Starr TeachForward
AI · Education · Impact
For District Leaders

Practical Support for Safer,
More Inclusive, AI-Ready Schools.

Starr TeachForward helps school and district leaders strengthen three areas that increasingly overlap: disability-inclusive school safety, special education practice and compliance, and responsible AI use. Every service is grounded in 23+ years of special education classroom experience, 12 years as an EMT, and direct experience supporting students with complex learning, communication, behavioral, medical, and accessibility needs.

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District Services

Three Challenges. One Experienced Partner.

Most districts are working on all three of these at once — emergency planning that has to include students with disabilities, special education documentation that has to hold up under review, and decisions about AI that nobody has clear guidance on yet. Usually that means three separate vendors who never talk to each other. Starr TeachForward brings them together, run on the FORWARD Framework™: the step-by-step process used to move a plan from current state to documented, assignable action items.

Inclusive School Safety

Safety Without Barriers™ — reviewing emergency plans, drills, and buildings so students with disabilities are planned for, not improvised around.

  • Safety Without Barriers™ building and plan reviews
  • Disability-inclusive emergency planning
  • Evacuation and reunification accessibility
  • Transportation safety review
  • Staff preparedness and training
  • Collaboration with families and first responders
School Safety →

Special Education & Compliance

Documentation and practice support from someone still teaching in a special education classroom every week.

  • IDEA/FAPE-focused compliance tools
  • IEP and progress-monitoring workflows
  • Documentation support for teams
  • Special education transportation considerations
  • Staff training on practice and paperwork
Special Education →

Responsible AI for Schools

Practical AI adoption for school teams — where it helps, where it must not be used, and how to keep student data out of it.

  • AI foundations for educators
  • Responsible prompting and workflow design
  • Student data and privacy practices
  • Special education use cases
  • Administrator observation support
  • District AI-readiness tools
See the tools & pricing →
Featured District Tool

Observation write-ups shouldn't take longer than the observation itself.

Administrators and coaches spend hours translating raw notes into structured, evidence-based domain feedback — especially in special education contexts, where documentation carries extra legal and compliance weight. Most AI tools aren't built with that context in mind.

Product 1

Vantage — Teacher Observation Partner

Turn observation notes into evidence-based domain feedback, aligned to your rubric.

  • Designed to work alongside whatever framework your district already uses, including rubrics aligned to NYSED requirements under §3012-d (Danielson, Marzano, Marshall, NYSUT, McREL, and others) — Vantage itself is not NYSED approved or endorsed. Upload your rubric each session; nothing stored long-term.
  • Structured, domain-by-domain evidence writing — holistic or criterion-by-criterion, your call.
  • Suggested ratings only — final judgment always stays with the observer.
  • Works alongside your existing observation platform (Teachboost, Frontline, etc.) — draft here, paste your finalized write-up into your official system.
Product 2

IDEA/FAPE Compliance Checklist for AI Tools in Special Education

Helps leadership teams evaluate AI tools before deployment.

  • 20 checkpoints across 5 sections.
  • Clear / conditional / do-not-deploy scoring guide.
  • Built specifically for special education contexts (IDEA, FAPE).
Bundle

AI-Ready Observation Toolkit

Vantage + the Compliance Checklist together — answers both "how do we use this" and "What compliance, privacy, and implementation questions do we need to resolve before using this?", which is the conversation district leaders actually need to have before adopting any AI tool.

Pricing

Choose Your Access

Ask about founding-building pricing for our first district partners. These three tiers cover the observation and compliance products. The Inclusive Safety Audit is scoped per building and quoted separately.

Vantage

Observation Partner only

Persona access, setup guidance

$499/year
Per-building license
Best Value

AI-Ready Observation Toolkit

Bundle — Vantage + Compliance Checklist

Both products, at a discount

$599/year
Per-building license

Compliance Checklist

Checklist only

Checklist + scoring guide (PDF)

$49
One-time purchase

Individual teacher tools on TPT run $7–$30; district-level tools for a full staff typically run $500–$3,000+ depending on district size and licensing model.

Flagship safety engagement

Inclusive Safety Audit

A structured review of one building's emergency plans, drills, and physical spaces against the Inclusive School Safety Framework™, walked through the seven FORWARD Framework™ steps. Your district finishes with a written report: every barrier found, and a named, dated action item for each one. Audits are scoped per building and quoted separately from the license tiers above.

What's included

  • Find the Need: document review of emergency, evacuation, and reunification plans.
  • Observe Barriers: on-site walk-through of routes, shelter areas, and sensory/medical spaces.
  • Respond Inclusively: student-level supports for sensory, communication, mobility, and medical needs.
  • Work Collaboratively: staff and first-responder role clarity, ICS-aligned.
  • Adapt for Access: recommended plan, drill, and communication revisions.
  • Review and Practice: an accessible drill design your team can run without me.
  • Document and Improve: the written gap report and action-item tracker.

What your district walks away with

  • A written Inclusive Safety Audit report, per building.
  • A prioritized action list with an owner and a date on each item.
  • One accessible drill your team can repeat each year.
  • Documentation you can show a board, a parent, or a state reviewer.

Building size, number of plans, and how many drills you want observed all change the work — tell me the building and I'll send a quote.

Request an audit quoteMore on School Safety
Evidence

What your district leaves with

Every engagement is delivered by one person: Karey Starr, a currently practicing special education teacher. Here are the credentials behind it, exactly what a training session covers, and what we cannot show you yet.

Credentials and training

  • 23+ years special education teacher, Rochester City School District — still in the classroom.
  • 12 years as an EMT.
  • ICS-trained crisis specialist (Incident Command System).
  • CPI certified — Crisis Prevention Institute Nonviolent Crisis Intervention.
  • TCI certified — Therapeutic Crisis Intervention.
  • LSCI certified — Life Space Crisis Intervention.
  • Mental Health First Aid certified.
  • PBS — Positive Behavior Supports.
  • Google Certified Educator, Level 1 and Level 2.
  • AI InnoVision certified AI consultant.

What a training session covers

Four working blocks. Staff leave with prompts, workflows, and privacy rules they used during the session — not a slide deck.

  1. 1
    AI foundations for special educators

    What these tools actually do, where they fail, and how to tell the difference — in plain language, no tech background assumed.

  2. 2
    Prompting for IEP and documentation work

    Reusable prompt chains for present levels, goal drafting, and parent-friendly behavior summaries. Staff keep the professional judgment; AI handles the first draft.

  3. 3
    Student data and privacy discipline

    De-identification habits, what never goes into a prompt, and a workflow your district can review without wincing.

  4. 4
    Building your own AI team

    The Command Center approach scaled down: three specialized assistants instead of twenty-four, set up in an afternoon.

What we cannot show you yet

Testimonials and district case studies are not yet available. Starr TeachForward is newly launched, and rather than publish anything invented, this page will stay empty of quotes and outcome numbers until real district partners give permission to share theirs. They will be added here as they are gathered. If you would like to speak with Karey directly instead, that conversation is available today.

See PricingTalk to Karey
FAQ

Common Questions from District Leaders

Does this replace our current observation platform?

No — it's a drafting/writing assistant that feeds into your existing system. Your platform (Teachboost, Frontline, etc.) remains the system of record.

Is our rubric text stored anywhere?

No — rubrics are uploaded per-session only, never retained.

How do you handle FERPA and student data privacy?

We take student and staff data privacy seriously. The tool is designed to be used with de-identified observation notes, and no teacher or student records are stored persistently unless you explicitly opt into a storage feature (not enabled by default). We don't claim blanket FERPA compliance on your behalf — FERPA obligations sit with the district. We recommend reviewing our data practices against your own FERPA and data-governance policies, and we're happy to provide a full data privacy overview and sign a district data-sharing agreement on request.

Does Vantage replace our existing observation platform?

No. Vantage is a drafting and evidence-organization tool. Your official observation platform stays the system of record — administrators draft in Vantage, then paste the finalized write-up into the district system.

Does AI make the final observation decision?

No. Vantage suggests evidence alignment and language; professional judgment stays with the administrator. Ratings and final determinations are always made by the observer.

Can we try before purchasing district-wide?

Yes — contact us about a single-seat trial or short demo period for your leadership team before rolling out district-wide.

Why one partner

One Practitioner. Three Connected Areas.

Safety, special education compliance, and AI are usually three separate vendors, three contracts, and three sets of assumptions that never quite line up. Here they are handled by one practitioner who has lived all three: 23+ years in a special education classroom, 12 years as an EMT, and hands-on work building responsible AI workflows for school teams.

Inclusive School Safety

Plans and drills that account for every learner.

Special Education & Compliance

Documentation that holds up under review.

Responsible AI for Schools

Tools staff can use without risking privacy.

Talk With KareyView PricingRequest an Inclusive Safety Audit