Special Education That's Not Separate: Inside Marysville's Approach to Aligned Instruction

New Episode of "Beyond the Box"

Dr. Ronald Taylor sits down with Rusty Gordon, Director of Pupil Services at Marysville Joint Unified School District in California, to explore how to integrate special education into a coherent districtwide instructional system.

Rusty has spent years doing the unglamorous but essential work of connecting special education to core instruction - across schools, across teams, and across leadership cycles. The conversation gets practical fast: how do you move from fragmented, one-off curriculum requests to an aligned districtwide system? How do you build common language when every school site has its own culture? And how do you design professional learning that teachers actually show up for?

Rusty also shares something that's easy to overlook in systems work: lasting impact requires letting go of personal ownership. The programs that outlast any one administrator are the ones built on shared expertise, not individual initiative.

A grounded look at what curriculum infrastructure means when special education sits inside the system, not beside it.

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