##VIDEO ID:VRug1wUeGMw## good evening and welcome to the Hatfield school committee our January business meeting it's Monday January 13th I'm Christy Buro chair of the field school committee and um joined by Administration and most of the committee this evening thank you for joining us and we're going to start our evening um with the opportunity to have public comment so you can join us in person at town hall or via our Zoom link for public comment is there anyone with us that would like to speak this evening okay thank you and with that I think we can actually end our Zoom link and anyone who's watching via Zoom we encourage you to use the Hatfield Community YouTube page which is streaming live and we'll um move straight into uh Mission moment anyone have any updates about how we're uh meeting and excelling at our mission I'd like to um if I can go um I'd like to just highlight the um prior to our our vacation we had our jollyball tournament and we had fourth fifth and sixth grade come up to Smith Academy um and it it was great they had a wonderful time um they cheered the teams on they they it was nice to see them um fully engaged in that aesome and to piggy back on that we had a in order to build community we had a whole school pajama day and one of the things that I was hoping to do more of was to get um buddy classrooms to get together but that just didn't work out teachers already kind of had something planned but we are planning on doing something on that Friday before February vacation um something about sharing things with the community um different grades going to do something either for seniors or for the veterans um and do that with a buddy class so that's awesome I was excited to see um a lot of sort of stepped up communication and I know that's like my my heart warms by that but both schools have a lot of stuff going out helping us just share more with the community about our schools and open houses that are coming up so that's right on plan and I know we'll hear more about that I know that's in some of the updates so did you want to say something I I think I can do it during an update as well wherever you'd like to I have something yeah um although I did not go the rest of my family went to the hockey game Saturday night and I heard great things about it how much fun it was and all the friends that were there that oh I didn't know so and so was going and we saw these people and those people and it just was great that we had a section and you never knew who was going to be there and a couple of my kids were very surprised to see friends they haven't seen in a while or um but it seemed like everybody had a great time and I thought that was awesome another way we built Community wonderful anyone else want to share a mission moment okay I'm tabling the consent agenda and the student report and we're going to move straight on to field trip approval so Dr Driscoll all right um well I'm going to hand it right over um make an introduction yeah uh Mary Miss Mary Shanel is our senior year our senior class adviser um and would like to present a proposed field trip for the senior class yeah why don't you sit where the microphone can catch you and as you go through through just let me know when you move slides and I'll project your slideshow in just a second hello I'm Mary Shanel I have been advising the current senior class for the last four years um over the summer I had some parents reach out asking about a senior class trip um they have known it has not typically been done at Smith Academy but they were in hopes that maybe this could happen and I proposed it to Dr Driscoll and he said that he thought it was a great idea and to pull through some ideas and go with the class um I pulled the class on where they wanted to go and their hopes if it is approved to go to a place called Ryden High Jude Ranch which is in warrenburg New York which is actually where I went on my senior class trip and it was amazing and wonderful and fun um so I'm going to start out with the why a class trip slide um so a senior class trip offers students a unique opportunity to celebrate their final year of high school and create long lasting memories with their classmates before they go their separate ways it will be a well-deserved break after seniors finish their finals which will conclude their High School careers the location of this trip allows for students to be together and experience opportunities that are in areas of Interest while remaining at the same location and this will also limit bus trips um students can participate in horseback riding boating swimming beach volleyball and lots of time to bond um so the proposed time to leave would be Friday May 30th which is the last day they would be taking their finals if they needed to make up any finals so all finals would be completed their High School career essentially minus graduation would be all done um and we would be returning on Sunday June 1st um which would be right before graduation rehearsal starts so it doesn't impact any graduation rehearsal or any of their classes um it's about a 2our and 40 minute trip up there um as the Willards are amazing people they have talked to um Michael's bus company and they have so far tentatively secured us a bus obviously with waiting on approval from all of you view um so I'm now on the ACT U there in the slide when and where there's like a nice little um map of the location we would be staying at students would be staying in a cabin it can sleep up to eight students per cabin um needing about only three cabins I have already talked to two with the numbers of the class we would need one female chaperon and two male chaperon in which we have secured um so some activities that students can participate in is swimming there's a pool there's a lake they can go boating there's rowboats pedal boats paddle boats kayaking they can go fishing um there's some horseback ridings there are barns there that they could horseback ride in there's also the woods that have trails that they can go in obviously depending on their levels um and there's a bunch of sports which our senior class is very Hands-On in and there's some beach volleyball places to play basketball a tennis court and some places to play softball and then underneath that slide Connor is just a little picture of all of the other activities that they can do while they're there um so lodging um they're going to stay in a cabin like I said cabins can sleep four to eight people downstairs there's a bed with one Queen and two twin beds upstairs there are two rooms there are two rooms downstairs one both of them have one Queen two twins and upstairs there's two rooms with one Queen and one Quin twin um there's also a pullout couch there are two full bathrooms and each cabin will have um a chapon in there I actually should have updated that um we only need one female chapon so that would be myself um I have secured two male Chon Mr Richards and Mr oconnell um underneath there's just like a picture of the layout of what the cabin looked like and the layout of the upstairs and the downstairs where the students would be staying um food is all included in the price of the class trip so breakfast lunch and dinner all provided cafeteria style at the ranch um the itinerary is right here we would leave Smith Academy on Friday May 30th around 12: PM arriving at Ryden high around three obviously giving some traffic maybe a little bit later than that um and every day we'll be in the same location the bus does not need to leave to travel any other location we would all be in one location together where students can pick and choose what activities they want to do for the day um and then hopefully leaving on Sunday well obviously leaving on Sunday June 1st um around 11:00 am. to head back home with a tentative one o'clock arrival maybe stopping for lunch on along the way um I did ask some our class officers for some input because they could not be here tonight to help voice their hopes for a class trip so um this is from from our secretary senior Caitlyn Graves um she said going on this class trip would be a great opportunity to strengthen our friendship as our time in high school comes to an end it would be a fun way to end the years we spent together and create fun long lasting memories before we start our own Adventures for some of us we are only used to seeing each other in school this trip would allow us to get to know each other outside of school and bring us closer as friends not just classmates um the cost for the trip would come out of the the class funds we've been fundraising a ton from freshman year all the way up till now um and I've talked to Riley and I've crunched the numbers and tentatively per family it would be between $300 and $400 in hopes that I can reduce that cost with a few more um fundraisers I have in mind before the May trip that's all I any questions I just want to clarify one thing yes so it would be $3 to $400 per student after the reduction yes offsets yes how many students um I have 14 definites four maybe and one no right now there's 19 kids total in the senior class is the no because of other obligations or financial reasons or because of other obligations I asked the families if they're like yes no yes if cost was a at play it was for other obligations and we make sure that families know that if if cost is a barrier that we have we have resources to help with that when you showed the layout of the ranch that one um I'm assuming there'll be other guests at the ranch while they are there so yes our students will be in one area or mixed in with all the others we would be in one area with cabins right next to each other oh like for the activities there would be people yes yeah for the activities there'll be yeah so this question is you stated and and Dr Driscoll stated that this is after their High School career is done and over so kind of officially when they're dismissed from school that Friday their High School career is over but it's still a school trip so they still are under the absolutely same and they have not graduated yet yeah haven't walked the stage right so should but if there were Shenanigans yes I think is that where you're yes that's where I um I want them to have fun but but but there is obviously repercussions in that graduation hasn't happened correct not that I'm expecting problems not that you're expecting problems no but mindful of yes and back when I went on this trip in high school they did a thorough bag inspection smelling shampoo bottles looking at anything that you could who could think of so Ranch did that or the chapon the chaperons did that um prior to leaving you'll be taking care of that nothing's gonna happen on my watch given that this is a more like active um trip than other than like a trip to New York or DC and there's horseback riding and swimming is there any liability to the school if a kid gets injured well on a trip I I don't believe so I can check with our Town Council on that but I think that would come into the liability of um what we already have for field trips and also for the ranch itself okay and when do you need to pull the trigger to make this work like when do you need to I'm I'm anticipating we vote tonight but at what point do we for sure need to say yes or no to this um I'm penciled in at the ranch just to make sure I said I still need to get it approved um so the sooner the better just so that they have that date available for another school if they need it okay do you want to hold up voting to check the insurance no that's fine checking I really love this idea I Frank I mean I'm happy for the seniors to go I frankly like the sort of precedent of setting up something that they do because it it gives the Freshman sophomores and juniors something to us kind of aspire to and and it fits with what we sort of how we have shifted things with with big field trips in the school too so a couple years ago when we went to DC it was 8th through 11th grade because 12th grade had already been but it allowed them to then have their own sort of own kind of thing and so do it this way and then with sixth grade coming up we we have the opportunity to have you know maybe a more extended middle school trip and you know ninth through 11th grade trip and then a senior trip as well which I think I think could really benefit the students so I want to start by saying I love the idea I really wanted to have a senior class trip and I didn't get one so I really love the idea no no one's che's fault um I am um taking just a second glance at our policies regarding field trips because the goal of our field trips is generally educational um so I was just taking a double check I looked previously but you know we do have sort of in our policy um information about non-academic field trips and there would be no structured learning time that anyone would be missing so I think that's all great mhm yeah okay and the the finances seem really reasonable yeah which is good so is there a motion I'll make a motion to approve the senior class trip to the rying high Ranch Resort as presented I'll second all in favor I I that's a 40 vote enjoy the trip on behalf of all of us thank you for your service in working with students in this extra capacity because those relationships mean a lot and I know it's a lot of work so thank you appreciate it and the consistency really helps on both ends yeah so we appreciate it yes thank you thank you do you have another trip you want to talk about well I can briefly talk about it but I don't have um the final itinerary yet we are waiting to get pricing from Bubba Gump's restaurant as well as um the uh there's a a a a viewing New York City viewing from the top of a skyscraper that we're waiting to get pricing on but we're hoping to do a school trip to New York City this year um we'd go down we would uh do Statue of Liberty we' do Ellis Island the 911 memorial we'd see a Broadway show um and spend a little time at Time Square and then it would be a two-day trip um that's a lot to pack in a lot to pack in in two days a very full itinerary um but they you know we have the same group that has done our DC tours in the past um has they they do this tour as well um we can't can't get tickets to see Wicked but um thing the show that the there's a show called Juliet which um seems to be pretty good and and appropriate for our age levels um so yeah it would be I think it would be a great chance for students to experience experience in New York City wow what's the timeline look like when uh April or early April I think April 8th uh 8th and 9th so timeline is to away there yeah so we expect to have the um the per the finalized itinerary and pricing by the end of the week so we can get interest and then we can figure how many buses we need hotel rooms that kind of as a short window for families who may have a financial obligation to participate it is yep okay does the funding for the school sorry I C you off does the funding for the school wi trip come from the school's budget at all or is it just all funded from Individual it it's for we don't have a line for field trips well we do have a line but it doesn't have any money in it um we ask for line but we do have the fund for students if it if it were would be a challenge to pay for it um the the reason it would have to be in that in that particular timeline is it's sort of that that um happy early season area for baseball where um they've had you know two weeks of practice uh which is great because then they can play games but nothing's scheduled there it's right before the games really start it wouldn't interfere with the musical or anything like that no it shouldn't interfere with the musical in fact it should Inspire the musical we can only hope well hopefully by the 8th and 9th of April we have a cast and everybody in place yeah there's tomorrow run lines on the bus 8th and 9th is a Tuesday Wednesday then it's not the 8 8 nth it would be that Friday I believe Thursday Friday of that week four and five or 11 and 12 well Thursday the 10th Friday the 11th yes all right we don't meet again until the 10th of February so this may need to come back in the meantime I'm sure the committee could make a virtual meeting if needed it feels like giving families more time yeah with information we can also I mean as I put it out there I could say here is you know here's the cost let you know let us know if you're interested we anticipate approval on a certain date well I would be willing to put forward a motion for initial approval so you can move forward with finishing your fundraising and everything else and then we could just do a final approval I mean we've done it before we don't have to but like we could is there a second sure I'll second that okay so do we want to have what's the difference between an I like if we approve it initially I don't feel like we need to schedule some like last minute meeting to get the final approval through do it in next me so Fe yeah I'm just trying to make sure Connor can move forward before February 10th because I think they're going to need to make plans I'm assuming is there any hesitation we have a pretty good idea of the itinerary and what I can't see anything that would cause us to go I know I I don't want to be in a position of having to say no to anything after giving initial approval like I don't know like about the money or cost or um so let's talk very quickly here what are the things that would inspire a no vote for this field trip is there is there a a gam stopper that we are there things we have said no to previously for field trips we didn't have enough this is the first overnight for um School a group this this size the whole school the whole school trip last year was a day trip I thought we did it Washington DC we did was 8th through 11th grade yeah but it was a small group wasn't that large yes yep um and we don't know what the group size would look like for this either I mean we don't know if um if it would be if it would be the whole school it might be that we have half the school that's interested in going are there other I'm not aware of any other trips planned for other groups except for the band the band has a trip but there's no Spanish trip not this year year and when is the band trip band trip is in May and there's a cost associated with that as well and it's possible that families will have the face funding these two trips if their B if their band member wants to go on both um well I I won't hold it up I just I'll I'll be looking for a lot more details yeah you know um I guess I I guess from my perspective I'm wondering what you know Christy was just saying like you know so that the school can move forward with things what I mean well and particularly if they know what the committee is concerned about they can be mindful of that in these last stages I think we can do that without an actual vote we can have a consensus of move forward with the planning of this yeah and we can vote on it I doesn't matter to me we have a motion in a second on it's formality sake so we're going to either take the vote or can be removed do you I forgot that it's been a long day yes um so not to get Meed in Robert's Rules of Order yeah um I I hear Kathy's point about not wanting to pull it back I'm not seeing any signs of big hesitations not to do it and I also feel like if if what you need is just like move forward see how many students want it get the cost better like go and do that please initially we approve that so yeah I think go forward right my concerns are about um the accommodations um adequate chaperon y um yeah we we would like to have a 10 to one chaperon student to chapon ratio um to break into groups that were grade level based when it came to uh rooms we would try to have um students in the same grades rooming with each other and blocks of rooms separated by shapon um so adjoining rooms couldn't you know you couldn't have Pros going into blaz rooms that that kind of thing potentially could the middle schoolers have a lower ratio than 10:1 potentially y yeah I'm just thinking that they might need a little extra yeah I I trust the older students of middle schoolers are still excitable and and and given the eclipse MH uh trip I just think having maybe a couple extra eyes on the middle schoolers if that's something that is possible but that's where my concerns lie sure okay I'm I'm gonna ask to table this vote and that way we I think you got what you needed which is what you looking for so we it's like literally doesn't matter it's fine so um and we will move on and look forward to hearing about that for final firm approval in February but I don't see any reason not to great thank you and with that we will turn our attention to student services and our presentation for this evening so I'm going to apologize right off the start for the length of my presentation tonight I've got quite a few slides to cover but I do want to kind of like establish where I'm going before we get into the presentation so so back in the 1960s under the Johnson Administration uh Johnson President Johnson actually presented The Early Elementary and secondary Education Act and some of the themes of that act actually focus on segregation of kids in school now what a lot of people don't understand is that President Johnson at one point had been a middle school teacher and he was addressing some of the segregation that he saw in the state of Texas relevant to families that weren't english- speaking and over the years years the educational system whether it's been through the uh efforts in Massachusetts to first develop special education law Which special education law in Massachusetts preceded federal law by a couple of years and the people that crafted special education law at the federal level were responsible for actually crafting the Massachusetts laws back in the early to mid 1970s so at that time special education in the state of Massachusetts included uh folks like kids that were pregnant or elll students were all considered special ed kids so in Boston you had over 10,000 individuals that actually were receiving special education services without actually having any kind of specialed guidance or laws to to uh to let them know what the process should be so by 1975 we had our first Federal special education laws and those eventually morphed into what is known as idea which is the individuals with disabilities Education Act and that act continues on today and is also reinforced by things like over the years No Child Left Behind in 2001 it was reinforced Again by the president Commission on excellence and special education again all laws that kind of stress the idea that we need to really be mindful of segregation in education so we've had more of a push in the last like 24 years relevant to inclusion whereas special ed services the foundations of them at one time have been more of a resource room model we don't really hear resource room models actually being talked about much anymore but the old resource room model actually took the place of General curriculum uh instead of suppl uh supplementing it so nowadays we do have still Ida that guides us and we've just recently gone through TFM which I know I'll be giving a report on later on tonight um but to go into the PowerPoint let's actually talk about slide number two so I did a program evaluation or started the the bones of that uh back over the summer and one of the things I found was that taking out developmental disabilities as a category and we do have multiple categories that we find students uh eligible under these are the the main ones but there are also things like communication Health neurological disabilities that can be added to that as well as de and and uh blind blindness disabilities so when I looked at our total numbers and again taking out developmental delays developmental delays is really I I hate to describe it as a catch-all but it is a catch-all for kids up to uh age nine it's essentially one of those categories that's applied there because maybe we don't know if it's a neurological or or a specific communication disorder or even an intellectual Disorder so it is kind of of safety net category for kids under 9 years old so I leave it out because I know it's a large category I know it also doesn't clearly Define always what we're looking at with our major categories so the ones that are listed on page uh two of the presentation are the main categories specific learning disabilities and specific learning disabilities is really kind of the main focus in Most states most school districts uh because it includes several different categories but the two primary ones are a math disability and a reading disability and reading disabilities in the United States are really kind of like the top dog when it comes to sheer numbers alone our other categories are autism which over the last 25 years when we talk about ratios we see the ratios relevant to autism I think when I started in education the ratios were somewhere around 1 in 150 and they've like decreased well basically ratios have gotten much tighter over the last 25 years so autism with no surprise is our second biggest category communication our third and emotional our third category I want to talk about some of the key mechanisms of the I when we look at the IEP there's certain things that we always have to be very mindful of because they are specific to the uh to the student so it's why it's called an individual education program because it are backed by federal laws idea backs the I AP and Americans with disability laws actually back the 504 process and the difference between those two documents is that 504 is really a document that focuses on access to the curriculum how does the disability actually affect a major life function of the individual with the IEP really focuses on modification and specialized instruction so there is quite a bit of difference there and over the years people have been kind of confused by those definitions and even the IEP can confuse that at times as well because what we used to refer to as the ple a and ple B were all focused on accommodations so access to the curriculum so for a long time people thought that a 504 and an IEP couldn't exist at the same time and that's not the case you can have a 504 plan that just specifically addresses access to the curriculum but still have that information included in the IAP as well some of the the key components are also the team Vision what we're actually looking to accomplish during the cycle of the I AP that meets the individual needs of the student we set goals and we also also in the IEP document uh set a service delivery grid to talk about who and when and for how long and what goals the services are going to be connected to so most of this is actually done during the team process we get together on a yearly basis after a child is found to be eligible and we review the uh the IEP and make updates and every three years we go through a re-evaluation process to make sure that we're on track relevant to um you know the students goals we actually focus on now point this out very specifically item number three is gets lost a lot in the eligibility process our goal is to set up supports for a student so that they can make effective progress and or access the general curriculum now a lot of times that gets gets lost in the discussions and what I do find in a lot of the districts that I've worked in that the mindset is often a child needs support they need to be on a one to one or an IEP and that can be really kind of like a closed argument it's not necessarily that the student needs support they can receive supports through other methods whether it's Title One services or accommodation plans or possibly 504 plans but the IEP is specific in that we're providing those modifications specialized instruction that actually helps the student to progress and to access the general curriculum if we don't actually have specialized instruction in place we don't have a 504 plan and I do see that some of the trends that we've had in this district is that when we talk about modifications and specialized instruction uh in our teams that that is sometimes where the uh the discussions break down and I do have to say we've had some kind of like Hardy uh discussions relevant to how modifications are actually provided and how that actually meets eligibility services and I am pushing staff to really kind of like answer those questions and to come prepared to meetings where they're not just saying the students eligible but the students eligible because they require these modifications or specialized instructions yes I'm going to try not to interrupt you that's okay often at all but on occasion if we don't ask it now it's going to be really hard to come back yeah and what I'm what I'm willing to interrupt for is clarification on stuff so could you give an example particularly for for committee members who maybe haven't been through the process Andor families who are at home trying to understand can you give some um explanations or examples of what is different between modification to curriculum versus the access to C like it's that's not jargoning for you it's kind of jargoning for us sure can you give us some examples that make that a little more tangible sure so modification could be is simply looking at where the student is and and this is a point that I don't want to spend a lot of time as far as my description when we look at gold goals can be written under two different umbrellas one is a growth goal so a Year's worth of IEP Services should equal a Year's worth of growth uh grade wise and a lot of people write goals that way the problem with that is that it doesn't necessarily align with the standard so if I say that a student has a third grade reading level and I'm expecting a Year's worth of growth in in that IE period IEP period that sounds great unless the student a 10th grader they're never going to meet standards if they're in 10th Grade with a third grade reading level so our job is to take the 10th grade curriculum and modify it as much as possible to actually allow or help the student to access the curriculum so if we have to do something like we're reading let's say Moby Dick in 10th Grade maybe somebody uh in a special ed program let's say the the student has a reading disability and they get uh services in their Ela class CL room either from a teacher or an ESP uh but they also have a secret service and this will play into some of the the things I'll talk about a little later uh but the Secret Service is more of a pullout and secret service again should uh supplement what's going on in the General Ed classroom not take over for it and we do see that sometimes here in the district that we do see a secret service on a very small scale take over for what goes on in the General Ed curriculum instead of supplementing it in some way so if I'm reading Moby Dick my secret service with a special teacher might be to review vocabulary because usually reading goals they might be comprehension based they might be decoding they might be phonological uh they might even include written language and how it's impacted so if I'm working with a student uh in a secret service I'm going to go through the vocabulary that they don't understand before the student actually gets to that text in the classroom so if they're doing a read out in the classroom or they actually do kind of like role playing uh or basically break the down break down the story into characters and and share characters and and real out in the classroom then the students actually seeing that stuff ahead of time and so it's kind of pre-taught so they have a better chance of actually moving along with the classroom as an integrated member of the classroom but also they review as well so they can look back at what did you have struggles with with in the previous classroom what were the barriers to learning let's talk about some of those things and maybe some of that time and secret Services is also presenting the material in different ways as a school psychologist I used to make recommendations relevant to reading based off of if the student had strong memory or or visual skills you take Mobi dick and how many Renditions there are of the the book into movies play the first 15 minutes of it so the student can visualize the characters and the settings and maybe get used to some of the vocabulary by hearing it from somebody else so that's more than an access because you're doing it with it with a teacher who's actually going over the vocabulary with you looking at your learning strengths and actually trying to play the information to those strings and understanding if you've got uh difficulties with things like um you know memory skills like short-term memory skills that possibly you're using things like character Maps or some sort of graphic organizer help you visualize the information to refer back to so some of it can be kind of like backing up a bit and saying okay your skills aren't here yet but we can prep you for this standard based goal writing uh that is in alignment with what the General Ed curriculum is doing instead of looking at where you are testing or assessment wise and only staying at at at that level so really if it's done well we should be challenging students that are on IEPs with the same curriculum their typical peers get but we do it in a way that offers them support and maybe does back up a little bit sometimes relevant to this their skills but make sure that we're trying to create kind of like a Level Playing Field and that might be with the presentation of instruction how we actually expect students to respond to things whether it's like a test or giving them wait time in a classroom or B maybe giving them something almost like a sentence starter to help them kind of like answer a question it could be things like giving them more of an opportunity to describe answers on a test uh and also kind of like the setting itself do they do better when they're actually working in a small group or individually we try to provide those supports to them in the general Leed setting but always with the chance to if they're working together as a full classroom if they break apart into groups do they have the ability to actually reintegrate now sometimes like inclusion models talked about this being a big ear issue since like 2001 inclusion is not always handled in a way that actually promotes kids that are on IEPs reintegrating with their class so sometimes you can go into a classroom you might see a kid a bunch of kids on IEPs that are working with a special ed teacher or support staff in the back of the room but they're working on something completely different so if there's an opportunity to reintegrate with the the class it's probably not going to be there because they not all working on the same material even though the teacher that's working with the special ed students is heavily modifying the curriculum so in those cases really the only thing that's missing missing is a fifth wall and you end up with kids that are basically being segregated inside the general Leed classroom and not really being given that chance to to mix so when I see things like reading groups going on not saying this happens here I'm saying from experience I've gone into special ed classrooms I've gone into General classrooms and in the general leg classroom sometimes I see like a reading group or a reading Circle taking place but there's a group of kids that are all on IEPs working in the back of the room on something else sometimes not even with the same like materials if the the general ed kids are working with a particular text or story sometimes the special ed kids aren't working on that same story at all so the chance of reintegration is really you know quite slight yes I need a little more clarification so what you described was specialized instruction modifying the curriculum yes so can you give me an example then of what accommodation access would be so the 504 so well just because you had asked like the difference between those two yeah real real simple example would be somebody with a urinary tract infection that needs to actually go down to the nurse's office to access the bathroom and check in with a nurse uh that would be you you go out into go outside the building and look at the sidewalk those cuts into the uh U the sidewalk in the curb are actually part of ADA so it's it's basically literally physically it can be access to the building or access to a support So if I have like a a visual disability of some sort and I'm technically legally blind my access might be something like using a computer that actually increases the size of font I don't really need special instruction I just need something that allows me you can still use the general education curriculum but you're going to need some kind of service that will help you be able to experience the generality curriculum but no additional instruction or no specialized instruction right even somebody with a hearing disability you might have somebody with an Odon or or a phone act that has the person has hearing aids but they actually have shoes and the teacher has a re uh transmitter device and the shoes on the hearing aids are actually receiver it actually allows that student to actually hear better than if this even if the teacher was standing three or four feet away a lot of times kids with hearing disabilities even that close without some sort of like uh boost to their hearing system it still comes off as being um muffled or hard to to understand okay so today we were talking about the IEP or at least on this slide we're talking about the IP which includes access and modification and and part of the reason that I'm mentioning the five 4 is because again it gets back to that it is but again it's like does the student need help yes well the next question should be access or modifications and a lot of people will say yes and think that that is immediately the Willy Wakka golden ticket to the IEP and and it really isn't because if you've got a poorly written I AP you really don't have anything much better than a badly written 504 plan at that point and and people kind of like lose sight of that so pushing staff to actually come to meetings to really be prepared to talk about specialized instruction modification is key into really kind of like having the foundation for a well-written IEP ask one more question pleas really quick I I am so sorry were you saying secret Services secret secret okay I was like I I'm sure it's not that but I could not hear anything but secret services and I thought if I heard it I don't know who at home is thinking that we're offering secret Services no I I heard it too but I knew what it was thankfully it's also on the screen I I just wanted to like no it's a good I heard the same thing okay thank you I was please tell me we're not clarify that a little bit on the uh third slide at the bottom of it is uh actually so we have our goals and those uh Service delivery points a b and c grid a grid is consultation usually between a special ed teacher and possibly uh another teacher General Ed teacher it could be related services and a general ed teacher it could also be something like special ed teacher to the parent the B grid services are actually pushing Services what we do in the General Ed setting and the segrid is always pull out Services it could be specialized classrooms like our star program it could be related services like individuals or small group or could be the academic focused uh areas that and they're all written out and they're not secret whatsoever everybody knows what they are they confidential to that family they're confidential to the family however okay so slide four I just mentioned and I know we talked about Federal Ida it's also state regulations under 603 CMR 28.0 to 2810 and this is kind of a create a little grave regulations on the state level uh relevant to eligibility holding meetings determine determining eligibility and basically implementing the IEP so my analysis on Slide Five what that consisted of was really going through every individual IEP that was active at the time that I started working on this this took me a little over a month to actually go through the full IEPs and now I wasn't reading the full IP from cover to to back um but I was focused on several different areas that I thought were very important now primarily one of the things that when I do this it's not just for the sake of doing a program evaluation but it's also to kind of help me prep for the budget season if I need to ask for services me breaking down some of the services that I can see in the I AP are going to be helpful so for purposes moving forward with this what I focused on were specific learning disabilities in really math and reading because those are the things that we find the most we do find emotional supports uh in the I AP we definitely find communication supports in the I AP and we definitely find autism supports in the IAP as well most of those services are handled either by special ed teachers or related service providers or specialized classrooms so again the big categories for us though are math and reading under the specific learning disability category so I'm looking at the goal how the goal is written I'm looking at the connection to the service delivery grid and I'm trying to hammer out what that looks like relevant to man hours and also services to see where our primary categories are so I'm really kind of like focus on B and C grid supports and how those actually play out overall so if I look at slide six I'm going to say some of the trends that I found and these were Trends where um they weren't huge Trends but the numbers were definitely over like 10 cases throughout the district and I'm some of these are okay uh the first one is not okay when we look at our numbers I know in the presentation I talk about how many percentage of students that we have on IEPs during the time that I collected this information so we had around 107 students and looking at SIMS data from uh the last Sims report at the time before I came on board we had I think around 322 students that were listed in in the data so I came up with essentially over 33% of kids actually on IEPs in the district that's just IEPs it's not counting 504s or any accommodation plans or anything else that's a a really high number uh pre- pandemic most districts would be like in the High Teens post pandemic uh districts definitely climb but usually between 22 to to 25 going back to last year's Sims data I found that at one point your low was 28.2 so I'm kind of hoping that some of the things that we are are trying to do right now lowers that number a bit because my concern is that we're overidentifying because we're not really identifying clearly if a student needs a modification so I'll use the first listing on page six as my example of a concern related Services only we have 17 students that either receive services in in speech or OT and that's it no specialized instruction no modification and this isn't a new problem this has been going on for years but people think that a related service only equals access to an IEP it does not Dennis Driscoll back in November of 1998 actually came out with a memorandum he stressed that if you've got an IEP that's written without specialized instruction you're not really talking about I AP services and that's sometimes hard for for folks to uh actually grapple with and even the other day last week I ran into a retired special ed director that challenged me on whether that was true or not uh now being on the books for over 25 years you'd like to think that more people would know about it but the fact is that related service providers can provide services under a 50 4 plan because the 504 plan doesn't require modifications it doesn't require specialized instruction and districts that I have worked in do actually do that so it's not like a new practice it's not something that we need to kind of like clarify with with Desi um districts do it as a regular practice all the time so if I took 17 kids off of IEPs and put them on 504 the services wouldn't actually change under the 504 they'd receive the exact kind of services but often and and I will say parents get nervous about 504 it's not it doesn't carry the same weight remember I said that both of them are backed by federal law and people get into the belief that the 504 can't be as involved as the IEP the 504 allows really any kind of structure that we want to place into it so if the parents want to get together like every couple of months to review the 504 and the progress and they're looking for uh like a a a service delivery like structure in the 504 those things are fine they can do progress reporting as often as we do in special ed and even more so if that's needed uh so there's really no kind of like limit to that but people have gotten into this idea that the the IEP is something special over other types of plans that exist out there that's not necessarily true so I'm sorry go ahead so the five people students the 504 it's still managed through certain Services you they still get a plan it's all drawn up and all spelled out exactly what they are entitled to is there a difference in reimbursement from governing authorities for a 504 versus an IEP yeah and it might that be one of the reasons why we've push people towards I before we what is the difference in reimbursement things like circuit breaker don't actually fall into the same category for a 504 so circuit breaker when I'm filling out like things like school choice increment or uh which is also I'm not going to say it's the same form it is the same form or it has been up until recently so school choice increment and circuit breaker forms were basically carbon copies of each other uh circuit breaker is specific to special ed only so I can't put 54 students into reimbursement so is there reimbursement for 504 Services no no not not under circuit breaker uh under under school choice there could yes there could be so school choice students we would see reimbursement yeah but we wouldn't see state or federal dollars coming in circuit breakers right not for circuit breaker so circuit breaker and and there was kind of a catch here as well because most kids we only have a few kids that go out of District replacement so the circuit breaker formula for us to get money back is essentially four times the foundation amount that we get for a special ed student so what I want to qualify that is we don't get any reimbursement back until we spend probably close to $50,000 on like tuitions anything over $50,000 so let's say just a round number we spend $100,000 on tuition and we seek circuit breaker reimbursement the first $ 448 $50,000 we get nothing back the other $50,000 will get up to 75% uh if the state approves a 75% amount every year uh so essentially we would get back like three4 of $50,000 so but that's only IEPs it doesn't count for for 504s at all so if the services that we're providing don't change depending on whether it's written up as an IEP or a 504 what is the driving interest to recategorize them in my mind we are getting into a bad practice of just putting kids on IEPs that don't have specialized instruction or modifications it it's I'm not sure a good way to describe it it's like if if we're trying to teach a child the right way to doing things except we keep on reinforcing the wrong way of doing it uh at some point they're going to determine that that's kind of like the the way to do it I I would kind of like translate that into like our staff and saying again if staff come to a meeting and they say my opinion is that the student needs to be on an IEP and we don't push that it's supposed to be for specialized instruction modification accessing the curriculum and making progress then we get into we get into that state where we kind of are right now where people say what's my opinion and that should be good enough is the way you're describing it it sounds like there's a financial disincentive to reconvert to recategorizing them as a 504 instead of an IEP so and the state also recognizes that because circuit breaker initially was supposed to be 100% reimbursement and the reason it's not is because they were afraid that districts would actually take advantage of that and categorize kids too much into categories where they would get a higher rate of reimbursement does the state audit or punish people who are categorized as an IEP when they should should be a 504 no so recategorizing them only changes our reimbursement yes and has us do it the right way yes and I I'm also going to stress one of the the cons of this is that if reporting kids on I APS that don't need to be on I APS two things we're increasing the case load of our teaching staff that's the part I want to understand so speak to that and we're also taking Services away from kids that might need them because we're overidentifying but if they would still need the same services on a 504 plan but again we're not talking about a special ed teacher we're talking Rel speciation teacher who may or may not be providing any services to that student they'll still have to write the IP uh because they are the liaison for for that student so any kind of like progress reporting that isn't provided by a related service provider you would expect the special ed teacher to do the progress reporting so they may not even do progress reporting but they are writing the IEP so that is from a financial standpoint that is the Crux is that we're we're Staffing for the reporting progress which is labor intensive if we keep them on IEPs and that has a real Financial issue con attached and and am I correct in saying too that there's a requirement for um a special ed teacher to be present at an i AP meeting yes and so so when those happen for students who don't necessarily wouldn't necessarily uh qualify for an i AP over a 504 when when the special ed teachers are pulled from their from their their instruction duties um that that can have that can have the impact of um not providing the instruction during those times right correct so if we continue to have 504s written up as IEPs it's it's a staffing issue that will come back in Impact it it already is I I understand okay so a couple of the things I'll just mention on on page six and these are not necessarily uh negatives at all uh students receiving like social emotional learning or counseling supports uh in I p s we had 40 at the time of the data analysis and students needing support with executive functioning skills uh this sometimes is how you take in visual information or utilize information whether it's uh visually whether you're reading it or manipulating it and how well you can actually organize the information and use it uh we had 31 students actually receiving executive functioning organizational skills support in IEPs and so is that a is the issue that it shouldn't be there or is the issue is it's there alone or is this just a actually I'm just mentioning it because it's it's a trend that I see it's not I was just checking to see if that was if those all three were like a of a kind but you're saying they're not okay checking so slide seven just looking at some of the trends with C versus B grid Services um there's a small table down the lower Le hand side of of that slide you can see that B- grid services and I broke it down no particular reason why I broke Elementary down into two groups um I will say that prek and K even though they're included uh really BNC grid Services aren't really like a focus of the I APS that significantly I you find kids that have goals for things like writing this skills uh not necessarily going to be sld based goals those are kids that are going to be clearly identified usually as developmental delay unless it's something specific that's linked to a diagnosis so I just I I do include prek and K but again the numbers in those two grade levels are very slight so if I'm looking at B- grid Services uh pushin Services I see that we had essentially 107 different entries for B- grid services and when I look at C grid Services uh I'm looking at 168 different secret services for for students now I will as we get into like slide um eight and some of the following slides I'm going to break down that data a little more to to show you what some of the impact of that is can we back up just one second I'm sorry 168 kids with pullout services not kids I'm sorry students it could be the same kid has multiple pull outs thank you yes so that's one thing I wanted kind of like show you on on slide eight um it's kind of a comparison but more or less a comparison between B and C grid services for particular subjects in age groups so the left hand side of the slide uh blue services are all B- grid services and red is all segrid services and this is all elementary school whereas the right hand part of the slide yellow is BD services and all the purple uh parts of the graph are secret supports now what is AC academic so that that's one of the trends that I want to talk about here is there is an overreliance on academic supports this makes it very hard for me to to look at IEPs and determine where sta are because academic support is used as kind of a catchall now what I expect to see in an IEP is like a let's let's say just for an example I've got a student with a math disability I see a be grid math service it might be something like 5 time 30 5 * 45 meaning that five times a week in a five-day cycle a special a teacher or an ESP will go into the math class in general education and offer support to the student as a group of students um for 30 minutes possibly 45 minutes they might be there for the for the entire class or only part of it and then I would expect to see the possibility of a secret service and Secret Service should probably be something like possibly 5 time 30 or 3 times 30 depending on what the student needs or I might not see a secrid service at all for math what so what I expect to see is a number of math goals and a number of c-grid goals that are probably equal to or lower than the number of B- grid services but when I start seeing secr services that are higher uh than how many math goal that we actually have it means that we're pulling the student out more than probably once a day or it might not even be every day like twice a day but it might be multiple times more than five uh during the week so that starts to to raise a a red flag for me relevant to overidentifying how many times we're pulling a student out of um out of their General Leed curriculum to receive additional supports in math when we're going into the general classroom already and then providing a tiered level of support with CD services that just doesn't explain to me why we're spending more time outside of the the general curriculum providing more math supports than what the actual class runs out so the academic support piece is on top of that and when it's not broken down I can't read the academic support entry in the service delivery grid and tell you so here's part of the problem with this is in the service delivery grid we link our service to the goals or a goal so often time with an academic support it may say something like this support is linked to goals one two 3 four and five that might be executive funing might be math it might be reading it might be decoding phonological awarness comprehension but there's nothing in the frequency and duration of that that tells me how many minutes is devoted to each one of those subjects so I can't pinpoint where my staff is or how much time they're actually spending on these academic supports and it makes it very hard to actually break down sometimes what I'm actually looking at relevant to staff and staff coverage so some of what I'm also referring to here and I think Adam this kind of like speaks to to your question earlier is there is an overlap and we look at the service ly grid and we look look at Eed we identify are we providing the service in like an individual session or a small group or to a larger group generally classrooms are going to be larger groups small group and individuals are going to be like the consultation and the pullout services in the segrid so we might if I'm looking at pullout services in the srid I could be looking at a special ed teacher working with anywhere between in a small group two to eight students if I put a pair of professional in that se grid services that could be anywhere between 2 and 12 students so some of the numbers that we're going to get into in a little bit I'm going to show you like total hours that we're actually spending but just realize that we're also talking about sometimes anywhere between two and 12 kids that could be together in a small group so the next couple of slides are just kind of like breaking down the information from the first group talking about B- grid so that you can see uh that uh between Elementary and secondary levels that then the numbers that we actually see between like the elementary schools and the uh uh secondary the elementary school and the secondary school uh how those numbers actually play out relevant to B- grid math B grid Ela and then academic supports and then slide 10 is really looking at the C grid and seeing how those numbers break down again in those categories secrid math CD Ela and CD academic support so I'm guessing that as you review this I just want to sort of we look at this and I think I think I speak for all of us it's sort of like I'm I guess that's what we should expect I really would like your take on as you look at these grids if this is what we have is there anything here that is a red flag to you I mean yes so those those higher numbers in secret Services it's the B Toc comparison that feels inverted is what I Tak away does and that's that's one of the things I'm saying in the slides is that we have a over Reliance on secret supports um and some of them like the academic support entries are vague that is not new for districts uh it it is a problem for administrators and trying to analyze where we're actually spending our our time and where our staff is utilized I could break it down further it would probably take me a couple of weeks of just uh trying to go through schedules or getting the schedules and going through minute by minute where staff are to actually make sense out of it so that I could could analyze it better I shouldn't have to do that but that's certainly not where my questions lie so I don't know if somebody else is seeking that okay can I ask a question before we move on the elementary segrid for ELA could that be so high because of the reading specialist type things that are happening um so there there are going to be a couple qualifications that I I want to like stress so I think a couple of meetings ago school committee meetings ago we talked about equity and and the case loads I said that you know at that time there was kind of a 6040 split and you can't really take 60 kids at an elementary level and 40 kids at the secondary level and think that the case loads are equal they're not because of things like greeing I mean we know that it it that shift from you know learning how to read to reading to learn if you don't have the foundations then you don't make that transition to to reading to learn uh so yes at an elementary level there's a lot more indepth services that go on that are like small group that are individualized that the students need because they they've got to make progress quickly where they're going to fall further behind the and you're going to end up with that scenario like I talked about a 10th grader with a third grade reading level so are you saying that seeing a much much higher level of secret Ela services at the elementary school are you saying that's expected yes okay yeah so that is not one of the red flags we're seeing no that should be a trend that we're looking for that we we expect to see our elementary team and as as an example when I worked as a school psychologist uh I would test kids with a Wexler IQ test and the Wexler IQ test it's first category of like combined scores is verbal comprehension so basically how well you you master your verbal abilities in answering questions or communicating with with folks and sometimes I would see kids with a below average range score in verbal comprehension and they would be qualified for speech services and then three years later I would test them again uh but with three year after three years of speech and language and and full-time school and their verbal comprehension scores would be up in the average area so again a lot of Sur uh services at a younger age but gets them up to speed by a certain time okay I just want to clarify what's counted in here um so we've talked on and off about kids that we sort of we um tier three support two tier support that are not going to be on plans that they Peri that they're pulled up for a little bit of time to help them ramp back up those aren't counted in this number correct no no this is all this just straight out of stra out kids on PL so yes when when you look at the mtss system and you look at your tiered levels of supports and I hate it we all hate it when people call it this from a special life perspective some people refer to mtss or RTI and the three tiers as the pre-referral process it really isn't it's an alled process so it could include uh kids at whether it's tier one two or three kids that are already on IEPs but don't have an area where they're identified as a disability for an example a kid that uh probably does have even a math disability but is struggling with fractions you might during in the mtss system even if they're on an IEP they're not getting Mass support so they could receive kind of like a tier 2 level uh support to help them get on track but that's probably going to be limited to maybe several weeks month and a half couple of months or whatever until they actually kind of like get to where they need to be at from a staffing standpoint though those services are shared between the same staff right some no not necessarily okay so if I actually direct our attention to slide number 11 uh this is really kind of like the manour breakdown and again I'm qualifying because if you look at just the hours it's kind of like how how do we do that uh we're talking about sometimes groups of kids working together in groups of maybe two to 12 or receiving inclusion Support Services in a larger classroom with multiple kids in in the classroom so again prek and three and grades four and six are broken down uh and grades 7 through 12 all together I'm going to point out the rightand category because if you add up the total hours for prek uh to three and grades four through six it's not that far off it's like 30 hours difference between the seven but if you consider that that uh those two combined hours or categories are done in a five-day cycle whereas the secondary level is done in a 7-Day cycle you're actually talking about more than just 30 hours because of the condensed uh version of time between a 5ay and a 7-Day cycle so in in IEPs along with that Service delivery grid when we talk about frequency and duration we identify what the school operates under so H operates under a 5day cycle Smith Academy operates under a 7-Day cycle as far as IEP services other things are concerned so that's part of that calculation so a lot of manour is really going into uh providing uh Direct Services in the classroom and pullout services in uh things like in secret supports if we look at our current Staffing on slide 12 I'll qualify this a bit as well uh we look at HS and we can say we've got four special ed teachers but one of those teachers as a prek teacher and the other one is a a star program teacher the star program right now essentially has two students we may have four within the next you know week or two um but uh that's really where that teachers focus is is is on right now uh when we look at esps at hes and I I qualify this the seven I APS that I reviewed uh students had one toone Services as little as three hours hours and all the way up to like a full day so between three and six plus hours so when I say that was the range there was only one student with three hours everybody else was four and a half to over six so the other uh um esps that are working are either working within those grade groups like between like grades one and three and uh four five and six um and we do have some other kids that have like Ono one supports but they're under that that three-hour category so really when we talk about total staff I mean yes 15 esps at hes but close to half of them uh are uh connected to kids anywhere between 3 to six hours a day as a onet to one and again we have some other kids that re receive less than three hours of support so we're probably really looking at something that's closer to eight full-time employees that are devoted uh TimeWise uh to Individual Services for kids so am I misunderstanding this CH at HS we have four specialed teachers right two of whom are assigned to the star room no one one to Star and one to prek teacher one so we have two specialed teachers who are kind of General across the whole school yes and then one is the preschool teacher and one is in the star room which star room has two students presently correct still a more cost effective alternative yep yeah to be clear about that yeah so one of the things I found with the outliers and this we usually cases that were like under five in in my so these are all trends that I would say these these are all negatives uh some of the negatives are that students receive a math support but no math goal students receive a srid pullout support but do not have a BD support at all so that's that resource room model that I was talking about some students have received secret Services as a replacement to the general curriculum and students receiving Ela support in core classes except for ELA so that's an unusual Trend as well yes um do you feel that these were like for instance like a student has a math support but no math goal does that feel like a simple oversight so so there could be explanations for that except I didn't F in one of the examples I didn't find this to be true at all so it as a school psychologist I would identify like a reading disability and usually in my recommendation I would say something like word problems in a math class might be an issue now that doesn't necessarily mean that we provide inclusion support into the math class we could address that through collaborative consultation between a special a teacher and the general a teacher running the math class just to Simply say make sure if you're giving word problems that the student actually can identify the process that's being you know explained in in that equation it could be that maybe we've already got somebody who's in a math class and that person would just basically do that as they're already working in there and it'd be really unlikely that we'd be pulling the student out for support on just word problems if not doing word problems you know much of the time in a math class so I didn't find that to be really kind of like the the the the trend or the the pattern with some of these okay yeah so moving forward there's a couple philosophies and I I tend to say these both quite a bit especially the first one uh because I've had in the past fortunately not here nobody said this here so I don't want anybody to think that this is something that people are saying to me in the hallways or uh in the conference room or the classrooms when I've gone in to visit but I've had experienced 30-year veterans in teaching in General Ed say if we include those kids they'll pull the good kids down and the response is usually something like they're all good kids we're not identifying special ed as it's not just mine it those kids that are on IEPs belong to everybody so when I look at students on IEPs I see them as general education students first and they just simply receive Services through the special Department that doesn't mean they're a separate subset of the district in any way because our goal like I mentioned earlier is that our goal is to make sure they make effective progress by keeping them connected to the general curriculum if we're not doing that again we're not we're not providing modifications or specialized instruction we're not really providing special ed services and then the second thing is that special education isn't a placement it's a service I mean often times in other districts that I've worked in again not hearing this here at all but sometimes there is an out ofsight out of mind if you have specialized programs sometimes that is a goal to if folks don't want to actually add address the needs of a child with a disability and again getting back to that mindset of sometimes people saying well bring the good kids down there is pros and cons of this as well we know that sometimes kids with certain disabilities can be disruptive in a general Ed education setting we're also educating pre-adults our goal is to basically make these folks not just College and Career ready but they've got to be community and family ready as well so if they don't have access to peers have disabilities they don't have exposure to that when they become parents with a child with a disability the mindset is going to be that well the public school will give them a separate program to flourish in and that'll be good it's not necessarily the case most research shows that when kids are included they make better progress because they're with typical peers and they engage in experential learning with those peers than if they're segregated uh off to the side somewhere else so that's why when the state comes in and they do their site review and they look at any spaces that we use for pull out services from a related service providers or where our star program is they want to make sure it's not tucked away in some Corner that's not actually being seen or used by their typical peers that they're more integrated uh into the system and that's something I think we are doing here we do integrate our services you know we're front and center in entr different entrances at at HS and Smith Academy we're definitely the the Smith Academy where the special ed teachers are is snack dab in the middle of hallways and that's that's what we want so given the inclusion philosophy can you talk a little bit about how you're partnering with General Ed classroom teachers because if it would seem that that partnership would need to be especially strong yeah so for the last probably 15 years I've worked with a gentleman from North Carolina uh that I found through looking for research-based inclusion practices and actually earlier this year we did a PD on one of our half dayss uh where we spent um I believe close to three hours with special ed and General Ed teens not a huge group but a group to get us started with this so so essentially identifying special teachers that go into classrooms where they work with the general teacher and the general a teacher being there so we focused on inclusion and co- teing and the the nice part about that is that um I don't think a lot of folks have had a lot of exposure to the different kinds of inclusion models so the person that I use he kind of bases his foundations in the philosophies of Marilyn friend who was kind of like the gold standard in in the United States relevant to understanding the different inclusion and code teaching models so we focused quite a bit on the six different models what they actually mean how they can be flexible when used in a group and essentially what should happen is that if I was new to the district and I walked into an inclusion classroom ideally I should not be able to tell who the special ed teacher is and who the general ed teacher is because there should be at at its height in co- teing or team teaching there should be that ability for the two to actually plan and sometimes that's a barrier for districts is finding the time to actually do planning between GED and special it together whether it's done face to face or electronically uh but I have actually seen this model play out in other districts because I've used him in essentially pretty much every District that I've worked in he's not the only trainer but the trainers that I have used besides him there is kind of like a specific model for each one of them that does have a lot of overlap we look at the students individually identify what their learning styles are what is the relationship between the teacher and co- teer and how do we actually help Implement and support that through planning and so most of the the like PD that I've done in the past whether it's him or somebody else those are kind of like the primary principles that are focused on but first we start with the foundations of understanding what the different models are so if we gave ourselves a report card right now how are we doing on that kind of level of communication and partnering so I'm I'm going to say this kind of the next slide okay because one of the things that I think that we don't we need to do is really write our IEPs and I've been stressing this as a mindset for folks we should not be in an IEP meeting where we're either initial an annual or re-evaluation when we start getting to the grid we should start with b grid Services now I'm running really the majority of the meetings like 98% of them and when I get to that point in the meeting where we're talking about the service delivery grid after we've hand hammered out the goals we've already talked about modifications and then the service delivery grid we talk about what are the be grid Services first so if somebody says got a math disability I want to hear what the the B grid math support is first way before I start talking about secret Services as well so I'm kind of hoping that this becomes kind of like a routine this becomes a practice the more we practice it the more people get used to it and I'm also trying to introduce like a facilitated format to how we actually introduce this information so it becomes more of a discussion from team members not just going around a table and giving a report like is usually common in I AP meetings but having more of a back and forth conversation we use a strengths and challenges model to actually run our facilitated meetings so I start with the strengths of the students and try to get into then the the challenges and sometimes I think that's helpful for folks because oftentimes I think that people think that I'm just going to come to a meeting and all I'm going to hear is the bad things about how my child is actually doing in school but oftentimes what I see when looking at a strengths and challenges model is that usually the strengths outweigh the the the challenges of the student and help to kind of like frame that discussion relevant to what students are good at and even the new IEP it talks about you know it's it's it's actually kind of funny because before the new IEP we usually didn't invite students until they were at least 14 years old to a meeting and now the state wants us just to invite kids so that they understand that this is kind of like your voice and whether you're young or not you need to get used to this process going on and you basis or as long as you're on an ie um but uh if somebody had asked me at like you know six to seven years old what do you want to be when you grow up because that's really kind of what we're asking I would have come up with you know astronaut or Cowboy uh and but that that's not really even the point it's the point is that they're at the table really kind of voicing and feel hopefully feeling or building up to feeling comfortable talking about what their interests are but also what their barriers are to learning if we understand from them what their barriers are it's not just a bunch of people talking about somebody it's taking that input and developing a better IEP for them and our goal is really put ourselves out of business and that's that's the best thing what we can do for a student is to give them the strategies to engage the curriculum to the point where they don't need us anymore so iep's also like I said earlier and I've said this several times tonight is we need to really kind of like identify what the uh the modifications are so that you know our discussions are clearly defined as warranting an IEP so slide 16 some of the other findings that I found um just in internal review and kind of like getting to learn the processes here and some of this I think may have existed at some time in the past I understand that you know staff changes uh relevant to like my position of the administrative assist assistant position Staffing positions some of these things may have gotten lost before I came on board in July but there was no Central mechanism that was in place prior to to me coming on board relevant to how we scheduled meetings or how we monitored progress in that and so we've kind of developed a tool to help a tool and process processes to help us out with that so really everybody's IE that who's up for an annual review or or due for a re-evaluation uh for the entire year those meeting days were always already set into place in September so that's something that wasn't going on here so I'm hoping that that actually improves on our compliance but also the monitoring like if we run a meeting and we've got an IEP that's due within like 10 days after an annual review takes place we've put into place along with that other tracking a way to say okay the day before day 10 we need to let this the teacher know that they're they're due for for that I AP to be in there definitely things have interfered with that this year hes has had essentially three people in one position so far we had a a permanent hire at the beginning of the year who left in October a replacement who uh actually did a really nice job as a sub but she was actually also out for close to three weeks uh and then now we've got a new person who's just started after the the holiday break so you know those things actually do create problems and people lose confidence and um you know is my child actually going to get Services I know folks are asking questions about you know what's going on with Services those are all legitimate questions and anytime that we've had to address it we've addressed it through the promise of compensatory Services whether it's being done this time uh when we get you know staff into place or if we even have to do it over the summer to make sure that the student gets uh gets the services made up roughly how many people have you offered comp brought that up with I'd probably say right now a rough number I would say probably around seven and and I I do have to say so that's what's been offered to folks that have brought it up the expect though with the new staff member is that we owe compensatory services so there is kind of like this looking at the schedule where can we fit that in whether a parents ask for it or not how are we actually going to provide it without people having to initiate the conversation themselves so the other thing that was kind of lacking here a couple different things that I came across we don't really have a special ed procedural manual there's a draft that I'm working on kind of going over the the Final Cut of it not talking about 15 or 20 Page document talking about a document that's going to be closer probably to 75 to 80 pages long it it will be kind of a sup To Nuts kind of a procedural manual it'll go through the initial processing for for an initial evaluation consense how we run meetings when uh documents are due after a meeting depending on what type of meeting it is how we actually will handle manifestations rescheduling meetings how services will be provided relevant to like B grid versus secd supports it'll cover really a wide range of things and the manual also be referencing things like idea and those CMR 603 28.0 to10 uh pieces of regulations and legislation that I had mentioned much much earlier also doing the same thing for the 504 process because I'm not finding that we actually have a 504 manual as well that there's a draft version of that right now it's probably I believe around 50 55 pages so far uh but again I'm just kind of like going through final readings of it to make sure that the language makes sense for this district and that is it is understandable at least from not just my perspective I'm having somebody else go through it as well I think we all would look forward to seeing that when you're yeah and also there was a past practice not big here but it did lead to some problems um there are versions of accommodation plans accommodation plans are not IEP they're not special ed they're not 504 they're just an accommodation or sometimes they're referred to as service plans which can be kind of confusing because there is another document that's referred to as a service plan service plans I am going to be critical about this I am not crazy about them because the ones I've come across here looking at like reading disability and also related Services it's kind of like if we're identifying those things plus a math support why aren't we just developing an IEP so I'm not using accommodation plans uh as far as like a leg of the special ed Department that's not really special ed uh if I'm running a meeting I'm determining eligibility uh if I'm not determining eligibility for special ed I'm referring to the 504 team um and then it would be up to them to rehash whether the student is actually eligible for for 504 services and initial evaluations what I've kind of found with that uh is that sometimes there was delays in testing sometimes that was because a certain things that should have been renewed as kind of like an automatic relevant to uh scoring software in programming was actually not immediately renewed when it was due uh and sometimes there was kind of a mindset that we could put it off for a bit and we are very much timeline and compliance Focus if we don't meet those timelines then we're out of compliance if a parent complains to problem resolution Services which is PRS uh like has happened this year we will most likely be on the hook for a corrective action and corrective action really usually falls on me because I've got to collect data to prove that we're actually in compliance and write a report to the state and submit that and all of that does take time so I'd much rather be in compliance than having to deal with a PRS complaint so slide 17 really is just kind of a you know I I know I've mentioned some of these things already but this is what we're we're doing we're actually when we've got vacancies we've gone above just using like School spring we've actually used indeed to post some positions we've had some luck with that we've also been reaching out to companies and other districts our PT service we actually uh got somebody to cover uh that relevant to our private company that that is acting as a vendor for us um so we've had some I'm not going to say good luck but because some of these things have taken months to actually sore through relevant to getting applicants or an applicant they would actually take a position there actually still positions that we're working on relevant to getting filled uh We've looked at like our PD and focusing that on inclusion when I talk about the TFM our TFM actually one of the few things that is actually part of the PD um component for the TFM is actually inclusion and also uh bus monitor is actually having access to understanding the disabilities of the kids on their Roots uh that that's pretty much the only thing in the TFM that is focused focused on those two things inclusion and bus monitoring and we've been looking at again our B- grid services having that is the main focus of our discussions when we're developing the service delivery grid uh looking at Specialized instruction and making sure that we uh have an understanding amongst our staff that without those modifications specialized instruction we're not really talking about U you know special ed services we're using analysis of data to make sure that that's also guiding our decisions relevant to our staffing needs and what our future Staffing may need to look like uh looking at special education procedural manual as a something that's needed to help staff have as a go-to document uh to know that you know if we're looking at initials this is what we're looking at for timelines we're looking at annuals this this is what we're looking at for timelines and also the the 504 manual the Eternal review of teams we actually do have uh one team that's going on every two weeks where we're talking about the referral and the evaluation process who's doing what what our timelines are because that's some that's a place where we really need to like I just mentioned there has been kind of like a mindset where we've kind of like put things off and we haven't met our timelines relevant to getting things done done there also been some kind of like hand fisted way that with staff leaving just one example was that uh before the end of June we had a student that was evaluated but the staff member that did the evaluation filed the paperwork but didn't tell anybody where the protocols the testing protocols were were placed uh it took us basically two months to find the information uh and when we found it there was no report attached to it it was just the raw scores so giving it to a school psychologist and saying can you write a report off of this and the concerns that probably anybody would have of actually doing a report off of somebody else's testing is really kind of like wondering if it was valid or not uh and really trying to address how we would address that if it wasn't valid which usually means a cross battery assessment with a like tool but not the same tool would it not have been more efficient to just retest the student instead of looking for the test for two months we looked for it for two months but remember most of the time over the summer school psychologists don't usually work the full year they work mostly school year maybe additional days but that's not necessarily so looking for it wasn't really going to waste any of our time relevant to testing because Summer you going test it anyway well and they don't count as far as hours relevant to our compliance timelines okay yeah and then really developing the central tracking tool to to help us better gauge where we are relevant to our compliance so on uh slide 18 the final considerations or recommendations restructuring or looking at our staffing patterns I really do kind of feel that hes uh probably is going to require a third special ed teacher to try to make that case load more manageable if we're looking at coverage there were times this year where some of our case loads at HS were close to 40 and that was partly because of like covering other grades and other positions so if we could spread that out what I see is a manageable case load most school districts would be between like 22 to 25 so when we' got 40 that's that's that's a huge case load and even anything up in the low 30s is sometimes not manageable because of the the amount of work that is uh applied to to providing students with b and secret Services we still are looking at providing additional PD on inclusion and other practices that might actually help us out in the Future Special Ed is a great thing to talk about but it's better if we plan as a first step with special ed relevant to scheduling and grouping so if we do grouping and scheduling first in a schedule and build the General Ed uh schedule around it sometimes it's very helpful in how we actually utilize our staff and it helps us to utilize our staff better when it's done like that and then we probably at some point need to build capacity in other areas such as PT we have a vendor right now but it's more expensive to hire a vendor bcba Services again outside of developmental delay you know sld and then autism was the the second category we have a part-time bcba here right now and we're kind of sharing services with an Autism specialist and also our school psychologist and we're making that work um it's probably not the ideal though and I know folks have been asking questions I just ask if there's any final questions that folks have I think there are likely questions so I'm gonna shift over so that I can see you I know I I have what I'm going to call a speed round if I can do it that way but I don't need to start so well maybe some of your questions are our questions might be does anybody have a burning question that they want um to speak first let's see I'm gonna go back no go ahead you speaking NOP um so on your slide 15 um what I'm hearing is that you really want to start with b grid and C grid is describing as like a tiered tiered support yeah I'm not saying like mtss or RTI but if so least restrictive environment talked about that briefly in one of my earlier slides that's really kind of the goal of services we should be asking what is the least restrictive environment where we can impact the students learning that should always start with the General Ed setting because again we're not we're not taking over the the curriculum we're not supplanting it with something different uh even when we pull a student out we write our IEP goals we can do the growth goals or we can do standards based goals if we write standards based goals we're keeping the student that much more connected to to their General curriculum so we should be starting with what services do we apply first in the B grid before we get to a conversation about srid services but are you still anticipating that um the segrid pullouts will be happening with yeah with a math disability there will still be a group of kids who are in a class that is not the regular Ed for their disability that will still be happening but you're just talking about the so so even if srid Services happen the student should still be connected to the B grid so when I talked about like grouping and scheduling if I was developing the ideal schedule on a blank sheet I would probably start with reading and math inclusion classes I'd plug them into the schedule first and then I'd pick my segrid service times at some other point in that blank SC schedule and then the rest of the General Ed schedule would would be built around that so that I would say that what should happen ideally is that a special ed teacher ideally would go into that B- grid classroom they would be co- teing with the general ed teacher and if the student needed secd supports that would be decided by the IEP team but the special a teacher would actually know what where to target those secret Services versus having ESP in the B- grid and then the the special ed teacher doing the C grid so there's a couple things that we could work towards Staffing patterns are going to be a huge part of that okay thank you others um my biggest questions right now I mean I have others but are are about the goals it you had a lot of lot of goals on like slide 17 like nine different things um that we're doing and some of them you know we need to start working on and then we have some final recommendations so like at the end of the day what would you consider like our biggest priority that we need to do to make sure our students are getting more providing instructional staff that can actually meet meet their needs in a reasonable schedule so I I will go back to the fact that we've had three people in one position when we don't have anybody in that position that means 50% of your specialed teaching staff are out the door and there's nobody to fall back to so things are going to happen where Services get missed IEPs I I like I said in my email I've been writing IEPs more so than I've done over the last 17 years I'm not complaining about that I'm not I haven't been a te since the 90s so I'm probably not the best person to be trying to write goals for kids that I don't work with um in terms of these other uh goals like these n you know nine different things um do you have like a timeline for for example the central tracking tool or like a goal time frame for like the manuals or things like that yeah the manual really both the manuals I'm hoping within the next month to have the final proofing done the tracking is already in place and we it's totally done it well I'm going to say it's evolved okay um if I'm finding something else that needs to be tracked that becomes an issue of concern it'll probably go into the document but right now we've added probably I want to say maybe eight different points and some of those points are are literally you know besides setting up the meeting dates in advance it's kind of like if the meetings rescheduled we put into place our procedure is going to be if a meeting gets canceled for some reason we reschedule within 5 to 10 school days or sooner if possible so that's now become a standard practice of ours we have kind of like notifications for when uh the IEP is definitely do so again that if we've got an annual review and we've given ourselves 10 days to write the IEP which is what the state allows up to 10 days uh then on day nine we're reaching out to the teacher and saying this is due tomorrow because it's got to be in the parents hands we've also with that kind of like defining I haven't seen this as much of a problem here initials and re-evaluations PE that's a 45 day school timeline people think that's 45 days to get the testing done and determine eligibility it's not it's 45 days to get the testing done determine eligibility in an IEP meeting write the IEP and get it into the parents hands by day 45 so and that this was something that did need some clarification is people were scheduling meetings sometime around day 40 to day 45 and leaving really no time to get the IAP written in process so we're actually saying 30 days for the testing which is what the standard is and then within 35 37 days we're running the IEP meeting I have a couple more but you can go if you want um no good um regarding the PD is it possible to combine with other districts um and do that or to reach out to CES and have them help coordinate a multi-district PD for us we could I I've actually done that before with other districts I've actually um coordinated with before it was SAS it was some sort of mechanism at the state level wasn't called SAS it was some sort of like PD support arm of desie uh where they they would come out and actually say hey if you're a level three or four school we'll provide technical or professional development assistance and we did kind of like a regional PD on on inclusion and I've also done that on my own relevant to uh because the person I use is in North Carolina when right now he does mostly virtual but he used to do in person so he'd come up and he would do kind of like bigger groups um and we would try to include other districts so I've had people from like when I worked in nagan had people from people from Agawan actually come up and participate in RPD so it's very possible to do that do you attend the student services director's meetings with the collaborative or I do with the CES and we are members with the Western Group I'm not currently a member of the ace which is I I hate to say really more Eastern yeah and I had been on the Executive Board of Ace but I don't really find uh that to be as important out here as the Western group is well I'm the chair of the board at CES okay so I kind of pushed that since we are members of of that organization um actually bill and I went to the last CES meeting like with within the last month and uh I think they've only had two and I did go to the first one as well so it would definitely be something to bring up with the other directors to see who we can engage with with to do PD and if the collaborative could help with any PD um the I have two things left the sixth grade moving up in the fall that will help some with the the workload some some yeah but that is a a positive regarding this anyway it is a positive but it'll probably be less than 10 students and what do you mean by building capacity in other areas so let's just take the PD vendor so if we hired our own PT person which we tried doesn't mean we should stop U but we pay like a vendor who pays the person to come in and takes a management fee so that is usually anywhere between like 60% more than what we might pay uh just somebody that we hire ourselves so internally that bill it's it's more financially viable it costs less it's our employee not somebody else's so we do our evaluations I don't evaluate unless I've got a problem with somebody then I'd go to the the vendor and say this is a problem that I'm having and ask them to look for somebody new but I don't really do the same type of evaluation that I would with staff that are are internal other the capacity building RS really based off of like we have a person who works as a bcba but they're here two days a week again our second category disability you know volume was kids with an Autism diagnosis and we do have other kids that don't have an Autism diagnosis but do have be social emotional behavioral issues they still benefit from things like doing fbas and developing behavior intervention plans and and we do have other avenues for pursuing those things whether it's using one of our school psychologists or School adjustment counselors to to to do those but bcba actually are really kind of like Specialists relevant to to autism and they do have a lot of good skills relevant to just doing Behavior plans for kids that aren't necessarily autistic but have similar problems relevant to behavior okay thank you so I have sort of two lines of questions um the first is really about just sort of doing an assessment and understanding of how we're delivering on stuff that we we didn't quite cover um and the second is really about um more on family communication kind of stuff so I think we've talked about we recognize some things are not where they need to be and much for stuff you you walked into not that you have done so I want to kind of see if we can do these rapid fire just because it'll put some stuff out there on the record and and help us all have a shared understanding um you talked about doing a review when you started but when was the last time there was a comprehensive review of services outlined in all our plans was that only on the summer review or is the team sat down since we sit down and actually like the the meeting that happens every two weeks that's really to address kind of like our evaluation timelines so it's very specific to making sure that we're in compliance and reinforcing that testing needs to be done at a certain date so that we could run the meeting when they're scheduled and in that process do you look at every plan every two weeks no we only that meeting what's showing up on the radar at the moment that's for meetings that are coming up where we're doing evaluations okay um when you have sat down and looked at all the plans how what percentage of our plans are we 100 % compliant in right now would you say you're not any I I'd say what percentage are we fully compliant in yeah I I'd say that Smith Academy actually has has a better um I don't want to say record but uh definitely providing the services that are in the grids more successfully you haven't had any staff really leaving Smith Academy so you know the the attendance issu is relevant to either people quitting or people being out sick have impacted HS much more significantly but it's because of positions being vacated and trying to get things back on track and so what is our estimation for when that's remedied if if like I said as far as compensatory Services we'll try our best to get it done within this school year but it may be part of and and some of the services we've written as compensatory into the service delivery grids so those that we've written most of them have been with time frames within like the school year but if it's but if it's an issue where we can't get the services done then the offer would be that we just carry it over into esy okay um are we currently staffed where we could meet 100% of the plans as long as nobody yes right right now we're very close to to meeting everything that we need to except for our reading interventionist which is still a vacant position okay reading interventionalist it's a very part time SMI Academy okay um so these are just things you know I'm sure off the top of your head on key milestones and this is really really the PSA version of tonight because I think there is a lot that people don't know and and those that live it every day it's just easy to understand for parents who are walking and new to this it's rough to find information um so help us understand some key timelines and what's allowed so the time between identifying a students's the the call out that there might need to be test and testing is 30 days well so the time between requesting meetings so I guess there's a whole bunch of little pieces to that timeline and I'm really looking for you to spell out what's on all those Milestones so consents actually start with when a consent is sent out to the parent so if it's a re-evaluation we know when the re-evaluation is due and we need to send out the consent at least 45 days before the evaluation timeline ends now part of the problem with that is that often consents sit on somebody's kitchen table and it may be a couple weeks or it may be three weeks or it may be three months before do we email them as well as mail them we do and we also send out second notices if we don't get it back within like 30 days that's true for pretty much all of our documentation whether it's consents or IEPs that haven't been signed so if an IEP hasn't been signed we send out 30-day notices and we do it essentially in like three cycles and then the fourth cycle we actually send a letter to the Bureau of special ed appeals basically saying that because we haven't received it back signed we're considering it considering it to be rejected and then bsea contacts us they contact the parent is this something you want to pursue through bsea are you rejecting the I or you just not get a chance to sign it and return it so there's there's that with that but let's go back to the 45 day timeline the consent gets signed the day it's returned to ass sign is day one for that 45 days we have 30 days to complete testing now nobody asks and nobody should ask for the results of testing on day 31 it's just that's part of the time frame that's allotted to allow for testing so that other 15 days is really however we break it down but it's having the meeting scheduled and we really should have the meeting scheduled as soon as we get the consent back and if we're concerned at all that and we are we're concerned that a consent might not be signed and return to us so that we get the evaluation done within the 45 days we're actually trying to send them out a little earlier than that so that we could have those things in place before the the time frame for re-evaluation runs out so 30 days for the testing the meeting hopefully within 5 days of that by day 35 hopefully not much longer than that and then if it happens on day 35 we determine eligibility and start to draft the IEP at that meeting and then the staff have essentially 10 days to get that draft into its final form give it to me for my review and signature and then it's in the mail hopefully by day 45 or soon ER to the parent and I just clarify that you don't mean calendar days you mean SCH school days school days yes I just clarify that as well yeah now the annual process is a little different there's no consent we have an end date for the IEP the goal is to have the meeting at least 10 days before the IEP ends so when we actually have the annual review is usually uh a review of the team summary and that gives us kind of like a 10-day window to write the IEP and again get it into the parents hands not 10 days to write it but 10 days to write it and process it and out to the parents so I am actually asking my Administrative Assistant don't just rely on like United States poal Service send things out uh in email because there's always a practice in most of the districts I've worked in we'll put it in the backpack and literally had a a a student come into school today um with a letter in his backpack and the letter from was from us to go to the the parents and we actually we weren't quite sure where it was so we opened it up at the meeting it's the invitation for the meeting so you know the parents never saw the invitation they knew when the meeting was but they just never saw the paperwork for it so I I hate to kind of like rely on backpacks it's one method I'd rather backpack USPS um email do you believe that that is consistently working that you're you're managing to get all those out I I think right now because we've got this tracking log that we're doing a lot better job than we were in September with getting the uh uh the sents out and the meetings scheduled the way they need to be and I'm not going to say there hasn't been some hiccups when did the tracking log start tracking log I believe I had it in place well the first part of it was the scheduling of the meetings that was in place by early September and then recently within the last month we've added to it relevant to the implementation of uh the IEP actually getting developed and written and shared with the parents the meeting rescheduled components of it um contacting the staff members if um we're up to day like 9 or close to day 45 and we haven't received the document back yet can you talk about how changes to plans are shared with staff what's the process for that so once the IEP um meeting ends if we do an amendment or we do a new IEP like whether it's an evaluation or just an annual review um the document goes out to the uh the parents now sometimes we'll have some of our staff say Hey you received this yet and it's and the process is that when we receive it we send out an email to the General Ed teachers and the special ed staff that are assigned to that student that we have the new I AP in hand so unsigned IEPs the active IEP acts as a stay put until we get that new signed IEP in hand we get the new signed IEP in hand and any changes that were made between the two documents they start once we had that document back and signed not before that that was a problem here IEPs were not signed and folks were applying Services which might sound like an an okay thing except you were still technically legally working off of the old active IEP and you were providing services that were not agreed upon so it sounds good to say well early we're getting stuff done early but essentially you're also opening yourself up to a liability piece where if the parent didn't agree with it and wanted to reject the services and just didn't get around to it we were essentially if if this was a pullout service we were pulling a kid out of a classroom without permission which is a civil rights issue so not that it you know resulted in any of that but that's the kind of path that it could have led to if somebody did not agree with us supplying services to student and what about requests that before there is a plan are those on the tracker so if there's a request if either I a family member or a teacher suggests testing that there might be a need for services when that request comes in how is that tracked so we do have a tracking form for that consense for an evaluation and and this is part of the problem that we had with the PRS complaint um we should process that as an initial valuation within five days now the PRS complaint the parent requested uh an evaluation back in March requested it in writing through an email saying I'm requesting an initial evaluation for special ed services uh it got diverted into the BST process now BST is like a sixe process so by end of you define bstu so everyone's on the same page it's it's a student study team it it again you could describe it as the pre-referral process not necessarily that way because the outcome could be that a a a support or a strategy is put into place and the student makes progress and it doesn't go any further than that but that's the principal the guidance counselor the nurse so so six weeks is not five days correct uh so we were like definitely out of compliance and the consent for the for the testing wasn't actually processed until I think it was like May 8th or 9th and so we were already six weeks behind the eight ball there and then we had testing done testing was not completed before the end of the year we had staff leave the report got lost and we found the report but then they were kind of like the what do we do with this is this valid testing and additional testing was was done at that point but there wasn't a sense of urgency with some of the staff so even though I had established what the drop dead date was going to be for for getting this done which was September 25th final day of testing took place on September 25th so we couldn't run a meeting on on that day because the testing wasn't completed we scheduled for like August 9th and actually the parent pushed that date aside uh in Le of a little later date I think on the 16th or 17th or something like that and then we you know ended up processing but the PRS complaint was absolutely valid they had asked for an initial evaluation we didn't process that for for a good solid six weeks and then we didn't meet our timeline relevant to completing what should have been done by September 25th something that had started on May 9th do all staff now recognize what a request looks like so that will never so so I actually at hes Melissa's been very good about giving me time at a couple different meetings where I've gone through those CMR 603s um especially you know specifically I think it's 28.0 04 relevant to kind of like processing and timelines and really kind of like saying that there certain things we don't do because we've had we've had to address these a couple of different times we can't just have somebody whether it's a special ed teacher or a general ed teacher just decide that we're going to change services in the IEP with without a meeting and even at a meeting the team's got to be in agreement and so I'm I'm going to say that like during an IP meeting meeting if I've got a split kind like some of the people at the table agree with this some of them agree with this it's the responsibility of the team chair which is usually me to actually make the decision as to what the the uh the district is going to propose so we've had to kind of like stress that not just in IEP meetings but also in staff meetings where I've given them handouts relevant to compliance issues that that we have been experiencing and how to correct those and what their roles are relevant to how we actually run an IEP meeting and how that IEP meeting is really the mechanism of how we change the IEP somebody can come to me and say Hey I want this change in the IEP It's Kind like that's nice but really we've got to go through the team process if I make a decision outside of the team process that's a violation I can't do that it's got to be part of the team and that it's not just for me it's for anybody else whether it's Melissa or Connor or a teacher in a class whether it be special ed or General Ed they can't just decide to change services because they think it's time to or even if it's for benevolent reasons they think it's going to benefit the student that may be the case but it's still going to be a team process There's an opportunity for learning on that front how are how do we confirm that all of the outline services in these 107 plans are scheduled and how do we how do we verify that they're being delivered so so there are a couple mechanisms in the TFM process now TFM stands were tiered Focus monitoring it used to be called CPR and it was aptly named that way because once you usually get your reports back from the state you went into cardiac arrest it's kind of like lightened up a bit since then but the CPR process used to hit 59 points that was all of the special ed uh qualifying factors that they would actually look at now they kind of like pick and choose maybe a dozen or so uh and they break it up into groups A and B and each each group has like a different Focus relevant to what is going to be looked at during that cycle but one of the things is uh I believe it's se22 whereas when I get the IEP I try to look it over look at the service delivery grid check out the goals to make sure that it makes sense but there's also to be a component in that where in some of districts that I've worked in this has been part of the routine I'm not the only one signing it sometimes it would be the principles and the principal signature would basically verify se22 if it is sc22 um which essentially states that the principles are looking at the IEP to make sure that service deliveries are actually being met and that related service providers are providing their services as well so both special ed and well special ed teachers and related service providers as well is that mechanism in place from the state can I just ask one quick thing please um so for students who have scheduled needs daily weekly whoever it is you know they have OT on this day for this many minutes they have reading intervention for in my head it feels like a show just be like a punch card like yes we did it on Monday we did it on Tuesday we did it on Wednesday whatever day it's supposed to be and then we can track whether we did or we did not is that yes so I am stressing that they keep a log because if somebody says well you owe me compensatory Services nobody's going to remember that off the top of their head um now that does become more complicated when you've got somebody who's left the position and you're trying to but even that you can figure out when somebody came on board and still the request is that once you start Services you're keeping a log so you can refer back to it and that that's true for both special ed teach and the related service providers I will say that related service providers do that pretty much as a standard I don't think special a teachers have been doing that on a regular basis and if there's a Miss are you notified like guess you know the head of student services hey we miss Services three days this week for Joey no no so how are we tracking that if somebody actually comes to me and says I'm missing services but as far as somebody submitting logs to me for for my review that that mechanism is not in place respectfully that feels insufficient yes um so there are there are still a handful of flags for me and I I just want to start by saying though I'm deeply appreciative for the time and the expertise and the transparency in what you've shared tonight and I think it's incredibly helpful um there's still some things that I can't quite see how we're managing and it's not to say that we aren't but I certainly don't have a clear picture of it and it just gives me hesitation so so here you do have I I know this is a small District special ed directors often wear a lot of different hats you don't have a designated team leader you've got me operating as special ed director and team leader so yes log reviews would be great I don't want to work 14 hours a day actually doing that and so there there is a manageability component of there also should be technology or something that's make like there are some of these things that feel like there there must be some solutions out there um for the life of me I still worry that we don't have a good way to track all the things we obligate ourselves to do against what we're staffed to do and how that schedule gets built to be really efficient um and and I don't know what the tools are but there I assume there must be some tools that help with that because juggling the schedule alone to be efficient for for teachers and for kids I I have concerns about how many times we pull one kid out of a class both on the front that maybe they're supposed to be seen 20 times during a month and they're seeing four and we don't know it because there's no system because somebody's been out or whatever happens but also that we're pulling kids out because we're over to your point we've over invested in secret services so that we're we're in secret stuff so often that it's hard for that kid to feel like they're a part of the class because they're gone however many times a day so in fact one of my questions on an early slide was sort of for kids that are getting pulled out what is actually happening how many times are kids getting pulled out in a day or a week can you speak to that what's common and then what should be the standard yeah so one thing that kind of concerns me is that some some of the grids I've seen are identifying times that don't really line up with the schedule so if I've got a 45 minute block or or whatever the standard is for the Block in each school but I'm like actually putting in the grid five times a number that's more than each individual Block it's kind of like I'm pulling the child out of a full Block Plus time in in another area so that that is always a concern of mine because and and I can say this is another thing that I've come across there's some grids that I could look at and the total minutes per week or well let's say per day might have been something like 475 well they're at 475 minutes in a school day uh so what that means to me is that people are putting in services in the grids at say like 5 times 300 but then there's five or six other services that are listed as well so they're not subtracting that from the 300 and sometimes that's okay because if it's a one: one the one to ones with that child for the entire time but if the service is more of a specialized classroom and the students actually also going out they're not subtracting the numbers so that they line up with the actual minutes during the week or during that 5ay cycle so that that that is a problem there as well most of that takes takes a bit of time to to kind of like sort out it's not new things I've seen that quite a bit I mean people don't think to basically subtract the time that a student goes out to speech and language services from the time that they spend in classrooms and they should be so that is definitely an area that that needs to be improved upon people could do things like keep grids in easted easted does have like Medicaid tracking now not all kids are on Medicaid but there are logs that could be put into easted relevant to how we actually track track the information but again the systems designed for Medicaid billing which is not all the kids that are on IEPs so it becomes kind of a do we use it that way and is it become more confusing if we eventually changed vendors because esped does have relationships with Medicaid vendors that we don't use um we wouldn't want necessarily erroneous information to be in a Medicaid system but we could set up some sort of like electronic log that would be shared whether it's through something like a Google doc or something along that line but there is that ability is getting time to actually review it the way we need to and addressing how we're actually going to provide whether it's a recoup of services or letting parents know that yeah your child has missed you know so many days of services and that does happen all the time in most districts team meetings are a good example of that you've got a team meeting going on you've got a special a teacher there who's probably scheduled to be elsewhere but there's nobody to actually cover those Services we don't have buffers like some districts actually do relevant into supplying somebody who can cover that class so there are things that we can do to to cover it's not necessarily an ideal fit all the time but it's better than doing nothing the state looks more favorably when we try to do something to make it work even if it's not exactly what we need um my my last general question to the presentation was are students making progress we talked a lot about really our side of this and nothing about the student side of this tonight um and so so so I'd have to say when I was talking about related Services only and I talked about the 17 kids that you're essentially receiving Services the several of those kids since that data collection that we've discontinued Services because they've made progress now when you look in an IEP there are a couple different things in it when you look at the goals there's a current level of performance and that current level of performance establishes on that day where that child is so progress reports are essentially a new current level of performance every time a student receives a progress report it is an update as to how that student is doing and progress reports go out with the same schedule as report cards doing each building so there is reporting so if if somebody's saying yeah my my child's not actually making progress or the progress report doesn't actually say that they're they're making progress then what should be happening is the IP team needs to reconvene to relook at that goal and reestablish what the focus should be of it I'm I'm hearing from families who aren't even getting progress reports so I truthfully I don't know how that's happening except for if somebody's been absent or out sick or something like that and then we're still trying to get the the reports processed but yeah they're not being done necessarily in alignment with the report code period because there isn't the staff to do it at that time okay other questions I'm sorry Adam I didn't want to cut you off that's I I cut you off you deserve to cut me right back um just weeding through my questions here to feel okay we'll start with an easy one CPAC doesn't exist correct have we made an attempt to make it exist again are we meeting what is required of us so I actually applied for a CPAC waiver we have a membership with Massac one of the mechanisms for actually compensating for not having an active CPAC is to have three presentations provided by the district so we're we've set up to do a rights and responsibility training um within the next few weeks with the Federation for children with special needs but I've also asked them to give me another I I've given them a couple of topics that I'd like to to do and that would give us a chance to offer two additional or the three that we need to basically offer while we don't have a CPAC in place the goal is at these meetings hopefully to drum up some interest in having parents come forward and saying I'd like to be a chair or a co-chair and get some sort of like Charter in place that really describes how the CPAC would would operate uh and try to get it moving again that way there are some other options I mean we can always join with another District um but it's finding you know like an Avenue for to do that with another another District that would be willing to basically share their time with another I've actually been pursuing that through the collaborative um I've asked Todd to look into how member districts can manage not having a CPAC and some of these small districts if they could pull together to create a regional CPAC um he is checking with the legalities of all of that and if the collaborative could not host it but be a part of it or if just help facilitate some of the smaller districts hey you are having a problem you are have and kind of get them together that way so Todd's helping on that end of things there are examples of that and one example that I can give you is I don't know if it still operates like this but probably within the last 10 years uh lunenberg had actually done Regional CPAC meetings they had championed it and invited other districts I'm not sure how many took advantage of it but I know they were were offering that to districts in the north central part of the state the districts of the collaborative there are 37 raing CPAC so that's why I was hoping to pursue something grabbing some of these you know Charlemont and you know Sunderland or not that they're the ones but smaller districts that are having issues most of the other District work except for wallam uh the IEP populations were between well not the I the total uh District populations were between 14 to 2 200 and we'd be lucky if we got like three or four people on a regular basis attending so even with bigger sized districts it's sometimes hard to get get people to attend sorry I that's okay um you discussed your tracking U mechanism and how you're tracking IEPs and we've kind of established just not really tracking for when we've missed a service on any given day how quickly if services are missed on a given day is the family informed of that immediately oh truthfully I doubt it okay yeah so so the state if we have somebody who's out or the position's vacant if they're out for two weeks we're given that time to notify families so we've got essentially a two- we window okay out to them and say hey Services have not been supplied in two weeks we're letting you know that and this is what we're doing and usually those letters are you know we're trying to hire somebody we're looking at vendors we're looking at other districts to see if we can borrow staff you know things like that but usually the letters like a you know maybe a paragraph or two just as a notification of what's going onqu have we sent that out this year do you think right I've sent out three versions for different things to what percent like you've sent it out to Three Families you've sent out three versions to no everyone three different letters to whoever the service affected so it wasn't kind of like a blanket letter to to everybody in the district but like if we were missing a reading intervention for two weeks anyone who was assigned to that reading intervenes would have gotten a letter yeah kind of for example so it's it's not like if we miss services for two days we owe that student two days extra Services they don't need to get like two double sessions to make it up or something well that's a good question because compensatory Services doesn't necessarily have to be the services missed made up with the same number it's what we try to do and I've never handled it any differently than that but the state actually talks about compensatory Services it's it's trying to make up but it doesn't necessarily have to be the exact number to the exact number though again that's what we try to do from a budgetary standpoint and this may be a question for Connor um are compensatory Services things were budgeting for if the if it was time lost in fy2 are we finding a way to get it out of the fy2 budget or are we really looking at compensatory services that we need to forecast into an FY 26 budget the only reason we would forecast it into an FY 26 budget would be if it went to the extended year if it if it came came after July 1 um and the the other piece would be if there was anything outside of the school day that needed any kind of funding and I will say so this is one of these it's not necessarily an apple apple comparison if we're providing over esy it might be in small groups with the the staff that's already working in ESI we'd have to be mindful of numbers to make sure they don't go over you know certain certain amounts but if the student was getting like Individual Services we might do small group over the summer the parent would be aware of that as part of the discussion about compensatory Services um you discussed what you feel are additional or supplemental Staffing requirements that we should have next year um prior to all of this Have you communicated that to Dr Driscoll and the follow will be to Dr Driscoll have we bud appropriately for that for next year yeah when so we've actually talked about a couple different possibilities there so when I mentioned restructuring in in my presentation looking at you know some of the positions that we have are we best utilizing them so it's some of it may not actually be additional funds but if we're deciding that you know by the end end of the year or before the end of the year if we really kind of like are looking and saying well we're talking about maybe repurposing this and but we decide that we really kind of like still need that position or that type of position then we'd be looking at additional funds relevant to a budget request but I think the goal is to try to repurpose in different areas that we can whether it's utilizing Grant funds or repurposing General funds that we have that are already designated in a particular area and trying to make those things work for for the additional special ed staff do we have the ability at the elementary school if we had a teacher who was kind of co-trained they were special educat a special educator certified and certified to be a fourth through six teacher or whatever um we have small grades at the elementary school could we have a situation where you know one of the fourth grade teachers takes over teaching all of math and all of of history or social studies so that the other teacher could be freed up to also be a special educator yeah I'm not smiling because I what I want to say is I realize small districts you want split positions and they're great when they work but that's part of what got us into a problem at the beginning of the school year we had somebody leave two weeks before school started it was a split position so we weren't just looking for a special ed teacher we're also trying to deal with counseling services and no applicants that would fit both bills so when you start looking at split positions again when they're filled with the right person they work great but as soon as that person leaves then you're really looking at either either supplying one or the other or I'm just thinking like you you know you said we have two basic two special Educators at the elementary school to cover the whole school yeah you would ideally we would have a third but if we had you know a two and a half we like we could if if it if it fell through we could always fall back on the two which isn't great but it kind of works you can you can post really as many positions as you want to under different like criteria like you could post like a you a05 or point8 or a 6 um and hope that somebody would apply for one of those positions that's going to you know fit the bill but realistically does anybody I mean are we seeing applicants for part-time positions well truthfully I mean our PT we ended up going to a vendor after posting the position for what five months MH yeah and in the reading specialist position again very part-time same type of thing we've had that posted for several months now when you not really getting uh an applicant that'll fit but it would be a part-time position in my my hypothetical land it would be a teacher who is a fourth grade teacher like I mean special Educators you're listening to this meeting please apply special Educators they're they're usually certified to teach one of the broader categories you know if they're at high school they're an English teacher and then they became special educator um and then they end up usually focusing in that lane but they technically have the ability to do both and so um in my head I'm assuming an elementary special educator has the ability to do both typically typically with certifications you you may have dual certification in in different subject disciplines it's um less common to have dual certification within special education and and a like an English you have one on staff right now currently that person's about ready to move up to Smith Academy okay yeah so so in and historically also part-time positions are have been have been harder to fill significantly harder to fill so I'm sorry no I was just gonna say we deeply appreciate the fact that those split positions are create challenges for Staffing but do understand your job used to be split with the superintendent so I mean we're very familiar with those challenges but also necessary for us right in in the budget situation that we're going to talk about in a few minutes when we move on I could also point out that our current superintendent has a split position he does in the vein of part-time positions or fractional positions are hard to fill uh you know we're saying we have a a small role necessary at the high school you know a few hours for reading intervention that we're not able to staff do we have full-time need for a part for a PT here or not really I'm assuming right it's it's less than it's less in a full day position okay I don't like this question but I'm going to ask it would our students be better served in a larger system where they have you know a system that can you we have we have greater need so you will have more full-time staff available so we're less Reliant upon Contract Services less likely that students would have Miss services or we wouldn't be able to meet students needs I I I do have to say and I again I'm not making a pitch to add ETL if you had a bigger District I would be making that that pitch and I understand the need for like people to wear multiple hats in in the smaller District some of the things that you talk about would be more monitored by having an ETL here along with a special ed director educational team leader thank you it's what Michelle Otis used to that was the title Michelle Otis would had so so in the districts that I've worked in where I've had etls you know those people will do things like help the staff actually write the IEP you know I'm writing some IEPs because people are positions are vacant people are out sick things like that but my schedule doesn't really provide me the opportunity to do that to sit down with special education teachers and help them to write an IEP monitor their schedules work on their schedules individually with them I'll give them some support relevant to their schedules but really that has been in a lot of the districts I've worked in kind of like part of the role of the team leader is to be that resource to the special ed teachers and make sure that things are compliant and on track again that's not a pitch that's just the way it works in other districts that are bigger that have more of the resources um most districts have like full-time pts full-time OT you have a full-time OT here you have good good staff relevant to coverage relevant to your speech and language Services your special ed teaching services like I said I think you know we we could use some extra support there because of the case load sizes um but overall I mean you're kind of hitting the boxes most of the places where you need to it's not ideal but you're doing it if I compare a district this size to a district that's five times bigger um you're still providing this Services you need by ratio uh just doing it in a little bit different format than other places that I've worked is it still the case the districts in the area are having a really hard time filling services and special education spots so a little over a year and a half ago I was still in Athol I was in Athol for three years two years I was trying to find an SLP full full-time position could not find I had one applicant the entire time uh actually in the person lived in person drove up to AOL and said I didn't realize it was so long to get here uh so it just kind of like ended the the interview process at that point and I couldn't even contract with people uh everybody wants to do especially related services that are provided by vendors everybody pretty much wants to do some sort of virtual service sometimes that works but it also means that for those kids that need extra support you have to designate probably a pair of professional to be in that session with them so when we could actually find a PT through a vendor that wanted to be here in person because I had a couple different people say well we'll do virtual but that meant really putting a parel with the student anytime we had a service in place it was just going to you know have our vendor cost then p pa professional on top of that to be there um is there anything else the committee really I I'm just mindful that no one wants to be here at midnight um well most of us don't want to be here midnight but this has been really helpful too so I'm just trying to balance those two things anything else um I think there's an opportunity for I I was glad to hear you're doing three presentations and one's already scheduled um I hope that you also have an opportunity to develop more materials that go to families to help them understand timelines process um where their role is in the process so that they're really clearly understanding when the clock is ticking when it's not ticking um because I I don't think any of us would ever want to hold up our kid getting what they need and I think sometimes we aren't necessarily as informed about all of that as the expectation would be so um and and frankly IEP forms are not by our design but by what they are are pretty horrible pieces of cre they're foreign language to a lot of families just horribly organized and and it's not our staff that's making them they just they are a designated form that comes from from outside so um regarding those two additional presentations you hope to do uh is opportunity to maybe throw out a survey with several suggested topics and see what families might want to hear about yeah actually the Federation does list you know like trainings that are available by by title but if you could narrow it down to a handful and send that out yeah we could do that that would probably help with attendance yeah as well if it's something that people are indicating an interest in I would encourage you to talk to staff about some of that as well because I think they have some pretty good because I think they're hearing from families I know is hearing from families um thank you so we have administrative reports I want to be mindful of the hour um anything that you got guys want to particularly talk about okay so thank you for sharing those I know I do believe we read them and and that they're helpful uh with that I'd like to turn to the school Finance subcommittee report hi hello um so just briefly about the current fiscal year um there may be an upcoming vote at a at a meeting just to adjust our overall fy2 budget because um it we're coming in over budget for the year and we our official budget to match um just things are the tech contractor Services we under budgeted this year that was our fault um and we're right siding that for next year but we it was pretty significant um and then uh the field Center is more costly than um having our own staff would have been so we need to kind of give it a right size overall budget for fy2 to match what we're actually spending but we do have school choice funding available to cover those costs yes so we're it's not a request back to town for funding correct um and in the vein of school choice funding we uh Dr J mentioned that he's restricting any discretionary spending uh through the end of the year try to preserve any remaining school choice funds so that we can roll anything that's available over to FY 26 um and onto budgeting for next year um the good news is that we're forecasting an increase in school choice funds for next year um a 16% increase uh and then all of their funding sources were forecasting to remain flat for the year um to maintain level services for next year it would be an increase of $286,000 which is a 4% increase um $183,000 of that increase comes from student services um parts of that are increase in transit costs um uh people that we hired in the middle of this year to replace previous staff for more costly staff they were at higher steps um than their uh predecessor uh and we have increased out ofd restrict tuition needs for next year at least possibly um and then we have a little over 100,000 and other known cost increases uh including an additional 22,000 in the tech services contract which is just kind of a rollover of why we're right siding the fy2 budget for the year um so we're kind of fixing that budget line for next year but it's it's significant uhing goes up $8,200 next year year um we're assuming about 2 and half% increase for utilities um we are not going to put any funds in the uh Loa account um which will make things tighter um and of note that this number the $286,000 doeses not include any newly negotiated costs with upcoming Collective barting agreements um so that's prior to that contract or those contracts being worked out um assuming we get a uh a two and a half two and a half% increase from the town's funding that's an extra $153,000 so we're looking at a pretty significant funding Gap at the moment so it's ongoing work so we're not coming and saying here is our budget tonight but it is I would say keeps me up at night kind of concerned Adam hasn't gone great yet so you know oh it's it's I'm getting haircut Wednesday they'll be hidden so um we also have some budget transfers tonight just shifting stuff around that was part of that your Finance update information um so there's local budget transfers and this is just considering some transfers I have seen in past years these are really small adjustments which I think speaks well of the the budget that you made a year ago because we're not shifting things around um and I just want to say I really appreciate the diligence and not shifting them to a slush fund and then out because it actually allows us to track what we spend money on for future budgeting um so there's local budget transfers there are one two three four five of those totaling $3,445 there are some transfers within school choice there's four of those for a total of$ 6494 um and I would I'll make a motion to approve the you all in favor I I thank you very much I have one little question yeah the very first one um the money is Shifting to athletic dues and fees is is that the account where the student athletic fees is or is this something different no no the D athletic dues and fees is its own line and that's for it's to pay the MIAA got it thank you that other would be a revolving account I thought so but I just wasn't thinking what it could be okay may I add because um there's one transfer that didn't make it onto this that I was hoping to do tonight and it relates to the PT um vendor that we have currently we have um the cost of the parttime part day PT as a staff position salary position um to move those funding those funds to specialed contracted Services because we're going to be paying a contracted servicer to provide those funds you have a total about $166,000 so just drain that first account move everything over to the contractor service just because we should be we shouldn't be paying a contracted service from a salary line okay so you want to move it from salaries to the contracted Services that's in the local budget okay so I'm going to make a motion to move 16,000 from the salary line into the sped contracted Services is there a second second okay all in favor just before we vote it's 16 flat yes okay perfect all in favor I I thank okay um any questions on school Finance appreciate the hard work yeah keep it we have more to do um so that increase in student service costs when we looked at that Gap is about $185,000 Gap and student services happens to equal that almost fully um and so we're going to take a look at some historical data to see what have we been getting back from circuit breaker because at some point it's sort of like we're we may ask for a like float us the loan because those Services get paid for a year behind um but before we can do that I think we have to be smarter about what we typically see coming back um because that kind of increase would be I think well beyond what we could ask the town for um I I don't think any of us imagine we're going to be able to ask for more than 200 and truthfully they would like us to ask not for that so okay policy okay um it is 9:52 p.m. how you're you're at first readings yep these are all first readings so we have three policies on the table um I will say that policy JK uh which is student conduct is the most pressing of the policy policies um jjba which is participation of middle school athletes on jvn varsity teams and Jay-Z musical production those two first readings have to do with the move of the sixth grade to Smith Academy um we are not even going to recommend taking we're recommending reviewing them as we go um but then taking like a batch boat probably in like late spring or early summer prior to that move so we wanted the committee to have them but I don't feel strongly about really diving into those tonight um unless the committee wants to um JK on the other hand um which is our student conduct policy this is the foundational policy for our student conduct revisions that we're working on on our code of conduct project so um I would love to hear from the committee if people are up for it we extensively Revis this polic policy um with the purpose of outlining our positive values and philosophies as a district um and then as I presented in a previous meeting the more specific um specifics in general I guess about um discipline are going to be moved into policy jic so if the committee has feedback we'd love to hear it um on policy JK from two of you so while Adam is rescanning I I I say I really like the positive approach to it I think this is a huge Improvement it is a first reading it's a but it just like the directional shift I think makes a lot of sense it feels much more aligned with our educational philosophy um and that all booted really well I got to the end and I I will say it I was like okay where's the next section it felt like there would be something more I don't know what the more is I just I got to the end I we got to end it on something okay what what's the tangible piece that comes next to this see policy J I see okay yeah I'm I'm content with that as an answer but that was when I read it my yeah a lot of this um that's good for we benefit from me meeting with theal Team yeah and hearing their views and um I'm proud of this one I really like the direction it went um I understand what you mean about okay what more is there so I don't know if the title needs to change to the school's student conduct guidelines or philosophy or beliefs or if it needs to be really high level yeah that was the goal that's why we got to get this one done yeah so this is going to guide us in the direction for the others I think I would wait and see what comes with it in terms of adding more to this policy or the other related could be like the policies that follow it right that this is sort of the umbrella of this is The Vibes of it right and here's the stuff that gets more tangible yes when I think about policies it's like oh I know exactly what side is okay and what side is not okay and this feels a little more right in the vibe zone and I think that was actually kind of the goal that's in this case um given that you have more coming again right looking at it standing alone that was it's setting the expectations it's stating what the core values are um and for the sake of anyone who haven't helped them they're still with us the core values do you want can you just read that second paragraph or maybe the second the top just so people hear ity it's all you the school committee believes that all students deserve every opportunity to achieve academic success in a saf learning environment good citizenship in schools is based on respect and consideration for the rights of others core values of Hatfield Public Schools additionally include dignity perseverance engagement and empathy we always strive to promote a sense of belonging and Community within our schools and local environment the district holds High academic social and emotional expectations to embody these values want the last the next one sure might as well like half there half the policy students are expected to conduct themselves in a way that upholds the rights and privileges of others when disciplinary action is necessary it shall be administered with fairness and shall relate to individual needs and the individual circumstances the district believes the purpose of disciplinary is to educate and equip students with the skills necessary cohesive Comm cohesive Community Educators seek to help students understand the impact of their actions and take appropriate ownership ultimately the goal of positive student conduct is to create an inclusive environment where all students can learn contribute and Thrive yeah I need something at the end and then there will be other things forthcoming like there will be like a little collection of policies that and that is how our policy manual is actually currently written um I think when we were doing our initial reviews we were like oh wow look at this great huge policy about student conduct it was jic and it's just like suspensions expulsions we're like we can't like lead with this like if we're trying to communicate to families and our community those things are important to outline clearly however um yeah yeah there will be there will be more any you have any feedback Adam I'm happy with it it I don't necessarily think it needs more I don't think it needs to I mean like that the last line I can see how maybe it leaves a little wanting or something but like it doesn't need to sound like struggled with that it doesn't need to sound like a Jed Bartlet speech for reference just for me yeah um like it's scroll down at the cross references I think it it seems I'm perfectly content yeah to to me it's not the it needs one more line kind of thing it's no it's like where do we go from here what's the yeah yeah it's sort of like when you write a strategic plan you don't want it so that any strategy would fit right like I just want to make sure that it's concrete enough but I think you have pieces that are coming that are that yes I'm not worried about it and that larger paragraph is kind of outlin how disciplinary measures yes still on a very high level right but it's setting the stage of the intent of discipline is not about the punishment it's learning yeah and creating that students gain skills recognizing their impact and owning up to things and moving forward so I anticipate in terms of student conduct that project um we will uh bring this back for a vote at a future meeting and the next policy in line is um jic um just for what it's worth we did read the middle school stuff I didn't see I didn't have any comments okay nothing jumped at me theth grade thing yeah that was exactly what I wanted to to say okay we kind of wanted to like get them out there and then we'll just bring them back for what it's worth for anybody following along it's the new policy would insert that's when it talks about middle school athletes in JV and varsity teams that six graders would not be playing Varsity Sports right is that already part of the handbook or yet to be part of the handbook oh it's not currently because sixth grade's not at the school yet but it will be it will so I know that that's just been something that came up so I was make sure I set it out loud and there were some handbook updates but I got to tell you I wasn't sure what they were so they're highlighted in blue us through those can you show them to us on the screens well I could but the screens have died out have one left we have you have one left over there that one's working oh great so I'll pull it up um so these so these updates are related to the tiered Focus monitoring um that John had spoken about earlier so uh we have a deadline of Wednesday um to do these that's why I wanted them on a vote for tonight um and these they all relate they are highlighted in purple you'll recall that the blue um was the last at the last school committee meeting we updated the handbook with some blue uh changes also for the tiered Focus monitor update and this uh the purple changes reflect some more of them is the yellow still in there too the yellow's the yellow is a change from last year to this year so yellow last year to this year blue previous updates and purple are and then we also had one blue change because they asked us to get and then that was their previous message and then at the last meeting they said oh actually no we were wrong put it back in so we'd already voted to get rid of it for their feedback um so as we go through here I'm just going to uh first one here academic access this is on page 12 if you're following along um this is a statement about um students regardless of any protected class that they may be under having access to our academic programs so that's on page 12 and if it's okay with the committee uh unless there are questions I'm not going to read through all them please let's see as we keep going it's on 45 thank you 45 I was trying to find the blue one that was up oh there was one policy had to add back was added back yeah sorry yeah because we should revote on adding that back in we'll go to page 45 here it is it's on page 35 actually um and there's a little bit of purple there too um General procedures for implement mation of anti-harassment ask us take that out they're asking us to put that back in okay on page 45 apologize for the seasickness here um Athletics and co-curricular activities is a similar statement to the academic ones this is um saying that regardless of a any protected status um membership in any protected class that uh students have access to our Athletics and curricular activities and I didn't see any other that may be it that was it that may be it okay is there a motion to adopt the changes on as outlined on page 12 35 and page 45 so moved is there a second second all in favor hi TI okay and with that you saw her email about the Title Nine yeah yeah I all that we got to put back well it's a it's a conversation to have it's not a mandate I don't think um so Dr Driscoll I have a question for you as it is 10:05 yeah would you be terribly disappointed if we shifted your midyear review I would I would not be disappointed at all be okay with that in fact that would be would the committee be okay if we Ted that till our next meeting yes okay see they have update on by then see no other business a motion to adjourn so moved and I think I've just learned there's ruls apparently doesn't require a second or vote as we adjourn I was informed of this in a different committee meeting well adjournment doesn't require a second we can just move to adjourn anytime I'm going to be watching out without anybody I know I'm going to be like 7:30 Becca like I can make a motion to a Jour and just run 901