For SPED directors, coordinators & teams

Overflow capacity when your SPED team is underwater.

Remote IEP drafting, compliance review, and team support — from someone with 10+ years in SPED classrooms who knows the timelines, the paperwork, and the stakes.

20+
years in education
10+
years in SPED
Remote
or in person

We can pick up

  • IEP drafting & re-evaluations
  • Compliance & timeline review
  • SPED team overflow coverage
  • PD for SPED teachers & paras
  • Ready-made PD decks — available for purchase on this site
  • AI implementation & educational innovation
Typical start: within 3 business days
What we actually solve

The pressure points eating your SPED week.

On the left, what we hear from SPED leaders. On the right, what we take off your plate.

I'm in meeting after meeting, compliance reviews, teacher observations, IEP meetings, manifestation meetings — and I completely forgot we have a PD day in two days and I have nothing ready.

Another all-nighter building slides from scratch, hoping they hit the mark for a mixed audience of teachers and paras.

How we help

Ready-made, facilitator-led PD decks — classroom-tested, aligned to SPED realities, and ready to present tomorrow.

We're behind on IEPs and the clock is ticking.

Annual reviews stacked up, re-evals overdue, and the team is already at capacity.

How we help

Remote IEP drafting that follows your district's templates and your timelines.

Per-IEP or hourly

We need to build a behavior program — and we don't know where to start.

Specialized placements, behavior supports, and the systems behind them are hard to design from scratch while you're already running a building.

How we help

Hands-on help designing behavior programs and specialized placements — plus the staffing, compliance, and daily routines that make them run. Built on experience opening and operating a state-approved Level 3 special education program, and coaching staff in CPI, MANDT, and SCM.

Program design + staff coaching

Compliance audit is around the corner.

Files are inconsistent, timelines are slipping, and nobody has time to audit before the audit.

How we help

File and timeline review with a clear remediation plan you can act on this month.

Audit prep package

Our SPED teachers are burning out.

Paperwork is eating instruction time. New teachers are drowning. Veterans are quitting.

How we help

PD built for SPED teams — paperwork systems, co-teaching, and case management that holds up.

Deck + facilitator guide

Parent disputes are escalating.

Meetings get heated, and you're worried the next call is from an attorney.

How we help

Pre-meeting prep and communication coaching so meetings stay productive and documented.

1:1 coaching

Our progress monitoring data isn't telling us anything.

Staff are collecting numbers but can't interpret them — which means they can't explain progress to parents, and meetings turn into conflict instead of clarity.

How we help

Build progress monitoring systems your team actually understands — clean data collection, meaningful graphs, and language staff can use to walk parents through what the numbers mean.

Progress monitoring systems + staff training

We want to use AI — without the hype or the privacy risk.

Staff are curious, leadership is cautious, and nobody wants a tool that mishandles student data or replaces sound practice.

How we help

A grounded, no-hype path to AI in schools — built around clear systems, staff training, and responsible-use guardrails that protect student data and your team's time.

AI implementation + systems + PD

Bottlenecks keep pulling leadership off the real work.

Evaluations, referrals, paperwork flow, parent communication — the same friction points resurface every month because there's no system holding them up.

How we help

We build the system or process behind the problem — evaluation triage, referral intake, compliance routines, whatever the bottleneck is — so the fix sticks after we're gone.

Custom systems + processes
What you get

Pay-as-you-go capacity. No long contract.

Start with a single IEP or one week of overflow. Scale up when it works — and only then.

IEP drafting

Per-IEP or block hours · your templates

Compliance review

Files, timelines, remediation plan

SPED team overflow

Interim or sustained coverage

SPED team PD

Paperwork, co-teaching, case management

Parent meeting prep

Coaching, scripting, debriefs

How engagement works

From first call to first draft in under a week.

01

Fit call

20 minutes. Tell us what's overdue and what's at risk.

02

Scope + pricing

Per-IEP, hourly, or block hours — written scope in 48 hours.

03

Start within days

Secure document handoff and we're drafting by end of week.

04

Stay or step back

Use us for one IEP or run with us through the school year.

Eric Wicherski, founder of Next Step Educational Services

Eric Wicherski

Founder · Former Level 3 director

Built by someone who's been in the room

Two decades doing the work schools are stretched thinnest to cover.

"Good systems make it possible to look past the obstacle, build a practical plan, and still hold high expectations — every day."

I also live this work as a dad. Every step of my children's lives — every new phase — brings its own set of challenges, tough decisions, and new knowledge you need to acquire just to feel barely somewhat prepared and able to advocate for your children. My own family's journey keeps shaping what I bring to the families I work with.

  • 20+ years in education, K–transition age
  • General & Special Education
  • Autism & behavior classrooms
  • Opened & grew a Level 3 program
  • Rural · suburban · urban districts
  • Parent of two children with special needs
Built on federal IDEA standards · research-backed materials
FAQ

Questions SPED leaders ask first.

Not sure where to start?

Tell us what your school is working on.

Three quick questions. We'll point you to the right next step within one business day.