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Hello and welcome to our last special education committee meeting of the year. Ah, it's sad because we're ending, but it's uh also great because we're going to have a really good meeting today. I'm
very excited about our meeting. Um, I want to uh thank a lot of uh folks who are here today. But before I continue with that, I just want to introduce myself again. My name is Carla Grigo and
I am your board representative in district five. I'm also the chair of this committee of the special education committee and I've got to say that for the last two months it's been really great co-chairing well no chairing after
Scott uh shared it for so long. So um I want to take this opportunity to thank the committee members. Thank you all for being here. It's been really uh good to be engaging in conversations about our
students uh sharing ideas and how we can do things better uh for our students. So, I really appreciate all the comments and all the inquiries and everything that you've provided throughout this uh at least during the time that I've been here, but I know you've been doing it
with Scott for a while. Um, I want you to know that your questions and your input are considered um by the district and the Division of Special Education, and we're going to make sure that we pass along all of those ideas that came out of this these meetings to the
Division of Special Ed. I hope that I will continue to serve um as chair in the next year. And so if you would like to be considered uh to serve next year's committee, please make sure that you contact my office. And after the meeting today, I
have some certificates of appreciation for all the members of this committee for volunteering your time to be here with us. So thank you again. Um so now let's see. I'd like to open up the floor. We're going to begin our meeting.
And as always, I'd like to ground ourselves. uh in what we're about to do. And um so today uh we're going to be doing um thinking back on our own school
experience and thinking about a time when we felt seen and or heard in our school and share about that moment. Think about what it was about that moment that made you feel seen or
heard. And so I'm going to go ahead and open it up to the committee members. If you can state your name again, your role if you're a teacher, a community member, an employee, and then please if you can share about your school experience that
made you feel heard or seen. Would anybody like to start? Sorry, I'll start. Hi. Um, so I'm Dr. Rivas. Um I am the board member for representative board district 2 and um the first memory that came to mind when
you mentioned the question or um the memory was when I was in fifth grade it was Mrs. right? I think that was her name, my my fifth grade teacher. And um what I loved about our class that we had journals and in this journal we can
write whatever we wanted to write, whatever was in our mind, whatever was going on, anything. And then and and these journals were were only seen and read by our teacher. And I remember one time um you know, I was just like in families, a lot of things were going on
in the family. I was feeling really sad. And I remember rewriting it, just pouring my heart out into this journal to this, you know, and um and then, you know, I just turned it in. And then later, you know, um my teacher came and
hugged me and and she just said, um is there anything you want to talk about? Like I felt like she read it and she cared. Um and that's the moment um that I felt I guess seen and heard because as a child your family's going through a lot
of things and you don't necessarily feel seen or heard even by in your own family because things are happening and then but I I just felt that warmth and love and that she cared and she actually I was like oh she actually read it and she came up to me and hugged me and and and
just opened herself to to dialogue and and to share more feelings. So that's the moment that really felt heard and seen. Wonderful. Thank you. So I'm going to move now to my left. So we can start with Miss Cox. This is a really good question. I
haven't thought about this in years as I'm sitting here thinking I guess it goes back to second grade for me. Um and just having a teacher who really believed in me and I remember uh that we had an activity in class. What do you want to be when you grow up? And I can
distinctly remember that I said, you know, I want to be a lawyer because I want to be a voice for others. And um over the course of second grade and even through the years thereafter, that teacher always reached out to me about what I said that day. And um the great
thing about that is that has resonated with me throughout my life and and thankfully I was able to, you know, actually uh meet that goal. And so I think about that teacher all the time. So, it is very important that, you know, we spend time to speak to young people
so that they feel like they're heard. Thank you. I'll move to the back. Miss Scott. Hi, Marcia Scott. Um, I'm a staff member with the district. Um, my earliest memory, a school memory that made me
feel seen and heard, I was third grade and my teacher was Miss Rondon. And I've never forgotten her because I always felt invisible in school. I was shy and not um very open to feedback and kind of just stayed in the corner, quietly did
my work. And she would go out of her way to ask questions because she knew I knew the answer. But me not raising my hand wasn't because I didn't know the answer. It was because I didn't want to be in the spotlight. and she changed my life
in helping me to gain the confidence to be able to speak um and to be able to be in a situation like this in front of other people speaking. Um it started with her. Love it. Okay, I'm moving back to the front. Miss Toes
Taz. Um Taz, thank you. Um, I was thinking about it and I I think that uh or an early memory is that I don't think my art was was very good, but I really loved making art. And there was one teacher who would put some art up behind
her desk. And one day she came and she asked me if she could put what I was working on behind her desk. And that made me feel really good and seen. Even if it wasn't great, it it was accepted for that space and felt nice. Sweet. Okay, Scott.
Oh, man. Yeah, he's part of our I usually stay out of this stuff. I know instantly the answer to this question, though. Um uh let's see, sixth grade, Mr. Don Littton at uh Limrich Elementary School. Um he he could tell pretty
clearly that um though I was a troubled child, I was I was smart enough to do school work. And he would he would take his precious precious time and talk to me about what procrastination is. And he would tell me like in very simple terms
that I could understand even though I was constantly moving uh the negative effects it could have as I go on. And I think about it uh to this day in this job that I have now. So like it really I mean he just nailed me. So
all right, Miss Bogarts. I am Amy Burgers. I am a deaf educator. Um, been working for the district for a lot of years. I'm having a hard time with that
question and I think it's actually appropriate that we're talking about inclusion because being the only deaf child, the only disabled child in that classroom, I never got that and I
was judged harshly because I didn't pay attention, because I didn't hear. I if I were to look at a book in advance to figure out where we were we were my hand would be slapped. So advocating for myself was a really difficult thing when
you're little. It's really hard to advocate for yourself. So I think this form is so important. What I do is so important because I try to acknowledge my students that I
work with and make them see feel seen and heard to validate their experiences in an allhe hearing environment and being the only deaf person and feeling different and feeling left out. So I can
take my sadness of feeling isolated as a kid and try to use that to unify our students and show them their strengths. Thank you. Turning something around for
others. Wonderful. I'll move back to Miss Thomas Parker. Good afternoon everyone. Um, I can say my experience was in the second grade. I went to 107 Street School. Uh, my second grade teacher was my mentor and that's
how I got started with LUSD. Um, I learned a lot from her. Um, she just would embrace me because I had a lot of challenges in coming up as a child. And so as I learned from her, I would always go back when I graduated from elementary
school, from middle school to high school, go back and volunteer to help her and assist her. And when I graduated from high school, I was hired for LUSD. And so I've been with district ever since. And I noticed that one of the things that is very important to me is to be around strong leaders. And I can
say learning from her has taught me a lot in my leadership, in my role. Um, I can say that I'm very grateful for the experience with someone that embraced me that is not my real parent, but is my godparent. And I have been able to be successful with LUSD due to the
encouragement and just her embracing me and being able to teach me how to carry myself from childhood all the way up to high school. And that's why I'm here with district right now. Thank you. Wonderful. Uh, Scott. Yes.
So, in Philadelphia in ninth grade, I chose Spanish as uh my elective and I had the most wonderful teacher. Her name was Joan Lucas Ber. I still remember her and she really um interested me in in
Spanish and becoming a Spanish teacher. And through her encouragement, I joined the Future Teachers of America, the FTA, and I majored in Spanish. and I graduated college as a Spanish teacher. And then when I went to a professional
development for teachers, guess who was sitting next to me? Joan Lucas Ber the my mentor. So that was a eyeopening experience for me seeing my teacher again who encouraged me. Thank you.
Wonderful. All right, Mr. Martin Flores. Hi, I'm Ari Forest and the one experience I had was that when back in sixth grade I had this teacher name Miss Amber. Sorry. Um I would I would be like
really a shy person that I wouldn't be really able to speak up to myself or really wouldn't interact with any other people. And that's when she came in and then she told me that that it is okay for me to like for me to speak up and try to be able to like be open-minded to
myself and that whenever I try doing that I just I just think to myself that like I overthink that I don't think that people just like listen to me like what I really say or do I even matter to myself. But Miss Amber changed that the way who I am and that's why how am I
here that I'm here in this committee meeting that I am be able to speak up and that's really proud of what I've been saying to so wonderful thank you for sharing and Mr. Mary Gleani.
I think for me I struggled in school. Um but it wasn't until college when I actually read my first book from cover to cover. Um it was of mice and men and I really was able to have some insight and uh added to the dialogue and that's
where I kind of felt like I belonged. Wow. So beautiful. Thank you. I think I covered every Mr. Mr. Sto, you can share your experience before you present. And the same thing with Miss Hos, please. Um, I want to share for me it was fourth
grade at Alexandria Elementary School. My teacher, uh, Miss Yano was when, uh, she was Cuban, and she was the first teacher that spoke my language, and it was the first time for parent conference that I did not have to translate for my
parents. And I loved Miss Yano. She then became she married a man named the last name Crab. None of us liked him because of that name. She didn't care. She married him anyway. Um but Miss, you know, Miss Yano just brought us opened
up the world for us. She would travel and she would bring pictures of her travels, share about her travels. She would camp. I didn't know anybody who camped. She talked about camping. She would cook for us and cook different types of foods for us and just opened up
my world. and um and yeah, she she saw me, she heard me, she she just was right there similar to everybody else. It's that teacher, that person that uh notices you, right? And does something
that lets you know that one you exist and you matter and you have a place in in this society. So, um, I chose that question because today we are going to be listening the summary report of the
listening campaign that was uh, launched by the division of special education. We're going to hear what our families, what our educators, what our students said about their educ uh, their experience in special education. I'm
very excited to to hear this. So, um, with that, I'm going to hand it off to Mr. Sto. And if you can, uh, begin and please, as your presenters come up, please share your moment when you felt heard and seen. Thank you.
Got any questions today? And also I just want to remind you that this presentation is going to be done in three parts. And so there will be a presentation and then we will pause for questions that you have but I also have some discussion questions that you can
choose to respond to um during your during our discussion. So there'll be three opportunities. Also, I do think we're going to have people from special education division in the back in case there's anybody from the audience who
did not get a chance to speak. They can um talk to somebody in the back after our meeting. Uh anything that has to do with special ed, anything that comes up for you during this presentation. All right. Thank you.
Good afternoon, everybody. Jose Sto, executive director of special education. Uh before before I begin, I just want to thank uh board member Grego for providing this platform for uh allowing the division of special ed to share uh the summary and next steps around this
process that we took uh in listening to our stakeholders around special education. And just to add to the table that we have, we have uh two representatives from the division of special education. We have Claudia Viadarees and Lilia Moran who are outside of the boardroom with the table
and they also have resources, updates, information for upcoming events, important information that they're happy to pass out to any family or members that come uh and come visit the table. They're also there to take any concerns so that we can follow up as needed. So, just wanted to echo that and that'll be
something that we'll do moving forward at all spec committees. So again, thank you for for allowing me this space to share uh the outcome of our listen and learn campaign. Um I'm wrapping up my second year as executive director of special ed. Um and this past
year uh we embarked on this listen and learn campaign. Um and I will say that it was a labor of love to say the least. uh because it was a pretty big lift as as far as like visiting all the regions including our virtual academy and
options. uh having meetings with stakeholders, having real robust conversations with our stakeholders, and then also sending out a survey and collecting that data and analyzing the data and then kind of identifying those emerging themes and putting together this plan of things that we're currently
doing and how we're going to expand the action steps in support of some of the recommendations that we heard. I am also going to be joined by two outstanding administrators who support the Division of Special Education. Uh Alicia Hos, our administrator of instruction, will be
co-presenting in addition to Kristen Lambert, our administrator of operations. All right. So before we begin, I just want to ground us in the vision of the division of special education. Our vision is to inspire all students to reach their maximum potential as
productive and responsible citizens. Our mission is to provide leadership, guidance, and support to the school community in order to maximize learning for all students within an inclusive environment so that each student will contribute contribute to and benefit from our our diverse
society. So the work in the division of special education is led by four big priorities. number one, instruction. Number two, operations. Number three, substantial compliance. And number four, engagement, communication. Those four um priorities
are aligned to the pillars in the strategic plan. As you can see, we have uh strategic plan pillars that are around academic excellence, joint wellness, operational effectiveness, investing in staff, and engagement and collaboration.
So the purpose of the listen and learn campaign was to get an idea of where we are with special education. Coming into this position, I wanted to be able to have an opportunity to hear from our stakeholders to be able to hear what are some things that are working, what are
some areas of opportunity that we can listen to and then take those recommendations and expand the work that we're currently doing. Um we did have a methodology that we followed. We it was mixed method. We wanted to ensure that we were hearing uh from stakeholders directly uh through focus groups and we
also sent out a survey that collected some quantitative data in addition to more qualitative data that uh was input into the survey. And of course the vision was to ensure that all students disabilities receive a high quality education. The process that we followed for the listen and learn was to learn,
listen, assess and act. But the most important component of this process was to listen. Um through this process again we engaged with many stakeholders and in the beginning I had a hard time just listening without responding and the whole purpose of the listen and learn
campaign is to listen and to understand. So I limited my talking. We we transcribed all of the comments that were made by our stakeholders in an anonymous way, but just to be able to capture those salient points and really take what they were
saying. And then ultimately, as we received this data and we we analyzed it, the goal was to take all of this information from our stakeholders, be able to analyze the data, identify those emerging themes, and then act on it. So, this wasn't something that's done in a
vacuum. our goal was to really uh act and make changes to some of the work that we're doing to better address for example communication right so so we can really start identifying those areas where we need to expand our
work so as part of this process uh we engaged in 31 focus groups throughout the district um focus groups included parents uh educational partners ers such as regional center, our CAC, our sped committee, our charter school executive
board, our deaf education committee. We also had focus groups with our par educators, with our teachers, with our assistant principal EIS's, with principles and regional leadership. This piece was very important because we were able to hear directly from
stakeholders who were boots on the ground and teachers and pared educators from our regional staff and we were able to really have a robust conversation around those focus questions, those guiding questions around special ed. um very candid responses from our stakeholders, which was the whole idea
of listening to our stakeholders because it's good to hear the it's great to hear what's going well, but it's also important to hear those areas that we may need to focus on and expand our work and acknowledge some of those areas. And it was really uh enlightening to hear
some of the experiences that our parents shared around their experience in special ed and how they're navigating the IEP process. And it was a it was it was good information for us because that's going to help guide some trainings that we're going to push forward as we move forward from this
process. Our survey participants I wanted just to highlight we had over,200 survey responses. Um and there you can see that our biggest respondents were our parents and our teachers. And then after we collected this data, we identified those emerging
themes. We wanted to hear from our professional experts in the field. So we engaged with three professional partners. Kristen Wright, who is an executive director for the Sacramento County Office of Education, with Dr. Victoria Graph, who is a former assistant academic program director of
LMU, who's also been part of our SPED committee. Uh, and we also engage with Dr. Chuck Flores, who's an associate professor at Cal State. uh LA so to hear their feedback and their recommendations around this work. And now I'm going to introduce
Alicia Hos who will be coming up to share our findings and summarizing our next steps for pillars one and two which is academic excellence and joy and wellness. Oh sorry I forgot to share my my story. So, thank you for asking that
question because I think as educators, we compartmentalize those teachers that always stay in your mind that touched your life in some way. And I have three. I have one in junior college, Dr. Kerry. I have one in middle school, Miss Moreno. And I have one in second grade, Miss Biza. So, I'll talk about Miss
Baza. Um, I was quite an active student uh growing up. And uh sometimes uh I was a student that they turned the card to red and we're going to call your mom or whatever the case may be. But sometimes I'd come home
with notes stapled on my shirt or two. So I remember Miss Miss Baza, she recognized some strengths and I didn't know what it was at the time because I was a kid, but I was a monitor. A monitor for everything. The light monitor, the I was a the mailman. And I
what she was really doing was she was anticipating anticedants before I performed any undesired behavior like get up or walk around. So when she noticed that I was starting to get fidgety, she say, "Uh, Jose, I need you to take this to the office." And I get up, go to the office, come back. So as I
as I as the year progressed, less getting in trouble. I remember she made me go up to the front, hold the big book as she was reading the story so I so I wouldn't be fidgety. Uh, but I started thinking like what a great idea now that I'm an educator because monitors were really important when I was a teacher
being able to have somebody be the light monitor or this or that, right? So, but I know now that she was doing it as a way to help me not get into trouble but to help me stay on task. So, Miss Baza, thank you so much. I appreciate that. So, I'll pass it off to Alicia now.
Thank you for sharing. I love that. All right. Well, thank you so very much. Um, I really appreciated the question as well. Um, I'm going to be talking a little bit today about student voice and self- advocacy as part of the presentation. So, it really touched my heart that this was the question you
selected because it's something we think as the division of special education is so critical as well. Um, my story, I I was not the student who was fidgety. I was the student that perhaps was a little too studious. And so, I remember um the teacher that stands out to me is
my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Beverly Jacobs from Shirley Avenue Elementary School. And Miss Beverly Jacobs made me promise if I ever got in front of a microphone, I would thank her. So, Miss Jacobs, wherever you are, this is for you. It's all your fault. Um, but the reality is is she was somebody who spoke to us not just as students, but as
students with a future. She was somebody who really spoke to us not just about what do you want to be, but what can you be? What is possible for you? And so when we all came up with all of our ideas, I mean now today it's to be a social media empire, right? But in those days it was to be a dancer, to be a
doctor, to be an attorney, to um work in schools as teachers. She always would push the envelope and ask you to explain and express what was it about that and then help us identify other opportunities in the world around us that might connect to those same skills. So, she just sort of expanded our
thinking and I really appreciated that as a student, but more importantly as an adult. Um, and I think it really did to Mr. McClean's point, it still impacts me today to think about stretching beyond what comes to mind as my comfort place
and reaching beyond that to where where might be possible. So, I really appreciated Miss Beverly Jacobs, fourth grade, Shirley Avenue Elementary School, LUSD. Of course. Of course. All right. So today I'm here to talk to you about academic excellence and joy and wellness. I'm going to be walking us
through our recent findings and our next steps tied to those two particular areas. And we know that these areas are essential when we're talking about ensuring highquality instruction and a sense of belonging for our students regardless of who they are, where they come from, and what their ability level
might be. So when reflecting on academic excellence, we really wanted to understand what was it that our educational partners were seeing, observing, feeling, and experiencing in the community. So when we looked at the emerging themes that came through in our
data analysis, we were able to identify that there was a definite recognition of the variety of program options that we have here in Los Angeles Unified School District for students with disabilities. Um, for those of us that have been in the system our entirety, um, we may not
be aware that Los Angeles Unified has far more options than many other neighboring school districts and we have the opportunity for many students to come to us specifically for our special education services. So, that was recognized and acknowledged by the teams. The inclusive classroom
opportunities was something that came forward. Um, we noticed that many of the respondents commented on the the feeling of belonging that came with inclusive settings and opportunities and the feeling of being seen and being heard
and being recognized not for one's disability but for what one has to offer and their their right to have that same education. So that was something that people really felt very strongly was a positive. Having said all of that, um there still were areas that under this
umbrella became very clear to us. Um looking at that need for instructional consistency, being sure that the teaching strategies that are being used in classrooms, the level of rigor in classrooms, the access to materials in our classrooms, making sure that that
was consistently not only provided but implemented with similar fashion so that all students had access and opportunity. Um the other piece of that was around the professional development that goes into play and ensuring that all of our educators have as many
opportunities for professional growth as possible. So when we look at our current practices under high quality instruction, some of the things that we noticed um was what is it we're really doing? And when you look at our slides moving forward, you'll see this structure and this format. What are our
current practice and what are the actions we're going to be taking? because we want to make sure that we recognize the work that our educators are doing now in the field. They're working very, very hard to support all students. We want to acknowledge that, but we also want to acknowledge our areas for opportunity as we move
forward. One of the things that we've been doing to improve our instructional practices is focusing on strengthening our tools and our strategies. And one example of that is that this year we created a division of special education instructional resource guide that
included classroom look force. And we wanted to make sure that we were providing clear guidance for our leaders, but also for our teachers in what does an effective special education program look like? What were those indicators that when you walk into a classroom, you just know you see good
instruction? And so we created a tool to assist both our administrators and our teachers with that. This year, we also implemented a structured literacy intervention program alongside with our division of instruction colleagues. and we introduced a diploma option that
includes an alternate assessment um exemption. So we have students who historically may not have been on a path towards a diploma and now with current legislation in the state of California were able to offer that and LUSD we've presented on that in the past and was an
early adopter of that work and we're very very proud of that. And then of course we have ongoing professional development for all of our stakeholders to ensure that they feel as empowered as they possibly can to deliver quality instruction for our students. Moving forward, we're
committed to expanding our professional development offerings both in scope and frequency. We know that where there are areas where we have been providing tremendous supports around inclusive education, around instructional practices. We've been providing a lot of professional development for general
education teachers and par educators, but we know that we need to do more. And so we have developed and are developing comprehensive training programs for both our special educators and our general educators as well as our parah educators. We worked with our division
of instruction colleagues and we're going to continue that work this year to ensure that we're embedding all of those best practices not just in PD that's done by the division of special education but also across all departments to make sure that all departments are meeting the diverse needs of all students including those
with disabilities. And then finally we talked about um our behavior symposiums. We know that behavior is an area where we've been asked for additional opportunities for learning and growth. And so in the past, we've offered behavior symposiums specifically for our
PAR educators. And our hope moving forward this year is that we're going to be providing those same opportunities for our administrators and our classroom teachers. All right. So in looking at inclusive practices in the least restrictive environment, um we've seen positive gains with supporting our
students with disabilities in the least restrictive environment. We are extremely proud to offer a micro credential for our general education teachers to enhance their support of students with disabilities in their program. And I do want to point out this is the only program of its kind in the
country. So once again, LUSD is pioneering the work. Our summer of learning options this year are have expanded. We have over 14 um choice sessions that we're offering for all educators to participate in considering ways to
increase the access for students with disabilities within the professional development modules that they're receiving, but also within the instructional practices that they're implementing in their classrooms. and we're continuing to offer our ongoing year-round professional development for teachers.
Moving forward, one of the things that came through in the responses from our stakeholders was an interest in providing um feedback through a multitude of opportunities. So, we're moving forward with looking at how we can conduct surveys of our of our field,
of our families, of our community, of our teachers in an ongoing manner, as well as focus groups for families and our community partners. Um, we're going to be expanding our district-wide implementation of universal design for learning. We know that when we teach our
instructional program to support learners with a diverse level of need and we are intentional about that instructional planning, we can serve students in a less restrictive environment. We're going to expand that microcredential opportunity. This year
we have our first cohort. They're just finishing. June 7th is their graduation. um and we look forward to getting feedback from them and starting our cohort number two in the fall. We're going to continue to work on
developing our model classrooms for inclusive practices with our instructional partners. We have several educational partners we work with including supporting innovative practices or SIP which we are a grant fune for. Um Cedar, Dr. Flores who was one of the uh contributors is a member
of the Cedar group. Um and we have a lot of other agencies that we participate with to sort of help us develop our skill set and ensure that the skill set that we're providing to our teachers is top-notch. So we are going to be working with them to work at with some of our schools that are leading the way with
inclusive practice to develop model classrooms and provide um supports and resources to those schools as well as others who want strive to be model programs. And then this year, um, our extended school year program, our ESY program, we're going to be implementing an inclusive model. So, we will be
having our students with disabilities and our ESY programs on the same campuses as our general education peers. And we're very excited about that. I really appreciated the question, as I said, board member GGO, and then Mr. Flores, your comment about being seen and using your voice really stood
out to me. Um when we talked about pillar two, we were looking at joy and wellness and thinking about how does the work we do impact joy and wellness. And when we looked at the data that we received from our focus groups and from our surveys, what we saw was that there
was an emphasis on the impact of fostering a sense of belonging. Everybody wants to feel that they're part of the community. supports like psychological services have helped with that and other wellness programs, but we know that there's still
work to do, especially around empowering students to take an active role in their IEPs and use their voice for self- advocacy. So, I'm excited that Mr. Flores, you had the opportunity to have a mentor who really showed you that and and and helped you to access that part
of yourself because that's really the key, right? As adults, that's what we do every day. we have to advocate for ourselves. And what a beautiful representation that you had that opportunity. When we look at current practice and actions to be taken, student
voice and self- advocacy are critical to that work. And we know that there is no better place for a student to have that opportunity than at the IEP meeting. To to support that, we created a student IEP participation toolkit. We wanted to
make sure we had resources available for schools to understand different ways students might participate in the IEP process and in their educational program. We did training for our assistant principles on the best practices in determining not only what are possibilities but how to determine
what's appropriate for an individual student to participate. And then we've been monitoring student participation to see is that growing? Are we seeing more opportunities for our students? And I'm very excited that to to share that um in looking at the data so far collected
this May in comparison to last May, there was a 69% increase in the number of students participating in their IEPs. And I know that we'll talk a little bit more about that. Um but I do want to say that that is something that ranges based on the ability of the student, that level of participation. Okay. So moving
forward, we're going to be doing some additional training for teachers on student engagement strategies. We want them to really feel confident in determining when and what is appropriate and again just like Mrs. Jacobs, how to stretch a little bit beyond that and give those students the opportunity to engage in their instructional program.
We want to make sure we're engaging our families and understanding the criticalness of building student voice and self- advocacy for our students. We know our families are very committed to their children and want very much to support them and help them to succeed.
But part of that is also allowing our students to flourish and gain that independence. And so we want to help our families really engage with that work and understand where that fine line really is. That students still need support, but we also need to provide our students opportunity and helping our families be able to determine when that
might be appropriate versus when that might not be the best choice. And then we want to find examples like Mr. Flores that we can highlight and celebrate their self- advocacy and their participation in the IEP process. We want them to understand that that's an important part of their educational
program and that we're so very proud that they are able to use that voice to speak up to advocate for whatever it is that they need, whatever it is that they feel needs to be said, and that they are seen and heard at every meeting, not just at an IEP meeting, but every meeting that they participate on campus,
every classroom they engage in, and every opportunity with their peers and their their educators. So, with that, I'm not sure. Are we going to take a break between Um, yes. Going to pause. So, thank you so much uh Miss Hos for
your presentation. Um, we want to take a pause right now and think about what we've heard. We do have some questions if they can be um displayed. Oh, they are over there. All right. So, these are some questions that um we have for you
to engage us in a discussion. But of course, if you have questions of your own that you want to ask of them, some clarifying questions or comments, please feel free. But I pose these for us to talk about. Um, so what types of investments and student supports are
needed to create an equitable inclusive classroom environment and what does it look like when student voice is a significant part of the IEP process. So we could engage in that conversation. um here amongst us and or you could ask
your own question during this time. So I'm opening it up for discussion. Sure. I just Hello testing 123. Um, I just wanted to go back to the PowerPoint because there was one part
that said that you collected information from the deaf education committee and since I'm part of the deaf education program, what committee was that? The advisory, the deaf advisory committee. Okay. The HR advisory committee. Okay. I just wanted to make
sure that it wasn't something I didn't know about. Now, I wanted to talk about the pillar one, the academic excellence with a variety of program options. Um, one thing I have noticed and I, like
I said, I've been working for the district for a very long time and prior to the full inclusion model being rolled out. As we know, the IEP through IDA is the primary premise
is to make sure that the students are educated with their non-disabled peers to the maximum extent possible. So I bring that with me when I work with my students and advocate for them which also means that we need to be providing
a wide range of services. I know you had said we do have a lot but I have noticed that there have been closures of the autism classes SLD classes ID
classes and if we're educating students to the maximum extent possible where are those classes for them that that's their maximum extent so we're putting them in one of three
buckets this fully mainstreamed in a Jed classroom, maybe a few special day classes or in a way more restrictive environment like a non-public school. Where are the classes in between
or the programs? So I I is okay if I Okay. Um I I So first of all, thank you for your question. Um, I think that it is fair to say that there are programs that close, but I think it's only fair to say that when we also say that there are programs that open. So, every year,
outside of talking about inclusive practice as a district, we have a responsibility, just like general education does, to look at who are our students that we serve, what are the needs of those students that we serve, and what programs based on an IEP team decision, which includes a family, are
appropriate for that particular student. And so yes, there are programs that have closed both SDC, RSP, but the same way there are general education classes that close and again all of those also open. So based on the needs of the student that are documented in the IEP, every
year we have a responsibility at both norm day and in anticipation of the next school year. We call that ECAST to look at the numbers of students that we serve and what have the IEP teams for those students determined is their least restrictive environment. For some students that might be general education
with support. For some students that might be a special day class. For some students that might be a non-public school or a pro or some other type of program, a Carlson homeschool hospital type program. That's based on what the IEP team says. And so there is a natural
movement that happens each year of programs opening and closing based on the needs that are identified by an IEP team and the numbers of those students. Is it possible to get a list of those programs and where they're located so
that that way it's a little more transparent where these programs are? We can certainly have that conversation. I can bring that back to leadership. I'll pause here. I have more questions as always. Okay. Thank you. Sure. Thank
you, Miss Bogarts. Anybody else have a question to them or um some responses, some ideas on what types of investments and student supports do we need in order to create an equitable inclusive
classroom environment? That's our ideas. What do we think and what is our idea of a student uh where student voice is present in the IEP process? So yes,
Scott, a quick operational question. So you're going to have opportunities for professional development in the summer. So teachers who are teaching extended year program
EYP and teachers who may be sunning themselves on the coast of Malaga. Will there be another advantage or another chance for them to take this professional development other than the summer? The summer is great because everybody supposedly is off, right? So is there another time that you're
considering? Yes, there is. Actually, we offer professional development throughout the year. The summer PD that I was referring to is the summer PD that all teachers, all educators have access to during the summer. It's a specific two days in the uh in the summer right before the school year begins for them
to come back and have a professional growth opportunity, but we do have uh repeat sessions of those. That's what I want. And we do have things in my PLN and thank you. So, yes, we do have that. Yes. Go ahead, Miss Tase. Hi there. Um,
I'm I'm going to speak to the bottom question. What does it look like when student voice is a significant part of the IEP process? I think a lot of times that we think of student participation in the IEP as the student there at the IEP meeting sharing something or having
some sort of input. And I think that that's important, but I think sometimes we forget about the IEP process being that whole year. And I think the meaningful participation of the student really comes in the process in which the
whole team checks in with that student in ways that are accessible and um maybe not as formal as we're going to sit down, we're going to talk about your IEP, but more, hey, we just did this activity. Did that did these supports
feel good? Did was there something missing? um and that question might not be an accessible question. So thinking about how can I ask this student in a way that they can share with me how they felt about the supports being provided.
I think that's meaningful participation. I think transparency about um about supports and what students have access to and when they should be receiving those and advocating for students to advocate for receiving those
supports. I think that's that's one thing. Um, and I think it should be planned just like we do our um uh progress reports a few times a year. I think those are the points in time where we should reflect on well what student
input have I collected as a special education teacher just so that there is sort of planned times to do that. I think that might be helpful. I would agree. Thank you. Thank you. I took note of that. I've got it here. Um, anybody
else? Um, move to the back. This Thomas Parker, can you elaborate a little bit more on the expand training for the pair of professionals? I noticed we have a lot of BII training, but what other
trainings are you expanding on for the paraprofessionals? We're currently developing training for paraprofessionals both for newly hired paraprofessionals and also our veteran paraprofessionals that yes will absolutely have a behavior component to them but also looking at roles and
responsibilities, how to meet them the um personal needs of students. um the instructional program and how they can support with small groupoup instruction, understanding disability awareness, um looking at um how they are documenting
information when it does when there is an opportunity for them to document something when um looking at early education and how we support our earliest learners. So there's a variety of modules that we're creating. Um and we're looking at modules that will both
be um asynchronous, synchronous. We're creating a an ongoing it would be throughout the year opportunity for pair professionals that's very intentionally planned. So will they be in-person training or is this would just be on my PL? It'll be a combination. and we've been working with the personnel
commission to ensure that we are um collaborating to make sure that we're addressing all of the expectations of the personnel commission and staying within class codes and um doing all of that as well. But we are doing this in collaboration with HR and the personnel commission. And then I have one more
question. I noticed that the healthcare assistants are also um acting as a role of a par profofessional as well. So what training would you have to expand a little bit more to assist for them to be included in this particular training? So the paraprofessional training that we're
planning is for all of our para educators. So even our healthcare assistants um our baseline providers our our BII or behavior implementation impleers they all would have the opportunity to participate with the training. Okay. Thank you. Yeah.
So good. Yes. All right. Go ahead, Mr. M Mary Glami. I I actually was going to address the first one. Um so I think it's important to look at um sometimes flipping the script when it looks like inclusion uh
equitable inclusion. Uh this Saturday uh my school which is a career and transition center we developed a uh underwater uh ocean robotics program uh where my students have built all the obstacles and we've opened it up to the
general education students and rather than my students pushing in I've got schools with weight lists to join our program and work with us. So sometimes our kids are in special ed and are in
there for a reason and sometimes they don't fit going back in. So looking at different ways of creating things where our students are the leads and having uh gened come in and be part of what we're doing uh is important.
I love that. Oh my gosh. So cool. You love You have a question. Okay. Go ahead. Yes. So, I liked your answer about self advocacy, but my question would be um what's the appropriate role for the
teacher to take when engaging the students? What's the appropriate role? I I would say that's very specific to the individual student. I know that Dr. Soda wants to add something. Okay. So, I I am also the father of a student with disabilities. My son is on the
modified court in middle school and this year was the first year that my son participated in his own IEP. Um, when we talk about a voice is significant, this was his metriculation IEP uh because he's going to high school
next year and we had to choose between three different high schools. and just having him come in and do a brief little PowerPoint about things that he's learning, things that he likes, and share that with us. And my son, sometimes we need to prompt him to
speak, but once he started to speak and talk about things that he's doing, it really helped guide the conversation around instruction goals. Also, when we were discussing the high schools, each high school had different strands for
for um focus. So having them be able to say, "Oh, I'm interested in cooking." Right? That helped guide our decision to send him to this high school so that he can access that program. Just having my son be an active part of his educational program and
being able to see him take part in the conversation. As a father, I was very proud. My wife was very proud. although he didn't although obviously we'd want him to be able to provide more feedback but just having him there and sharing
what he could do some of the things some of the things he hated or because I I hate music right but being able to hear from him and that's what we're trying to to promote at our school sites we know that every child is different their role of participation will be different but
having a child come in and start being part of their IEP process and I hear what Dr. Dr. T is saying it's not just one time a year. This is ensuring that we are monitoring the IEPs, the goals, the benchmarks, and having that conversation with families to give them
an update of how is my child progressing, right? But being able to have your child come in and share and talk about their likes or dislikes at whatever capacity it is is so good for the IEP team to hear because then he got
to sign that he participated. And again, um, to your question, it depends on, you know, what what a teacher would like a student to say or what the student can be able to share at the IEP meeting. There's different levels of participation. We just want to encourage
participation at whatever level so our students can be an active part of their IEP process. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to add really quickly as part of the participation toolkit, that's what it talks about. It talks about how do you engage your student throughout the year in preparation for the meeting and then what could it look like at the
meeting. So it is something that is an opportunity to practice our listening and speaking goals really looking at how are we engaging our students in understanding the purpose of the work that they're doing and the intention of that work. So it's moving them through a process throughout the the entirety of
the year. Wonderful. Dr. read this. I mean, apart from the toolkit um that you mentioned, um are there other systemic changes that can be considered to better integrate um a student voice and so self- advocacy in
the IEP process at an earlier stage or what else beyond the the toolkit can can be systematically changed in the IEP process for students? I think the part of the Oh, go ahead. Oh, I was just going to share an a
suggestion, but you can go first. No. Um, I was just thinking, you know, there's all these different parts of the IEP that we share about. We share about present levels of this and that, and we share about parent input. Um, but in the IEPs that I've personally done and that
I've seen other students do recently, there isn't a time like a spot in the IEP meeting where we talk about student input except in our transition IEPs. Obviously, we have transition plans and there's some student input there. But for younger students, I I don't know
that there's that designated time. Um and and not to say that the student has to be there and doing it, but a time for the teacher to reflect on, you know, their conversations with the student about um about their goals or their
um feelings about their placement or their accessibility of um social or academic materials. I think that might be cool. Let me just going to bring us back to your question um and what Dr. Innesota was sharing before. For some of
our students, um, it's going to be a student coming in and simply introducing themselves. They've been working up all year the opportunity to be able to say their name and share who they are and just introduce themselves or introduce their parent or escort them to the space. In some cases, it's going to be a student on the complete opposite of the
spectrum who can facilitate the entirety of the meeting. It's really based on what is appropriate for that particular student. And so when you talk about what other systematic things besides the toolkit, I think that's where the training really comes in handy. It's really about understanding what is appropriate and where there's opportunity, how do we work with our
students throughout the year to hear them and see them as partners in the process as an active participant. And I think that that's really the key going back to what Mr. Flores was saying, you know, just having somebody have an opportunity to converse with a student and encourage them that it is okay to
say what you think and what you need and what you want. um and that's a critical part of the process. So I think systematically the first thing we need to do is work on the mindset and helping people understand what's possible and that it's not an expectation that every student is there for the entirety. Um it's not the expectation that every
student will look the same as in their participation whether it's a picture that they drew that the teacher brings to the meeting and the student's not there. Um it can be a variety of ways but I think that we need to look at how do we engage just like we talk about engaging our parents as partners. How
are we engaging our students as partners because this is their story and our role should be to facilitate and to support their role should be to live the leading part right so I think that um that's going to be done through some additional trainings but I think it's a very good
question thank you all right we're going to continue please hold on to your questions write them down you can bring them up in the next section um so go ahead Mr. Sto. So needless to say, this area of
the focus groups elicited the most conversation, the most robust conversation from our parents, from our teachers, from our stakeholders because we're talking about engagement. How do we engage families uh and collaboration?
So for some of the emerging themes that uh were shared by respondents were that parent engagement opportunities are increasing through ambassador workshops. Also that community partnerships are growing to support families. Also families need more accessible and clear
information, transparent information. So an area was enhancing parent engagement. So currently as you guys are aware we are updating our website. We now have a a new website uh server that we're using. So we're updating the website. We're trying to make it uh really user
friendly to have fingertip facts to have those documents that parent may need at the touch of a of a button. In addition to that uh we collaborate with our CAC when it comes to uh developing the uh SULPA plan. Um, and those are things that we're currently doing. We also
collaborate with our SFACE department, our student family engagement office, and we collaborate with them when it comes to ambassadors trainings, being able to uh work with them in delivering professional development for our parents. And as you guys know, we have the region ambassadors which happen uh
at each region. So, we definitely are embedded in that work as well and providing opportunities for professional development for our families. And lastly, virtual workshops are available uh on the website. So if a parent might have missed a workshop, there's an opportunity where they can click and
watch a virtual uh workshop that was provided. So how we're going to expand this work, something that we've thought about and we want to really promote and and push is family resource fairs. So we want to have a special education parent and family resource fair uh at each
region. So it's closer to home for our families. Uh we want to have an opportunity to have our partners come and table whether it's regional center uh child uh children uh California children services be able to have our teams out there doing activities with parents and families and really make it
a day to provide resources and information around special ed for our families uh in each region. In addition to that, we want to encourage parents to either participate in the ambassador trainings or to watch the ambassador trainings. So, we want to promote uh watch parties at our school sites. So,
at each parent center when the ambassador trainers are going on, if there's watch parties are scheduled at the parent center, parents can go to their local school site, watch the training, and then have a network of other families or parents that are student are families with students disabilities and create a network there
within their small school community. Um, we also want to continue the conversation around listen and learn. Um we felt that this first goal of listening to all of our stakeholders across the district was very very powerful and we want to continue that work. So, we want to be able to localize
that and start having listen and learn uh sessions at our regions or coffee with the with the division of special ed and be able to hear from our stakeholders uh and continue this work so we can continue to acknowledge areas
that we need to expand on and be able to pivot and and create action steps. Uh and then lastly, we want to continue to organize or we want to organize workshop for parents focused on supporting their child at home. uh whether it's instructional support, behavioral support, uh we want to continue to offer
those opportunities for our parents. And then in the area of fostering community engagement, currently we collaborate with with partners to promote services service delivery in the LRE. We definitely uh we also partner with our uh department of rehabilitation uh supporting the work
that we do with our students here in LA Unified. We also have project search which was a great opportunity for our students to uh work uh at hospitals uh as as interns uh and we have that uh spread across uh LA USD at certain hospitals where our students are
working. Uh we also uh collaborate with the center of advance advanced transition skills and one big feather in our cap is a very special arts festival which happened last week. uh it was really uh well attended by our students, our student performers, students from other school districts and it brought
together the arts and the focus was on science and then we are also collaborating with the depart with the division of instruction on this on the dyslexia work group actions that we're going to take to expand the work is we definitely want to continue meeting or
meet with newer or more uh higher ed institutions. Uh currently we meet with universities to work on recruitment of special education teachers but to continue that work uh so that we can create this network of of educators that will graduate and come back to LA Unifi
to teach here in our district. Um again we also want to offer more workshop for parents that's focused on supporting students in the LRE. And I want to be very clear um when we talk about inclusion inclusion we offer a continuum
of program options. We are not closing special day programs and pushing all students into the general ed. Our goal is to have students uh educated with their general peers to the to the best of their abilities based on their IEP team decision. So, um again, I just
wanted to I think there's been there might be some misinformation about what inclusion is. A lot of times we hear, oh, they're closing programs and kids are going into the gen ed. Our goal is to meet the students where they're at and to use the IEP as a driver to decide as a team what would be the best benefit
for a student when it comes to inclusive opportunities. So just wanted to kind of come back and and hit on that point. And we want to also continue to celebrate events but also hold and celebrate more events. For example, we want to really
highlight our cerebral pausy uh world cerebral pausy day. That's something that was recently passed this year. We want to make sure that we're using all of our our social media, our website to really promote that. Also, inclusive schools week is another big uh lift that
happens in December where schools show off how they're using inclusion at their school site and share activities and they post on the on the on their social media. And we also want to continue to highlight autism awareness week and really make sure that we're really uh
promoting those days so that all LUSD knows and and ensure that they're celebrating those days at their school sites. And again, we want to expand our partnership with DACE, our division of adult and career education to find those opportunities to continue to support our students after
postgraduation uh to be able to develop opportunities for our students that uh may attend a CT to have employment opportunities with LA Unified. so that we can continue hiring our students here in LUSD and ensuring equity and communication. So right now the website
platform allows us to select a preferred language. So that's great because they could translate what they're reading on the website. Also uh we offer multilingual support for publications uh documents, videos, and communications. Uh we collaborate with local community organizations to support both language
assistance and the effective distribution of materials. We also uh have computerenerated uh translation of IEPs currently in Spanish, but that's also been something that has been really beneficial because we were able to provide a a translated IEP for parents
as they leave the IEP meeting. Um it's not the official IP, but it's definitely a a translated version of the IP. And things that we want to do to expand this work um based on the recommendations from our stakeholders was we we definitely want to explore expanding
available available language options for recorded parent workshops. We also want to integrate visual aids in in all of our presentations and publications. And we want to use AI recorded videos. This is as you guys know AI is a big movement
right now. So being able to leverage AI to provide AI voice to presentations that is clear uh that is um monotone and is able to be fully understood by anybody who's listening it to it is something that we want to leverage. Um and we want to expand computerenerated
translations to other languages. We want to explore that as well. And then this this uh last area was one of that really elicited uh conversation from all of our stakeholders and that was demystifying the IEP process. Um
currently we have resources and tools on the website that uh parents can util can access around the IEP. Um we also uh enhance the ability to address and resolve parent concerns during the IEP process. Uh we have updated the IEPU and
the ITPU and those are available now on our website as well. Uh we haveformational parent workshop sessions to continue providing uh uh professional development or guidance on parents and empowering parents. Uh and we empower families uh during the IEP process. Uh
we have a presentation of empowering parents on the IEP process. But with that said, there's more work to do. Um some of the salient themes that we heard during the listen and learn from parents was that at times they felt like they were just acquiescing to the IEP team.
They felt like you guys are the the professionals. Whatever you say we'll do, right? And I think that it's a it's a opportunity to really uh create an o to empower our parents to learn about the IEP process to be able to ask questions in a collaborative manner with
the IP team and be an active part in their child's education. Um, so we want to we want to develop uh video video modules for those parents who are probably entering special ed uh so they can have a module to refer to to know what they're coming into as far as being
a parent of a student with disabilities and an IEP and be able to provide that information so when they come into an IEP they have an idea of what I'm coming into, right? And they're able to really actively participate. We want to produce video modules uh around section 504 and the IP process that will be accessible
to all parents. Say that I'm a parent and I have questions about 504, having a visual video module that I can access and watch would be very beneficial. Um also again like really providing a robust overview of the IEP process and supports available uh at parent centers.
We want to empower our parent reps at school sites by training them around the IEP process and maybe not become experts but be able to answer questions and maybe who do they go to if there's a question around services or something who can they go to right so being able to provide that information at parent
centers provide updated materials the same materials that we have out front when you walk out that our division special ed has ensuring that our school sites have access to those materials so they can hand them out to families that go visit the parent center. Um, and then we definitely want to uh have special
education presentations at our school sites. So being able to offer two presentations per year at each school that's either led by our APIs or schoolside administrator on topics around the IEP process or instruction and bringing it to a localized school so
that there's access for parents who may not be able to go to a uh uh training that's you know at regional or at Bodri and bringing it closer to the school site and being able to offer those uh at the school site directly to parents at
that school community. All right. Well, thank you so much. That was a lot and it's one of our favorite pillars, right? I know our parents and I just want to take a moment for the families who are in the audience. If you're not uh going to be speaking
today, uh you can definitely respond to these questions via an email to me or in a little card. However you want to uh share your thoughts with me in regards to these questions or anything that you've heard today, please feel uh free
to email. We also have a staff person from my office out there that you can also uh speak to if you want to have any uh input into this. So, thank you. and she's over there. She raised her hand. Um, all right. So, we are now, um, we're going to take a quick little pause
because we, you know, we have a lot after the meeting. So, um, a few moments. Uh, what type of external partnerships could we could resource gaps in our school communities or and or what are some topics and activities that
would make parent workshops more meaningful and relevant? Um, I'd love to hear from, you know, Mr. Martin Flores, um, our educator, anybody what to any responses to these questions or any
questions to Mr. Sto regarding the presentation he just did. I will start on this side. Does anybody have any questions here? We have Okay, go ahead, Miss Scott. I actually find um recorded webinars been a beneficial way to
translate information. Um and we've recently started doing some of our trainings in our department as webinars that are pre-recorded but as um a team's meeting with a live person that can pause the webinar and answer questions
for people that are specific to them. And I think that could be a helpful way to engage parents um where they can actually have an opportunity like office hours for lack of a better word to be able to be more engaged with people that
can answer the questions that they need because accessibility for parents means accessibility for students. And I'm always here to advocate for the parents and for the students because as we do our work, it is for them. So it needs to
be beneficial and meaningful for them. Wonderful. Um I'll hear anybody here. Yes. Go ahead. Dr. Sodto, we've we've been on the same team uh for a long time. Um I think it's really critical
the piece that we're talking about and looking at where we're looking at uh career ed and the supports uh for that. I think having um the leverage of a committee like this, the school board uh
local superintendent help us as well. Um we have uh a student um students trying to get jobs in the districts but often hit roadblocks for testing and things like that for the different departments. So having more opportunities to leverage
the the need. Um five years ago we had several students that were able to get custodial positions in the district. They're maintaining those positions. um one of my graduates actually was being evicted at the time and now is the the bread winner for his home and uh they're
able to to sustain that. So, it's life-changing to have those opportunities. So, the more that we have those uh opportunities to speak with the different departments and expand those uh opportunities for our students, uh the better off our our population is
going to be, right? Yes, Scott. I'm a big fan of the TV station KLCS and I know there are a lot of parents who don't feel that comfortable manipulating a laptop for these PDs. Is
there a way that we could have a series of programming on KCS so parents could watch at their leisure? It's our TV station. Other school districts do not have a TV station. So, I'm thinking what a good way to use it. That is something that we'll definitely
look into and I'm writing it down right now as we follow. Thank you. Thank you. Wonderful. Um, does anybody else I just I'll speak to the second one. Um, one of the things that I've been hearing from parents and even as a teacher when I
worked at the school site and as a community school coordinator, um, a lot of our parents needed support at home with their uh, children's behavior, right? And we know what that can be like even you know as a parent period you need support with that. And um and when
I would host when we would organize parent meetings with our PSW who would have information about the brain and trauma and how kids learn. Why do kids behave a certain way? Why are these what is a behavior right? What need are kids
trying to meet? It just parents the feedback we got from parents was amazing. They were like, "Oh my gosh." Like it just really diminished the level of stress because you realize that you can see children in in as they are right
holistic holistically and appreciate all that they are. I think as parents in general we stress out about our kids and we we compare them. We think like, well, you know, my kid is the one who like really acts out, but I'm but no, all of our children, you know, have their
behaviors. And so once we know, you know, where it's coming from, why they're doing it, what they're trying to communicate, it just alleviates so much stress on the parents. And also, it it really um that is when we start to see
and hear our own children. So I got a lot of feedback from parents about that kind of support that they needed some more um support from our professionals in the mental health or professionals in special education um you know play
therapy uh play um ways to support children's language in uh and communication in any different ways that that is accessible to all families. just have a conversation with a child, ask why and how, and that will really expand
their brain, right? They just start to think, imagine, create. And so, um, anyway, I I think that's something that I would really love to have for our families as part of the menu of PDS that
or not PDs, but uh, parent workshops um that we can offer. Um yes, Miss Taz, I just want to build on that a little bit because I think it connects back to um earlier in the presentation, one of the areas of needs that teachers
mentioned related to education was behavior. And I think that whole concept of behavior is environmentally driven and it's always communicating something. I think if we're providing training to general education
teachers, that's a really big important piece because I I I think all special education teachers come out of their training with a lot of information on the functions of behaviors, how to adapt environments to support um communication, but I don't think general
education teachers always come out with that deep knowledge. Um and I think it can really help folks understand that um oh you know this is not a inherent student deficit this is communication and there are things I can change about
my environment. Um so I think if if teachers are requesting training for behavior that it should be first grounded in in environmental adaptation and communication rather than here's how to
stop that behavior. Wonderful. Thank you so much. I think I also heard changing the mindset, right? When we're thinking about our students as having a voice, being a part of the IEP process, we do need to start seeing the IEP process truly collectively
created and developed with our students, not only their needs at the center, but their voice at the center. So, um, thank you. Is there any other comment? Yes. um just on a little bit on the video modules and
um to help parents understand the IEP proc IEP process and the section 504. I think what be also be great is um in these modules to help the parents or know um how they can be advocates for
their child. It's one thing understanding the process. Yes. So you so this happens and this and that but how can provide um some questions that they can ask how they can critically um support their child but help them become
advocates because what I've heard um from a lot of parents is in that process and I think it was mentioned earlier um is that they feel like you're the professionals and I don't know anything but the parent knows so much right and how can we leverage their knowledge of
their child in advocating for them in this process and for them to know that they're an equal an an equal partner in in in this as you know the same thing as parent right with student when you have the student voice they're also an equal sort of participant and advocate for
themselves but helping parents really know how to be an advocate and then maybe in these modules or or or videos is hearing from another parent that's been in their position and how they advocated and how they um sort of
maneuvered the system. So I think that's what it's if anything is their understanding of their role as a parent in advocating and the key questions to ask and all in all stages the initial stage and all the way to the end of the stage. Um and the other thing I just
wanted to uh mention is I know AI is is something that we all want to use and um and that's all great. Um and and I'm not, you know, I use AI every now and then, you know, but um I think what's really critical is having that
connection with a with a with a human being, with a person. And I'm I'm not sure exactly how these AI recorded videos are really going to be integrated or the um expanding computerenerated translations from also from what I've
heard from from parents is when they have a translator um that person is just there to translate obviously, right? but they want more of a connection with that translator because they that translator is their voice and sometimes they they
feel like um they would like someone who knows the IEP process and can be their voice when they're translating to the IEP team and and and etc. They feel like that person is like I'm not here to help
you. I'm here just to translate. And I think there's a disconnect and again feeling alone in this process. So I ai is great um but I think we really need to invest more in translators that
either have had a training in the IEP process or or something that they that parents can feel connected to the individual that's helping. And a lot of the times it is somebody from from the school is that maybe it's a parent rep or maybe training parent reps on how to
be that that person that can either connect with the parent or be helping them advocate for themselves. Yeah. Wonderful. You got a lot of ideas coming out of this group. That's great. Yes. Last one. So, I am a new special ed
teacher and I want to know how I can explain to my gened class um about special ed students. How can I do that? Is there a PD? Is there something that they can watch as a new teacher to help them to use the correct
vocabulary and explain to their gened class exactly what what is a special ed class and how does it work? Is that is that is that a complicated question? I mean, we all are good at a we all have good hearts. We all have
good hearts, but we want to make sure that we are being very thorough and and and precise in explaining to our genet kids what what exactly is a special ed class and how does it work? What do you think, Dr. Jose? Thank you.
Thank you for that. um when we're navigating students with disabilities and IEPs, we also want to be very thoughtful about confidentiality and moving towards that process. So, um it would probably be trainings for the whole school around, you know, um
disability awareness, right? Or promoting that for the whole school as opposed to one teacher talking to another class and saying, "Oh, I'm a teacher of a special day program." So I we promote more trainings around disability awareness that all that all stakeholders, all students here at the
school site. Um and that's something that we definitely are pushing uh so that there is that that conversation that's being had at the school site around disabilities. All right. So we're going to go to Yes, Miss Cox. I just wanted to ask a
question of the division of special ed leadership in terms of the parent workshops. Are you contemplating inviting like regional center representatives or department of rehab uh representatives to those parent workshops as well to expand that knowledge around the whole process? That
would be quite beneficial and I know that when we had the listen and learn focus group with regional center they were really appreciative of having that platform to have that conversation. Um so that's something that we're also going to be pushing to have those conversations with the division as with
educational partners. So having groups come on to present around some of the work that they're doing to support students disabilities would be ideal. So that is something that we'll definitely look into. So thank you for bringing that up. All right. Wonderful. So why don't we move on to our third
section, our last one. And um yeah, we can be here all night. We have so many ideas and so many comments, but we won't. Right. Good afternoon everybody. I'm Kristen Lambert. I'm the administrator of operations for the division of special ed and I'll be sharing some key
findings and next steps related to pillar four which is our operational effectiveness and pillar five which is investing in staff. These pillars are central to our ongoing work to strengthen special education and our outcomes throughout LUSD. So some emergent themes that popped up in pillar 4 is when we talked
to stakeholders about operational effectiveness a few things were really loud and clear. People really appreciated our accurate data that we provide as it's essential for improving student outcomes. There were also a strong commitment on using the data that they
get to ensure and refine practices. But we also heard that staff could use more support about feeling confident on how to use data, manipulate data and things like that. So diving a little deeper into pillar four, we already have a number of strong
data um practices in place. We have regularly scheduled data discussions with schools, regions as well as division leadership. We participate in data digs with them. We also distribute compliance data to regional and special
education teams weekly and monthly. We've developed school site training to ensure that teams are in compliance with federal, state, and district requirements. And we have monthly office hours where our data team meets with people from the field, takes in data
requests, goes does tiny bits of training to really ensure that they're understanding the data that is out there that is, you know, available to them. We also use those data trends to design professional development. Moving forward though, we do want to build on some of the things that are working. We'll be highlighting
schools um that are leading the way or meeting or exceeding compliance standards. We'd like to provide certificates and highlight them in district and division publications and use them as a beacon or a lighthouse school so they can help other schools. What systems are working, you know, and
really be able to explain what they're doing to help their colleagues. We also want to continue to deliver a comprehensive ESY program for students who are eligible. My colleague talked about the inclusion that's going to be happening this summer to so keep on building that as we pilot it this year. When it comes to investing in our
staff, there's a lot to be proud of, especially our new teachermies and increasing access to professional development which we heard about. But we know that there are still some challenges. We have staffing shortages that remained an issue and the clear need for more PAR educator training.
To support pillar 5 educator growth, we have been providing training and coaching based on research-based strategies. We've worked closely with human resources to offer a five-day new special education training academy for newly hired special educators that focuses on behavior inclusion and other
instructional initiatives. We hold regular meetings with our curriculum partners which are 95% group to make sure that what we're doing in the classroom and looking at data it's comparable. Um we also foster strong and consistent collaboration with med and division of instruction to make
sure we're on the same page. Some actions to be taken in pillar 5 and investing in staff is we're going to develop specialized training for educators in program specific roles. So, so that what we heard was your training's wonderful but you know it might not always apply to me. So we
really want to focus on our deaf educators resource special day really have specific training modules for that type so they can take that back to their schools. We also want to expand training opportunities for gened teachers to support students in inclusive general education environments. We started that
with our first micro credential, but we are offering more and more robust presentations for our general ed knowing that they're always welcome to come to our special ed presentations and trainings. We also are working on offering a comprehensive onboarding and sustained pro professional development
for PAR educators. So really focusing on the needs of what we heard behavior instruction what to do when you you you know could be your first time in a school how do we greet students you know really working on that. So we also know that retention and
recruitment is key. So we've been partnering with our higher education institutions to develop strategies to recruit, train and retain special education and deaf educational professionals. We have worked on creating pathways to place university interns and student teachers in those
area of needs to match their credentials and we've taken a big part to be actively engaged in job fairs and recruitment efforts. What we what we will continue to do or actions to be taken is that we are going to work on developing a career and tech technical education pathway for
our high school students that may be interested in careers in special education and or deaf education. We're also working to expand our partnerships between internal LUSD departments such as BAP, ETO, CEUS, and DACE to really
combine our efforts and reach out. We're continuing to work with HR to strengthen collaboration with our intern credentiing and also our added endorsement authorization program to meet the needs of our students in our classes. All right, thank you so much, Miss
Lambert. Um, so this is our last um, did you notice I'm chunking our presentation here? I really do believe in chunking things. So, um, we want to go ahead and we can discuss these uh, questions or if you have any questions for Miss Lambert
or anything that that you still it's still pending um that you did not get to ask earlier, uh, this is the opportunity. I'll start here with Scott. I'm glad we got to the part about the parah educators because I firmly believe
that the special ed teacher him or herself really can't have a complete program without the assistance right of their pareducator. So we really should be recruiting as strongly as we're recruiting special ed teachers pareducators who can make the the class
completely different can can help the teacher can help the kids and make progress. So really important to include them too. Thank you. Miss Bogart, I have a shout out. We talk about exploring development
of career and technical education pathway and using our high schools to find potential people to come and work in LA USD. I was just in an um interview with somebody, a candidate who was talking about their high school
experience, learning ASL, becoming fluent, getting hooked, taking ASL classes in college, going to the teacher training and wants to come back to LA USD highlight. So what we do in the
school to include our non students with or students without IEPs to support our students with IEPs. What we do is invaluable. So once we get them here, let's do what we can to keep them
because retention is key. You any other Yes. Miss Scott, have you partnered with the career ladder program? Because they're one of our better pipelines to build our para educators and they have resources available in terms of um sometimes they
have stipens for for exams and um scholarship assistance. They have tuition reimbursement um which is very beneficial for our par educators that want to become our teachers. So, we're creating our pipelines and expanding our
pipelines. The recruitment and retention go hand in hand. If we start off with people that know our special needs students well and work well with them and have those skills and build them into our our educators, that's the best way to support the community.
Thank you for that. Yeah, we actually are. And that's why I mentioned earlier we're working with not only the personnel commission but with HR because we know that we have to look at it from both ends of the spectrum. We have to look at how do we better support our pair of educators and recruit quality staff, but then how do we give them those opportunities for learning and
growth. One of the things that I'm very proud of in LUSD is in that work with the personnel commission and HR, we're really looking at thinking outside the box. How might we explore avenues that perhaps in the past we hadn't either thought to explore or been able to explore? What are the opportunities that
we have that are more creative? Um certainly still within all the guidelines and you know expectations that we need to follow but really looking at how do we identify staff earlier looking at our high school students. Is there a potential pathway we can create for them to gain that
opportunity through um opportunities through our clubs and our um programming to get to engage in the paraprofessional work and then how do we also take that staff and work with them from being the paraprofessional to the teacher. We're also looking at working with our DACE,
our um division of adult and community engagement. How can we work with them to create pathways for students to go from what they're interested in in high school to careers that we need here in LA Unified, whether it's through our um ground building and grounds, culinary arts, all different types of programs
that they offer at our occupational centers. How might we leverage that and partner that with the work our amazing CTC's are doing? So, we're really looking outside of the box at some new and innovative ways, and we're really excited about what's to come. So, thank you.
Love it. Um, anything else? In restorative justice, there's always the last prompt, which is nothing left unsaid because there's always something, right, that we want to say. So, this is your nothing left unsaid. If you have
something, please. All right. Well, um I guess that's all. Do you have a a final I I have something left unsaid. Oh, go for it. I just wanted to the the completion of the listen and
learn campaign although it took about a year. Um it it was it's been a heavy lift and I would be remiss if I didn't thank the support of Dr. Carlo Strada, Tony Aguilar, the chief for allowing me the autonomy to kind of schedule this and work it. And then also I have to
give a big shout outs to these two young ladies who supported me through this process who are here presenting. Also um behind the scenes we had some of our special ed team putting together analyzing data, finding emerging themes, creating booklets. So I want to call out
specifically Dr. James Coons uh for his support in creating the slide decks. And and just so you know, we are going to be uh publishing an actual pamphlet or a a book that has the results of the listen and learn campaign. It'll have the
quantitative results of the survey. It'll have a more in-depth look at the emerging themes and what we're currently doing and next steps. This was more of a summary of of the listen and learn but that'll be available on the website uh so that anybody can access this because again we want to ensure that all the
voices that we heard we have something memorialized knowing that we heard you, we acknowledge you and here's what we're going to do to move this work forward. So thank you um thank you for allowing us this platform to share this information and um again we're grateful that we're able to move forward with
this process now. So thank you. Another nothing left unsaid. Nothing left unsaid. Well, just on that note, um just wanted to know what what's the anticipated timeline to roll out the key actions to be taken outlined in your
presentation and how will progress be monitored and communicated to the community as you're working on all of these every there was a lot. So yeah, what will be like the followup to make sure you know that is a great question because we wanted to be very uh intentional in the work that we're
doing. So as part of the booklet that will come out, we also have included measures of success with uh timebound time frames similar to the strategic plan we have by this year we will do this right. Um, so we are being very
intentional in ensuring that if we're going to commit to making a change that it's time bound and that we continue to progress monitor based on whatever metric that is that we're monitoring uh so that we can get information and see where are we in this metric so that so that we're held accountable, right?
Because that that that's what it's about. It's about listening to our stakeholders voice, being able to find those emerging themes, expand the work that we're currently doing with the division of special ed and then being held accountable to implement these changes that we are saying that we're going to implement. So there will be
measures of success that a one pager that will outline all of these tasks with the timebound date so that board members, families, parents can say, "Hey, where are we with this?" So we're definitely going to have that. We're going to be very transparent in this work. And do you plan on having a second
a followup to this another listening and learning session or or at least from the coffees or the meetings having something that is continuous because you want to continuing to listen and learning and evaluating and absolutely improving. We have to continue to be reflective and
introspective of our practice. So, uh, as mentioned, something that we're going to do is ensure that we're offering these opportunities regionally because every region is different, right? And being able to have stakeholders from a region participate in this process and share their experiences or share
information that is pertinent and then being able to kind of analyze that data and then regionally being able to create action plans or things as we move forward. We definitely want to continue this as part of our practice because it's important to hear next to our students. Our parents are our biggest
stakeholders. So, being able to uh continue to hear from our parents, our educators, our boots on the ground, our teachers, our principles. We want to ensure that we're still hearing their voice and acknowledging their their praises in addition to those areas of opportunity.
Yes. And we will continue discussing this and check on the progress and revisit and do our own uh PDSA cycle and see what is working and where we need to shift and pivot right because that's the kind of work that we want to do in this
committee. So thank you Mr. Sto, thank you Miss Lambert. Thank you Miss Hos. Really appreciate it. I heard a lot of great things. Um, one of the things that I liked was hearing that we do stuff and
we need to do more because we know that, right? Our parents have been telling us that, our students have been telling us that. So, I'm grateful that you acknowledge that and that you said it aloud that we need to do more. And um some of the things that um the takeaways
from here on my part um that I heard was ensuring that the IEP process incorporates continuous points of engagement throughout the year. Students is active participants modeling an inclusive supportive transparent and accessible
IEP process. Expanding LUSD jobs and career opportunities for our students programming through KCS. guiding and supporting our parents to feel empowered, not just engaged, not just involved, empowered when they're
advocating for their child, promoting disability awareness, recruitment, and retention for PAR educators and special education teachers and general ed teachers. And as a final point, I'd like to mention that my office will be putting out together a um a year in
review in collaboration with um our board president Schmurson's office where we will elevate the committee's recommendations from all the special education committee meetings that we've had this year. So, I'm really looking forward to that. And uh we're not done
because we have public comment. And once again, I want to uh invite the families who are here, caregivers, students who are here to write your questions out if you have any, if you are not going to be able to come to public comment to
connect with Rebecca. And there's also the special ed division outside in case you have some questions of them. So, I'm going to hand it off to Mr. McClean who will guide us through uh public comment. Okay, it's time for public comment. We have a pretty full list of folks. We
have a young man up front who seems very eager to go. So, um, in the interest of time, um, come on up. Please state your name and you'll have two minutes to speak once you begin. Hi, my name is Wen M. Hi, I'm kind of a little nervous.
Okay, you're cool. Hi, my name is Wen Martinez. I'm 12 years old. I go to Ralph Wadd Emerson Community Charter School. I've been diagnosed with autism and the one thing I need from is I need
respect from my teachers because one day when I was at my school, my like in period 4, my teacher took away my Chromebook and forced me to
leave her class with her screaming and she repeats the words, "Get out. Get out. When she said those words, I mean those words, I was crying to tears from the word she
said. I would say that one day if there was a kid who was being yelled from a teacher, I would think of the same problem that I had. And I just want to
say to you guys that please tell them to respect me and my condition of the autism that I have. And I don't ever
want a person to yell and yell and make me get out of the class of of all years. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your time, Mr.
Martinez. All right. Shirley Gruber, are you here? Shirley Gruber. Chariss. Okay. How about Dian Guen? Is Da Guen here? Sh. Okay. So, Miss Miss Grubin is going to speak in Spanish. So, if you'd like
to hear what she's saying in English, uh, please put on these headsets that my colleague Norberto is handing out, and you'll be able to experience simultaneous translation. Good afternoon. Thank you very much for the opportunity. Good afternoon, Mr. Sto.
It's a pleasure to see you today. Today my public comment I'd like to address it as a appreciation for the department of special education. Mr. Sto, thank you because last month I was here. I've been participating this year in the
committees for CAC and I've been heard. My son is 5 years old. I heard Mr. Scott, I am such a fan of yours as of this year. I just want to tell you that I'm seeing your work. I'm noting your
commitment. I see it. I feel it. That is that that's not something you can fake. I hear you, Miss Samantha. I hear you, Miss Borgett. And as a mom, a committed mother who drives an hour and a half to get here. I am grateful for what you do
for our kids. I am so moved by what I hear from Mr. W because I want my son to speak here when he is of age to fight for his rights. because when I am here now fighting for him but I will collaborate with you. I applaud Mr. Sto
everything that you've proposed today. Let me just tell you that here you have a mother who will collaborate with you. These workshops are incredible what you're proposing and my husband and I will collaborate with this committee always. Thank you very much for
everything you are doing. Hey, let's see. Danna Guen, are you here? No, Diana. Um, Jacqueline Casas. Jaclyn Casas. Miss Kas is going to speak in Spanish. So, if you'd like to hear what she's saying in English, please continue to
use these translation headsets. Okay. Good afternoon to all of you. I want to thank you uh for having this meeting and to speak about all the concerns that we have and
more than anything hearing the com the commitment you have with our kids. I'm a mother of Gwen Martinez and for me it's very important to include my son so that he can learn how to advocate since
unfortunately I I talk about his experiences and I thank Mr. Sto for supporting us and I also thank you all for sharing all the information that uh you bring here at the board meeting and
I hope with the bottom of my heart that teachers for special education can be better trained and have more empathy with our children because they they suffer. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Okay, Dalia Gutierrez, are you
here? Dalia Gutierrez, David Tokovski, are you here? I do not see you, Mr. Tokovski. Uh, Y Tina Y, come on up. Please forgive me if I've mispronounced your name. Uh, you'll have two minutes
to speak. Why don't you begin? You don't have to run. I don't want to miss time. Okay. Hi, good afternoon or good evening, members of the board. Thank you for this opportunity. My name is Daiina. I'm the mother of a third grader
diagnosed with ASD and ADHD. It's up there in the ranks, too. And whom against all odds has successfully transitioned from SDC to GenEd or at least the least restrictive environment as as
as it said. My child, like many in special ed, hasn't been able to access extracurricular activities, workshops, or any enrichment afterchool programs because, from my understanding, the
district refuses to allow his BII to support him during after hours, during after school hours. If we make efforts for a child with a physical disability to join a choir, why can't we provide supports for
children with invisible disabilities so they can also have an opportunity for impactful learning and personal growth. Mr. San Rubin, the KTLA anchor we lost last year, he found his purpose,
his purpose right here in our district, right there at the child's school. his sister, a retired teacher, just a few weeks ago shared with the superintendent Carvalo how an extracurricular program sparked that aha
moment where everything connected for him. Board members, what helped you recognize your vision? How did you discover your skills? When did you experience that sense of accomplishment? live in a
collective spotlight, not in the shadows of a restrictive environment. The question is simple, or at least I think it's simple. Do you believe in your students agency over their own ongoing education solutions exist? Let's create
pathways for every child to discover their unique gifts in the light of opportunity to take Mr. Sto's words or Dr. Sto's words. Let's meet them where they are, but please also open doors for them. Thank you. Thank you for your
time. Uh, Maria Sanchez, are you here? Maria Sanchez. Miss Sanchez is going to speak in Spanish, so please put on these headphones headsets, translation headsets if you need one. Okay, gracias.
Good morning. All right. Good afternoon. Good afternoon everyone. Rosio, Carla, Scott, and Mr. Sto. I hope you will do what you're saying because I've been 16 years in the
school and I have not seen progress in that school, Mark Anthony school, and it's for special education. And the parents are truly complaining of many situations of
what Mr. Sto was talking about. And we don't have those workshops for those kids with special education. And I will I want to know if you will do the SAC committee
because the parents really don't know about that committee. I just found out because I uh solicited something and I was never called. I I was never I I never concluded being in it. But others were talking about how
there are no workshops for these children that have auditory issues or down syndrome or other special needs. There's no committee for them. And the parents are complaining in the parents center. In my parent center also, they
are complaining quite a bit for the most part and there's not teachers for hearing impaired children. So, I want to know if there if they can provide them because there are
none with those needs and there's none for sign language and there are not there are not resources for them. That's what I need to know. And for all the schools for them to have a
class for sign language because there's brothers or sisters who are in limbo and me these six years I've seen so much indifference in the parents and like I just said like Mr. Sto just said if you
are going to do this this year then please do so because the parents are not thank you for your time okay with it. Yeah we have a number of people online some were listed to speak in person but it looks like they're here with us online. Let's go first to concerned
parent. Please press star six to unmute yourself. Concerned parent and you'll have two minutes to speak once you begin. Good afternoon committee members. Um first and foremost I would like to extend my deep gratitude to Dr. Sto for
launching this campaign. I'm hopeful for for the potential direction positive direction that this will take um the division of special education into. And um I want to uh point out a couple of of thoughts. Um, and this is not an attack.
This is more feedback. So, I hope that you all take it in that way. In terms of domestifying um, special education, I would want to express that it starts at the top. And a lot of you, some of you
sitting in this boardroom right now have expressed that special education is more of a burden to the school district because of cost. And I completely understand that. But I want to point out that students with disabilities are
general education students first. And special education is a service, not a place. So with that, I encourage the school district to make general ed special education training a requirement
and not not an opportunity or an option given that the majority of special education students who receive special education services are placed in general education for the most part. In terms of parent training, parent training is part
of the IEP process, but it's not tapped into well enough or efficiently enough because it's mostly um targeted towards mental health and not um disability awareness or
disability support for parents. the student advocacy again part of the IEP process. It's embedded in the individual individual transition plan. But a lot of these plans are just embedded into the
the into the IEP without discussion and meaningful input from parents and students. So let's let's better that. Let's make an and more training for students in this process and giving them
that empowerment to do that in terms of advocacy. Thank you very much for your time. Okay, let's see. We have Erinda Morita. Please press star six to unmute yourself and you have two minutes to speak once you begin. Erinda Morita,
good afternoon. To everybody here present, we ask safety for the schools. Please have metal detectors at the doors to prevent weapons from coming in and security and drug control to avoid deaths. As parents
need your collaboration with academic things, what are the protocols that you are complying with? And I ask you, are teachers trained in the materials they're trying to teach,
sharing learning within the schools, within their certifications? Have they complied with the criteria and the statewide credentials they need with the instruction that they are imparting our
children with? The district and the board are failing the students and us parents are being given the runaround and we are not being answered in our phone calls and our questions when we're
asking since there's not a knowledge regarding teachers in the classroom and we ask that you reply in a formal document. We've been having so much stress. I've talked with so many of you and nothing has been solved enough of
this parent injustice. We need help. I need this problem to be solved in the schools that don't have a structured guide in their teaching. I've talked
about this in ninth grade, 10th, 11th, and my student is about to finish and there still has not been a solution to this problem. I need you to help. I need you to give me this information in
writing. I don't want to be given the runaround because I've already talked to so many district uh members of personnel, the board, the school, and my problems have not been solved. Thank you. Okay, Maria Duran, I see you're
online. Please press star six to unmute yourself, and you'll have two minutes to speak once you begin. Maria Duran. Good afternoon. Can you hear me? Good afternoon. My name is Maria Duran. Hello. Good afternoon to the committee.
My name is Maria Duran. Student and special education. Well, we hope that the LUSD can form a committee for special education on a school level for
elementary uh middle school and high school. When it comes to the English advisory English student advisory commission, this can be a part of the continuing education of our exceptional students. And this can
consist of assistance from parents of families to provide uh advice for the district policies to improve the academic results of our students and guarantee the special education rights.
And this committee would be essential so that the students with educational needs have access to a quality education based on their individual needs and promoting their involvement, inclusion and development involving
students with special education. This would be to workshops that currently are not being done in the schools involving parents in person. So there's been a lot of changes made
especially with special education, especially with English learners, especially with IEPs and you all. So this has not been done in the schools like I'm mentioning the workshops are not in person and a lot of parents
cannot access a computer and they don't know how to manage the parent portal. So this is very important that there may be specialists that can provide these types
of workshops in the schools and why because sometimes parents have so many questions and that's why these IEP meetings we Good afternoon. My name is Norma Elena
Gonzalez. I'm a mother of a student who has special needs in the school district. I am here supporting parents like myself who have students with special needs and other
parents who have students with alternative curriculums because a lot of schools have these teachers that are not prepared or qualified to have students with an alternative curriculum that is
severe. Why? because these students have needs that are more impactful with their uh with their disability and there's teachers who do not consider or do not have the capability or the empathy
to deal with our students. So there was a proposal here about um there was a situation where a teacher accused the student but the same teacher does not have the capacity to understand the student. We need a continuous
investigation of not just one but all the teachers in general when it involves special education students and alternative curriculums because we also need as parents to join and
not relying on other people that are exposing their work. But we really do need to demonstrate that people are doing their jobs. We don't need to be applauding certain areas that benefit only certain
parents. As parents, we all need to work and we have the right that the employees in the district support all parents, not a selective group. We think the importance of being here participating
in the committees and the schools is is uh where we need a committee where we can provide information to all parents with special education because we can't just base ourselves in the workshops that has been
offered to us within the district. We want a committee that can help all of us parents. Okay, Danna Guen, I see you're on the line. Danna Guen, please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have two minutes to speak once you begin. Danna
Guen, good afternoon. My name is Vene Yin, chairperson of the pack committee, and I want to take advantage of this occasion to publicly say to Miss Rosio Rivas that it's been two emails that I've sent on behalf of
PAC and we want to meet with you and you've ignored us and we're hoping that I'm going to remind you. I'm going to send a third reminder. Hopefully, you'll get it. I don't know what's going on. And also the other board member there,
the chairperson. I also want to say to Miss Graco that we have a meeting pending with Miss Ortiz and well, Miss Ortiz has been sending emails
and we've been ignored as well. Right now, you're talking about how you want to involve parents and Mr. Sto did a very good presentation. I think the intentions that Mr. Sto are great, but when it comes to the work, it it just
doesn't get done. The CAC committee have been talking about this committee that we want on a school level for the children with special needs and parents with kids with special needs and a regional committee at least because the
one we have is so little and we have less than 20 individual parents participating and this is too little. the workshops that you're doing that are are webinars and like the other speaker said, it's not an attack. It's feedback. It's not working because parents in this
moment need to have their questions answered. And when the parents are seeing these videos, you start to use a language that is not understood where we can't get clarification. So, I'd rather stop this webinar because it's not
working. It It's not useful. I'm not getting the answers to the questions that I have. So when it comes to the workshops for parents, they need to give one with the things that are just the basics and the curriculum that you have for parents of special education to at
least know. Okay. Erene Isabel Miron, I see you're on the line. Isabel Miron, please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have two minutes to speak once you begin. Isabelle Miron. Bu good afternoon. My name is
Isa and about the presentation I do have some points that I would like to mention with all due respect. Number one for the students they are not being given the option to participate in IEP. Practically uh they're being obligated
to be there. And the worst is they're not taking in consideration the opinions or the fact that they want to advocate for what they need and want. So what's the point of them being there if they're not going to be listened to? The
inclusion in activities with students is important and can be very productive if it's done with fidelity and respect. We continuously hear that the district is a pioneer and is implementing these programs that don't exist in other districts or other states because
they're the first to do it in the nation. But it doesn't work if we're having these programs and it's not being monitored and we really don't know if they're working for the parents. We're not being considered with our opinions
and our concerns. And to a certain degree, when we're trying to advocate for our rights and those of our children, we feel like there's a vengeance done and we've been victims of a hostile environment on on behalf of the coordinators and the
members of the IEP. So, we need to have a voice and we need to be respected and we also need need the respect of the personnel. It's also important that the members of the IP they be trained and
they be know the basic laws because some really don't know the process. They really don't respect the guidelines. They don't respect our questions, our rights and it's important that those
individuals be trained on how to respect the law. So, thank you for your time. David Tokoski, I see you're online with us. David Tokosski, please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have two minutes to speak once you begin.
Thank you for the generous two minutes. I appreciate the committee meeting, the listening learning study is wonderful and you clearly have good staff to do things with it. But as a politician, I know that only surveying a thousand people out of nearly a million is about 1% and therefore your error rate and the
conclusions will be upwards of 20 20%. But more importantly than the error rate is what Dr. Rivas has asked. What's the data? What's the timelines once for completion? That's very important. And what I learned uh learning so much about special ed as a former schoolboard
member for 144 months on LA Unifi is that there are three things that are important. The hostile environment has to be changed and that young man who spoke at the beginning expressed at ironically Ralph Waldo Emerson school uh the hostile environment that continues.
Number two, segregation. Segregation just saying thank you to Dr. Estrada is not the same thing as having Dr. Estrada and the superintendent sit in this committee and not segregated to the instructional committee. For example, uh the money in ELOP is $500 million a
year. 15% of that, which is the student population of special ed at a minimum, would be uh over $45 million coming uh to uh help programs like the uh ESY in the summer, not not to just do inclusion, but to enrich the program,
strengthen that program. Uh number five, uh lawsuits. You still are not seeing how many lawsuits are happening and settlements on a regular basis and how much that is bleeding the district. You have not been schooled on the consent decree by legal staff and others that came before you. And the parent who
spoke today brilliantly said it is not just special ed money. All of the budget is special ed. And to only segregate it means that you're missing out on opportunities to pay for restorative justice, pay for counselors, pay for social workers, and get the money from the children youth behavioral initiative. Hostile environment
continues. That young man showed it to us. and teachers not in the classroom and lack of people should be a Williams complaint. Every classroom that doesn't have the right certified person in there is a Williams complaint. You continue to have a superintendent and team who has
not posted the Williams uh in each and every classroom like Mr. McClean has done in your boardroom. Thank you very much for the time to speak in two languages I might add. The Williams complaints. Okay. Our f our final uh final caller is Mr. Lucas Cook. Lucas
Cook, please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have two minutes to speak once you begin. Lucas Cook. Mr. Cook, I see you're with us. Please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have two minutes to speak once. Can you hear me? All right, we sure can.
Hello. Okay, great. Hi, my name is Lucas Cook. I'm a former member of the LUCD board committee as the student as the student representative for district 3. uh going into this meeting while looking over the slides I was very optimistic uh
given the fact that you seem to be addressing the needs of what parents are actually asking for that we are looking for in increasing inclusive muscle model education programs. However, my skepticism still
remains as the task that I set out very simple task of just changing antiquated language such as the use of the word and the uh address virus manual has not been changed. You've laid out this plan of all the things that you're going to do or sorry, you've not laid out a plan.
You said all the things that you want to do with no ways of implementing it. It sounds like great things, but as we've seen before last year or the superintendent of Carvalo cut a lot of special education programs and we've seen a dramatic drop in the amount of inclusive model education programs. It's
no wonder why parents are demanding the return of these programs. But to simply get rid to create a problem and then claim victory for putting money back into inclusive model education programs doesn't solve the issue at hand. we further work needs to be done in to
actually expanding inclusive model education programs. Uh as a person with a disability who went to LUD, I was attempted to be denied access to an inclusive model education program when transitioning from kindergart from preschool to kindergarten. I had to go to a charter school instead because I
was told that I would have to be placed in a special education model. Sorry, I would have to be placed in a special education program which would have prevented me from going to UC Berkeley where I now go and is a very unfortunate thing but it's something that we need to pay attention to is actually carrying
out out what we've laid out today in this meeting. So I hope that everything that's been said is carried out but I do have a lot of skepticism. So I hope you are true and honest today. However, uh nice sorry skep skepticism but thank
you and I hope that this plan is actually implemented. Thank you. Thank you for your time and that concludes public comment. All right. Wonderful. So thank you so much. Um I completely understand the
skepticism. I any comment that comes to us. I certainly I don't think any of us take offense to it. We want to hear your comments. We want to hear your feedback because that is our goal. At the beginning when I first came we all shared as to why we are part of this
committee and all of us said that we wanted to do more and better for our students. Right? So please, there is no offense taken here when you say the things that we need and that's what we want to hear. My dream is to have this
room full of parents and students and to have students come up and speak and let us know what we're doing great and where we need to improve. This is the space and what we can do. What are the things that we need to do to make things better
for our students as our students deserve it. My heart is with all of our students, but I I I'm biased and I have a very special spot for our students with disabilities. I'm a special education teacher. I chose that. And so
I want you to always feel welcome that this is a space for you to always speak um and share your ideas. So with that, I want to thank everybody here again because you all have been part of this journey sharing your ideas and your
thoughts on on what we can do for our students. We know we can do more. We know we have to do more. We also know that we need to regain the trust of people. And so it's on us to be holding ourselves accountable, right? because we
need to build that trust and that belief that we are going to do what we say we're going to do. This committee will continue to hold our um our district accountable. We're also going to hold ourselves accountable to make sure that
we're doing that. Um so with that, once again, thanks to the committee for giving up your afternoons to come here. This is voluntary work and I want to thank you for that. Some of you drive far away to get here. Um, and so your participation is very crucial to
improving how we support special education, and I thank you again for your service. I also want to encourage you to continue to use me and my office as a resource. If you ever want to make a recommendation or share any useful information regarding how we can improve
special education experience for our students here in LA Unified, please share that with us. And then um if you would like to be considered for next year's committee, please reach out to my office. Um that's pretty much it. If you can stay for a little bit, committee
members for a photo and we have a little uh certificate. I want to thank the pe the members uh of our staff who who came out. I want to thank our parents and our students and our uh everyone who comes
and shares their voice here with us. And please continue to stay engaged and let us know how we can be make these meetings more accessible to you. So we hope to see you again next year. There are folks outside if you want to speak to anybody from the special ed office. There are folks outside. Please share
your concerns about your specific concerns that you might have. So thank you again. Scott, would you like to say any words? I just want to say that Carla has done a fantastic job with the special ed committee and I appreciate it very much.
She has the strength and she has the vigor and the gumption to want to make sure that we help our special ed kids and their parents. Thank you Carla. Thank you. [Music]