

Crystal is a speech language pathologist and former state agency specialist whose work centers on evidence-based instruction, inclusive classroom design, and supporting educators to meet the academic, social, and emotional needs of all learners. We talk about how schools define inclusion and how that definition can quietly turn into separation and segregation, the myth that you have to choose between rigor and belonging, and why inclusion doesn’t start with programs or aides, but with strong teaching in every classroom.

Before I meet our guests, I want to tell you about our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by IXL. IXL is an all-in-one platform for K–12 that helps boost student achievement, empowers teachers, and tracks progress in one place.

As students practice, IXL adapts to their individual needs so that every learner gets just-right support and challenge, and each student gets a personalized learning plan to close gaps. Check it out at ixl.com/inclusive. Again, that’s ixl.com/inclusive.

All right. After a quick break, it’s time to think inclusive with Colleen McCoy-Cejka and Crystal Brooks.

Catch you on the other side.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka and Crystal Brooks, welcome to the Think Inclusive Podcast.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
Thank you. We are so excited to be here. Mm-hmm. Crystal, honestly, is a longtime fan, and she’s the one that turned me on to this podcast, so I gotta hand it to her for that.

Crystal Brooks:
Yes.

Tim Villegas:
Thanks, Crystal. Can I ask you how long you’ve been listening?

Crystal Brooks:
Oh gosh, over a year now at least. Okay. And yes, you’ve accompanied me on many morning walks with my dog and long drives from Phoenix to Tucson.

Tim Villegas:
That’s wonderful. I love to hear where people listen. I listen to podcasts when I walk my dog. Yes. And I do that every morning.

Crystal Brooks:
Yes.

Tim Villegas:
So yes. Mm-hmm. I’m always have something in my ears, so I appreciate that.

Crystal Brooks:
Yes.

Tim Villegas:
Well, thank you both for being on the podcast. We’re gonna be talking about how to support inclusion in faith-based schools.

Crystal Brooks:
Mm-hmm.

Tim Villegas:
And so why don’t we just get right into it. When we’re talking about a faith-based school and they say yes to inclusion, what’s that first conversation like with the leaders, and how does that align with the mission of the school and also your work?

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
It’s kind of funny when you think about whether a school actually says yes and then all of a sudden they’re like, oh, now we’re inclusive because we just said yes. Because the first conversation we always have is actually, here are the natural proportions, and this is how many students you actually probably already have in your classrooms.

Because every classroom is neurodiverse. But when it comes to saying yes to something that’s a little bit more profound than the high-incidence disabilities that they’re probably already serving, that is a conversation. And that’s a mission conversation. It’s understanding that as a faith-based school, you are not legally bound to an IEP. You don’t have to do anything. Mm-hmm.

And many of the buildings that we work in are not even structured, they’re not accessible buildings. And so there are barriers, especially in older construction. But it’s that understanding of your mission, of what you’re called to do as a ministry, as a service to the people in your community.

Crystal Brooks:
Mm-hmm.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
And it has to be bigger than we’re just here to teach kids academics. And once you get past that and you understand the bigger mission and the whole child, serving the whole child, and what we’re called to do in the life of families and children, yeah, that’s where it really takes off.

Crystal Brooks:
Mm-hmm.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
But we were also talking this morning about that definition, so saying yes to inclusion. Mm-hmm. You want to kind of talk about what we run into with that?

Crystal Brooks:
Sure. Yeah. Inclusion means different things to different people. For some school leaders, it may be let’s start to really acknowledge and serve the students who are already here, who we know parents are seeking outside support for and spending a lot of money on reading interventions or therapies, and they want to think about how can we provide more of those supports through our inclusive community.

Or it’s a school leader that has a family that has had many siblings come through. They may be a legacy graduate of that school themselves. That’s what’s really amazing about faith-based schools—sometimes you have generations of family members going through. And they have a child with Down syndrome or with developmental delays, and they realize we need to get ready for this child. All of his siblings have gone through here, or her siblings, and we want them also to be a member of our community.

So what does inclusion look like for that child to join our classrooms and be welcomed and fully belong? So it’s all part of how they define inclusion. But usually it’s a celebration that they did say yes.

Tim Villegas:
And the schools—I’m sure there’s a lot of reasons why you’d work with a particular school, right?

Maybe it’s a family that knows that there’s gonna be some support needs coming up with a sibling. Mm-hmm. And so they connect your services with the school. Mm-hmm. Maybe they organically know, like, oh, there’s particular students that we don’t know how to support, so we’re gonna reach out to somebody who does know and has experience supporting a school like ours.

So what does that first contact look like typically, or is there even a typical way that happens?

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
That is a very good question.

Crystal Brooks:
Yeah. Often referrals, so to speak. When people reach out and they want to work with us, sometimes it is apparent and they’ll say, hey, can I share your information with my school principal?

And then that principal will reach out and we’ll start that conversation. Oftentimes what we really like to learn first is what are you already doing? Because language is different in a private faith-based school. They don’t often refer to the way in which they support struggling learners as our MTSS system or specially designed instruction provided by our interventionists.

So the language is different, and we like to learn what are you already doing. Because so many of our private faith-based schools, because of their inclusive missions, are already doing a lot of the work, and they just don’t call it special education or MTSS.

So we like to go in and provide some affirmation that what you’re already doing is working well for many of the students that you currently serve. And then we use that as the foundation to say, now if you’re looking to support a student that needs more significant educational or academic supports, here are some goals that we can establish and some steps to take to achieve them.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
I think that there’s also that notion—and you’ve made reference to this before—about funding. Mm-hmm. Funding is a real issue. And so for a school to embrace the mission, say okay, we’re all in on this, but okay, this is gonna be a heavy lift. We’re gonna need more training, we’re gonna need more equipment, we’re gonna need personnel.

Where does that money come from? One of the things that we do, and I’ll tell you there aren’t enough of these nonprofit organizations around the country, but we do work with a handful of nonprofits around the country that specifically raise money for those purposes, to be able to provide faith-based schools with personnel, training, or necessary equipment.

And they will hire us as the service provider then to the schools who have written grants to that organization, or whatever the case may be. Often we go in as the service provider to then help. So there’s a couple different ways that we connect with people.

Crystal Brooks:
Mm-hmm.

Tim Villegas:
How do you ensure—since your focus is inclusion—how do you ensure that the services that the school wants to provide or is providing is actually inclusive?

And I’ll give you an example.

Crystal Brooks:
Mm-hmm.

Tim Villegas:
There are a number of faith-based private schools that I’m aware of that have academies within a school that are separate from everyone else, right? So it’s not unlike the separate, segregated classrooms you’d see in a public school.

It’s just in a private school. Mm-hmm. And that’s for a lot of different reasons, because that’s how they’ve decided to support learners with developmental disabilities or more significant cognitive disabilities. And so I’m wondering what that conversation is like, without being negative. I’m trying to assume positive intent.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
Right.

Tim Villegas:
Right.

Crystal Brooks:
Yes.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
And we totally get that, because we’ve actually been told that our flavor of inclusion—some schools don’t like it because we advocate for full inclusion.

Crystal Brooks:
Right.

Tim Villegas:
Right. Yes.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
So it goes back to that definition of inclusion. And for many organizations, inclusion is we’ll let you in the door and then we’re gonna set you up over in the inclusion room.

Yes. Or you’ll be in the inclusion program over there, where you’re not actually included. Right. And so it is a struggle for us too. Mm-hmm. To help schools understand. And it’s plastered front page of our website: Inclusion is everyone’s responsibility.

It’s not like that person, the resource teacher or the inclusion teacher—they go by many, many different names—that those kids, and sometimes that’s what they’re called, those kids are that teacher’s responsibility or that person’s responsibility because they’re part of that department.

We really try to dismantle that. And so we work very hard with the schools that we work with to understand that. And this all comes from research. It is all research based.

There are global studies, there are local studies, there are great things happening within the United States now even where we know that when all students of all abilities are in a classroom together, that all boats rise. And there are many different reasons for that.

It has to do with the teachers now being required to use different methods and teach differently, and that’s actually better for everybody.

So then the impact that that has on language—there is hard data on when students with disabilities are in a classroom. If they had been self-contained, they would not be getting as high language scores, math scores. The impact of kids being fully included is a benefit definitely to those children.

But also, again through that faith lens, we believe—this actually comes from church documents—that people with disabilities are agents of catechesis. It’s not just us who get to be the gatekeepers and say, we will welcome you, we will allow you into our space.

Right? It’s we have so much to learn from you and the benefits to everyone in our community and the children that you’re going to be friends with. Wow. What a gift you are to this community.

It’s just a different mindset. And getting there, Tim, is hard.

Tim Villegas:
Yeah.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
You know?

Tim Villegas:
Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely. I think listeners—and everyone at MCIE—we’re all, this is hard work. Yeah. And I think it’s important to acknowledge that it’s hard work, but it’s worth doing. It’s absolutely worth doing.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
Absolutely. Yes.

Tim Villegas:
Yeah. Crystal, did you have something you wanted to add?

Crystal Brooks:
Only that I think sometimes schools are surprised when we do start working with them, that we’re like, we’d love to observe teachers in the classroom. And we do start from that tier one general ed perspective. What is everybody getting?

And even the name of our company being Inclusion Solutions—people think, oh, you just do special ed. But we always clarify and say, but it begins in every classroom.

And sometimes that’s very surprising to school leaders and even the teachers. Some who have been in public school—I’ve spent more time in public school than Colleen has—but for those teachers that move from a public school or the school leaders from a public school into a private school, they had that notion of the self-contained classrooms.

Or, well, I can’t provide special ed if I don’t have a special educator on my staff and I just can’t afford to hire one, so we can’t serve those kids.

But we start in every classroom, and we go in and we observe. We look to see how the students are engaged. What does the classroom look like? How is it set up for the students to be successful? Because that’s where special ed begins.

Even in the public school, it’s supposed to, right? Tier one. It’s in tier one. Mm-hmm.

Tim Villegas:
Right. Yes. Yes.

And there are certain myths that accompany what special education is or what inclusive education is.

Crystal Brooks:
Mm-hmm.

Tim Villegas:
And I think you even have a resource—something about rigor versus inclusion. Is that right?

Crystal Brooks:
Yes. Mm-hmm.

Tim Villegas:
Okay. So this idea that if we are inclusive, we are going to have to water down our curriculum, do something so different that it’s not gonna look like our curriculum anymore.

Or to your point, educators saying, well, I wasn’t trained to teach these kids. I was trained to teach these kids over here that don’t have any disabilities, and that’s what I am trained and what I want to do.

After the break, we dig into some big tensions schools wrestle with—what inclusion really means, why rigor and belonging aren’t opposites, and how strong classroom practice has to come before programs, labels, or extra staff.

Colleen and Crystal also talk through common myths that keep schools stuck and what it looks like to shift mindsets without losing your mission.

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Tim Villegas:
Okay, so there’s this idea that you either can be rigorous or inclusive.

Crystal Brooks:
Right?

Tim Villegas:
So I know that you have a resource on your website. Can you share some thoughts about that and then maybe tell people where they can find that resource?

Crystal Brooks:
Sure. So one of the barriers we’re often faced with when we have conversations with school leaders and teachers is that they are a college prep school, or we’ve even seen K–8 schools say, we are a high school prep school.

And our question is always, but isn’t every school? Mm-hmm. I mean, every public school is preparing students to go to college or wherever else their journey may take them.

So we started to push back on that a little bit and challenge the distinction between being a private elite school and being a private faith-based school that’s driven by mission and community and bringing people together. And those conversations really give people pause to think about, that is a good question. What are we doing here? And who are these children that we’re forming and then setting out in the world?

We’ve also had to emphasize that inclusion isn’t only for students with specific learning needs in that they’re below grade level or struggling to stay on grade level. Those children also may be high-achieving, curious, gifted learners.

And sometimes parents may choose a private school thinking that it’s more rigorous, it’s more advanced, the pacing goes a little bit faster. And teachers recognize that those students also need a very different approach than a child who’s just on grade level moving along as expected.

So we do push back on the rigorous college prep or high school prep schools to say every school does that. When you define rigor, how are you defining rigor? And is rigor just more work? Is it extra homework?

We have some teachers that pride themselves on, well, they get at least an hour of homework from my class every night. We’re like, oh no, that’s not necessarily rigor. That’s terrible. Yeah, those poor parents.

So we have to start with what is rigor. And when we have those conversations, rigor is more than memorization. It’s more than just regurgitating facts that students can ask their AI for now or their smartphone.

So rigor looks loud, it looks messy. It looks like students collaborating. It looks like classrooms that are student led and student directed. Mm-hmm. Where students learn agency and self-advocacy.

And when we see classrooms like that, we’re like, this is a rigorous environment where students are given what they need to meet the high expectations that are set. It’s not merely setting high expectations and then saying, maybe you’ll make it, maybe you won’t, just try harder. That’s not rigor.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
A rigorous classroom is one where the students are thinking and they’re creating, and maybe they are reading and writing. Mm-hmm. And maybe there’s ten minutes of class where the teacher is giving them information, and then they’re gonna do something with that information.

So we often think a rigorous classroom is not necessarily a lecture-based classroom or a teacher-centric classroom. They’re very student centric. And the students are busy learning.

They know that when you’re given a task, your learning is your responsibility. And creating that culture takes very skilled teachers. That is the type of culture that we like to see.

A rigorous environment is one where kids know that they have to take responsibility for their learning. All students have to take responsibility, and growth is the goal for all students, whether they’re middle of the road, neurotypical, middle-of-the-road kiddos, or high flyers, or the kiddos that need more support.

But everybody is growing because everybody’s getting what they need. Right. We’re not teaching to the middle.

Tim Villegas:
Right. Exactly. Exactly. And that’s a hard conversation to have with educators who have been teaching a certain way for a very long time.

Crystal Brooks:
Yeah.

Tim Villegas:
Or even have this idea that education should be where the teacher knows all the knowledge and is therefore bestowing the knowledge.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
Yeah. I call that the factory model of education. I’m not into the factory model. People call me crazy, like I’m a little bit crazy.

Crystal Brooks:
Not me. Not to our face most of the time.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
But not to me. I know I say controversial things like, why are all the kids that are the same age in the same room together? I don’t even understand that. I’m a huge proponent of multi-age learning.

There are so many benefits of multi-age classrooms. Why does the same cohort of children stay together all day long trying to learn at the same pace and do the same things? Mm-hmm.

There are so many better ways that we could be doing school.

Crystal Brooks:
Mm-hmm.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
Because we’re aware of so many innovative models out there like team teaching and co-teaching. Co-teaching is not a new thing, but for a lot of faith-based schools, we introduce this concept of co-teaching and they’re like, well, now hold on a second.

Tim Villegas:
Whoa, wait a minute.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
And then team teaching. Let’s talk about a whole team of people with like 60 kids.

Crystal Brooks:
Right.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
So I’m all about the innovation, but I’m all about the research. If we know that there are things that we’re doing that maybe aren’t working—Tim, I just looked up this statistic the other day—54% of people in the United States read at the sixth-grade level or below, and 22% of people in the United States are completely illiterate.

So the way that we’ve been doing school for all this time is sometimes not working. If we don’t start doing school differently and break out of the way that especially I was taught in school—when I go into schools and I’m like, that’s exactly the same way I was taught—it kind of hurts my soul a little bit.

These kids today are different. They have different experiences. They have all the information at their disposal. Let’s get them doing things with the information and forming a relationship with the content and the skills.

Let them discover things. I know it’s controversial. That’s why people call me crazy. It’s okay.

Tim Villegas:
Well, I went to a private Christian school.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
Okay.

Tim Villegas:
Did we talk about this?

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
I think you told me this once.

Tim Villegas:
Yes. So I went to a private Christian school from preschool through college. I went K through eighth, high school, and then my college—I went to Azusa Pacific University in Azusa, California.

And I was in a multi-age class when I was in elementary school. I was in a two-three class. Not that I remember any of it, but obviously it didn’t hurt me.

I do remember the teacher would split the class and say, okay, I’m gonna talk to my second graders now, and I’m gonna talk to my third graders now. And I’m sure there are better ways to do that.

Crystal Brooks:
There is a better way to do that, Tim.

Tim Villegas:
Yeah. But I’m just saying it’s certainly possible. Even in some of the public schools we work with, the population is so small they combine grades.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
Yeah. I taught a combined seventh and eighth grade class as a language arts teacher. I knew the standards well enough. I could group kids for books and have kids of different grade levels reading.

We had data, so grouping kids where they should be, pairing them with their interests, reading different things. Writing is probably the most individualized thing you could possibly teach.

It’s harder in math because you’ve really gotta learn some things before you move on. I don’t want to make it sound super easy, but I loved teaching a multi-age class.

Tim Villegas:
Yeah. And a lot of special ed classrooms are multi-age.

Crystal Brooks:
Of course.

Tim Villegas:
I’m not saying that because I think it’s a good thing. I’m just saying a lot of people do it.

We’re getting a little off track here, so I apologize. But the point is there are a lot of ways to teach kids, and you have to be adaptable and flexible.

Crystal Brooks:
Exactly.

Tim Villegas:
And with your work and the schools you’re partnering with, the mission should be to include all learners.

Crystal Brooks:
Right.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
There’s a wide range of abilities in every classroom, whether you’ve got people of all the same age in there or not. Adapting to that takes skilled teaching.

Tim Villegas:
Yeah. I’m gonna close the loop on the rigor and inclusion resource. You do have a resource, and where would people find that?

Crystal Brooks:
We do. On our website there’s a tab called Knowledge Builders. Once we’ve created a training and found it was of high interest or high need, we create a one-page summary with tips and resources that teachers can use.

Principals can use it to drive faculty meetings and have conversations about these concepts or skills. There’s a wide variety of Knowledge Builders on our website that anyone can download.

Tim Villegas:
Great. And I took a little survey of the stuff you have on your website, and it looks like fantastic resources, so make sure you definitely go there and take a look at everything that they have to offer.

I want to circle back to what you were talking about for accessibility in certain school buildings. Yeah. And I’m wondering if you could share maybe an example or a story of working with a school, and then is there some sort of resource or checklist that an administrator can go through and be like, okay, our school is in a church and it’s like a hundred years old, right?

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
Right.

Tim Villegas:
And I’m not exactly sure if we’re accessible or not. Is there anything that can help with that?

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
There’s a few different tools that people can use. I’ve been hearing more and more about special education audits. I think there are special education audit tools out there.

Sometimes those do include the financial piece and the operational piece too. In a private school, really you would be starting from scratch and looking at what is accessible in terms of the physical space, the learning spaces, things like that.

We published a book in 2018 or 2019 that has a checklist in it for teachers, for principals, anyone in a community to be able to use to look at different starting points for a variety of topics within the community.

It is classroom-level stuff, system-level stuff, and then also what are you doing for admissions? How do you communicate your message through your website? So it’s a little bit of everything in there.

We’re in the process of updating that because it’s outdated already. So when we do get it updated, it will be available on our website. That’s coming.

Another really good place to start, if you don’t even know where to start, is the National Catholic Partnership on Disability. It’s an organization that provides all kinds of resources on their website. They do webinars, all kinds of things.

It is a Catholic-based organization, but this is good for any faith-based organization. Any faith-based organization would be able to use some of these resources and benefit from them.

On their website, they have a tool that’s called the LAMB. And if you just Googled National Catholic Partnership on Disability or NCPD LAMB, you would find this checklist that is available to download.

It talks about language. What kind of language is being used? Is it person-first? Is it respectful? Is it age appropriate? What is the language of the community?

Then it focuses on physical accessibility, checking where are you in this and scoring yourself. There’s a little rubric for it.

Then social accessibility—how are people able to be part of the community events, which is very important to think about. And then the accessibility of the learning spaces themselves.

So that’s all there, and that’s a really easy one. A couple of recommendations for places to start there.

Tim Villegas:
Yeah. I hope that’s super helpful for anyone who’s listening and going, where do I start?

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
Where do I start? Yep.

Tim Villegas:
Yeah. Yes.

How do you get away from the idea that, okay, we’re gonna do inclusion, we’re saying yes to inclusion, we just gotta hire a bunch of paraprofessionals or aides, and this is how we’re going to implement inclusion?

Is that something that you run into? And then if it is, how do you manage that?

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
I would first want to say, because I don’t want to downplay this and say anybody can just do inclusion in their classroom. It is hard, especially if you’re like, I wasn’t trained for this and I need some training.

So personnel can be very helpful, but you don’t want to oversaturate your community with personnel and say, okay, those—and call them things like the inclusion aide or something like that.

Crystal Brooks:
Right.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
We wouldn’t want to do that because, again, we go back to our philosophy, which is inclusion is everyone’s responsibility.

So it really does start with building the knowledge and skills of the classroom teachers to ensure that everything that they’re doing in tier one—what’s the phrase? You can’t tier two your way out of bad tier one instruction.

Crystal Brooks:
Yeah.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
You’ve gotta have excellent tier one.

So that’s where we start with teachers. You can learn about the ones that you see in your classroom all the time—ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, autism spectrum disorders. You can learn about those things in a variety of ways. Mm-hmm.

So it’s building knowledge and then skills. Once you know a little bit about those disabilities that you know you’re seeing all the time, then so what? What do I do in my classroom? Then what do I do about that?

Once we can get past knowledge and skills, which takes a long time—this does not happen in three meetings, it takes years—then you get to, okay, what methodologies can we shift?

How can we integrate more movement? Let’s think universal design. What is the learning environment? How are we utilizing the learning environment as the third teacher? That’s that UDL concept.

Are we making sure that everything is not you have to sit still and be quiet? Because that’s not how a lot of kiddos are actually learning.

So how can we train people out of that?

We have a colleague who always teaches the ten-two principle. You’re never giving more than ten minutes of information to a group of kids without then giving them a minimum of two minutes to do an activity, have a conversation, or do something to process that information.

Never more than ten minutes.

Oh, I like that. So there are basic things, but making changes is really hard for all human beings. It takes time, but we get people there.

Crystal Brooks:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And then when teachers have those practices in place and the conversation comes to, well, this child still needs an aide, we want to get down to that question: what is the aide’s purpose?

What is the goal of having this aide in the classroom?

Here in Arizona, there are scholarships and vouchers available for families who send their students to private schools. They often have funding through insurance or scholarships to hire behavior analysts, therapists, or one-on-one aides to help in the classroom.

So is the focus on behavior? If so, we need to work in partnership with those professionals to gradually fade those supports and make sure that the teacher is still the responsible person for that child.

Because what we see oftentimes is when there is an aide in the classroom, that child is left for the aide to educate. The aide becomes that child’s primary educator, and the teacher says, well, I don’t know what he did today, you’d have to check with so-and-so.

Mm-hmm. And we want to move away from that because the teacher is still the teacher of record. It’s your name on the report card. The aide is not on the report card.

So we really want to get to what is the purpose of the instructional aide, because if that purpose is defined and understood by all parties, the outcomes can be much greater when they have that partnership with the classroom teacher.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
And then when that aide is trained for that specific purpose.

Crystal Brooks:
Right. Right. But it is a challenge.

Some of the schools that we’ve worked with have intervention teams of nine or ten skilled interventionists, and their immediate role is to take kids out of the classroom to provide intervention, tutoring, or homework help.

And again, you’re not helping that classroom teacher build the knowledge and skills to keep that child in the classroom as much as possible, included.

Tim Villegas:
Yeah. Yeah. The issues and how you are managing in faith-based schools are very similar to how everyone in a public school environment experiences these challenges.

Something that is a little bit different from public to faith-based is how are we going to pay for all of this?

Crystal Brooks:
Yeah.

Tim Villegas:
You brought it up earlier. I’m wondering if there are any successful models or ways to provide funding for additional staff, for equipment, or any other additional supports with regard to faith-based schools.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
So there are two different ways we can answer that. One is with regard to federal programs. Why don’t we start with federal programs, and then I’ll talk about some other stuff.

Crystal Brooks:
Okay. So we do a lot of consulting with private schools to help them understand the differences between Title I tutoring and intervention and equitable services available through IDEA.

It’s amazing—sometimes there’s no knowledge of IDEA funding. We see that in both districts and private schools. At the district level, the special education director may be exceptional at their job, but when you talk about this portion of IDEA—proportionate share, equitable services—they’re like, well, we just do speech therapy and everybody gets speech if they’re in a private school.

Mm-hmm. Which is not what everybody needs.

So we do a lot of consulting around knowing how much money you have as a private school within a district boundary. And it’s usually not that one school, but all of the schools in the boundary.

The district has to set aside funding through that proportionate share formula that’s available to students who are parentally placed in private schools. We want them to know what that is.

We actually share that information among our schools here in Arizona because the Department of Education makes it very easy to find on their website. We’re like, here it is. It’s all laid out in the spreadsheet. This is how much money your district had to set aside for IDEA proportionate share services.

Now knowing that is great. Receiving those funds is a totally different story.

Tim Villegas:
Right. I’m sure.

Crystal Brooks:
There’s a lot of gray area in the interpretation of the law, and ultimately the district does have the final say as to how those funds are spent.

We try to say, know your kids who are receiving Title I, because Title I actually helps support MTSS processes in many private schools. Then it’s through those interventions—after they’ve been exhausted—that a child gets referred to Child Find and may become eligible for a service plan and be able to access certain services through those proportionate share funds.

So we try to educate. Not that they need to count on that. We would never want them to count on those funds, especially this year. You can’t count on federal funding or put it in your budget, but at least know it’s available and how to advocate for it.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
And how to advocate.

Tim Villegas:
This is for every state.

Crystal Brooks:
Yes. Yes.

Tim Villegas:
Let me recap just so I can understand. What I’m hearing you say is that every district has proportionate share funding set aside to support learners who have been placed in private schools.

Crystal Brooks:
Yes.

Tim Villegas:
That can be used to support those learners at the discretion of the school district.

Crystal Brooks:
Correct.

Tim Villegas:
But most people don’t know that even exists.

Crystal Brooks:
Correct. Yes.

We spoke with one of our partners on the West Coast recently, and they had someone within their network do an analysis of the Title I funding and IDEA funding made available through equitable services and proportionate share funding.

They found there was at least a million dollars that was never spent on behalf of students in their private schools. Ultimately, I think states differ, but sometimes it goes back into the general fund. Sometimes they may be able to roll it over into the next fiscal year.

Millions of dollars across the country are not being spent on students in private schools who are eligible for Title I and eligible for services under IDEA.

So we like to start there. In one sense it’s low-hanging fruit. Once you know about it, you can ask about it and advocate on behalf of your students.

It doesn’t go directly to the school, like a budget line, but it provides services. A speech therapist can go to a private school and provide therapy. Social-emotional counselors can go to the private school, or the child can go to the closest district school.

Reading, math, all of those services identified through evaluation—if the child were in a public school, they’d be in an IEP—can be considered for that student in a private school.

They won’t get everything because they’re not entitled to FAPE, but the district can say, yes, you have a specific learning disability in reading and need support. We can provide specially designed instruction.

Sometimes it’s as little as 30 minutes a month or 30 minutes a week. It depends on need and availability.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
But also, I’ve been a Catholic school principal, and they make it really hard. It’s very time intensive. You have to learn the law. It’s convoluted.

There are barriers to principals being able to advocate for that money, which is why a lot of that money is still on the table.

Tim Villegas:
Anything else you wanted to share about funding?

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
We talked about nonprofits. There are about 35 nonprofits across the country that raise money specifically for Catholic schools to provide personnel, training, and equipment.

There are 194 Catholic dioceses across the country and only about 35 of these organizations, so it’s not enough.

There are also 33 states that have school choice programs. It’s a sticky point to talk about, but they can be game changers for families.

In Arizona, for example, families can use ESAs or tax credit scholarships. There are also 12 states that have specific special needs scholarship programs that are pretty robust.

If you’re in one of those states, those funds can help pay for tuition and free up money for outside services like speech therapy, OT, or specialized tutoring.

School choice programs can free up money for parents to pay for outside services they might otherwise have to pay for anyway.

Tim Villegas:
Sure.

I guess the only thing I would say about school choice is there’s no guarantee that a school will support a child with disabilities, and that is kind of the problem.

Crystal Brooks:
Percent.

Tim Villegas:
It’s super unfortunate.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
Agreed. That is true.

Crystal Brooks:
Last thing with funding—it does come down to schools making it part of their budget. Hiring a part-time speech pathologist or reading specialist.

You’re already budgeting for music, art, and PE teachers. Kids need academic support too. School leaders need to include it as a budget line.

Tim Villegas:
As we’re wrapping up our conversation, I’d love to know a story or example of how you’ve seen inclusion really work with one of your partner schools.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
Would you mind if I talk about a personal example from the school where my kids went? It actually is a school that we’ve partnered with too.

Tim Villegas:
Of course.

Crystal Brooks:
A story is a story.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
I have a couple of good stories to tell about them.

So the first thing that comes to my mind is my kids went to elementary school at a Catholic school. It was a very open, welcoming campus. And there have been kids there with a variety of disabilities for a very long time.

My kids, when they were in elementary school, had classmates with autism and a variety of disabilities. We had multiple students with Down syndrome on the campus as well.

I remember one of my sons—my son has autism, he still does. At the time, he participated in a lot of activities, and the play was one of those. The play was a huge thing. Every fall there was this huge play that about 40% of the kids in the school participated in, and my son was in it.

A couple of classmates with Down syndrome were also included. There weren’t activities where they said, oh no, these activities are only for these students.

My son’s classmate with Down syndrome participated on the basketball team. He was always included in whatever he was interested in being included in.

My son—his brilliance, his superpower, was geography. His school happened to have the National Geographic Bee every year. So the schoolwide National Geographic Bee, which he won twice, and he was able to compete at the state level.

He was also a musician, so he got to play his violin at Mass at the school Masses.

Here’s the thing about some of these schools that really truly understand that their mission as a faith-based educational institution is to form the whole child and to honor the gifts that God created them with, and to bring those out and figure out ways for those kids to grace the community with their gifts.

As a personal example, I can give you a few different ways that school did that. And we see that a lot—where kids are able to shine. Even if they struggle in the classroom, they’re able to shine and be honored for who they are and who they were created to be, and to participate in the life of the community.

That’s a really beautiful thing. And we do see that a lot. Mm-hmm. And that keeps us going.

Crystal Brooks:
Mm-hmm.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
Absolutely.

Tim Villegas:
It should all keep us going. It’s important work. Thank you so much for what you do and how you support faith-based schools.

Crystal, did you want to add anything?

Crystal Brooks:
No, I think that story is one of my favorite ones. Just knowing that community as we do and knowing they have such a profound impact on the families that are there.

Tim Villegas:
If any of this sounds interesting and you want to know more, where can listeners find more about what you do?

Crystal Brooks:
Our website is inclusionsolutions4kids.com. It’s the number four.

You can contact us through our website and we’ll get right back to you. There are resources there available for teachers, and we have an online learning library that schools can engage in to build knowledge and skills.

We’re a small team—Colleen and I and our fellow consultants—but we really do partner deeply with every school we’re with. It’s very personal to us.

Knowing the difference it can make for families when a school says yes, when they’re willing to do the work—it’s life changing for those kids and families. Thank you for the opportunity to share what we do today and where folks can find us.

Tim Villegas:
We’ve spent this time talking about mission, mindset shifts, and what it takes to build real belonging in schools, especially when the work is hard and the systems aren’t built for it. To close things out, we shift gears with the mystery question.

Of course. Of course. And can I keep you for a mystery question?

Crystal Brooks:
Yes. Yeah. This is the best part, Tim. I’ve been looking forward to this.

Tim Villegas:
This is my favorite part. This is my favorite part. I’m nervous. Okay, here we go. No need to be nervous.

All right. Oh my gosh, this question.

So if you were alone in your house and there was a fire, what would you grab on your way out? It says alone, which is interesting, right? Because you can’t grab another family member.

Crystal Brooks:
That was the first thing I thought of. I gotta get my dog. My dog.

Tim Villegas:
My dog is like 80 pounds, so I’m really hoping he would just follow me out. I would pick him up, but I’m really hoping.

Oh gosh, that is an interesting question. I used to say photos. There are definitely photos that I have that are not digitized or uploaded anywhere. But they’re upstairs in my closet, and I don’t know if I’d have time.

We do have some photos downstairs that I would grab, so probably still that.

What about you all?

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
My guitar is sitting in my kitchen on the guitar stand because I pick it up and play it all day long.

Tim Villegas:
Wait, you have a guitar in your kitchen?

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
I move it into whatever room I’m in. If I have five minutes between meetings, I just pick it up.

Tim Villegas:
How cool. That’s awesome.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
It would be right next to me, so that would definitely be coming with me.

Tim Villegas:
Okay. Crystal?

Crystal Brooks:
Oh gosh, this is tricky. After my dog, the first thing that came to mind was my phone so I could call my family and tell them I’m okay.

Chances are I already have it close by or in a pocket. If not, I do have a box of mementos from each of my children. I have three kids. Things that are special to my husband and me and our kids.

It’s not a very big tote. I would probably grab that—the little things I couldn’t replace.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
She’s much more sentimental than I am.

Tim Villegas:
Yeah.

Crystal Brooks:
I don’t play guitar either, though. That’s really perfect.

Tim Villegas:
We have memory boxes for each of the kids. Full credit to my wife—she’s so organized. We weed through them every so often.

It’s a little heavy, though. Depends on how much my house is on fire.

Crystal Brooks:
Right.

Tim Villegas:
Either way, it’s bad. I never want anyone’s house to catch on fire.

Okay. Thank you. Mystery question—we did it.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
Yay.

Tim Villegas:
Colleen McCoy-Cejka and Crystal Brooks, thank you so much for being on the Think Inclusive Podcast.

Colleen McCoy-Cejka:
Thank you for having us. It was a lot of fun.

Tim Villegas:
That was Colleen McCoy-Cejka and Crystal Brooks. One thing I keep coming back to from this conversation is how often schools say yes to inclusion in theory, but then build systems that quietly keep students on the margins.

What Colleen and Crystal reminded me is that inclusion doesn’t start with a program, a label, or an extra adult in a classroom. It starts with how we design classrooms and schools and how we see our responsibility to every learner.

That really connects with our work here at MCIE, where we’re trying to break down silos and shift systems so students with disabilities are learning alongside their peers in their neighborhood schools, not somewhere else.

Inclusion is hard work, but it’s also deeply human work.

One practical step for educators: take a fresh look at your tier one practices and ask, who is this working for and who isn’t it working for?

Small shifts in how lessons are structured, how students are engaged, or how support is shared can remove real barriers without waiting for a new program or more funding.

If this episode resonated with you, share it with a colleague who’s building inclusive schools. Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and follow Think Inclusive wherever you get your podcasts.

Shout out to all of our listeners who have caught every single episode of this season. We are on number 23 of season 13, so that’s about 23 hours of content you’ve spent with us. Thank you for every minute.

Do you have a favorite episode of the season so far? I’d love to hear about it. You can always email me at tvillegas@mcie.org.

Now let’s roll the credits.

Think Inclusive is brought to you by me, Tim Villegas. I write, edit, mix, master—I basically wear all the podcast hats and baseball caps. This show is a proud production of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education, with scheduling and extra production help from Jill Wagoner.

Our original music is by Miles Kredich with extra vibes from Melod.ie. Big thanks to our sponsors, IXL and Adaptiverse. Visit ixl.com/inclusive and Adaptiverseapp.com.

Fun fact: National Toast Day is celebrated on the last Thursday of February, and it’s all about honoring one of the world’s most comforting foods.

Toasting bread actually dates back to the Roman Empire, when heat was used to preserve stale bread for travel. What started as a practical solution has turned into a global celebration of crunchy creativity—from simple butter toast to fancy open-faced masterpieces. Proof that sometimes the simplest foods bring the most joy.

How often do you eat toast? I had some this morning. I’d love to know about it. Email me at tvillegas@mcie.org. I read every single message.

If you’ve made it this far, you’re officially part of the Think Inclusive Inclusion Crew. Want to help us keep moving the needle forward for inclusion? Head to mcie.org and click the donate button. Give five, ten, twenty dollars—it helps us keep partnering with schools and districts to move inclusive practices forward and support educators doing the work.

Find us on the socials almost everywhere at Think Inclusive.

Thanks for hanging out, and remember, inclusion always works.