Who We Are: Laura Jurgensen, JD

“Through a systems improvement and organizational effectiveness lens, we build the knowledge and abilities of state teams while providing resources that add value to state efforts.”

About Laura Jurgensen

Laura is the engine at the Region 14 Comprehensive Center (R14CC), navigating challenges, building capacity, and moving projects forward. Laura supports and builds the capacity of state education agency (SEA) staff, while applying research-based systems improvement strategies from business, to elevate our organizational effectiveness portfolio of work.

As a former Assistant Director and attorney at the Kansas State Department of Education, Laura brings legal knowledge—a unique asset in educational consulting —as well as clarity and coherence to supporting SEA staff. Laura analyzes how a SEA’s systems and processes disproportionately impact historically marginalized groups of students and identifies areas for improvement and supports implementing solutions.

Career Highlights

• Project co-lead for the online system build of the Texas Instructional Leadership (TIL) tracker, an online database system for tracking coaching data of principals of low-performing schools. This system will empower the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to scale the TIL program across Texas and support TEA TIL staff, TIL coaches, and principal supervisors to view different metrics and track progress toward their levers identified for success.

• Task leader assisting the Nebraska Department of Education's state special education team in preparation for the U.S. Department of Education's differentiated monitoring and support system initiative. This is a comprehensive monitoring that encompasses fiscal subrecipient monitoring, integrated state monitoring of school districts, the sustaining of compliance and improvement data, the State Performance Plan and Annual Performance Report, and dispute resolution. Laura also supports the dispute resolution team with capacity-building for state special education complaint investigators and advises on complex state complaints.

• Laura spent almost ten years with the Special Education and Title Services team at the Kansas State Department of Education, overseeing the team's integrated accountability efforts with a focus on equity and student outcomes. Laura helped lead the passage of legislation on regulations regarding the use of seclusion and restraint in schools. Subsequently, she helped develop a system of technical assistance designed to reduce the use of seclusion and restraint.