Director of Evaluation and Appraisal Katherine Chenier has been with CCS since her Doctoral level internship when she began working at Akili Academy in 2013. Katherine is now a licensed psychologist, working in the school system that she grew up in.
“At CCS, I feel like everyone is always working together with the best interests of kids in mind, which is why I have stayed as long as I have,” Katherine said.
Even before receiving her doctoral degree at Louisiana State University, Katherine was always interested in psychology. Her mother worked as a social worker, as well as a teacher, and her grandmother was also a teacher. But her interest in school psychology was sparked when taking additional undergraduate classes at Tulane University.
In her current role, Katherine works with and manages the evaluation team across the network. The evaluation team consists of two school psychologists and an educational diagnostician. In addition to managing that team, Katherine also works closely with school-based team members who are referring students for assessment.
“I also work with the schools on their overall intervention programs,” Katherine added. “There are a lot of reasons that we need intervention in schools, but it ties directly to evaluations because students have to go through the intervention program before we can refer them for an evaluation.”
In addition to her role at CCS, Katherine is also Co-Chair of the Louisiana Department of Education’s Special Education Advisory Panel. She currently serves as the charter school representative and co-chair, a three-year position. The panel is made up of various people from across the state, including several parents, people with disabilities, and representatives from different agencies.
The panel meets roughly every three months to discuss various happenings in special education and sometimes has to choose whether or not they will endorse specific developments within the sphere of special education.
“I’ve learned a lot on the Council, and probably my favorite thing about being on the Council is that I do get to work with and hear opinions from people who I typically wouldn’t because they are across the state and from a different perspective,” Katherine said.
Katherine aims to continue highlighting the importance of Special Education at CCS and through the panel.
“I think CCS has put a lot of resources into special education, which is unique,” Katherine said. “There is a school psychology shortage across the country, and so whenever we talk to people about school psychologists, the sentiment is often ‘we can’t find them’ or ‘we don’t have enough’ and at CCS we’ve decided to keep ourselves staffed, which is a reflection of the importance we attach to this work.”
The team at CCS makes sure to work with each student thoroughly, “we don’t want students getting to an evaluation without knowing that they’ve gone through everything they needed to first,” Katherine added.
“Sometimes it can be easy to overlook special education because it’s not impacting every single student in the school, but CCS really believes that every single student is important. We’ve put efforts into building our intervention programs and providing additional professional development for our staff because we know that creates the best outcome for students. And that’s something that I’ve not always seen at other places.”
Looking toward the future at CCS, Katherine hopes to continue growing and improving the services it provides to its students.
“It’s been very challenging with students coming off of virtual education, and I think there are things we don’t know yet, in terms of long-term impact. My hope for CCS is that we can continue to maintain the high standards that we have for special education, and that we continue to be responsive to the needs of our students,” Katherine said.
