This AI Software Translates Special Education Plans for SF Parents – The Frisc

Report on an AI-Powered Initiative to Enhance Educational Equity in San Francisco

Introduction: Addressing Educational Disparities in Alignment with Sustainable Development Goals

In the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), families with limited English proficiency face significant barriers to participating in their children’s special education planning. This challenge directly contravenes the principles of Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4), which calls for inclusive and equitable quality education, and SDG 10, which aims to reduce inequalities. A new artificial intelligence tool, AiEP, has been developed to address this gap by empowering parents to understand complex legal documents and advocate effectively for their children’s educational rights.

Systemic Barriers to Inclusive Education (SDG 4)

The Challenge of Individualized Education Plans (IEPs)

Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) are legally mandated documents outlining the specific educational support for students with disabilities. However, their implementation within SFUSD presents several challenges that impede the achievement of equitable education.

• Language Accessibility: With over 2,300 English language learners in special education, the district’s translation services for IEPs are reportedly slow, often taking 10 days or more. This delay hinders timely parental involvement.
• Document Complexity: IEPs are often dense, lengthy (nearly 50 pages in one cited case), and filled with specialized jargon, making them inaccessible even without a language barrier.
• Resource Deficiencies: SFUSD has a documented history of failing to meet IEP requirements, often due to staffing shortages and large caseloads for special education staff. This systemic failure undermines the provision of quality education as mandated by SDG 4.

The AiEP Tool: An Innovation for Reducing Inequality (SDG 9 & SDG 10)

Functionality and Development

Developed through a collaboration between the nonprofit Innovate Public Schools and Northeastern University’s Burnes Center for Social Change, AiEP is a civic AI project designed to promote social inclusion. The tool’s functions directly support the reduction of inequalities (SDG 10) by providing equal access to information.

1. Translation: The software translates IEPs into Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Vietnamese.
2. Simplification: It summarizes key information, such as the precise minutes of therapy or support a student is entitled to, and simplifies complex educational terminology.
3. Empowerment: The tool creates personalized recommendations and checklists to help parents prepare for meetings with school administrators and advocate for their children’s needs.

Case Studies in Parental Advocacy

The tool has demonstrated a tangible impact on parents’ ability to ensure their children receive entitled services.

• A Spanish-speaking mother, Rosa Mendoza, used the tool to understand her daughter’s updated IEP for developmental delay, enabling her to advocate more effectively.
• Another parent, Shan Hong, discovered a significant clerical error in her son’s IEP using AiEP. The document listed 100 minutes of language arts support instead of the verbally agreed-upon 227 minutes, a discrepancy she was able to correct because of the tool’s clarity.

Implementation Challenges and Institutional Accountability (SDG 16)

Adoption and Security Concerns

While approximately 200 families are currently using the free, open-source tool, its formal adoption by SFUSD is pending. This situation highlights challenges related to SDG 16, which calls for effective, accountable, and transparent institutions.

• District Hesitancy: SFUSD officials and Board of Education members have expressed concerns about data privacy and the security of uploading sensitive student information to a third-party tool.
• Developer Assurances: The engineers behind AiEP affirm that the platform is highly secure. The process involves redacting all personally identifying information, destroying the original uploaded file, and using the anonymized version to generate summaries. The system does not use personal data to train its models, and users can delete all their information at any time.

The Need for Institutional Modernization

The reliance on an external tool underscores gaps in the district’s own systems, which a school principal described as predating the AI era. The lack of official integration prevents widespread use and points to a need for institutions to develop more responsive and inclusive processes (Target 16.7) to serve all families equitably.

Conclusion: Technology as a Catalyst for Educational Justice

The AiEP initiative serves as a powerful example of how targeted innovation (SDG 9) can advance progress toward SDG 4 (Quality Education) and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities). By demystifying complex educational processes for non-English speaking families, the tool empowers parents to become active participants in their children’s education, ensuring that students with disabilities receive the support they are legally entitled to. While the tool itself is a significant step, its full potential can only be realized through collaboration with public institutions. Formal adoption by school districts would represent a commitment to building the strong, accountable, and inclusive systems envisioned in SDG 16, ensuring that technology serves to bridge, rather than widen, societal divides.

Analysis of Sustainable Development Goals in the Article

1. Which SDGs are addressed or connected to the issues highlighted in the article?

1. SDG 4: Quality Education
   • The entire article revolves around ensuring quality education for children with special needs. It discusses Individualized Education Plans (IEPs), which are legal documents designed to provide personalized education, accommodations, and goals for students with disabilities. The challenges faced by these students and their families in securing the services they are entitled to, such as one-on-one paraprofessionals and specific therapies, are central to the narrative.
2. SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities
   • The article highlights significant inequalities faced by specific groups within the education system. It focuses on the dual vulnerability of students who are both in special education and come from non-English speaking families. The language barrier prevents parents like Rosa Mendoza, who only speaks Spanish, from understanding complex legal documents and advocating effectively for their children, creating a clear inequality in access to information and participation.
3. SDG 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
   • This goal is relevant because the article examines the effectiveness and accountability of a public institution, the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD). The district is portrayed as struggling with “special education staffing and resources,” having “notoriously slow” translation services, and failing to meet the legal requirements of IEPs. The parents’ struggle to get the services they are legally entitled to is a matter of access to justice, and the AiEP tool is presented as a way to make the decision-making process more inclusive and participatory (Target 16.7).

2. What specific targets under those SDGs can be identified based on the article’s content?

1. Under SDG 4 (Quality Education):
   • Target 4.5: “By 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities… and children in vulnerable situations.” The article directly addresses this by focusing on students with disabilities (those with IEPs for hearing loss, balance problems, and developmental delay) and children in vulnerable situations (English language learners from immigrant families). The core issue is the lack of “equal access” for these children to the educational support they require.
   • Target 4.a: “Build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability and gender sensitive and provide safe, non-violent, inclusive and effective learning environments for all.” The article mentions the need for specific accommodations like “quieter, autism-focused classroom settings” and a “classroom paraprofessional for one-on-one attention.” The district’s failure to provide a paraprofessional for nearly a full school year is a direct failure to provide an “effective learning environment” as mandated by the student’s IEP.
2. Under SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities):
   • Target 10.2: “By 2030, empower and promote the social… and political inclusion of all, irrespective of… disability… origin…” The AiEP tool is explicitly designed to empower parents, particularly those who do not speak English, to participate in their children’s educational planning. By translating and simplifying jargon-filled documents, the tool enables parents to “be ready to speak up” and “advocate,” thereby promoting their inclusion in a critical decision-making process from which they were previously excluded.
   • Target 10.3: “Ensure equal opportunity and reduce inequalities of outcome…” The article provides clear examples of inequalities of outcome. Shan Hong’s son almost received less than half the language arts support he was entitled to due to a clerical error. Rosa’s daughter went without a legally required paraprofessional for months. These are inequalities in educational outcomes that the AiEP tool helps parents identify and rectify, thus promoting equal opportunity.
3. Under SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions):
   • Target 16.6: “Develop effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all levels.” The article critiques the SFUSD’s effectiveness, citing its “history of failing to meet the requirements in IEPs” and its slow processes. The story of Shan Hong discovering a 127-minute discrepancy in her son’s weekly support highlights a lack of accountability and transparency in the district’s record-keeping.
   • Target 16.7: “Ensure responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making at all levels.” The primary barrier for parents like Rosa Mendoza is the inability to participate in the IEP process. The district’s translation service taking “10 days” is not responsive to parents’ needs. The AiEP tool’s function is to make this process more inclusive and participatory by giving parents the information they need in a language and format they can understand, allowing them to have a “voice.”

3. Are there any indicators mentioned or implied in the article that can be used to measure progress towards the identified targets?

1. For SDG 4 Targets:
   • Indicator: Proportion of students with disabilities receiving their legally mandated support services. The article provides a negative indicator through the anecdote of Rosa’s daughter, who was legally entitled to a paraprofessional but did not receive one “until May 2025, in the last weeks of the school year.” Measuring the gap between entitled services and delivered services for all students with IEPs would track progress.
   • Indicator: Data on the intersection of vulnerability. The article provides the statistic that “Roughly 17 percent of these kids [English language learners], or 2,300 students, are in special education,” which serves as a baseline indicator for the size of this vulnerable population.
2. For SDG 10 Targets:
   • Indicator: Time required for translation of essential documents for non-native speakers. The article mentions the district’s stated timeframe of “approximately 10 days to have an IEP translated,” which can be used as a benchmark. Progress could be measured by a reduction in this time.
   • Indicator: Parental engagement and empowerment in educational planning. The article implies this can be measured by the number of families seeking external help. The fact that “About 200 local families have already started using” the AiEP tool indicates a need for empowerment. A decrease in such needs or an increase in parental satisfaction could be a progress indicator.
3. For SDG 16 Targets:
   • Indicator: Rate of clerical and administrative errors in official educational plans. The case of Shan Hong’s son, whose weekly support was misstated from 227 minutes to 100 minutes, is an example. Tracking the frequency of such errors would measure the institution’s accountability and effectiveness.
   • Indicator: Timeliness of institutional response to legal requirements. The nearly year-long delay in providing Rosa’s daughter with a paraprofessional is a clear indicator of the institution’s lack of responsiveness. Measuring the average time it takes to fulfill IEP service requirements would track progress toward Target 16.7.

4. Table of SDGs, Targets, and Indicators

Source: thefrisc.com