Good morning. Buenos dias. My name is Grace Rivera oven. And I represent district one. I am the chair of the Special Populations Committee. Thank you. All of you at home and all you ladies for being here today. As a committee this year, we have really
focused on the experience of our special populations in our schools. As we know, the vast majority of our special populations spend the lion's share of their time in our general education classes. Understanding who our special populations are and how they experience our school is the
work of this committee. Our topic today is to better understand the special education services that we provide. Birth to age 21. Before I go on, I would like my colleagues to my right and to my left to please introduce themselves. Good
afternoon. My name is Laura Stewart. I represent district four and I'm happy to be here today. With my colleagues. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you, everyone, for being here. Rita montoya, a board member at large. Great. With that, I'd like to ask my colleagues if
there are any questions, concerns, anything you want to change on the meetings from our last meeting? If not, then can I get. A motion to approve? Motion to approve. Second. All those in
favor? Okay. That is wonderful. We're going to start our presentation. Good morning. If you guys could please introduce yourselves. I know who you lovely ladies are, but for those people who are watching. Thank you, Miss Rivera-Oven. My name is Peggy Pugh. I'm the chief
academic officer. Good morning. My name is Diana Wiles. I'm the associate superintendent for the Office of Special Education. It's good to see you this morning. Good morning. I am Kelly Jorandby. I am the supervisor for specially
designed instruction in the Department of Special Education Services. Good morning. My name is Kim Murphy. I'm the director for the Department of Special Education Services. And can I ask our wonderful staff member
here from the board to introduce herself? Good morning all. Yolanda Ferber, coordinator of constituent services with the Board of Education. Nice to see you. And we also have a wonderful Juan taking notes. Would you like to introduce yourself, Juan Ramos? Administrative services manager
for the board. Okay. These are some of the people behind the scenes that we usually don't know, but who do a lot of the heavy lifting. Okay. Doctor Pugh, would you like to start with your presentation? Absolutely. If you could bring up the slide deck. Again, as you stated, we're beginning to
uncover and think through who our students are and what their experience is here in Montgomery County Public Schools. Next slide please. The information that you'll see today is definitely aligned with the board's priority, and certainly with our priority of math and
Ela achievement. And improving student outcomes. Next slide please. This morning we have a full agenda. But we are going to go through exactly what you see here. What is special education.
Who are we serving. Who is eligible and what services are provided here for our students and families? How are we measuring our student outcomes and the progress to determine how effective our services are? We'll talk a bit about staffing
and professional learning funding. We'll share a case study and then wrap up with parental rights. Next slide please. And I'll turn it over to Diana Wales. Good morning again. So when we start talking about
special education and when we give a primer of what it is, it's really important to know what the basis of why we have to provide these services to our students. The individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires a students be eligible
under 14 different disability categories. Later on, we will show you what those categories are and the services are provided to students from birth to age 21. Services under an ID under RDA are through an
individualized educational program, and they are truly individualized services. They're intended to meet the unique needs of the student, and they are required to give a student access and educational benefit. There is a lot of intersection
with ID with two other laws. The Americans with Disabilities Act, as well as section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. And I think it's important to talk about what that intersection is, because we oftentimes get a lot of questions and confusion about
how do students with 504 plans interact with, or how are they differ from students that have IEPs? Next slide. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act is a civil rights law. It requires
that students with disabilities receive equal access to their general education curriculum, to the general education setting, and it is required that it prohibits discrimination and retaliation. Unlike Idea that
covers 14 broad categories of disability. Section 504 has a broad range of categories of disability that that are covered, and it ensures the students receive reasonable accommodations throughout the school day and in
extracurricular activities. Next slide. So this graphic just shows that intersection between the three laws that outer Circle Americans with Disabilities Act
is the broadest category. Anyone any individual that has a disability in any public accommodation or public setting would be eligible for support services and accommodations under the Ada. As I said, with
section 504, we have students who qualify under section 504 who have very specific accommodations that the school is required to provide them so that they can access their education so that we're not discriminating against the
student based on a disability. And then i.d.e.a. Provides even more coverage under the law, student who is eligible under Idea is covered by Idea section
504 and the Ada. Next slide. Just a few other clarifications about how the laws intersect. The purpose of the Ada and section 504 are both civil rights. Laws specifically with
section 504 covers any institution where there is funding for federal programing. Similarly, Ida school schools are covered because we receive federal funding. Who qualifies
under Ada and section 504. It is individuals with disabilities, specifically with 504. You have to have a disability that limits a major life activity. So that could be eating, drinking, walking, talking, reading. Major
life activity is a broad category of pretty much anything that an individual would need to do to access their environment, or the educational setting or instruction. Under Ida. However, as I stated, the it is a limited
a more limited focus where it is students from birth to age 21. That fit into any of the disability categories. As you can see, the funding is only for
Ida. We receive federal funding, and we'll talk a little bit later about what that funding looks like. We while we are required and mandated to ensure that students who are eligible under 504 receive the accommodations that they need,
which could include different technology. It could include adjusted or adapted seating. There's a cost to it, but there is no funding source for it. There is no federal funding that is attached to section 504. And
then finally, the biggest distinction between the three laws is that under Ida we are required to provide specially designed instruction. Which we'll talk about accommodations, modifications and services to
our students. Next slide. One other piece of information in terms of how the laws intersect, both Ida and 504 have a child find obligation. What that means is we have we have an obligation
as a district to identify students who may have suspected disabilities even before they are school age. And so some of that work is done through connections with pediatricians, with the health department. Our Infants and Toddlers program is
a we work with and we partner with the health department to ensure that parents know what the process is to get their students evaluated as soon as possible, because we know that if we can begin to provide the services early, that that early
intervention helps later in their educational career. And then due process rights are both rights that parents and families have under both Ida and section 504. And we will talk a little bit more about that later. A
couple of other points just to highlight here is that under Ida, students in the state of Maryland, after the age of 14, receive transition planning services. What that looks like is that we begin to talk to students about what it is they
think they may want to do as they go through high school and into either college community or the work world. So we have an obligation to make sure that in their plan we are planning, and we are instructing them on how
to transition into a setting after they are. After they exit school. Next slide. This slide shows what our demographics currently look like in Montgomery County. For our
students who are receiving special education and related services. We serve 24,403 students. That's approximately approximately 15.2% of our population. And that's as of
February 18th. About 40% of our students are Medicaid eligible. And the reason why we want to highlight that is, as I'm sure you all have been paying attention on the federal level with some of the changes. With Medicaid funding, we get funding
through reimbursement through the Medicaid program. Any of our students who are Medicaid eligible, we can bill either for academic services, for speech and language, occupational therapy services, and it helps to fund the Office of Special
Education, which that funding could go to. Additional staffing and other supports specifically for students. Out of our total population of students, about 2600 of them are pre-K students.
In our pre-K educational programs and the in the dark bluish green box, you'll see our least restrictive environment information, least restrictive environment. The law requires
that students are educated to the extent possible with their non-disabled peers. So this is the number of students inside general education versus a combination of general education and self-contained, and then students who are primarily
instructed in a special education class. As you can see, about 63% of our students are served in general education, which makes it even more important that we are providing professional learning for our general educators, who are oftentimes the primary service
provider for our students. We also have about 27% of our students who are dually identified as emergent multilingual learners, who also receive special education services. And then we have about 350 students who are in our
public separate day schools, which we'll explain what those are later. And about 652 students who are in non public or private separate day schools. The law also requires that we provide services to students who are in private, parochial
schools through a service plan. A service plan is not a the entirety of the services that we provide to all of our students, but it is a selection of services that, based on the funding we receive and in collaboration with the private
schools, we may send a service provider out to support those students, or some students may be bussed into their local school to receive, for example, speech and language services in a more limited capacity. Next
slide. Next slide shows a breakdown by race of our students that we serve. With IEPs. And as you can see, approximately 39% 38% of our
students are Hispanic, Latinx, and 26% are Black African American. Next slide. This slide. Highlights the disability
codes that we serve. One of the things that may be a little bit confusing to individuals is what these categories mean. Some of them are pretty self-explanatory, but when you look at the category of other health impaired, that's where you primarily see students that
have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. They may have a medical condition. So that category is kind of an all encompassing category. But as you can see in this line graph, it shows you where we have where we primarily service students. Our students are students with
autism, students with specific learning disabilities. And as I've discussed in previous board meetings, we have had significant growth in the number of students that we identified with autism. Next slide. I'm
sorry. Just a quick question on that slide. Sure. There were a couple at the beginning there that are zeros or no, they're just very minimal. Very minimal. Yes. So our deafblindness or orthopedic students who may have
traumatic brain injury. Yeah. All of those. It's a very small number. It may be a handful of students, 20 to 30 students. Because we call them low incidents. Disabilities where those are the federal categories
that we have to provide the services. But it's very few students that fall into those categories. Just a quick question. These are the kids who are currently enrolled in M.c.p.s. Even the ones who might be in an outside placement. Yes. Correct. Thank you. Next slide.
So this just shows the trend data over time. And we've you may have seen this slide before during any of the budget sessions. Either this year or in previous years. But we tracked the data for enrollment both for
the entire district in comparison to our growth in special education. And we know that enrollment overall has gone down for MCPs, but enrollment for special education has continuously gone up. If you
look at the FY 2025 line, where it says 14.1% of our student population is students with disabilities. And then in the previous slide, I said it was 15.2. This was data that was pulled earlier in the year. So that just really shows how, you
know, within less than a year, we've we've grown by 1.1%. Next slide. So where the process starts is at child. Fine. As I
stated before, we have an obligation as a district to locate, identify and evaluate any student who is suspected of having a disability. Our process is we have an office child find office where parents are able to
contact that office, and we start the process and we evaluate students. As soon as the parent has identified a specific request. As I said, the eligibility criteria is within
those disability categories. And forgive me, you may have seen I have 13 here and 14 somewhere else in the federal law is 13 disability codes in Maryland at 14. But once the student is
identified as eligible for receiving special education services, that is not an A forever. The lifetime of your educational career. We have to evaluate students to determine continued eligibility every three years, but also, a parent
or a school based staff member could request an evaluation to determine if a student has any changes in what we're providing services for, or a student may have excelled beyond what is in
the IEP, and a team may be considering dismissing a student from services. So that reevaluation process is ongoing, but legally, we're required to reevaluate students every three years to determine if they continue to be eligible for
services. Next slide. So I will pause now if you have any questions before we go on to the next session. Thank you. I'm going to have my colleagues, Miss Montoya, go first and then Miss Stewart, and then I'll save mine for last. Thank you. Thank
you so much. Good morning, and thank you so much for all of that information. I hope that the community is able to feel more informed also, just generally about the way that these processes work and the types of supports that are available. I do just have a couple of questions and perhaps in future presentations we can
provide some of this information because we don't always know what certain terms means. And it helps to know as we're going along. And so one that I noticed was on page nine, there's the three different levels of least restrictive environment A, B and
C. And I do want to recognize that that is then defined I believe on page 17. But it would be helpful just to kind of know what those are at the time. So I can really make that that data make sense for myself. Because I think what you said about least
restrictive environment A is really important when it comes to staffing and also professional development, right? If 63% of our students with IEPs are in general education, then we really need to make sure that our general education staff understand those needs and make
sure that we're providing training. I'm also on page. Let's see. I think it would be page 11. It's MCPs students receiving special education services by disability. Can you explain, please, what other health impairment means? It's a
fairly substantial portion and it's really unclear. And I know that federally, in terms of the categories, it may mean something that parents might not consider. Sure. So other health impairment is one of the federal
categories. It is broadly interpreted. It could be a student has a medical condition. It could be a student that has ADHD, typically attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. That is a large number of
students who are qualified under that other health impairment category. It could be a student with asthma. It could be a diabetic student. So it is not as just with the other categories. Visual impairment. You kind of you understand what that means. You understand what
an emotional disability could be. But other health impairment is the category where if it doesn't fit into any of the other categories, it may be a student that would qualify under that all encompassing category. Okay. And then I also see we have specific learning
disability. It seems like that might also be an all encompassing for various. So and again I want to be clear for the community. And also I understand myself that these are federally required categories that we have to send data to the federal government for. And so obviously, it makes sense for us to also use some of those
categories. But in terms of providing the services for our students, providing training for our staff, do we then break down those categories so that we know in MCPs we have this number or percentage of students with
autism, this number or percentage of students with dyslexia perhaps, or ADHD, so that we can then focus. And do we have that data available. So we track the numbers. But it's more important what is what's more important is what is in the
student's IEP. Because I could be a student that has autism, but really it's about where am I functioning and what services are provided. So we don't necessarily plan for a student because they have autism. It
really is the mechanism by which a student is found eligible. Oftentimes what we'll see is that a student falls into any of these categories, or maybe multiple categories. But that doesn't really define who that child is, how we define who the
student is and what services they need is through the IEP process. So it's through evaluations, observations, gathering data from teachers, looking at work samples. And then through all of that you develop an IEP. And so while I
may be a student who has autism or who has a specific learning disability, usually those are students that have dysgraphia. Dyscalculia may have challenges with with writing or specific academic supports that they may
need. I also may have some social skills that I need to develop. And that would also be included in the IEP. So we're not limited based on the fact that I'm eligible under these categories to serve in that one category for that student. Our
job as special educators is to make sure that we're meeting all of the needs of the student, but this just is the entry point by which you are eligible for services. Correct. But my question was, do we, as a school system, break these down so that
we know? Because yes, of course we're always going to look at IEPs and the specific school and the team are going to make sure that the services are geared towards that. But if we're trying to train staff, let's just say about Neurodivergence or ADHD or I know some of our children receive in their social
emotional learning classes instruction about these, how are they supposed to be trained if we're saying, well, we're just looking at what the specific skill set service the child needs, that doesn't let me know that our staff is trained to understand what ADHD even is.
And I can just anecdotally, in society, a lot of people have a hard time, right. And we want to make sure that our teachers are prepared for success so that they can not only look at the specific skill sets or differentiation in teaching that the student might need for whatever their needs are,
whether it's, you know, again, with autism, that's one. But within that there might be various needs that they have. They might actually span a few of these on this chart. Right. And so I can appreciate that. But in order to make sure that our staff understands our students, I'm not sure how we
can do that if we're just saying, well, all of these kids are under other. And that could be anything from asthma to ADHD, which are two very different things and two different things that our staff would need to understand. So is the answer that no, we do not break those down. The answer is yes, that and that is where the data comes
from. We're able to pull data on each of those categories. How many students we have in each of those categories with these categories I'm talking about again, so other health impairment. Right. I heard you tell me that could be diabetes, asthma ADHD. It's a very it's like the catch all right. For
the federal government which I totally understand. But on our end as a school system, are we then breaking that down so we can say we're seeing really huge increases in children with ADHD, and perhaps we need to step up our general education training
for our staff so that they fully understand I can help out, or maybe Doctor Pugh can can chime in because I think we're saying you're you're saying the federal standards, which we totally understand. I think what my colleagues, Mrs. Montoya's
question is okay, but do we break those down? The autism spectrum is from you can be autistic, but you can be functional. Right. Or and autism, you can have severe autism, but you can also have a hearing impairment. So I guess the trends in Montgomery County
like who are special education children are and where do we see the trends, where we might see a higher number of kids with dyslexia or ADHD, or the intersection of M, ML and special education, but then
breaking it out? What is that look like? Yeah, we say we have about 7000 kids in that category, but what are they. What but what categories are those? I think that's what she's going with that. So we do that. And part of that is having distinct within the Office of
Special Education, we have distinct offices. We have a office that focuses on students with emotional disabilities. We have an office that focuses on students that have visual impairments or hearing impairments. And then we have a group within an office that
focuses on some of those catch all disabilities, like other health impairment and specific learning disabilities, because there is no certification for a specific category. So our central office staff is trained to be able to both look at that
data on a systemic level and determine what are the needs of our district based on where we're seeing growth in those disability categories, which over the last several years has been in the area of autism, but
also on a school level, we they're able to look at what the needs of school based staff are, given the number of students who are in their buildings. Okay. I would just like to make a specific request for information. I would like the
other health impairment statistics and data broken down by what those are. So if, for example, if there are 5% of kids with asthma, I want it to say asthma 5%. ET cetera. For this specific learning disability, I would like the same thing so that we can get an idea of when
we're talking about X percentage of our special education students have other health impairment. Are we talking about asthma or ADHD specific learning disability? The same are we talking about dyslexia or dyscalculia for example? Thank you. Thank you, Miss Montoya.
Miss Stewart, you're on. I was going to ask that. Same ask. So. So times two. So I'll just say we may have some of that. All of it may not be disaggregated because it's not required for a team. When they make that
decision. They may not document it that way. But we will certainly determine if we can pull data that way. And I would just add, you know, to your point, if you think about autism, you could spend a lifetime learning about autism. It is such a wide spectrum of services. It's not broken down
into autism A, B and C it is. Students have autism and the way that it impacts them and their learning is different and as unique as that child. And so, you know, teachers in their undergrad program have generally on average, 1.5 courses in
special education. And the state of Maryland requires three, three credit hours. So within that they do not train. We do not have access to training across the spectrum. What we try to set up is that specific to a school and specific to a
student. What does that student need? Because the needs are different even in those categories. So I understand the need to try and understand at a more fine tuned level who we're serving. But that is work that when we're out of school and we're identifying students and
looking through the services that they need, that is the training, then that the teachers need is what does this specific student need and how does that look that from coming from the general educator and from the service providers. So we do have
discrete, specific things that each student is doing, but they are in that student's IEP. So in my head there's like very there's certain conditions we hear about all the time that's
not on here. So maybe if we could concentrate at least on those ADHD, dyslexia, just the ones that rise to the top where maybe we could if we see the numbers, then we could say, okay, then let's increase the
training in this particular area because we do see and then we can see the trend over time to see, you know, what's happening in our society as a whole. We don't know why these are come up to be a focus, but it does
affect all of our classrooms. So anyway, that's understanding that you can't break down, you know, autism into five categories necessarily. But there are other categories that we could pull out. Okay. I just wanted to I have a question on
again nine. Page nine. And I'm sure I'm I might be missing something. But when we looked at the least restrictive environment, A, B and C, that doesn't actually add up to 100%.
So could you just explain where that adds up to 83%? So where what category would that be? 17%. Yes okay. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. So just this slide
just highlights those services that are in our public school settings. Our students who are in our public separate day schools, Rock terrace, Sandburg. Their least restrictive environment is a different
category. It's a different code. The majority of our students are in LRE or least restrictive environment A, which is in the general education classroom, or they are in or they they're in the general education class from
the majority of their day, or they're in a combination of general education and some special education, which is E, B and then C is where they are primarily in a special education classroom. So these may be students who are getting all of
their academic instruction and reading, math, history and science with a special educator. But they come out for art and they with their non-disabled peers. So that accounts for that percentage. The other percentage
is our students who are in nonpublic settings. Public separate day with some of our students who are in residential settings where they are living and being educated in a particular school. Okay, so I have more questions about the
differences and how we determine that. Should I wait till later or should I ask now? You can. It's totally up to you. Okay. We just do a couple more because I would like to move on. Yes. Because we're going to do I think we're going to do some of
that in the later presentation. I'll wait then. Thank you. Very quickly, when we look at the MCPs. Student ethnicity services. One of the concerns
that I have had is for the last few years, the increase, especially of the Latino student population growth. And then correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like that has been the fastest area of growth within
special education. Now, not every Latino students in the male students. So I just want to make sure that there is no misperception, right? That all all the 9000 plus kids that identify as Latino, because my kids were half and half, you
know, and so they they were identified as multi multi race that they are male. So out of those 9329 was the breakdown for the MLS population. So the MLS
is 27% of the total. Now I don't know. So I don't have the total of the 24,000 right. Right. I have it pulled apart of the Hispanic students. Which percentage probably will be pretty high up. I would I would assume that number would be high
up for AML. So my question is about again, we're going with Miss Montoya's question about the whole spectrum of special education, seeing what the trends are. Because when you have children with special education needs, working with
the parents is absolutely vital. So when we identify them early in pre-K, as you know, or we try to identify them, is it true then that they start receiving services in pre-K? Or do we wait
to kindergarten because I'm getting two different I'm getting information that is with our EML kits and pre-K. We wait till they start kindergarten for services. But if it's a special, if there is a special education
component on it, now that we're going to be moving from pre-K, going to some of those part time to we're going to have all day pre-K, are the kids who are identified infants and toddlers who come into the system. Are they then the recipients of
already? Were they being identified with with any disability? So any student is identified as eligible for services at the time that they are identified. So if I have a three year old that goes through child find and is identified as a student with a developmental
delay, we begin we offer services. At that time. The parent has always is. The parents have to sign to begin those services. The at the first initial IEP. Once the parent
signs, then they can begin those services. Whether or not those services are full day or half day is a discussion at the IEP team has based on the student's needs. Okay. No, but I'm saying now that we're going to be doing
full day pre-K, you know, pre-K. We're going to have, I guess, a bigger population starting probably next year of kids who are going to be identified longer because unfortunately, a lot of the kids in half a day pre-K parents work. So a lot of
parents don't even take advantage of it. So you could have a child who was, you know, identified a pre-K with a disability, who was not going to take advantage of that program because of transportation needs. Right. But now we're now those kids are going to be able to go to school all day. So we're probably I'm assuming this is
just an assumption. We're going to see more more pre-K kids identify with special needs. And I just want to make sure that, you know, we have this is one of the reasons why we are supporting the increase for
special ed in our budget to have those folks. But where I'm going with this is the whole the whole involvement of parents at that stage is so critical. And if we're seeing a large M population, my concern is what
is the communication? Because usually the kids, most of them speak English. But but in order for a kid to be successful with an IEP plan or a 504 plan or both of them, you really need to ensure that the parents are able
to understand and to be partners at that early stage for the for them, for us to see success as we develop these plans. So is our special education unit fully equipped with bilingual
professionals or with that, with that skill or that training, to be able then to be able to deal with with those parents. So if I can just just to back up, just to clarify a bit, we have been
so the what drives full day versus half day for us is really student need. And yes, there may be parents who opt not to start IEP services in a half day because of transportation, because of, you know, any of
those potential barriers. But I don't know that we would necessarily anticipate a large number of students that would I don't necessarily think we would increase significantly child find numbers, because we still
track the number of students who are eligible, even if they don't, if the parent says, well, I'm not going to have my student receive services until they're in kindergarten and it's a full day. So that's one clarification with regard to bilingual needs
of our families, we absolutely engage all of the resources that we have within the district. And certainly when we can hire bilingual staff at both the pre-K and the school age level, it is a benefit with the number of students who and families who
are multilingual lingual in the district. But in terms of our teams, they may engage with the language assessment team. If a
student requires assessments in their native language, we do that. We also use language line and other resources, but certainly whenever and wherever we can identify someone who is in the building that can support
those conversations. For parents who are who are not bilingual, who are Spanish speaking, we utilize those resources. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Should we do you have anything else to add?
We're good. Okay. Do we want to go to the next section? Good morning again I'm Kelly Gerrard supervisor especially designed instruction I'm going to start
by explaining a little bit about our pathways to high school completion. Students receiving special education services have two pathways for completing high school. They can earn a diploma or a certificate of completion. And there is a difference
between the two. The most significant difference is that students working towards a high school diploma must be meet. Msde and MCPs requirements concerning earning credits in specific classes. Earning student service learning hours,
and taking and passing state assessments. A program of study for students working towards a certificate of Completion is awarded by the state for completion of a special education program by students with disabilities who do not
meet the requirements for a high school diploma, and the. This is identified based on the student's individual needs and identified by the IEP team. At age 21, these students exit high
school, and so we work to prepare them for community, career and or post-secondary education. Next slide please. Special education services are provided on a continuum to
eligible students between the ages of birth and 21. And we talked a little bit about this, but I hope to provide some clarification and examples for you. Beginning with infants and toddlers, they provide early intervention services to
children birth to age three in the children's natural environment. MCPs has the following services. Service models for eligible children ages three through five. Preschool education services,
otherwise known as Pep, serve students with a wide range of developmental needs, many with mild to moderate learning needs in one or more areas. Pep services are located in 14 elementary schools in the
county, along with in the Stephen Knolls School. At the pre-K level. M.c.p.s. Also provides itinerant speech services. We provide a comprehensive autism preschool
program. Deaf and hard of hearing services. Vision services and services for students with physical disabilities. Next slide please.
Skip this slide. Okay. MCPs is bound by law to educate students in their least restrictive environment, meaning that they are educated to the maximum extent possible with their non-disabled peers. So children of the same age who do not have
IEPs. The majority of students receive their special education services in the general education classroom, and this is what we refer to as LRP. Some students receive special education services is a
combination of inside the general education classroom with some pullout services. And this is where we could get into LR. E b. An example of pullout services might be if a student is receiving an intensive reading intervention, and he or
she needs to be in a quiet, non-distracting environment, that would be a service that could be provided outside of the general education classroom. But for these students, the majority of their services are in that general education classroom. And then a small group of students
receive their special education services with or completely outside of the general education classroom. And this is what we would call lrec. And we commonly refer to this as a self-contained setting. So you
might hear that next slide please. Thank you. A very small percentage of students require education in a separate day school. And this could be public or it could be private. In these
situations, students have no access to their non-disabled peers. So meaning they are solely educated with other students who have IEPs. Some students require home and hospital instruction when a student has an IEP and requires
home and hospital instruction. The IEP team identifies goals for the teacher to work on so that the child can continue to receive special education services through that home and hospital instruction. MCPs also
provides special education services to our incarcerated students per idea. There is a special education teacher at the Clarksburg Jail who provides direct instruction to students who have IEPs. Next slide
please. This slide lays out our continuum of services. Every elementary school provides home school model services, and every middle and every high school provides learning and academic disability services and
transition services. MCPs provides more specialized services at regional sites. As we do not have the capacity to provide these specialized services at every school. An example of this might be a classic autism service or
classroom, and the students who are identified as needing this service require a very specific methodology of instruction. And so we have highly trained teachers that teach in those services. And so we have them at
regional sites throughout the county so that they are accessible to any child whose IEP team deems that that service is appropriate for the child. And then if a student requires a service outside of their home school, then we provide
specialized special education transportation as a related service for that child. Next slide please. This slide shows our related services. These are services that students might need to access and participate
in the general education curriculum. Some common ones that you probably think of are speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy. We also offer art therapy and music therapy. The need for related
service is determined by the student's IEP team. Next slide please. As Diana said, we have some separate day schools that are public. And this slide shows the six schools that MCPs has
for children. Next slide please. And I want to move into instruction a little bit. Planning for and implementing specially designed instruction is a collaboration between the general educator, special educator and related service
provider. And remember, specially designed instruction is what I.d.a or the Special Education Law deems that a child with an educational disability requires. As you will see on this chart, the responsibilities
between the general education teacher and the special education teacher are almost the same with the special education teacher having those case management tasks. I think that this chart exemplifies why we
need to continue to provide professional learning to our general education teachers. As for the majority of students, they are a primary service provider. Next slide please.
Thank you. Placement versus location. Special education placement is determined by the IEP team. And that is that's the services and LRE that a student requires. Location of services
is determined by the district. And it is not prescribed by Idea. So therefore it might look different from one district to another. Location of services is typically dependent upon space.
Which buildings have space for regional services and transportation. Just before we go on from this slide, just can you go over but there's a there's the questions are next
questions. Oh okay. Never mind. If we can let her just finish. It's okay. I'm almost done. Yeah. Well, and I don't know if this answers it, but with this slide, there is in your appendix, there is a sheet that shows the feeder patterns for all of our services that are not
in each home school. Next slide please. And if you have questions we can pause. And I think you do. Yes. So I'm going to start. She had it ready. Ready to go. Her question that
was a lot I know really fast. So yes, my question I just wanted you to talk about the special education placement. Because you you just talked about difference
between districts. I wasn't sure why you. Can you go into that absolutely deeper. So placement when an IEP team meets and they have gone through the IEP, they
have gone through present levels. And then they have identified what goals the child needs to work on, what accommodations, what supplementary aids. That individual student. Can you quickly just say what IEP is just for those watching at home who might not know what an IEP
is? Individualized education program or program okay. So as part of that team discussion, once all of that is identified discussed, then they have the team has to determine what services, meaning how much
specially designed instruction does the child need in order to make progress in the general education curriculum. And so those services remember that three column chart depending on
what the child needs, those services could be in the general education classroom. There could be some pullout. And for some students, the needs are so significant that the student requires services for the
majority of his or her day by a special education teacher. So at this point, we're looking at more of our services that aren't in every school. Now, that whole process is dictated by Idea, which is the governing law for special education. Once the IEP
team determines the services and the least restrictive environment, meaning the amount of time the student needs to be inside and outside of general education. If those services cannot be delivered in the student's home school, then we
look at where in the county can those services most appropriately be delivered. When that happens, you have someone like myself from the Department of Special Education as a part of that meeting to help allocate those district wide services,
because if it's not in their home school, it also comes with special education, transportation. We have to get the children there and we have to get them home. That is, once we get to location of services, we've kind of moved into what
the county prescribes. M.C.P.S. Has a large continuum of services. Other counties, they're continuing. Continuum might not be as great, meaning they might not have as many options. But you're still bound
to implement service hours, and you're still bound to have that child participate with his or her non-disabled peers. As much as the IEP team has recommended. When it comes to location, I could get a child who moves in
from Howard County, who might be in some sort of service, and I don't know the name of their services. I do know they are named very different than what our services are, but I'm charged with looking at that IEP and looking at what is comparable in Montgomery County
to serve the child, even if the name of the program service is different. We look at what the child needs. And so in MCPs our locations we have a very large
district. And so we have locations of services in many schools to help serve all our needs. But that's really the difference between placement. That's the IEP team decision and then location which is the decision by the county. Where can they be implemented? I will
share that by law, we have to have the child served as close as possible to their home, so that we make every effort for them to be as close as possible. Thank you for that explanation. So I want to dig in a little bit
more into placement. I've had discussions with several schools, school staff. I've had people write me about when they're, you know, the staff at
the school is struggling with integrating a child into general education, where it has been determined as least restrictive. And so they start a process and bring in, you know, special
education team to talk about where this child should be placed. So that they are receiving the education that they need. And also so that the
school, the classrooms can actually function because there's secondary issues that come up when maybe the child is not placed in the least
restrictive, as in getting the services that they actually need. So then so this process happens, and then maybe the school or the team is set told,
well, let's try to implement something different in the IEP. And it continues to be an issue and drags on for months and months. You try to get placement, try to get placement, and all of a sudden you're almost to the end of the school year. So you're like not going
to place them at the end of the school year. And now you've got a whole year where there's disruption and issues. So the question I'm trying to get to the question. Sure. So is the question is how and how you evaluate those plans. If they're
working, how often you do it. Do you have the staff to do it? And if the placement is not working, what do you do? Yeah, thank you for that. I'll start and let the experts join in. So the obligation is to serve the student. Like we said, in the least restrictive environment,
which means we have to attempt to try the plan that the IEP team has determined is appropriate for that student. And so let's just take a random its behavior, right. The child has to have a behavior intervention plan. And that behavior intervention plan has
to be implemented. That behavior intervention plan is implemented for a period of 6 to 9 weeks. Data are gathered on whether or not it is working. You can convene earlier or you can make adjustments in between. But really, the object is to
implement the plan that the team created to try and make an impact and hopefully reduce the whatever the behavior is. And you can't just stop doing that and say, we want placement because it is about serving the
child. And so really working with the team to say, are we seeing this? You know, X is a trigger. Are we removing the triggers from this student every single day. And what is when is the behavior occurring. Where is it occurring. Who is triggering.
And that data then helps to inform what the plan is. So it's never about get the child out. Because we serve all children. We're a public school system. We serve all children in every school. And the goal is to do to use the resources and bring in
the supports that are needed to provide what that student needs is only after a period of actually trying to implement what that plan is. Where it's not working, that team might come back and say, let's try something different, or let's take a partial step towards
reducing that. Those triggers and then more data are gathered. So it is not a quick or easy process, but it is the right of the children and their families to get those services and to prove that we have done everything that we can to try and meet their their needs. So
that's the big picture, is that it really is student specific and it really is. Are we doing what we said we would do? And are we gathering the data that shows that it is or is not working? Because that is what is then used to inform a next decision? So my question, my
next question then is. Is this done as a team effort or is it more top down where the providers at the schools told. I mean, how is that how did you
come to these conclusions? Because I've heard that maybe sometimes they would like a second opinion that there's in other words, there's something going on where there's not the
team isn't coming to the same conclusion. So I'm just curious how that is worked out. If I
could just add an Happening, you know, in the day to day. And perhaps it could be the family
and students or maybe staff or collectively that maybe this is not the best fit. Not that the school system is not trying or the school is not trying. It's not anything about
that. But just perhaps this wasn't the best environment for that student. And so where do folks go from there? Is that kind of what you're getting at? Yeah, I'm just talking about everyone, including the
parents, the teachers, special ed, everyone is working as a team. So you're on the same page. Sometimes I feel like there's a disconnect happening. And I'm curious,
what do you have ideas of how to get through the disconnect? Do you have processes to do that? So thank you. I want to acknowledge something that's been stated throughout this presentation. Special
education is extremely complex. So I want to just say to you that I hear your question, but the way to
Choir services that are greater than what they are receiving. We are now in the process of trying to place a student, for example, in a nonpublic. That may be one situation. When you talk about how are these decisions made? They are data driven decisions. So one of the references that
Kelly Jerome spoke to were the present levels of academic achievement and functional performance. We have to look at how the child is performing, whether it's academic or behavioral, social, emotional. But what
are the factors Again, the rate of progress could be very slow, but there is progress. So we have to acknowledge that going right back to the legal realm, which
is that we must provide the services in the least restrictive environment. What is the least restrictive for one child may not be for the other child. So again, is it a collaborative process? It absolutely is. It has to happen in an IEP team meeting. And so
we review that data. It is not guided by one individual. Parents are part of that team. And then I want to take it in another direction and tell you that parents have rights. Later on in the presentation we were going to talk about it, but I think it makes sense to talk
about it now. There are due process rights that parents have. And so when a parent does not agree with a team that they can challenge, if you will, and I'm using that
Of both. So there are different scenarios that would allow a child to continue. In an environment where some staff members may be concerned, other staff members understand. And so one of the things that I have found is very helpful is that we
educate staff. On what we're doing. But it takes me to the next point professional learning. Sometimes staff members need more than what they currently have in their toolbox. There was Miss Montoya asked about that. When you talk about disabilities. Our professional
learning isn't solely given toward a disability because it may manifest in different ways. So what we do have to do is there are some common strategies that you may use with a particular disability. But the way again, one child presents might be very different from another child. So there are some
baseline strategies behavioral social emotional that we might use. But again it's also looking at what's happening. Because sometimes what we find is that the adults in the room don't even know that they are triggering a child. And so we have to go in, we have to observe, we have to give
feedback. And there is a proces. We try very hard not to make unilateral decisions without being able to look at all the data points. So, you know, I recognize that I may not have answered your question completely, but what I want to acknowledge is that there's not
just one way to answer that, but there are many factors that may impact what someone feels is happening versus We can actually elaborate a
little bit more on what that looks like, the plans and so on. But I do want to give me some time. Do you have another quick question? One more question is how do we as when we intake our
international students and they come in sometimes, maybe they already had some kind of services where they came from? I don't know, how do we determine and place our international students, and is there a process to do that? Absolutely. So one
of the things I want to acknowledge is that when international students arrive, they may or may not have a full amount of documentation. So oftentimes what we receive is a message that indicates that there may be a disability. So we
have to follow the process. There's a child find process that is established in the event that we don't have all of the data. When we do. The process that Mr. Ron talked about, whether it's in-state, out of state, we need to provide provide comparable services. But
oftentimes the documentation that is required to determine that a child is eligible with a disability code would mean that we have to look for those pieces of information, if you will. And so if they're not there, then it's incumbent upon us to move through the child find process. But I want to also acknowledge
that because we suspect the disability doesn't always necessarily mean that there is a disability that warrants special education services. For example, a child might have cerebral palsy. And so it may be that they need some accommodations. So perhaps maybe it's a 504 plan
that they require. So it's again complex multifaceted, but one which we move together with. Thank you, Miss Montoya. Thank you. I actually have a question about the special education related services. But want to make a quick point that Miss
Middleton Murphy, I apologize, mentioned about training and I can appreciate that we don't ever want to paint our students of any group with a large swath, because we know that those are just labels and groups that we put folks in, whether we're talking about race and ethnicity
or disability. And I absolutely, 100% agree. I do have a concern, though, by not training, perhaps, for example, our general education staff on various disabilities for which we have large segments of our student population presenting that we are then perhaps
permitting staff to rely on their own views, generalizations, etc. When they engage with students. And that can sometimes be harmful. So it's just something for us to consider and perhaps have a conversation about that. There are, you know, are things on both sides. And there are ways, I think, to train so that our
staff has an understanding of some of these, what we're calling disabilities. I would beg to differ with that, but that our students present with without then also having them place those students in a box that they are unable to get out of. Right. So thank you. In regards to special education
related services, which is on page 20 of the slideshow presentation, my question is. How much or which of these? Or maybe it's sometimes probably a little bit of both of these types of services. Do we provide
in-house. So our staff might be going in to provide versus contract out. And then any challenges that your office has experienced with that? Because I know I hear about them sometimes. So contractual services is a hot topic always,
particularly when we get to discussing the budget. We contract for services where we can't hire staff to do the work that is required based on IEP. The majority of our contractual
services are paid for through for speech and language services. We have approximately 40 or so vacancies in speech and language for speech and language pathologists, and we contract for those services where we have
not been able to hire. One of the things that we saw is that post Covid closures, many speech and language pathologists opted not to return to in-person work because they were able to do the work of a speech and language
pathologist virtually. So some of our contractors are virtual speech and language pathologists. It is always our goal to have an in-person provider, but we are required to provide these services. So we provide them in the best way
that we can. Some of the other lesser used related services we also contract for, for example, orientation and mobility is a service that is particular to students who are blind or
visually impaired. We have some in-house vision teachers that may have that certification, but we also contract with Maryland School for the blind to support those services as well. Given the number of students who need those services. Art therapy and
music therapy are other areas where we where we contract simply because it is more cost effective to contract for those services. Because you have a very small number of students who receive those services, it is not a related service that
many students require. Thank you. And I know in some of these areas, perhaps speech and pathology, we also have shortages just in general of people that are available to hire. Right. So I just want to make sure that the community understands it is very hard to
find pediatric specialists sometimes, especially that can provide in-person services, whether it's for school systems or individual families. Thank you. So following to that, I am very concerned about a couple of areas. But before we go into
that, I just very quickly, when you contract these services, how often do you evaluate their performance? So our speech supervisor is responsible for identifying schools that require
SLP contractor because there's a vacancy. She monitors where we have those vacancies. She also attempts where we would like to have an in-person and have a
virtual on an ongoing basis. She checks that and reaches out to the agencies to try to identify an in-person contractor that we can swap out, essentially. But we also rely on the school team, the special educators, the
administrators to provide that feedback because they can always call our special speech and language pathologist supervisor and say, you know, this isn't working. This individual isn't showing up. This individual is not providing services in the
meaningful way to students. And once they provide that information, we work to identify someone who would be more appropriate. Okay, so we don't have like a yearly evaluation of our contractors. Like if we have occupational therapy, for
example, we have a contractor, do we then send out to the schools who use the occupational therapy and say, is this working? You know, you know, like a way of us measuring that, that we're getting the service
that our students need. And it could be with, with a different I know we do a lot of contracting and special education. So that's why I'm asking, do we have something that is set up by the system, but not to wait for the school? Because a lot of these schools are so overwhelmed because of
the nature of the student population that they have. Right. That I'm just wondering, do we as a system, have a mechanism to do these evaluations yearly of the contractors that serve the needs of the kids in special
placement? So we do not at this time send out annual evaluations to the schools with regard to how any of the agency special SLPs are functioning in their schools. But again, we monitor
on a regular basis their performance. And one of the reasons I'm going this way with it, because one of, you know, I'd be interested to know how the monitoring is done. And you can let us know as an addendum to the presentation, how you guys do that. But, you know, one
of those schools is in my district, and one of the reasons why I shared this, this committee is because the special populations community is very close to my heart. And having had family members and, and so many folks and, and that I, you
know, that I, that I, you know, including myself had to, you know, manage navigating through very, very bureaucratic ways sometimes that our system has rightly so, but still nevertheless, it is quite a burden on a lot of parents who might not know the system well.
So one of the areas that I'm very concerned about, when you said we have 40 vacancies on speech therapy, it is a huge red flag for me. And you're absolutely right. We should not be doing speech therapy online because some of these kids, specifically in schools like
Longview and Stephen Knowles and others who are the most medically fragile, that and you know better than anybody else, specialists will tell you that it's not the best way. It's you know, it's one thing when I had speech therapy in elementary
school because I had an accent and they had to put the pencil in my mouth, right. So I couldn't get rid of all the R's and how to pronounce the S's. But it's another when you have a child who might have had a brain injury or so on, that is a different mechanism and engagement that needs to be done. So do you know how many
speech therapists we have on hand right now? How how bad is the situation? Because I keep getting email after email from many parents, and a lot of these schools with their children have not gotten speech therapy for months. And I just want to see how we can. Is it is it the fact
that we need to hire and pay better rates than that? And then what we are offering because like you said, many folks have left. And is it because of pay? Because we do have one of the largest systems in the in the state. And we, you know, compared to other states, we
have a large population who needs a lot of these services. So I just want to have I just want to hear an honest, you know, response on what is it that, you know, we need to do as a system? Because I know we're not unique or lonely in this area. I think everybody is feeling the pain. But when you
have a population that is the most fragile, who truly need the services, do we have other speech therapists in our in our county who can provide some some of these to the most needed and most fragile of our students
currently? So as you said, and as Miss Montoya said this, there's a critical shortage. There's a national critical shortage of speech and language pathologists, special educators. People are either not going to
school to do this work, or they don't want to work in the public education setting. Covid changed a lot of people's. Mind about how they wanted to do the work.
Some people opted, and we saw this particularly with speech and language pathologists, because the national organization expressed that speech and language therapy could be provided virtually through telehealth. And we also
see a shift for more telehealth. Certainly there are students that would that telehealth isn't the best way to provide those services, but it's a reality of where we are today. And where
the profession has gone. As I said, we monitor particularly for schools and for different services in schools where we know we would like to have an in-person SLP there. Our supervisor monitors regularly.
Can we get someone in person? The reality of the situation is if we have 20 contractors that have been gone through our procurement process, because we do have to follow our procurement process to contract with them. Those same 20
agencies are also providing SLPs for Prince George's County, Howard County, Anne Arundel County, and SLPs who work for agencies have flexibility. They may not want to work in a school. They may not want to work in person. They may not
want to work with a specific group of students, or they may decide, well, I don't if I'm offered a position in Prince George's County and in Montgomery County was closer to my home. And so it's a moving target that our supervisor
spends a lot of her time just trying to track and monitor to make sure that that our students are receiving the services that they require. We always are open to looking at additional contractors that we can add. But again, that process takes a few
months because they have to meet all of the procurement requirements for any contract that we open, contracts that we have. But we work on this on an ongoing basis. Okay. No. And so I'm just currently how many
speech therapists do we have on hand. How many what is the total number of SLPs. Yeah, because I know we have 40 vacancies. But how many how many bodies do we have that number, if you allow me to look for sure and then I can answer that a little bit later. Okay. Thank you. You just I do I just want a quick thing
about speech that the community understands, because I know we're also used to telehealth, and there's a real great convenience for it. I've appreciated telehealth myself. But when you're talking about children with speech and I have familiarity in this area, it can be really tricky to see things through the screen. It can be hard to hear the sounds
distinctly or see which muscles are moving or not moving, or the way their tongue is moving, especially when you have young children who don't understand, maybe to get up close or things like that. So it's really important to have in-person pediatric speech therapists, which is why this is such a big
need. Thank you. If I could just add to address and put a point on your on your point, there are not enough people going in to speech language pathologists. And it is a that's part of the reason for the critical
nationwide nationwide shortage. It's also that there aren't enough seats in the programs themselves that do exist to increase the capacity. There are also limitations. Some of them are only offered during the day. So you can't be a person who is
working and going to earn that, earn that certification. So expanding the number of graduate programs and the fact that we're competing with every other district in Maryland and the region for this highly specialized service means that
you do have to look at your caseloads. We do have to try to keep the people that we have. We have to have more reasonable caseloads, which, you know, means we need more contracted services. So it is, as you said, a very complex piece. It's something that we have been
working with higher education. We do go meet those individuals, try to court them, invite them, monitor them, you know, sponsor them so that they will choose to come here. And to Doctor Pugh's point, we have a partnership
with University of Maryland, where we pay a portion of tuition for SLPs. You know, it's not 20 that are coming out every year. It may be a handful, 3 or 4, but every every SLP that we
can get is an added. It's a bonus for us. I just want to put a plug in for grow our own and make sure that we have our high school students know that this is there's a great need for this and so we can kind of help fill
that pipeline. Also, I just cannot let this conversation go by without saying that my own child at two years old, we had a conversation with his teacher and she suggested we use child
find because he was not really. He didn't have his consonants, so he would say whole sentences without consonants. I learned to understand them. The teacher could not, and so I cannot imagine having him at that age going and doing this online at
all. It was a lot of physical work with him, and after six months he had all his consonants. So and then, as you know, parents again, that was important to me that the teacher
said, maybe you should use child find. So I hope that even though we have not as much resources that we need, that teachers feel okay if to have that conversation with parents to
identify students, because in the long run, it's it will actually save us money. If kids are identified earlier than later. And so I just want to make sure that our teachers are feel free to have that
conversation with parents and that it is a team effort. Thank you, Miss Stewart. And the last thing that infants and toddlers program is run. It's not run by us, correct. It's run by HHS. It's run by by us. It is run. So
we have. It's a it's a little bit complicated, but essentially there's some grant funding that's passed through the health department. To us, the vast majority of the infants and toddlers staff is M.c.p.s. Staff
is M.c.p.s. Staff okay. Right. But there's also some I guess are not. There are few okay, that are either through the health department or some partnerships that we have with some local agencies. Okay. So we monitor them, then we monitor them. We pay them, okay. They're
our teachers okay. And service providers. All right. Thank you so much. Can we move on to the next section? I know this was a lot to take in and I appreciate. You guys navigating this very
complex. And as Miss Middleton Murphy said, these are, I think, the most complex group of students that we have in our system. And not every program fits. Every child is really an
individualized plan for a lot of our children. So, okay, measuring student progress. Absolutely. I will take a moment to make you laugh. I know that people always kind of pause at how long my name is. You make my dad happy when you say
Middleton, you make my husbandha Murphy. So I'm fine with Kia Murphy. Please feel free. I've been that way for many, many years. I'm happy to make your dad happy. Okay? All right, all right. He's probably chuckling. Now to that end, the academic and social emotional success of students receiving special
education services is monitored through a range of different measures. At the individual student level, the school system level and at the state level. So on this slide, you'll see the first bullet, which is state performance plans, annual performance reports. That is in essence the special education
reportd. We are monitored by 17 different indicators. There are 17 different categories to which I won't go into specifics, but to give you an idea, it would be about our least restrictive environment. We are
supposed to make sure that students receive their special education services in the least restrictive environment. So to that end, there's a certain target that we're supposed to meet for the number of students in A or C. Another area would be, of course, the
disproportionality or proficiency rate for diploma students, non diploma bound students. But there are 17 different indicators on our report card. The next area which is the IEP and so on the IEP or the Individualized Education
Program. We look at the goals. And each quarter we measure how students are performing. We do that because within the goals we have the measurement criteria. So the case manager is working along with the related service providers as well as the general
educator to gather that data and to report out quarterly if the student has met their goal, if they are making progress toward their goal, or if they have not made progress at all. And when a student has not made progress, we must have an IEP meeting to look at what we might need to
change in order for that student to make progress. That is a collaborative effort, and as you saw in that chart earlier, that all stakeholders have to work together to make sure we understand where that student is performing. And of course, there are school improvement plans where schools are looking at
their school wide data and they're taking a closer look at trying to identify where there are gaps and if there are gaps, what is it that the school team needs to do? That is oftentimes where we are collaborating very
directly with schools specific to that school's needs. And Miss Montoya, I think maybe I didn't do a good job at answering your question, but this is where that comes into what is the professional learning or specially designed instruction supports that that individual school may need. So it may be
talking about disabilities and the different categories. It may be that team members need to have training around de-escalation. So in the broad sense we do meet with elementary lead teachers approximately
every other month. We meet monthly with resource teachers for special education. Those are the department chairs at the secondary level. So there is ongoing professional learning. But when it gets more individualized to a school, it's
based on having that analysis of the school specific data to really make sure that we're designing, if you will, the professional learning that's appropriate for that school team. And then we get down to the student level. So it may mean meeting, as we call them, consultations with the special
educator or the special education team. We over the summer time have professional learning in which we bring in the administrators. So we do try at many levels, but it is a collaborative process to really understand what a school team may require beyond what is observed by the special
education service, I mean the supervisor or instructional specialist. And when you talk about the system wide data, there are three different measures that we use. Classroom performance is going to be your grades, state assessments, which I'm sure that you're aware of. Macapp. And so for our students
who are non diploma bound, they also have a state assessment to which we are looking at because their performance is equally important. They are part of those 17 indicators as well as our own desire for them to have successful outcomes. And then of
course the district assessments. You've heard about Dibels, the curricular measures that we use. So there are a variety of ways that we are measuring student progress with the Individualized Education Program. At least once a year, we are having annual
reviews, and then at least every three years, we are having a reevaluation to determine if a student continues to qualify. Next slide please. Okay. And so we've talked a little bit throughout around the importance of professional learning on
special education services. And so I just want to highlight of course what's extraordinarily important is to make sure that we're legally compliant with Ida. And so we want to make sure that we are providing a free, appropriate public education for students in the least restrictive environment. Some of
the decisions that are made by IEP team are not always understood because of the legalities that are involved. So making sure that people understand that's also very important. With professional learning. We want to make sure that we're also enhancing the collaboration. Teachers have to
learn how to work together, and they have to understand the roles that they each play and where they share responsibilities. Because there are shared responsibilities, administrators are critical in making sure that those collaborative opportunities do occur. Our general educators, as
was mentioned before by several of us today, are our primary service providers. So we do want to make sure that that collaboration occurs. And then ultimately, it is about making sure that we are continuously looking at the needs of our
students, and so that we are equipping all of our educators and all of our staff members. Because remember, the Paraeducators are critical in providing specially designed instruction. So we want to make sure that we're looking at the strategies that are needed for
the research based interventions. We want to make sure that we're looking at behavioral strategies, inclusive practices, and then of course assistive technology. Next slide please. Staffing special
education staffing. There are multiple factors that we use to guide our decision making. So when you talk about getting the stakeholder input we meet monthly with our Mcap advisory groups. And so that's led by Miss Wow. So that's one
opportunity for us to hear from our administrators. We also attend their professional learning community meetings. That doesn't happen all of the time, but that's another avenue for us to get direct feedback from our administrators. There are monthly meetings with our
area specific labor relations management. So that's when we're meeting with MCE. And so each of the directors joins Miss Wiles to hear from our MCE staff members. And that's not just the teachers, but that also incorporates the related service
providers like our social workers or our speech pathologists. It also incorporates the Pep teachers. There's a representative there as well, see, and that is our parent group, Special Education.
Thank you. Citizens Advisory Committee. The acronyms are endless, but they are also a critical point for us because it allows for parents who may not be comfortable speaking with us, but they will speak to the co-chairs and so they can raise
questions, concerns, comments. But it's an opportunity for us to also give them what they are seeking, which might be, you know, learning about how to support their child. It may be about learning about the resources, but that is where they can give us feedback around
the staffing. In December and this year, it occurred in January, Doctor Taylor did come to the meeting to talk about the budget. So that's just another way for us to get input around staffing models. And then of course, the staffing plan
meeting that we hold, it is required that we have this annually. And so we typically meet and I think it's about August where we prioritize with a broad stakeholder group. It could be parents, community advocates. It's also school
based staff. But we identify the priorities for the budget. And so oftentimes it's going to be staffing. And where we believe that that staffing should be placed. And so then we come back in January to review where we are and what we've accomplished.
Next slide please. So the source of special education funding, we've touched on this in different meetings. But I think what's critical to bring up is that when you look at the federal or the state funds, it accounts for less than 9% of the
total budget. And then, of course, given the current political landscape, it's possible that that percentage of funds coming from the federal government could be less. Next slide please. So here are some
factors that impact our budget. And again what I would like to call out which we spoke to earlier, is that the students who are Medicaid eligible, we're able to bill for the services. And that's another source of
revenue that we use for staffing the related service providers and special educators complete the paperwork. And so, in some cases, you would imagine that we're impacted because we've spoken to the vacancies that we have. In order to do this, the
special educators and or related service providers must be licensed in their particular field. And so given that we have vacancies, that's going to impact some of the ability to bill for those services. Next
slide please. So we've talked a little bit about the placement process. And in totality special education. And so I wanted to draw your attention because I know that it has been a concern
that students may require something more. So I wanted to talk to you a little bit through a case study of a student who started receiving special education services and then ultimately required more than could be provided in the home school or in one of our discrete
services. So we have Joanne, who is now a fifth grade student with multiple disabilities, autism specific learning disability and other health impairment. And so I say that to say that she certainly has significant needs. And so she's now attending a private separate
day school. But let's talk a little bit about Joanne's journey. She received special education services in an elementary learning center for third and fourth grade to address at that time what we identified were reading, writing and math needs. But Joanne
continued to have difficulty she wasn't making progress toward her goals. And so we talked about this, that when a student is not making progress, the IEP team comes together to look at what is happening, what is her data saying? Where do we need to
adjust accommodations? Where do we need to adjust her goals? Maybe she needs an intervention. So we make decisions around what we're going to revise and we continue to serve. Joanne, when it appears that we have exhausted all of our resources
and that we seem to still continue to have difficulty, the team determined that we need to reevaluate. Joanne, and the purpose for doing that is we want to gain additional information about what may be needed in her educational programing that is not currently
being provided, and so she had educational assessments, psychological assessments, related service assessments. And so here's what we found out. She had more needs reading, math, writing, her social interactions, her self-management, her executive functioning. And she also
required occupational therapy. So when the team met again to review all of these assessments, they updated her IEP, wrote all of the goals and objectives that she then required. It was through that collaborative process that the team discussed her needs, and felt that Joanne required a small group
instruction and highly structured classroom outside of the general education environment, and so she needed parts of her day where the social skills and the behavior management were embedded throughout the entirety of her day, and these were beyond what could be provided in the
continuum that we have in Montgomery County public schools. So there was a central and that's stands for centralized I Individualized Education Program meeting, in which we determined that Joanne's least restrictive environment was commissioned to
a private, separate school. So that's a little bit about how one child may require a greater level of service. Next slide please. These are or this is the
photograph of what we call the parent rights or the procedural safeguards notice. And so we provide those to parents at a minimum yearly. And so these become extraordinarily important because we want to make sure that parents are informed
participants. And they can advocate for their child. They are provided in multiple languages. Msde has them on their website. So we certainly have access to print those and provide those to parents. They can be provided physically in hand, or it could be sent electronically. They're
important because they protect the rights of students with disabilities. They prevent discrimination and ensure access to a free, appropriate public education. We also want to make sure that parents are clear about what their informed
consent is, because we can't move without their consent. So, for example, assessments parents have to give us written consent to perform those assessments. It also outlines dispute resolution and mediation. So if a parent
disagrees, what steps they can take to request the due process or the mediation, and then ultimately I think that it encourages open communication sometimes this is a very dense document. So we talk about it. Special education supervisors,
instructional specialists, special education teachers. We also have our Resolution and compliance unit which is there to answer questions. So it's a dense document. But it is also important that parents are aware that it exists and that we can talk through so that they have
clear understanding. Next slide. Stakeholder engagement. So our family support services specialist is Mary Beth. And it's a required position. And so what she does for Montgomery County Public Schools is she
maintains a web page which has a multitude of resources. She also takes individual phone calls. She comes to IEP meetings with parents. But it's an opportunity for parents to talk to someone who they may feel is far more neutral, because it's not
someone at the school, and it's an opportunity for them to also receive information. She organizes workshops to make sure that parents have opportunities to learn about valuable information related to their child and the special education process. And then we talked
already about special education Citizen's Advisory Committee. And so those are, again, opportunities for parents to talk to us about what they believe they need. And it is between Mary Beth Mars-uranus, our family Support services, as well as the directors and
special education that work together to provide those resources to parents. I know that earlier in the year, I saw Miss Montoya at our resource fair. This was new this year that we did one in the winter based on parent input. They really wanted to have something
at the earlier time to help them identify ways that they can provide summer camp opportunities for their children, or even just in the evening. So we had many different community organizations there, a big interest, and we also have water
safety sessions going on now for parents, but was about swim lessons. So we had a couple of different organizations there. And each month, Rockville Recreation, as well as Montgomery County Parks and Recreation, come to our meetings to talk about what's going on, to support parents with matching
different activities for their students. And so again, we have periodic meetings with our different stakeholder groups. And then we also in the spring I will put a plug in. Now, Mary Beth, I know you're listening. May 10th at Seneca Valley High
School, we will have our I'll say Spring Resource Fair now that we've had one in the winter time, where we also bring different organizations and the children are welcome. We have activities that go on for the children so that parents can
come and feel at ease, and the children can be engaged as well. Next slide. Time for discussion. Okay, I'll start on my left. Miss Montoya, thank you so much. Thank you so much for all of this information. I want to give
a shout out to the folks on the Kcac, because that is a wonderful space for parents. And I myself have been to those meetings and sometimes met some of you in those meetings and been able to learn about all kinds of different workshops and things, quite frankly, that Mary Beth has put together. She's
done a lot of work in that area to try to provide more information for families with all of you, of course, including the resource fairs that you spoke about, which I've been to last year, the spring one, which I believe was at Blair, and then this year, the one that was at
Carver. And I will see you at Seneca Valley, I'm sure. And I appreciate all of our community vendors who are there as well. One note I want to mention is that I don't think everyone is aware of. I only learned about Kcac last year and my children are in third and fifth grade, so I do want to just make sure I
know again, that is a community group. It's not necessarily an MCPs group, I don't think, but just as much as we can get parents out there, I was thrilled to see about 60 something folks on the meeting, but in a sea of 24,000 potentially eligible families,
because of the number of students we have with special education, right? That's not very much. So we want to make sure we get the word out. I want to also, you know, I have to be honest, this is like the number one thing I hear about everywhere I go is special education. Before I was on the
board and now and I know it is a very complex area. So I don't necessarily take that to mean that MCPs isn't doing the best that they can do, but one item that can be really challenging, and I say this as a parent, is
that even when I have a law degree, I don't always understand our policies and regulations or the notices or the handbook. Understanding not all of that comes from MCPs, right? Some is from the state Department of Education. But and
I acknowledge the steps you're taking to try to bridge that information gap, but we're going to have to figure out more, because, again, even as someone with a level of education that I have where I should be pretty easily able to understand what these processes are, the policies and the regulations, it
is very confusing. And when you are already feeling challenged or panicked or some of the feelings that we as parents can feel when we're trying to get services for our child, it can be even more so. And so to the extent that we can always work on making sure the language is
in plain language, and I'm happy to provide any support that I can, that I think that alwayss a benefit to our families, especially those who may not even speak English or who aren't comfortable questioning authority or knowing that their services are even available. So I appreciate the work you're doing there, but I want to just
make sure we highlight that it's only accessible if we can understand it. And that also leads to the meetings. And then just highlight the factors that impact the budget. On page 29, we see in our current budget for this year, that is a huge part
of our budget that we're proposing to the county executive and the council, because we know that we need more staff, right? Our students can't receive the services that they need if we don't have the staff we need. And accordingly, the resources that all of you need to help craft that out. So I just want to highlight that for the community that we see
that that's a need, especially in light of some unknowns at the federal, state and county levels. So thank you again, Miss Stewart. Do you have a question? One thing I would like to see, I appreciate the case study that
was included in this packet. I would like to see a maybe a case study of what happens again when I hear about I'm bringing this up because I've heard about it several times in the last couple of weeks about in especially in
elementary school where there's a child that's basically just being followed around by an educator, because walking the halls. ET cetera. Because they're just not thriving in the classroom. And so what happens
as that situation comes up? I would love to see. You know, the process in having that child placed. I know we talked about it today, but just to see the case study is helpful for me to understand how that kind of situation is handled. And then I
was looking at the. DCS and. So again with. The underneath the black and African American.
Category is Hispanic Latino. I'm just making sure I have that right. I mean, what can we go through? I'm talking about page 36 and 3535 below that I think
is Hawaiian Pacific. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So I always try to see are there outliers in the way this data looks to me. And so there
was 9300 29 students receiving special education services. And then if you go over to the private separate day, they have 121 students there. Yet for
black students and white students, it's almost twice that. I'm just curious if you is there, why is that an outlier?
Are you referring to slide 38 with the MLS and private separate day schools? Actually it's 30 this page 35. The previous one. I'm sorry. Could you could you ask the question one more time? Page 35 I see, so
if you go you can see the end student number rate the highest in the N category is Hispanic. Is that correct? That's correct. Yet if you go all the way over
to the private separate day compared to black and white, they have the lowest amount, even though they have a higher amount of students overall. I'm
just curious, is this could this be because they don't there's not as much information or resources. So they don't know that they have that option of if
the education, if education is not happening in school, that they have that option. I just don't know if you have anything to add context to that. So let me make sure I understand the question. I think what you're asking, because our Hispanic
student group is the highest number of students who are eligible, but it is not a comparable number who are in private, separate day schools. Correct. That could be for a multitude of reasons that I wouldn't be able to tease out.
Just looking at the numbers. It could be that the students are also receiving EML services. So they they have the support of Eld services. I'm sorry. They have the support of the Eld
teacher along with the special educator. So they may not need the level of support in a private separate day. It could be that there are students that we have not been able to place. One of the things we didn't talk about today, and some of the challenges that we have to speak
to. Your request for case study is that we have students who may be awaiting a nonpublic placement where we have said as a district, unfortunately, we can't meet a student's needs because they are greater than what we have to support them.
But we are challenged with the same challenge we have with the SLA and the contracts. There is not an infinite number of nonpublic schools and we are, along with the other school systems, trying to place
students where they need to be. So a school, Catherine Thomas or Kennedy Krieger, Sheppard Pratt, they have X number of seats. And we may refer a student and they may not have space, they may not have enough teachers. They may
not have the capacity to work with a student at that time. And so sometimes that is what you'll see in a school where a student is still in a public school setting, because we haven't been able to identify nonpublic for them. But in reference to your
specific question, it's hard to tease that out. Just looking at this data, because it could be a wide range of reasons. Thank you for that. I just want to reiterate what my colleague
pointed out is that making sure parents know about their options, you know, and. It is good, right? So they know that they can advocate for themselves. But also there's something that you said that
resonated with me about that EML teacher. So I actually observed a classroom where there was an email teacher in that classroom, and you could see that that was really a great support to the general ed teacher. And so this
just reiterates why it's so important in the budget that we are supporting funding more paraeducators and special educators so that we do have
more supports pushed into the classroom, because it really does make a difference. And if that happens, then maybe we wouldn't have to place so many, you know, out of our public school system because they're actually getting the supports in the classroom. So I just wanted to point that out and say thank
you for this data. This is really helpful for us to again, look at trends, outliers and see where maybe where we can improve communication or other services, like that email teacher that makes a difference. Thank you,
Miss Stewart. Miss Montoya, just just a quick follow up, because I too noticed that there are a disproportionate number of black and white students in private, separate day placements as opposed to Latino students. And I want to be clear, because it was suggested that that one of
the reasons for that could be that the Latino students are also or in need of emerging multilingual services. Not all of our M.C.P.S. Emerging multilingual students are Latino students, and we even have charts here that show us that. So I want us to be very mindful
of the suggestion that. The that the fact that some Latino students may be ESL is then bleeding into some of the reasoning behind these. That's just a very that's an assumption we should not be making or suggesting. Thank you. Okay.
This was a packed, packed with information. I wish we had more time for discussion, but we will. Sorry miss, I did want to give you the SLP numbers. Oh, you got them this quick. Thank you, I pulled them, I just didn't have them in front of me.
Thank you. So there are 300, approximately 375 FTEs for speech and language pathologists, with 345 of those FTEs filled. So that would give us about 30 vacancies, FTE
vacancies. But that does not that doesn't mean 30 people, because we allocate FTEs by point. Correct. You know. So yes. Right. Yeah. It's a little bit more complex with that. But that's about it okay. But we have 375 bodies who provide. And
let's just remember we're 211 schools and almost 160,000 students. But with that being said, then we really, whoever the gurus are and M.C.P.S. Who allocate some of these folks to
schools, can we please look at those very vulnerable schools that have not been getting the speech therapy folks in house for those kids who, as Miss Montoya said, a little bit more complex than the child who might
just, you know, have the less, more, less invasive kind of speech therapy, they are prioritized. Okay. But again, agency SLP may opt not to work with certain populations of
students, unfortunately, just there's one more very quickly, very quickly. I'm sorry. I just feel like I can't let this meeting go by without at least mentioning our twice exceptional students, because we didn't cover that group, which is a
unique group. So I'd like to have that covered at some point about how they're identified is that, you know, what programs are available and or how do we handle that situation. Those situations in our general education population, very
quickly, I just I just wanted to give you a little context, twice exceptional is the set of services, but not the disability. Okay. Thank you. So to answer that in a nutshell, there served across all of our services. And so I think, you know, probably more information
about the services we can certainly provide. I just but I wanted to make sure you understood that that was not the disability per se. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. Thank you, Miss Middleton Murphy, for that clarification. What I just also wanted to say
is, as we communicate with parents on the progress of their of their students, I hope we do it in a way that is that they're able to digest that, because sometimes the way we that we send out grading and so on to the general population is not in the best way, understand by many
parents we send graphs and we I hope this is more of a of a level where parents are able to follow the progress of, of, of our students because it is a bit more complex that that communication. It's in plain
English as it can be. So parents can be involved at a very early nature with the progress of their children. But also, I like to acknowledge and say thanks to
those folks who come into our classrooms every single day to teach our children and who see this not as a profession, but as a vocation, to be able to work with our students from our special education educators to
our teachers, to our therapists who sometimes have to, you know, make it work and go the extra mile. That this population has grown so much even after Covid, and that they are very complex.
Thank you, Mrs. Kia, for making us understand that not every every glove fits every student. And this is not, you know, where we can actually see that. But this is more complex than that. Every child has their own needs. And as we are one of the largest
districts in the country and the largest in the state of Maryland, we have to understand, you know, that unfortunately, we are also facing some difficulties with speech therapists, occupational therapists, occupational therapists, and you name it. So this is just, you know, to say
to the young people who are choosing careers, there is a variety of careers in education that we're going to be, you know, seeing a need for. And I hope some some of those young people answer the call because
it is a very these are very noble professions. So with that being said, I want to thank Miss Pugh, Miss Weiler, Miss Doran and Miss Middleton Murphy for being here today. And I know you have another colleague who has been here as well. And to her as
well, and to our staff and I, I thank you and I will see you. When is our next meeting? Can my staff can somebody from the staff remind me? Maybe Cinco de Mayo, May 5th will be our next meeting. So with that being said, I hope to see you all next
time. Thank you so much. And with that, we're adjourned.