e is Grace Rivera Oven. I represent district one and I'm the chair for the Special Populations Committee. Welcome. Bienvenidos a todos. Today is September 29th, and this is our first meeting of the year. So
thank you for joining us. We are looking forward to a very informative and lively discussion this year as we enter our first year of our new strategic Plan. This year, our committee will continue to dedicate itself to enhancing the experience of our special
populations in all our schools. We recognize that most of the students spend a significant portion of their time in general education classes. Our mission is to understand who our special populations are and how they navigate their school
experience. Before I go on, I would like to introduce my wonderful colleagues and I will ask them to introduce themselves. I'll start with my left. Good morning. Thank you. Rita montoya, Board of Education member at large. Thank you all for being here
this morning. Good morning. Laura Stewart representing district four and happy to be here on this lovely Monday. Thank you. I as you can see, I have wonderful colleagues who join me in this committee, so I appreciate that. Today we will
also approve the 20 2526 work plan for the committee. We will also continue the presentation that we left off. I feel it's been like a year. So it's it's been quite a while. On identifying and serving our gifted and talented students. A very important conversation
that we started last time. And then we will then receive a presentation from the Division of Specialized Support Services. I'm really looking forward to. So next I what am I doing next?
Miss Yolanda to approve this. Any questions or concerns. And I think we need to approve the. Yeah. You're going to go over the informational summary which is in there. Make sure that's fine. Any questions on that. And then we're going to begin the begin the agenda with the work plan. And I just wanted to
give my colleagues a second. Any questions. No questions. Yes. Let's get going. So then we're going to begin our. You're going to go through the work. Just preview the work plan. We're just going to
preview it. And then we're going to move on. Okay. With that you guys were able to look at the topics that we had. Yes I'm good with the topics. Thank you. All right. I think we have
to vote on it. I don't think we have to vote on it, but I just want to make sure it's approved. But I just would like to get us a consensus. Okay. Can I have a consensus to see if you all approve? Yes, Miss Stewart? Yes.
Yay! With that, let's let's get going. Because we have we have a lot to cover today. Good morning. If you could please introduce yourself for the folks who are watching in and for us. Remind us of who you are. And your title, please. Good morning everyone. I am
Christy Clark, the supervisor in accelerated and enriched instruction within the Division of Teaching and Learning. I'm here with my colleague Sarah Jackson, who is our twice exceptional instructional specialist, and we are excited to continue our presentation
from May 5th, where we talked about our gifted and talented students. Sarah is going to present on the twice exceptional students, and I am turning this over to her now. Okay. Good morning Sarah. Good
morning. So like Christy said, we're going to pick up in the section we left off on, which was on twice exceptional. This controls right I can use this. Yes. Awesome. Fantastic. Love it. So just to recap this first
couple of slides that we did where we were talking about who are twice exceptional students were and twice exceptional really is our students who have been identified both as having a cognitive potential have very high cognitive potential, usually in the 90th percentile or higher for their age. And they're also identified as
having one or more challenges or disabilities. It does not require that they have any type of paperwork, no IEPs or 504. All that typically is how we track who they are, how many we have in our system and how we're supporting them. But as a profile of learner and a
profile of person, this is who they are without having to have any official designation. Part of our job and our challenge, of course, is to identify both that giftedness as well as those challenges and then determine what type, if any, support that they need within
their particular settings. One of the biggest things that makes this both fun and a challenge is that they are most noted by their masking, which is when either their giftedness hides their disability, the disability hides the giftedness, or they're both hiding each other so that they look average
when really they are a contradiction of needs. Who and they're struggling in a variety of different ways. The most common term we use for our kids is consistently inconsistent. You never know what they're going to do, but you know it's not going to be what you expected. And that for them,
for for those learners, it produces frustration and anxiety. It presents most often to other people as behavior problems, but really it's just part of the behavior of the profile because they are struggling with this consistent inconsistency. And I think another important thing to
remember is that while we are the school system, as a twice exceptional person, that is their life. They're like this at home. They're like this at school. They're like this with their friends in the neighborhood. And so while we only deal with the frustration, what that presents to us in the school system, for those
students, it is their life. And so a lot of the supports that we help deliver are helping them manage all of these aspects of their lives so that they can take their learning and live more full and fulfilling lives. And that is where that really complex support comes in. And we'll get into that in a couple more
slides. But essentially, we know that these are students who require both acceleration when appropriate, enrichment constantly, and also specially designed instruction that usually focuses around soft skills, skills that are hard to nail down but are desperately needed for our students. So
that is what this ends up looking like in the classroom setting. You know, was this what are the specially designed instruction look like? It looks like being able to in that that typically general education classroom providing the topic acceleration or content acceleration, providing
enrichment, providing different ways to think, different ways to express themselves, but then also providing that specialized support. Sometimes it's with our special education staff, sometimes it's the general educators who are supporting them, depending on their need and how we present that. And
it's also a lot about access, making sure they're accessing the appropriate level of instruction. Many, many, many of our twice exceptional students are in our compacted classes, accelerated classes, AP, IB, and a lot of our students are in dual enrollment. And so especially as they get
older, teaching them how to navigate this so that they can be high school students successful in the college setting is a big part oft we do as they get older, and we also have specially designed social emotional instruction. It's a big project we've actually been working on. I'll talk about in our end slide,
but spending a lot of time, like I said, on those soft skills around the executive functioning, self-advocacy and social emotional needs. So this is a new slide that we reformatted for you guys because we really want to talk about what is this twice
exceptional service specifically through special education. Because it is a service like no other. It is one of the few in the country that exists, and it really is meant to be a synthesis or a synergy of best practices and gifted education, along with what we do with special
education, what we provide as far as services go. So we're really talking here about students who, again, are accessing those high level classes, but we're using special education support. And specifically I'm speaking about twice exceptional students with IEPs in this case who have that
inclusive access. Having our our advanced teachers understand what universal design for learning is and making those advanced courses more accessible across the board for many students, but specifically specifically for our students. Understanding that enrichment and complexity
does not mean a heavier workload. It means a more complex workload. It means a heavier thinking load. But it shouldn't always mean enough essays to make you cry in a week, which is often how advanced classes get translated. But we really are working to
explain that you don't have really. You don't have to cry in order to be an advanced class, but helping our students be able to express those deeper thoughts and opinions and ideas in a way that is manageable for them while also building their capacity. Because some of the
issue with our students is that they either don't understand their own capacity for learning and working, or because there's so many different areas of them struggling, it's hard for them to to channel their energy in the right direction. And so that becomes part of our process also is teaching them how to manage all of those
different pieces of their profiles in order to meet those needs. One of the the key pieces of our twice exceptional special education services is that cohort Cohorting is a gifted best practice. It is not a special education, best practice. That's why we kind of
pulled it out at the bottom here, because we do support the heterogeneous inclusion. We do support having access to our Gen Ed peers and to our advanced gen ed peers. But one thing we also know is that a best practice for gifted ed is cohorting students, that they have the opportunity to be with
other gifted students, and for twice exceptional kids, it's even harder because they don't always fit with the gifted kids and they don't always fit with the special education students, and they don't always necessarily fit with each other. But at least they don't fit with each other in a collective way that makes sense to them. And so that really becomes one
of the hallmarks of our program and our services is being able to provide that location. You know, we have give or take. And I'll go through the slides in a moment. Around 3000 twice exceptional students in the county, around 800 of those students. And these are identified students have IEPs,
but we also have 200 plus schools. So our kids are spread everywhere. And for some kids it's okay. But for some kids, they really need to have that access to those similar peers so that they have a place to belong. And they have a place to get both the enriched instruction they need, as well
as the special education services they need. I'm going to stop there if you guys have any questions. And then my next few slides are all about demographics through last year. Thank you so much, Miss Jackson. I remember how wonderful you
were at our last presentation and how grateful I was and still am, for the depth of knowledge that you have. I remember how passionate you are about this subject, and I just really appreciate that because it really helps us to be better informed. Can you just tell me the number that you just said again, I think I just missed it.
That was like 800 or we have and that's my next slide. I'll have my end of year numbers for sure, but we have approximately 3000 students who are twice exceptional, and I get that number from pulling directly the number of students who have either five or fours and IEPs
and are identified as gifted. We also know that number is underrepresented because there's a lot of students who and we've talked about this in our previous session. We're still working on best practices for identification in order to make sure our students are identified appropriately, especially with that gifted
flag, but then also helping navigate the process of whether or not they need more support than just UDL and best practices in the classroom. Do they need 500 fours or IEPs? That is a complex process that we help navigate, but 3000 is a pretty good estimation
estimation okay. And I guess yeah. So I'm happy to hear that we're trying. And I know amongst the many things we're trying to do, but trying to figure out how we can identify students, because I even get concerned about the gifted identifier, that we are not necessarily identifying
children who might be gifted, because perhaps their challenges are getting in the way of them being able to kind of demonstrate that in the way that it is measured within m.c.p.s. So I just have to wonder if we might have other kids who also have 500 fours and IEPs who likely would be,
or they're kind of close enough where they might need these same similar kinds of supports. We absolutely do. And one of my little many side projects right now is working my way through different grade levels. And what I actually end up doing is pulling lists of students from a grade level that are not
identified as gifted, and I try and focus on the grade levels of the year after we do the central process. And there are times where I just spend a week and I read every single psych report I can find for every student in that grade level, just looking to see if they
even have those baseline scores that we use for identifying gifted, and then kind of making a list to see how far off we are and then what we're working on as a part of this process is how do we refine that pathway of identification for students so that, you know, a lot of
times our teams know they're gifted. They have that conversation. But if if the IEP team doesn't happen to know that there's a process for identifying those students through our office, those kids don't get identified, at least the school team, because they've discussed it. They know. But one thing we're working on
is better strengthening that communication and better strengthening processes to make that process of identification just paperwork wise, easier, so that we can have better and more accurate numbers. Okay. Yeah. And I really appreciate that because I imagine we have students who might be in
accelerated courses or AP and IB, and maybe they're not labeled as gifted. And maybe even if you look at their, you know, their test scores and various things that go into that, maybe they don't quite meet it, but it could be because they're not or they have not gotten the support they need with their IEPs or 504 or not having those even
that they're not able to really demonstrate their full potential in that way, but they still need support because they're still going to fall within these types of groups. Thank you. Exactly. Stuart, I'd like to go on the other side of the identification. She actually had some of the same
questions I had, but so we have a lot of kids that are gifted and they're labeled as gifted officially, but they have a lot of social isolation and issues
because the other side is not identified because they mask so well that they don't cause a problem in the classroom. You know, for the most part, they figure out a way to get through and, and, you know, get those
grades people expect them to get because, you know, they're in these classes they're going through, yet they are not integrated all the time. And so how what's the process of trying to get these kids
identified? If you do if a teacher sees this social isolation or these kids kind of slip through the cracks. So I'm curious how what's the process of getting children identified that might not present as a
disruption. And these are absolutely the most challenging kids in a lot of ways to identify because they're not behavior problems. It's the double edged behavior problem. So the kids who act out get noticed, the kids who internalize don't get noticed as easily. Mechanically, it's the same process as we have for
any other student who we're seeking either a 504 or IEP for. But the real the real nuts and bolts of it have to do with that professional learning piece and that getting out into whether it's the parent community or within the school
community. And that is where so much of our effort is in that professional learning side. We've always worked very closely with special education. Glad they're here today. You know, working hard to provide support and instruction around
identification, what to look for, what's available, and for our resource teachers. For special ed teachers. I teach a class during this year. I actually have a second teacher now who teaches a class in recognizing and serving twice exceptional, and we get so much out of our teachers. Anytime we
do any presentation for RTI, we work a bit of that twice exceptional or that just sociald students into our presentations. And after every presentation, there's always a flood of, can you help us with this? And then some of the best practices that
we teach on the side have to do with that. They might not be identified, but we do specifically one on executive functioning for gifted kids, because gifted does not come with a skill set. You know, a lot of people think, oh, they're gifted. They should be able to fill in the blank. But that doesn't mean they
automatically know how to take notes, organize themselves, or turn anything in on time. We have to teach those skills. And so teaching it through that, through that gifted lens is part of what we do. We have one on perfectionism. And what does it look like in a healthy way? What does it look like in a problematic way? And when is it
time that maybe we need to seek outside support? And so sometimes just reframing things we already know for our teachers and things that they see, and to kind of giving them that permission like this is okay, this is when you might need help, and this is when you and the students need help and you need to seek further. And
that is a big part of what we do, because, you know, there's only a few of us and there's thousands of teachers and they have much more access to the kids than we do. I think part of this, too, is to let kids know how to identify, even in themselves, so they can self-advocate, and also, even
if they're not officially identified, have those like lunch bunches so you can kind of support each other. But I think it's so hidden that even kids might not even realize what they're going through. And so anyway, I just wanted to put that out there. Thank you. And
any time I talk to or do any consulting with school teams, I always make sure whatever resources we give them, that we give them that broad permission. We're talking about this one student here, but this is going to be good for students with these profiles. And so I like that frequently. I go into schools I've been at before and
they've already used those resources. They're continuing to use those resources for students, whether or not they're identified, which I think is a positive. Great. I have a couple questions, but I would like us to go to the next slide. If I could reserve that, then to ask the questions after the next slide, that'd be great.
Go ahead sir. So so these are our demographic data through our from last year. And I did update the numbers since May to get our numbers as of the end of June. So these are our students who are actually in our regional service sites which are elementary schools at
Barnsley Elementary, our middle schools at Clemente, North Bethesda and Odessa Shannon. And our high schools are Northwood, Walter Johnson and Watkins Mill. So we just pulled these numbers so that you guys could have a picture of what it is or who it is that we're serving. And I know when it
comes to gifted demographics are a big part of what we look at. We also do know that when you pull those demographics by school, there's a lot of variability within each school program. Some are more representative of the school they serve, and some are much more identified with our
Caucasian students. We do know our Caucasian students are overly represented, and those numbers have fluctuated over the years. I didn't think you guys wanted like ten slides on that, but I definitely dug in to see kind of what those waves and patterns are for, how we identify students and how we
identify students to get services. But this is where we were for last year. This is our. My eyes are getting old. So this is our our large group. So the top row as our students who
are identified as gifted and talented and also have 504. And then the bottom row is our students who are identified as gifted and talented and also have IEPs. So we have that broken out across our demographic groups. And then I put them in the pie chart because I like the colors more
than the numbers. And you can see, you know, again it's pretty consistent. We are way over represented with our Caucasian students. But I will say there's a lot more colors up there than there used to be. And so while the numbers aren't great, we have made a lot of progress. I know specifically
when I first started teaching at Northwood in the program in 2014, our program was 99.3% Caucasian and was at 0.7% everybody else. And within two years, we actually were able to match the demographics of our
school through just professional learning and just all the things we've talked about already. And so we have made movement in our numbers. But there's a lot to be desired. And then this is all of those numbers, including our students in our twice exceptional
regional services in one big handy dandy pie chart. And like I said, the balance. It all is about the same. But it is has moved a lot since we've been tracking these numbers, which is about ten years for some of
our locations. Okay, so now I'll ask my questions if that's okay. Yeah. Excuse my voice. I've been fighting with this laryngitis for a couple of weeks, so I just a couple of things that I'm interested in is piggybacking on something that my colleague to my right
said about. It's just about I'm trying to understand when is the average age that our system identifies a twice exceptional child? When does that happen? Can you repeat that one more time? When is the average age that M.C.P.S. identifies a
twice exceptional child? Like when is when is that around? I know it's not. You know, but when does that happen? So officially it would happen at the end of second grade because that's when we officially identify gifted. So all of these numbers are third grade and above, because we don't
have a mechanism right now for either tracking twice exceptional. We don't have a specific twice exceptional label. And we also don't offer that GT flag until the end of second grade. So any students who are in our pre-K prep all
the way through second grade are not formally identified. That's not to say we don't serve them or support them. I would say one of the largest groups I've had in consulting and doing stuff with in the last couple of years has been that K-2 group. I spent a lot more time in kindergarten than
I ever thought I would, and it's a little bit harder in that because we don't label it, but we know that it's there. So part of that coaching is when we talk about those 500 fours or IEPs, how do we document it on those documents? But at the same time, our current
mechanism doesn't easily let us say, okay, this is a kid we know is twice exceptional, and we've been supporting on a 500 for an IEP for three years now. And it's the end of second grade, and we don't necessarily have an easy flag or an easy way to mark them as gifted. So that is definitely a barrier
that we have. In my ideal world, we're twice exceptional is everything. I would love to have a twice exceptional flag that we could have that extra pathway to identify students, like you said, like we have parameters for identifying gifted are twice exceptional.
Students skirt those parameters sometimes, but we still know they're twice exceptional. And so part of our discussion is do we identify them as gift? Anyway, like I said, in my magical world, I get it twice. Exceptional flag. That that makes it hard. And that's one of those places where we rely a
lot on the professional learning and the knowledge of the school teams and the documentation on 504 and IEPs to support them and provide the services. But it doesn't help me tracking demographics. Yeah. And I guess that's where I'm going with this, because when I look at the demographics of our population currently in
M.C.P.S. and I'm looking at the geographics of where twice exceptional children are coming in, in a sense, right. My questions are the uniformity of how we're identifying twice exceptional children in
M.C.P.S. as a system. Right? Right. So you might have, for better word, the experts in certain schools that you know, you have the right team. And by luck, hey, your kid is going to
be identified. And if we do it until second grade, I guess my concern is. What about the dozens of schools where we don't have the expert people to be able to be on the ground and make those decisions or determinations correct? That is
100%. And I think I would echo special education as well. That's a problem across the board is our services, our support and our identification is only as good as the team in front of us. And we work really hard for all of our no doubt. Yeah. So I was going to say so
you guys work very hard and there's no doubt is the question is how do we get more expertise out there? How do we do a better job of identifying whether it's the disability or the giftedness? How do we do a better job of getting that expertise into all of our schools and not just our lucky schools? Correct. Because we we
constantly say, you know, we're looking at things with an equity lens. We're looking at things with an equity lens. It's very nice on paper to say we're looking at things with equity sense, with an equity lens, but I'm more interested in the practice of, you know, are we are we doing what we're
saying? And if we're not doing what we're saying, what is the barriers? Because I think my colleagues and I would like to know what are the barriers that exist currently in our system to prevent you from doing that. Because I'll be interested to
know. Right. Because we know one of the largest groups of right now in special education. And Doctor Cage is here today and she can correct me if I'm wrong. I think it's mainly with the ESL population. We have a significant growth within a
male population. And then you also have if it's up to second grade, you also could have children who are you know, who their first language is not English. Right. Who can probably be be twice exceptional. Just because you don't speak English doesn't mean you're not twice
exceptional. And do we have the capability to be able to do those evaluations for children like that? Because if we don't, right, then you have because I can tell you, I know for a fact I had I have a kid who's twice
exceptional. And one of the reasons why I ran, I think, for the board, is because I felt that the system absolutely ignored my child and what I was saying and begging for evaluations and begging, you know, and oh, he'll grow out of
it. Or he's oh, he's just shy, right. All these labels that you get and you're like, no. And and I'm a pretty, you know, self resilient mom. Right. So I'm thinking about those other moms who are not. And and this
is, this is I think why I, I love this committee is because I think we need to start changing some of our paradigms. We need to start changing some of the ways we look at our special populations and twice exceptional children. I think we need to make sure that we
are not the barriers. And if they are barriers, I think we have a duty to say what they are so we can have the tools to be able then to make sure we can accommodate all our children. There's nothing worse for a child to feel, you know, just out of sync, like I don't.
I don't like not belonging. Right, right. And for a parent to be fighting that fight of I need my child to feel like they belong. So. So anyway, if you have an answer or, or suggestions, that would be great. The question is, I have a related question, so maybe
we'll add her question and then. Yeah. And I think that's right I'm a current parent. So most of my questions and thoughts always come back to how can we help parents and families support their kids, whatever the issue is. And I think especially when we're looking at our younger children, you
know, a couple of things. Like you mentioned, we don't even flag for giftedness until a certain grade. I think I know as a parent, when those my children were going through those processes, I didn't really understand what it even was like, do I? Should I even care about this? And honestly, at the time I was like, we have
so many things going on. I don't have the capacity to learn about this or care about this. No one's really telling me about it. I'm not even sure if my kids took the tests because I was like, why am I going to have you sit for another test you guys are testing out, right? Not realizing that, oh, actually, this could really impact them.
And if they needed, you know, support in those ways. So my question is, how do we one educate our parents and families, and how can we as the board help to support that? Because again, you guys are here doing so much work. So I'm always happy to support getting that information out to the
community. And then so how do we educate them about what this even is and why they should care? And then how do we educate our families and parents with how they can support their children, whether they technically have the gifted flag or not? But we know that there are some kids who are very, very intelligent and
also have some challenges with executive functioning and things. How do we get that piece in there? Because as a parent, I know that the schools you only have them for six and a half to seven hours a day, and if I don't do some things when I'm at home with and I
have the privilege to do those things, some of our families don't, but how can we help them so that we can make sure that our kids are in a better position to learn? And then we can also help other parents, right? Sometimes parents don't have the privilege to do some of those things, but some of us can help. Yes, I wanted to take
this one in particular, because our office is actually planning to have a series of parent information nights this fall covering various topics, and one of the topics is GT identification. And so we felt
that it's very important to get the information directly to our families. Previously, we had been working through the schools, but we really want the information to get to our families. So we are planning some series of just different
things. GT identification of course, we'll bring in twice exceptional enrichment, just not just in elementary but elementary through high school so that parents know what the choices are and how we identify
students for those options. So we're excited about that, and we hope that it helps the it will be virtual so that we can record it. And we'll be able to put that recording on our website as well. So we're really trying to just get more
information out to the community. Would you have translation? That's what was going to be my question. Fantastic. Yep. We're going to have it all covered because some of these terms I mean, I'll be honest, like I didn't know what ADHD was even when I first became a parent. Some of these terms are just completely
unfamiliar to some of us, irrespective of the jobs that we do or the degrees that we have. Right? I'm not I'm not an educator. I'm not a psychologist. So I just really making sure that all of our parents understand even what these things mean, because then we can't support or even flag
for things at home that we can then bring to the attention of, you know, whether it's medical professionals, education professionals, etc. Thank you. And I think a big part of what we do, like Christy said, you know, making this push to go out into the community through our lens, I would love to see
us take advantage also of community resources that are out there. There's amazing community groups in Montgomery County, as well as at the state and the national level. M.C.P.S. is actually hosting the Maryland Educators of Gifted Students Conference on October 17th. Gaithersburg High School is hosting us, and there
is a whole track for just twice exceptional. I'll be presenting there, but we please send us that information if you can. Absolutely. I know Doctor Taylor is actually delivering opening remarks, so anything we can do to support teachers getting there. Because sometimes I think also it
doesn't matter how often I say it, if you hear it from other people's voices, it sounds more legitimate. So just getting our teachers and our administrators and everybody to hear the information and spread that out to our community. In a wider sense, I think that those are all great opportunities that we
have. We also have been working with our state group and our state people to release a twice exceptional resource guide that we're also presenting at Meg's. I have a lot of presentations this year, but we're presenting on this resource guide that we have developed with other counties in order to help our
twice exceptional kids and put things out there for teachers, M.C.P.S. as well as other counties to say this is what we have available at the state level for professional learning, creating things that are more turnkey so that staff development teachers can use them as they plan their instruction for their own
schools. Just trying to put as many resources out there, because there's only a few of us. We can only go to so many schools, but if we can get those resources in people's hands, that's one way that we're trying to break down those barriers. When you say there's a few of us, I'm wondering, what is that number?
A few of us. Yeah, a few of us. But I'm just like me. But truly, like I am. I just wanted to clarify. When you say a few of us, us, us is more than one. So I just wanted to clarify, because it sounds like you have a little army, but you don't. I
have my own army and my own mind. No, but I mean, a lot of what I do also is just working with our professional staff. I've, besides going to a lot of our instructional specialists have taken courses with me working with the instructional specialists and I, one of the
things I'm really working on is trying not to have to be the one person at the table and having other people go out having people from our office join me in presentations so that then they can go out and do presentations, they can help with some of the consulting. And then, like I said, building in this on our side, on the
enrichment side, so that every piece of instruction that goes out from AEI, whether it's with our primary talent development coaches or the liaisons, which is elementary, or EHS, which is middle school, we build twice exceptional instruction, identification and or social emotional learning into all of
these trainings so that it's getting out beyond just our little tiny community. And sorry, just as a quick follow up, when we talk about elementary, we have the center for Enriched Studies programs at a variety of schools throughout the county. The kids
go to whichever ones, and they're kind of, I hesitate to use the word region, but their space, their bubble, right? Do we I mean, that seems actually kind of like a natural reviewing group of kids, including the kids who may have qualified, but then they didn't
win the lottery, right? Because it is a lottery process. Is that something that also maybe gets reviewed to see if kids in there can qualify for services or whatnot? So qualifying for services is more about that special education process when they show that need. When we go
through, whether it's the response intervention or however that process is, is defined, students who are in SES are eligible for their 504 or their IEPs, and they keep their services if they have them. That is a group that we definitely look at. And then
also when we do our content instruction or our professional learning, all of those teachers get instruction on working with their twice exceptional kids and supporting them in SES. And part of our training in there also is whether or not they have an IEP. If they present like this, provide the support.
And that's part of that whole universal design for learning that we do. Okay. And I think that was where I was getting at, because I think when we talk about masking, right, a lot of our kids and I'll just say, I've heard from other families, I've heard myself, oh, well, but they're getting good grades. Oh, okay. That doesn't mean
anything. Right. And I think there's still this misnomer in society that if you're quote unquote academically smart or intelligent, then that must mean you don't have any challenges. And I think that actually helps to erase the support that some kids need. So I get really concerned about this idea that because a child
is getting certain grades, that must mean they don't need support, right? Especially the emotional support. Right? Can we because I'm keeping time and I want to make sure we have can we go to the next slide. Because a lot of what we touch in Miss Montoya touched on is on the next slide as well.
Absolutely. So yeah, this was just you know, we know that the way students have been identified has declined and their access to our services has declined. And there are a lot of factors that we know go into that. But one thing we wanted to highlight is what we're doing to respond to that, which, you know, when our
services are are when the number of students accessing our services is declining, that doesn't mean our numbers are getting smaller. It just means the kids who are getting there is fewer. And so one thing we have been doing a lot is to push out professional learning so that the students who exist are still getting support
wherever they are. We've been working closely with our school psychologists, and we have actually a proposal we're going to be sending to them this week about some professional learning we'd like to do, but just spending time. I've gotten to be in front of our first and second year school psychologists to talk about
twice exceptional. I've been working in the past with our resource teachers and presenting at meetings, and of course, all the consulting we do, the CPD course, the recognizing and serving. That's a Maryland recognized course, and we teach it usually 2 to 3
times a year. And I like I said, I have another teacher now who teaches it with me. And we have usually between usually between 40 and 80 teachers a year who go through that. And that's three credits of professional learning where they really deep dive into twice exceptional students and what it looks like
in their setting. And we have special ed teachers, gen ed teachers, M.L. teachers, media specialists. I've had pretty much everybody in some professional capacity in our course, and we've worked our way through a lot of work in there. We have a new resource curriculum that we've put out
or a framework rather that we've worked on. It's a learning progression for students grades six through 12 that touches on four major areas of social emotional learning, and it's a process that we've been developing for about two years now, and we are presenting our newest iteration of it at the conference in
October. We also are putting out the third edition of the Twice exceptional Handbook. It's still in draft right now, but we put out the last edition in 20 1415. So this will be ten years. And so this is a lot of update, a lot of updated research. There's been a lot of
change of definitions right around 2019 to 2021. The Council for Exceptional Children changed the definition of how we look at twice exceptional as well as some other major studies. So we are including that information. And also we're diving a lot more, a
lot less into programing and a lot more into what do these students look like, what do they need and how do we support them where they are. And then we also hope to expand that framework that I have for six through 12 down to kindergarten, and then just also working more
on our professional learning and targeting different groups of teachers with specific professional learning. Thank you for that. One thing I would like to request from you is if you could make sure that each one of us gets a copy of the handbook, that you, that you're,
that you're working on, that that would be great. You love a rough draft. I got a great one for you. But but I guess my question is. When I got on the board, this was my question when I was asking about ESL students because as a former
ESL EFL student, I feel that every adult in that building should be interacting with with all students. And the lifting of ESL students should be everybody's job, from the bus
driver to, you know, to the person who serves, who serves. Lunch should be interactive and building vocabulary and and helping out, you know, lifting our students. I kind of feel the same way about this, too. And I know that it took a while,
but I think now the the workshop or the training they do is mandatory when you're talking about this workshop, because we have a lot of new, new folks in the system, especially in the psychology
department. A lot of our parent community coordinators. And so we have a lot of new staff. We have a lot of new principals, frankly, and I think they should be part of this training. No disrespect, you know, but I just think, you know, when you
when you're kind of the leader, you need to kind of set the tone for everybody else where you are. So I'm wondering, are you working on training for those folks? And I don't want to put you on the spot to say that this should be mandatory, but I'm wondering if some of this stuff should just be, you
know, everybody goes through this training period. I mean, I'm happy to be a part of mandatory training. I will talk to anybody about twice exceptional, whether they want me to or not. I hear all my friends laughing. It's my I am a twice exceptional person. My child is twice exceptional. My
husband is twice exceptional. I'm I'm quite sure the whole it's a big family tree. Some of us don't even know, but we are twice. I can tell you right now, honestly, the number of people who do my training and afterwards they're like, I didn't know this about me because there are a lot of educators who are twice
exceptional, whether or not they're know it. I will talk to anybody about anything, and I know Christy will make me available or make any of our staff available to those trainings. So, yeah, I don't know if you can talk to it. I just, you know, I just think
we're such a big system. It's not like we're a very small system where we have ten schools where everybody knows each other, but we have 211 schools. We we have almost 160,000 kids under our care. And I just feel certain things,
you know, should be part of everybody's training. I don't know how you feel about that. Yeah. Yes, we agree. And we do have the opportunity to get in front of the community school coordinators every year. And I think it would be important for
Sarah to join one of our other specialists so that that can happen without any extra planning. But also we have an opportunity to speak at some of the principal PLCs. And I think
that's a good space. If we have enough time carved out to do really good kind of deep dive overview, if you will, of twice exceptional and then gifted in general, because it's just a
topic that's not talked about a lot in the school district, and we are ready to get it elevated a little bit more. So we can definitely work on that. I appreciate that. Thank you so much for for the feedback and for the sincerity. And I think
it's important to have those conversations. If we feel like something's not being elevated enough, I think it's our job to to stay so. And because I think we're all here to do what's in the best interest of of our kiddos, and that should always be the focus and our goal. Okay,
one more question, one more question, and then we'll wrap it up just this is response to actually the title of the slide to the decline in the two e regional enrollment. When we originally looked at this presentation, I believe it was
August. So now school started and I don't know if you have any preliminary trends happening for this school year. Is it continuing to decline as it leveled off? Is it growing?
It's continuing to decline, and there's a whole lot of factors that are going into that. And so as always, my first thing is let's make sure we have the information. Because if we don't know who needs to be served, we can't get them where they need to be. So this is
alarming to me, to tell you the truth, that it continues to decline because I know kids today and more are actually being diagnosed with ADHD and other issues that could impact
this group of kids. I mean, I have to say that I'm probably the third member of the committee that also has two kids. Did not find out until much later because again, they
weren't sticking out, you know, in the classroom. So how many? I mean, it's disturbing because I feel like we're losing some of these kids to give them the supports they need to be successful later in life. You
know what really sucks? If you get diagnosed and you're in grad school, that's not great. No, it's never too late, but it's not great. So it has real effects on these kids lives.
And so if we can, as you know, you get them earlier, they have coping mechanisms and can recognize some of the patterns themselves and be able to self-advocate and know where to go as if they're feeling overwhelmed. This can make all the difference. And so I really
want to dig into this declining enrollment and how we can counteract it, because this is not reflective of our student body. So that is something I'd like to follow up on and maybe in a later session, if that's
okay with my colleagues. Absolutely. If you invite me back, I'll come talk. Sarah, it has been truly a pleasure on behalf of this committee and my colleagues in the board. I just want to say thank you so much for your work. It's not easy
work, but I really recognize your diligence but also your passion for this population. And so I just want to say thank you so much for everything. And if you need anything from us, we're just an email phone call
away. I appreciate you both for taking the time. I know you're busy, folks, so thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Okay, so we're going to
ask for our next presentation. Is Future Ready special education status alignment and next steps. You know, just small small stuff we're dealing with today. So I'm going to ask Doctor Cage to to come and join us and whoever else she wants
to bring with her to the table. I'm looking at the we don't have a big enough table for team chairs if we need to, but. And I just want to say thank
you so much, truly, for the organizational chart that you have put together with folks pictures and everything that for folks like us, it is absolutely incredible helpful. I know it seems very trivial, but it's not. So we appreciate
that. Plus one on that in me. Appreciate it. In fact, I think she started something new. We should ask of each department to do the same. So. Do we need
more chairs we can pull? We could. First let me just say welcome to your first meeting. Yeah. And and Doctor Jenkins
also is. Right. Anybody else who's first meeting? This is first committee. First committee meeting ever. Oh my goodness. Hello. Thank you for being here. And Doctor Cage I don't think there wasbody more exciting in this county.
Than myself to know that you were you were on your way. I don't know if Doctor Taylor told you, but I think it was literally every day I would say, can she not come sooner? Can she not just take a plane, move
her stuff later? So I just I just want to say how appreciative we are that you're you're leading this very probably one of the most, you know, departments that needs the most attention and the most
TLC. I will say in our, in our community, with significant growth in population over the last few years, and I know that Covid unfortunately, really stopped a lot of the progress
that we were doing. Unfortunately. And in some cases, we had to start from ground zero. And that's a big lift for our system, as big as ours. So I just want to say to you and to your team and, and
those folks who are here for the first time, welcome. We are delighted you're here. And with that, I'll let you start. Awesome. Thank you so much, Madam Chair, for having us here today. We have a lot to share
and we will definitely have to come back, because we also have even more to share of the great things that has already happened, but will continue to happen. I am seated at the table with portion of our special education staff. These
are the directors and the associate and the Ed and myself. And I just want to pause just for a second so that you can put names and faces together. And sometimes these people will be in the room when I'm not here presenting on various topics. And they are definitely
the experts and undergird me and everything that I do. But I would be remiss as well not to acknowledge those who has been here at M.C.P.S. and they have been so supportive to me coming when I call answering questions
that I need, giving me information. So off to my right. I have special education staff and also well-being staff that came to represent today, and I would just like to acknowledge them briefly and have them
stand, please. Thank y'all. Thank you folks for being here. Appreciate it. Definitely. So I'll lead to my left with introdons. Good morning. Lisa Garrett Jones Associate
superintendent, special education. Good morning, Jada Langston director of special education services. I share her mic doctor Tyree Jenkins, the executive director of the
Division of Specialized Support Services. Good morning. My name is Bernita Christian. I'm the director of special education compliance. Good morning. My name is Julie Hall. I'm the director for special education
systems and management. Good morning. I'm Erica Williams and I'm the special ed I'm the director for special education pre-kindergarten and related services. So without further
ado, we're going to get in and start talking about our future special education. Today we're going to share with you our status of where we are, our alignment pieces, and also our next steps. So in the agenda,
which you talked about earlier, is the organizational chart that came along. Because we do have so many new faces, some in county, some out of county, and we really always just want everyone to know who to contact
and who's there for support. We're going to also talk about our mission and vision, something that we've been working to align all summer with the new strategic plan for M.C.P.S. And basically where we're going, our strategic priorities undergirds the
mission and vision. And just a general overview of special education and our strategies for improvement, hiring and also staffing updates. So we're not going to sit through this, but I just wanted to have a
dictionary of everyone who is represented. Our staff is definitely eager and ready to support on all fronts, and I want to be sure that our community, our principals, our teachers, our parents, our
board, central services know who to contact fhose specific areas. So let's get right into our mission and vision and our strategic alignment. So our mission is
breaking barriers, building futures. It definitely aligns with our strategic plan that Doctor Taylor and and team released just recently. So in that mission and vision, we're talking about delivering high
impact, inclusive supports for our students with disabilities so that they can engage fully, think critically, and develop skills to thrive. We also talk about what that vision looks like. It is success for all. We
also know that our regular general education, twice exceptional students, all of our 160 students at some point may be identified for special education services or 5050 for
services. So we're definitely focused on success for all. And then we are also coupled with our values, which are also aligned to our strategic plan, guided by learning, respect, relationships, excellence and
equity. Next slide. So our strategic priorities we we had a couple of huddles. We had a couple of work groups over the summer. We had a couple of parent groups. We have our CEC, we have our mag, all of those different things where I was
able to sit for the first 60 days, along with staff that guides that work, and we came together and decided as directors, after we have taken all of the work and the feedback and everything, we came up with these three big
buckets. These three big buckets are also aligned to the Maryland blueprint. They're also aligned to the work for from Maryland's Department of Ed, which we call Msde. It is
also aligned to many of our corrective action plans and also our areas where we need the most professional development and support for our schools. So student performance, we want to close the
performance gap and improve all outcomes for students. You will definitely see the report card embedded in this presentation, which I'm not sure was ever really exposed to my colleagues here, but our report card is an
additional report card that comes on top of the Student Performance Report card that is just for our students with IEPs. Our second big bucket is disproportionality. We are disproportionate in a few areas,
and the biggest one is our suspensions of African American students, males to be specific, and also the identification of our alternative learning outcomes. Our next big bucket
is to expand and support inclusive opportunities for students to receive educational services in the least restrictive environment. So if you look at these three buckets, we have nailed it down to student performance. Turning
around disproportionality and ensuring that our students are being served in our in the least restrictive environment possible. So our equity commitments, this is just a different way of looking at
what I just shared with you. We are addressing disproportionality. We are building capacity through professional learning. We are strengthening academic outcomes for all, and we are expanding equitable access. Next slide.
Again the alignment is here. Future ready MCPs strategic plan. Our Maryland blueprint. And Msde has just recently released Maryland Transforms,
which is a handbook for special education leadership and guidance. So let's talk about a little overview here. Our special education overview. We
definitely are following along with the same three buckets. And in order to achieve those we are talking about achievement and readiness. Looking at our early childhood outcomes, social emotional knowledge and behavior
proficiency rates for students with IEPs definitely remain below the state target. So we definitely want to increase those areas. We also want to identify the achievement gaps
and also increase those areas to a more positive end. We are looking really closely at pre-K and Pep readiness for expectations to ensure that we're doing everything possible to build a foundation for our students before they even get
into K-12 education in the middle, equity and inclusion. Least restrictive environment talk targets missed are across all of the grade spans. And this is where you talk about
continuum of services, which we are definitely starting from. Grassroots with our continuum of services, ensuring that our special schools, our extension programs, and all of the programs that we have are
actually encompassing the right type of students so that our staff can focus on the purpose of what those schools were created to do for our students. And as you see here, I mentioned earlier about the disproportionality and
inclusion and also bringing parent voice into the situation through surveys and making sure that we are actually utilizing the data from the surveys and actually including that in our planning efforts as well. And
then the big bucket of accountability, the presenters before us said we would love to sit before a group of of staff and have a mandatory training. We would love to do that as
well. Identify a few mandatory training opportunities so that staff can be well informed, and they can also be able to provide the students with the things that they need to be successful. And on the back end,
staff can also be successful because they will have the tools needed for their toolbox to be able to not only support the students, but the families and also themselves. So I'll turn it over to Miss Lisa Jones
and she'll talk about our State Performance Plan, annual performance report. And this is the report card that I alluded to earlier that is just for students with IEPs. Thank you, Doctor Cage. As you mentioned,
our state performance plan does have also have indicators. And 18 of them as it supports our special education students. And these are the ones that are listed. Next slide please. And as a result of that we do have
areas of success which will include graduation which is indicator one, our dropout rate indicator two, as well as our proficiency rates for fourth grade reading and math, eighth grade reading and math, and high school reading, which is under indicator three B also
included is the suspension rates, which is indicator five C and our educational environment, which is six C. There is still a disproportionate representation ages six through 21. In special ed, which is indicator nine and the disproportionate representation disability
categories by race indicator ten. Early Childhood Transition Indicator 12 and Secondary Transition Indicator 13 are all areas of success for us currently. Next slide please.
In addition to that, we do have some areas in which we did have to submit an improvement plan to the Maryland State Department of Education. And those areas included participation in state assessments for high school reading and math proficiency, and state assessments for high
school math. Number two, proficiency in alternative assessments. And that's for our fourth grade or eighth grade high school reading and math. There is still a gap in proficiency for fourth grade and eighth grade reading and math, school age, least restrictive environment, as
well as preschool, LRA, childhood outcomes, and the three areas and our parent survey, our response rate, our results, and the alternative assessments. Next slide please.
And now I'll turn it over to Doctor Cage for indicator report card. So this is the indicator report card. And we actually took pictures and put it in here. As Doctor Jones shared we when we don't meet a
state target we have to complete an improvement plan of how we're going to make that particular area better. Every school district does, and it has to be submitted to the state. And what happens is the
state monitors the activities of the plan that we submit. They can pick any area at any time to monitor. And when I say monitor, they can do an audit. So that's what monitoring activities look like. The audit
may just be as simple as requesting documentation of completion of whatever it was that we put in the plan. For instance, if it's professional development that we said we were going to target specific audiences, sometimes they will
come back and they will request sign in sheets. They will request dates and times that those particular professional developments took place. And they will also want to see the surveys of the participants in
those particular professional developments. If we don't have the data to be able to produce to send to Msde, then there is a finding there because we said we were doing something that we actually didn't do. So over the
next couple of slides, you will see those areas that we didn't necessarily meet the targets for. And within your particular presentations that you have, there are clear explanations of
which of what each of these indicators represent, and also the activities that we're supposed to be performing within our school district to increase these. Some of these also come along with additional grant funds. So in order to
continue receiving the grant funds, we have to increase the target positively increase meeting the target positively. Excuse me. So if there is no positive growth over time, what
happens is we start to see funding being reduced in these areas to support the obligation of meeting the target is not reduced, just the support and the funding from Msde is reduced, but the school
district has to pick up that cost, which we have a few of those grants this year that this is the last year we're receiving. So we're going to have to start picking up the cost in some of these areas. I'll pause right here because these are a lot of slides and
entertain any questions. Just just very quickly. When I was looking at the the student participation Indicator report card. So we were doing actually
well in 2021, 2022. I mean, we no, actually we did not do well in 2022, but we did significant well in 2022, 2023. It's a significant jump, at least for the reading. In high school, we
were like a 97.4. And then and then we took a big dip, which is to me is more than 3%. So do we have an idea what what was the the indicator, what was happening there? So if you look
at the years and these dates are always two years behind, as you can see by the data that was right in the middle of that Covid when we were all online and kids still took state performance tests. That makes sense. Yes. So that's that's in
that area right there. Okay. And I can tell you, I have shared all of this in our principal PLCs. They are like extremely excited to receive this information. Now they know what to target. Right now they understand also. This is why
staff is telling me we can't be out of timeline or we need to do this, or we need to do that. This particular area that's in front of you currently. Three A when I was just at the principal PLC last week and I said, guys, we're right on the
cusp of actually meeting this target. It's simple. Have the kids take the test. They may not finish the test, but something as simple as having them come in the afternoon,
having them test after everyone else finishes. I mean, you you know, as a former principal, I had to get creative with getting our students in the room that need that 1 to 1. You know, I've even created spaces where we can call where it's a nontraditional classroom
testing site where our partnered with the library. And I had a teacher and a para that came into the the study rooms and actually gave a test because my particular student would get overstimulated. So this was a better environment,
just doing little small tweaks. And we will definitely meet this state target. That's all it is. The number of students that actually took the test. Okay. Because that was the other question I have. Is it also we don't know how many
kids this data represents in a sense, right? We do. It represents 100% of our students with IEPs in the tested grades, which is how many. That's a good question. That's what I meant. I just because if somebody is looking at this, it
could be like, well, you guys have very few kids who this is. It could be it could be ten kids and this represents ten kids. But what I'm trying to bring home is that our IEP population is very significant, and we have very significant
numbers of kids in high school with IEP because that's who this represents. And if I'm sorry, I got a little ahead of myself. I went to the next indicator report card. Right. And I'm looking at the fourth grade. And these are again our
kids with IEPs right in the fourth grade. So these are all of fourth graders in Montgomery County. Correct. And that's fourth and eighth. No. This is performance. The one that I, that I yeah yeah yeah. Should I jump ahead to performance. Yeah
I'm sorry I jumped to performance but still I'm about to cry because yes the numbers are alarming. Yes. To say the least. But what you're saying is we also have to keep in mind
that those numbers, you have to go back two years, which is the height of the pandemic, right? Which sometimes we don't do. Because I look at those numbers, I'm thinking 20, 22, 23 when we were already coming out a little bit out of the pandemic. But that data is two years old,
right? So when people are watching at home or people are going to be able to access this, they need to think that this data is during the height of the pandemic, am I right? Yes. You're correct. And I can tell
you just a raw number. 22, 23, 24 we had 21,322 students. And just looking at our population, middle and high, totaling about 10,000 students with IEPs. And
if I were to break down the elementary and just do an average, it's about 18,000 students that actually tested. That's significant. That's even sadder. Okay. I just wanted to
put it in context, because when you look at the numbers, it could be like, oh, it's a couple hundred kids. We can work with that. We're talking thousands of kids. 2000 I'm sorry, doctor, I don't know. Do you have a quick question? Sorry. No, I just wanted to make sure that I understood
something correctly. So the state law or policy, whatever it is that I can figure out later, is that if for a certain amount of time you're not meeting specific targets, then instead of providing more
support to the school system to help reach those targets, they're taking money away. And yet we're still expected to reach the same targets. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. You won. Bingo. Absolutely. Yeah. That's that's exactly how we're
working here on education. We're doing great. Okay. And then quick question. So I see some low hanging fruit. You mentioned one of them. Some of this will probably take us years to get where we need to
be. I mean we need to do better, but to like flip like that, it's going to be very difficult. So the the ones I see as low hanging fruit is parent survey. I mean, do we would we actually lose money if we don't get enough parents to fill out the
survey. Is that is that one of the. We do have a grant. Yes, ma'am that pays for parent liaison. We have a part time parent liaison. That was one of the sticking points I made with principals. So we have a whole campaign that we're going to do in this parent survey comes out
in the spring. It's going to be plastered everywhere. And if I can get some money, it'll even be plastered on the busses and the metro, because there is great advertisement there. Right? But we want to increase these numbers and we definitely look at all of the surveys. And
this the reason why this is so astonishing is because a lot of my colleagues have never seen this. So now they know, you know, a part of it is having the information that you need to do better. And we already see work happening in our
schools and in our central services, because they know this is what our laser focus is. Excellent, because I fully expect us to meet all of this for the parent survey. And then also the test taking. You
already mentioned that some of the other issues, the least restrictive environment. I mean, some of that is pretty. We're pretty far I don't know how we can get better, but some of
this we might have to revisit at another time. But thank you so much for providing this to us and to staff. This is the first time I've ever seen this report card, and maybe I missed something in the past, but no, you did not miss anything.
Thank you. Thank you for highlighting the first for all. And I think you mentioned it was the first for principals, which is I'm glad they have that information now. But it's also very troubling to me personally that they did not
have this ever or in the past few years, I didn't even know it existed. This is the first time I'm hearing about it. And so it's really important. So I just want to say this was a lot of heavy lifting. I'm sure, for your staff to put this together. But I think this this also goes
along with the line with the alignment of how I hate the word transparent. It's so overused transparency, but I'm going to have to use it in this case, because I think it's important for the public and for people and for us who make decisions on budgets and
policies to also very much understand the process of how things work or are not working well. And so I really just want to say thank you. So with that, I'm sorry I keep interrupting you. Please keep going. That's
okay. Thank you. You know, I'm I'm very transparent, even to a fault sometimes because I know sometimes it's information overload. But I always want number one staff, community, everyone to feel supported. And I want them to understand why
I'm moving the way I'm moving. This is real data, right? And these are the things that we truly need to focus on. I don't like to turn in reports and not be able to provide the data to those that I'm turning the reports into. So even though we
may not meet all the targets perfectly the first try, we are showing that we are trying and we are doing this. So there's a lot of great work that has happened in Central Services already, and now all we're doing is bringing it all
together. Like Thomas says so often, and making all the arrows point in the same direction, because we have a lot of people doing a lot of great things. There's a lot of work that's being repeated, and all we have to do is talk to
each other, which I loved with the twice exceptional presentation, because we are even working more closely as a team with our curriculum and instruction and our school leadership area. Like we all actually are talking to each other and making decisions
together. And that is definitely extremely helpful and needed. And I also think it's important for us to not forget that when looking when we're looking at especially our fifth graders. Right. They did
not have the socialization and the skills development that we need that we base on them, we build on to move on to, you know what I mean? And, and and that has that has continued through. So there's a lot of
other factors that were kind of out of our control that have contributed to not just children with special education needs, but to all children, and that we still see, you know, the cause and effect today.
Even the kids who were supposed to go into sixth grade and that that transition period that is so important to build on. And I would say like my kid was 20, 20, you know, he didn't have any of the right of passage
that a high school or, you know, you and something to begin something. Right. They didn't have that. And that was a struggle. And, and and I still see it. Right. There's that melancholic feeling that you did not end the way you're
supposed to end, or that you begin the way you're supposed to begin. And I think those are contributing factors that as much as I think, you know, we're very foolish to think about scores, let's just think about math. They are social, emotional contributors that
hampered the productivity. If you might say whatever, you know, the progress that we cannot just ignore. So I just want to to say that for contents. Go ahead. Thank you. You guys have said a lot of
things that really tugs on my heart. I too have three, twice exceptional children, whether it be my baby who is legally blind, my middle child who suffers with anxiety and depression and has to study
really hard. And then my oldest child that was gifted, but also special education in the area of English language arts. So this work is is personal and I'm very passionate about it.
And I always believe that you're you're in the right place at the right time to definitely make a difference. So thank you for everything. Doctor Jones, you want to take the next few slides. Absolutely. So with what we have going on,
we do have state complaints, due processes and administrative reviews. Our state complaints if you notice they have increased. We had 20 in the year 20 23, 33 in the
year 24 last year, we had 125 state complaints. And this year to date we already have 35. So unfortunately we may surpass what we had last year for state complaints. I'll just add to
what Doctor Jones is saying, because I know the burning question is why? I've also, like I said, shared this information with our school leaders. And yes, we have some very serious advocates that are
filing state complaints now. But what I tried to get them to focus on is not focus on the filings, but focus on the fact that there are findings after the filings. So anybody can file any type of complaint on
you at any time, whether frivolous or not. But when the investigation is done and there are actual findings that come out of the investigation, that's the areas we should be focusing on. And we with, with
these state complaints, 96% of them are yielding findings, which is another reason why we chose the areas that we chose in those three big buckets that I talked about earlier. So everything that we're showing you today, there is direct
alignment as to why the work will move forward in the fashion that it is. Questions just very quickly. Because we said, okay, so so these are the complaints. But I guess my
question is out of those 125 complaints, how many were had foundation out of the 125? I can tell you one of them I
probably know because of the constituents that I have and because I have. A school in my in my district that serves kids with very special high needs, is speech therapy. I think all
of us have had complaints on the board about speech therapy. And there's one. And I just want to make the difference right there. Speech therapy and speech therapy for certain. So the speech therapy I'm talking about is for kids who because
when I was in Esol, apparently I had speech therapy and it was great. I loved it because she would take me out and give me candy afterwards. It was just awesome. But, you know, she would put the pencil in my mouth and try not, you know, the S's and the, you know, the pronunciation. And so but these
are with kids who have very high needs, who either either have some trauma injuries, are learning to talk from zero, you know. So the biggest complaint was a lot of speech therapy was
done online, which I still cannot comprehend for populations who I'm not an expert, I'm not a speech therapist or a doctor, but I'm a mom and and and I have worked with special populations in the
past. And I can tell you I was like, that's not that doesn't make sense for, for for for us to be doing online speech therapy. But then when I dig more into it, it was the fact that we're not the only ones
who are experiencing the huge shortage of speech therapists. So in a way, we were all competing for each other, with each other, all the districts. Right? And we had speech therapists on staff that I don't I don't think we
recognize the value of them. And they just left the system. And we lost a lot of really good speech therapists. So we were in a situation I think, that it was dire not to say, though, a lot of kids did not
get their speech therapy or their therapy. So I don't know if you want to. It's just an example that, that I, that I want, but I'm just trying to see out of 125 complaints, what were your major ones that you were like? Absolutely. That is those are areas that we need to
improve. And if I can just add a related because it's related to the speech therapy. And I'm wondering, you know, obviously if we're not providing something that's valid complaint and all of those things, but I know from a variety of experiences that we have a huge lack of speech
therapists. And this is a nationwide problem. This is not an M.C.P.S. issue. It's it's an issue. Right. And perhaps others as well. I'm not sure how occupational therapy and things like that. Even if you have private insurance, the wait lists are very long and you're just supposed to wait it out somehow. And so I'm just
wondering, not withstanding, I understand the legal process and maybe they don't care, but where we have just a lack of resources, it's not because we don't want to provide these services for our students. You know, is there a way to and maybe that goes back to the
category type, but where we can kind of parse that out to see the difference between, yes, we want to provide that. We just literally don't have enough speech therapists versus, yeah, someone kind of mess that process up over there. Thank you for that question. So just
a few things, and I know at some point we have to get past Covid, but Covid taught us some things that we should keep. And it also taught us some things that we should let go. Right. But I can tell you nationally, our speech therapists is not as
broad as we used to have a speech therapist in school districts for every single child. However, we are creating a space where we can promote in our local universities programs,
where we have grant funds, where we're trying to partner with a grow your own to have more people go into speech and actually have some of our current staff go in and add the endorsement for speech. So I just actually signed that
paperwork about a week ago to have that program come in speech therapy online, just like all of the medical practices and things that you can now do online. In some cases, it does work. I can't say that it doesn't, but it's one of those things that we
have to get used of, you know, having in our schools to say that it works when a parent out and out refuses speech therapy, we try to find a person. We really, really do. We are working really, really hard to try to find a person, and
sometimes I wish I possessed some of those extra skills so that I could actually provide services, because I would. It is no consolation that it is a nationwide problem, but in the space that we have, we have done a great job. Staff
directors over that particular area has done a great job with accommodating our students that really, really need that person in person. But speech is not one of those areas to get back to our state findings and corrective actions that I've
seen a lot of. So I'll answer the second part of that, which is what are the areas we go back to the big buckets, currently present levels of academic functioning. So basically a lot of the findings are coming from the IEP itself
and the way the IEP is constructed. So what we have started in our area which kicked off actually September 16th, is we've partnered with MSD to bring forth a professional development for
all staff, central services on down to our Paris, to our librarians, to whomever touches our students on present levels of academic functioning. So those trainings has been happening 3 to 4 times a week, one in the morning and one in
the afternoon. So right now it is optional. Like I said, we would love some mandatory trainings. However, it is an area that we are finding a lot of our state complaints in the other area is least restrictive
environment. We have to do some training on goal writing, which is our second spin off of our partnership with MSD. That training happens after the present levels of academic functioning, is another area that we are opening up in. Our
curriculum area is we're going back to office hours. When I was in New Mexico and enacted office hours, we started off with 38 participants, and by the time I left, we were over 300 because this was the space where you could come and get
the training and get the information and have your questions answered. So we are kicking off with our office hours and uniquely enough, our office hours may be more than an hour depending on the training, but they will know
ahead of time where to go and get that information and get that training. With the office hours we are. We were just talking last week and are creating a space for our paraprofessionals because we know it's very, very difficult for them to be able to get out
of class or leave the students. These will be conducted after hours because of course, we're still at work and we're trying to move some funding around so that we can pay them a stipend for actually getting on to those trainings. Just trying to
be creative here. Another area of our our state complaint is simple things like ensuring that we have the correct procedural safeguards that we are actually using the prior written notice properly. So
it's really things surrounding around the IEP. And one of the suggestions that I did give principals in their PLCs is when you get your state findings report, because there's one that comes after
every investigation. It's normally on one IEP, one child. Take those findings, pull a set of IEPs randomly and look for the same thing. If it's there,
then it's something that we need to fix as a school. Because what we're seeing, which is this slide that's up our state findings are now systemic. And I've been working with MSD really partnering
partnering with them so that they don't give us a systemic state finding, which will come with a whole lot of work and a whole lot of people in and out of our schools that we can't control. So here in front of
you is our state findings, which I think one of our neighboring counties is now going through. Here are our state findings. We just pulled the big ones, timelines, provisions of five day docs not
being provided before and after the meeting. So there are timelines with everything. We didn't make sure that the IEP was reviewed annually, so we missed that date. We didn't follow proper procedures for the reevaluation. We have not
ensured student progress. And IEP is not just a paper that we take out once a year to review. There are goals and objectives that are on the IEP. And just like a report card, we're supposed to actually be checking those, tracking those,
upda those, writing on the IEP because it is a live document. And we really didn't have a lot of documentation or evidence that we were doing that. And sometimes not even providing progress reports on the goals and objectives of the
IEPs. These are all very simple things that we can fix just with some procedural safeguards of our own. Having protocols, having checks and balances. But our schools needed to know what these things were. And I mean,
if I get a findings report, then I'm thinking it's just me, it's just my school. But when I give it to all of the principals in a space, they all now understand they're not alone. Like, we all need this training. We have a lot of new
principals, we have a lot of new teachers out there, and we need to be able to provide them the training that they need. So this is just though, people who have filed a complaint with the state right now, as a current
parent, there's a lot of stuff we have to deal with on a daily basis. Some school stuff, some non-school stuff. And I know of families where they are experiencing some of these things, but they don't file a complaint or they don't speak up or they don't say anything, or they don't feel like they
can or should or want to cause problems and all of these things. And so I'm just really happy to hear that we are trying to encourage our staff to just look at these and basically look for the patterns. Right. We don't need to have the state tell us we need to do this before we look to see whether or not we need to fix
some of these things, because some of them are simple, right? Like the five day, you know, notices and those kinds of things. Understanding that our school staff also have a lot of things happening on any given day, but I think making perhaps some sort of I don't know if we have like a checklist or things like that that can maybe auto
populate at certain times where you have to, you know, sometimes there's forms where you have to fill out this question or you can't keep going, things like that, that kind of really force folks to get into the structure of things, because I think it could be really easy to overlook some of what are basic things. And again, and
especially sometimes culturally, some of our families don't feel comfortable or think it's okay to kind of quote unquote, challenge authority. And so I worry about those families that are not going to be as vocal as I am and say, well, I don't accept that answer. Who else
can I talk to now? Okay. Moving on. Just oh, go ahead. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry. Can we get through the chart? Yeah. Oh, actually my question is on the last slide. So we're good okay. Go ahead. Thank you. Go ahead. Oh on the last slide okay. All
right. So you can go to the next one. The request for due process and administrative reviews is separate from the state complaints. I just wanted to share that data with you as well as to how we have moved
more from mediation into our due process realm. And I have a definite expert in that area now. She has taken and hit the ground running and is really working in the area to make due
process mediation, state complaints, findings, central IEPs. I mean she is just fabulous and that's Doctor Vanessa Christian, so I'm sure she'll be coming back to do a presentation on all of the great things that's happening
there really soon. So here are the top ten parent issues. We we kind of try to spell it all out for you. I shared a few of them with you already. Least restrictive environment Fape is the number one because it's
very, very easy to to file a complaint to say Fape was not being provided free appropriate public education. Thank you. That is what Fape stands for. And that means that we are
providing an opportunity where our students can be a part of an inclusive community, where they are being challenged at the same rate of their peers. They're actually being educated through the provisions of the IEP. Goals and objectives are
being tracked. Parents are being informed of the data and progress of the student. So that is what Fape is. So next slide. Okay. Miss Mr. what you want to ask you a question.
Sure. On the issue category we have placement less restrictive, placement more restrictive. And they're about even in number. But in the report card it says
that we are more restrictive. We're not meeting our less restrictive goals. Right. So can you kind of contextualize this because again, this is about even one way or the other.
Sure. I'll start it off and I'll ask Doctor Christian to come in if I don't get something right. So from what I've been able to see or unpack, shall I say, since I've been here, the parent complaints are
truly driven by parents, attorneys and advocates. If we decide as an IEP team on a specific placement for a student, sometimes the parent or the advocate may disagree. They feel it's either too
stringent, meaning more restrictive. They want their student to be in an environment more relative to their peers, or sometimes they feel as though we are not being restrictive enough because they
prefer for their student to have a 1 to 1 environment, a smaller space. What is happening is we're deciding as a district or a county or a school system leaning more to the more restrictive, which the
state is saying. We're not making the best decisions in that area. So that's where the two align or where the two meet here. Did I get it right? Yeah, I think that about sums it up. I'm sorry, I said I think that
about sums it up. The only thing I would add is when you speak to the discrepancy between how the state complaints show data, that's pretty even. There are some parents who want more service, some parents who believe they should have more inclusive opportunities. But in the
improvement plans, we have to speak more specifically to the state mandate of allowing students to access the least restrictive environment that they're entitled to. And so some of what we need to improve is making sure that we're taking into consideration how to maximize resources in the
least restrictive environment to give students those opportunities, and also help parents understand the resources that can help the students be successful and access the curriculum in those environments, so that there are not assumptions being made about having to go to more
restrictive learning centers, extensions, programs, or even in some cases, nonpublic placements. There are things that M.C.P.S. schools are doing well and can serve students, and some of it is just a matter of making sure we're working with families to make sure they
understand the opportunities that are available to them right at their residence schools. So I think if we made the least restrictive environment, a place where the family felt like their kid was actually making progress. So
there would be a couple of reasons why that could maybe not making progress. And it could be even the way that classroom structured or and then that parent just gets frustrated and asks for more restrictive because they just can't see their kid not making
progress month after month, year after year. Am I some of that? And probably there's other reasons too. But thanks. That really helped me wrap my head around this. This kid's not getting what they need, or at least parents not seeing
that. So thank you. You're correct, Miss Stewart. Exactly what you said. So in a great segue, Doctor Christian has taken us into talking about
private placements. When I unpacked and uncovered this information, I, I literally my eyebrows went to the top of my hairline. And every time I look at it, it still does. This is
one of those areas where the state is pulling back funds. So, as you can see over over time, we have steadily increased the different types of payments that we are paying for our
students in the various schools across a few states, because it's not just Maryland where we actually have to send students. And I truly believe that sometimes these placements are warranted, but sometimes this
goes directly into that question that you just asked Miss Stewart about. Why is the imbalance of our state talking about least restrictive environments and then our parent complaints? This kind of
falls over into the fact that we are putting more students in a more restrictive environment based off of the percentages and the populations. We're supposed to be able to serve them here. So this is a particular grant that is
currently the state pays 70% of what you see here. M.C.P.S. pays 30. I will ask Miss Julie Hall to talk about this, but I believe we are going to 50%
next year, so we'll have to pay 50%. And then she can explain what happens after. So with every private placement, we submit the enrollment to the state and we get a percentage
back from that. It's called the 300% share. And in the next sequential years, that percentage that the state is going to reimburse us back is going to decrease by 10% each year. So then M.C.P.S. would
come up with the difference for that. And this is the tuition for residential school age day for our Maryland School for the Blind and Deaf, jointly funded is is what it means jointly funded. We pay the educational portion of the day during the
day, but the student is a resident student and the state pays for the the residency side of that jointly funded. And then there's home and hospital, and you'll see that we are progressively getting more and more. Part of our budget is going up each year in the millions. Thank you. Julie, can
we just do very just give me a very quick example so we can actually digest this better. So you have a student with very high special needs that needs to live to live in a in in home situation, a residency. The
state pays for the residency, we pay for the education costs. But are you saying then that's for specifically that one row called jointly funded. Jointly funded. Yes. So for example, for School Age Day, a student would still be living at home
and they go to a one of the special schools that the student has been placed at, like Kennedy Krieger or Ivy Mount. And when they would get their day school services and we pay for the tuition and related services that go along
with that student, and then the state will pick up the, the, the medical costs of the residency cost, not for school age days. So that would be the first line where residents, residents is literally the student is in resident at a facility. Okay. All you know
outside the house. Yes. Okay. But the other the other scenario that you were talking about because I because I'm a little bit confused. So I just want to make sure people are not confused. You said that. Then every year the state's going to decrease funding the
percent that the percentage that they usually reimburse. Is that also in this situation or for every or for the ones that are not, it's for every private placement for. So for any private placement, there's going to be a decrease of support from the state. Yes, that is going to have to then
pick picked up by the locals. In that case, us correct. To be able to put that funding towards. Correct. Okay. Just wanted to clarify. Quick question. Yes. Thank you. And so when we're looking at these private placements, so let's just say for example the school age day because it may be that
no, we're not in a position at this time with resources or whatnot to help students who are legally blind. And so there's, you know, and also just with socialization, right. It might be better for them to be with other students who also are legally blind or whatever factors go into that. But if we're just looking at, for
example, School Age Day, which if I'm reading correctly, is the bulk, it seems, of what we spend here, about $53 million with an M. Are those reviewed to see whether or not the student still needs that
placement, because M.C.P.S. cannot provide the services, because I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that, you know, I see the good work that all of you are doing. I've talked with with many of you. I see where we're heading and where we're trying to head. And is it that a student maybe in
first grade gets this, you know, school age, private placement and then we just don't ever look at it again. And now they're graduating from 12th grade. And we just keep paying, paying, paying. Because as we grow as a system and as we get better trained and provide better resources and things like that, I mean, my hope is
that we become better able to have our students stay in Montgomery County Public schools rather than private placements, without the assumption that, well, they just need to keep going, because I also, you know, if our staff are not getting the information or the training, well, then of course they don't
feel equipped to be able to provide for that student in the general education setting or perhaps even in some of our our programs. So do we review these? And if not, is there a plan to perhaps put a plan together to start doing so so that we don't automatically assume that year
after year? Yes. These students just need to keep continuing in private placement. Thank you for that question, Miss Montoya. Yes, yes and yes. No, we were not reviewing any of the
private placements that I could find that I can unpack to say this. This child is ready to go back into the general education setting with M.C.P.S. or whether or not some of our boutique programs are extension
programs, our special schools, our learning centers would be equipped to now manage the students education. We are currently creating standard operating procedures for all of these things. As I said earlier,
really starting grassroots with looking at the procedures in each area. And even though this was supposed to be happening where there was some type of cyclical observational feedback cycle happening to ensure that
our students were getting our very best, it was not. But it is happening now. We just have so much catch up. Okay. Thank you so much. Because I think, you know, especially of course, we want all of our students to get whatever services they need,
wherever that may be. Right? If some students do need a private placement or some other placement, then we absolutely want to support that. We want all of our kids to thrive, and we want to acknowledge that sometimes M.C.P.S. may not be able to provide that for them. But if our kids can, you know, especially when we're looking
at these really tight fiscal constraints, where more and more and more keeps getting shoved to the local, I just want to make sure that, you know, with our growing system and the growing body of knowledge and resources that we're continuing to have, that if we can provide for our students and families in our spaces that we are able to do
that. Thank you. Thank you. And we can. We definitely can. Yep. Next slide. I just wanted to share with you a three year trend of also what our settlements are looking like. This is separate and apart from
our private placements. This is also this is not covered by MSD. So this is completely local. Next slide. Strategies for improvement. So as you see the
pattern here we wanted to continually address our three big bucket areas. So even though it looks the same it is a little different here. We set goals as a team. All of us sitting at this table for our perspective areas. We all have
goals within our areas that we lead and supervise, and we also have goals as a team. Sitting before you. So one of our goals is to increase the proficiency rates of students with disabilities in reading and
math over the next three years. Our other goal is to reduce those suspensions, especially with those students that are disproportionate. And our third goal is to increase the percentage of students served
in the general education setting, meaning we are trying to increase our less restrictive environments, have more students in inclusion, have more students with more opportunities, and decrease the more restrictive environments.
So what we've done over the next couple of slides is break it down of what that would look like for the various levels of those that we support. So here are our improvement strategies for administrators. Definitely
have already hit the ground running with with these items that are here. By collaborating with our schools, we are setting up quarterly daily review cycles with our schools that are germane and aligned to our report card. And actually
those state findings where we're looking at our schools, who may be needing more support in those areas, and dispatching teams outside of cross-functional teams to be able to support them in reviewing and looking at those
IEPs. Because if we have one, nine times out of ten, we may have more. So we want to be sure that we're giving them the skills that they need to be able to know how to do that. Review process. Facilitating professional learning
communities I love being before principals. I think I shared with them last week that being an elementary school principal was possibly my most favorite job, but I am middle school all the way. But even though those
babies, they really did touch my heart. Principals have a very difficult job to man everything that they have to man, and my team here knows that it is one of my focus areas to ensure that schools have what they need to be
successful, because when they are successful, our students and our teachers are successful as well. Equity and inclusion. Cultural competence is extremely important. It's a lot of the work that I was able to
do in New Mexico and transferring here. We are very diverse, so there needs to be a basic understanding of how cultural competence comes into play, what actual learning and learning styles. So just
looking at all the data as a whole, making sure that we're pinpointing our students for different types of services and also entertaining the whole child, I can tell you that our professional development this year, and possibly the next two
years, will be extreme because of the level of professional development that we have to ensure that our schools have. And then also the the accountability piece, working with schools to make sure, like Doctor Christian said, the
resources that we've already provided are they're being are they being maximized? Are they being used to the best potential that we have? Looking and working with school principals to understand how to utilize a para or teacher by maximizing the time on their
schedules, and then also engaging with staff on quarterly reviews of of least restrictive environment and placement data that goes even into our public and our private schools that we are placing, because it's extremely
important. Next slide. Okay, improvement strategies for teachers, which looks very similar to the first slide. But we wanted to definitely hone in. And I'm told we have three minutes. We definitely wanted to hone in on what it looks
like for teachers. So I wanted you to have this before you. Next slide. Then we're breaking it all the way down to our para educators. Because really, honestly and truthfully, I'm going to tell you your para educator is extremely important.
They are the wills or the rubber that meets the road in those classrooms. So we definitely need to make sure that we're supporting them differently. And here is our section for our improvement for students and parents. We had our first meeting special
Education Advisory Parent Council. I messed that up. But that's what it is in a nutshell. And it went over really, really well. And we have some exciting plans to do with that particular group this year as well. So we always like to make
sure that we have resources here. If you're interested in joining our Kcac, the landing page is here. Who do you call for? Whatever source? All of these are links. We have our family support center here. We
definitely will be having a special education resource fair. Our Pep virtual workshops, our office hours, and many different things that are coming. I'm really excited to
also announce that starting in January of 2026, we will be launching our parent newsletter where we will be having a plethora of information and resources. ThinkPads. We will
have little trainings, their suggestions and strategies also. So we have a special Dropbox email that you see here, spec support services at M.C.P.S. And any parent that is
interested in receiving this newsletter, please sign up and we will be sending the first one out come January 2026. This is also something that I did in New Mexico, and we actually and I'm gonna say this wrong as well, we broke the platform or
the dashboard because so many parents joined. We had to purchase and go to a bigger dashboard. So we are definitely hiring and also staffing and
special education. We can never have too many to serve the needs of our students and staff. Next slide. So we definitely have a recruitment campaign that is going through our talent management area. We also
send staff to support those efforts out there. Next slide. This is a video that you can look at in your leisure. Next slide. And just sharing some updates as to where we are, what our vacancies and our fill
rates. And we've actually narrowed it down to schools and the particular positions that we are looking for. Keep going. That's all our staffing slides.
And this concludes our presentation for today. We stand for any further questions. Doctor, thank you so much to you and your staff for this very thorough presentation. Like I said before, some of the information was never shared
with us in a sense, and it's so important to be able to to also do priorities and so on as we go into the budget. So all these things are really, really important. So I really, I really want to say, you know, to you and your staff, thank you for being here. I know you
guys have your plates full. We're hiring. I know you still hiring folks. And, you know, I think Montgomery County is a wonderful county to work in and to live in and raise your kids. You did talk a little bit about cultural competence. I would
say we also kind of, you know, I will I do not want to miss this opportunity to say that that is very important. It's very important, especially, I think, with populations that are majority minority in our in our county and our school system. It is, you know,
Heritage Month. So I'll take the opportunity to say we do we need to diversify the leadership and the folks who work in special education in Montgomery County and our schools. That needs to be part of part of the mission and vision that I know I have shared with you personally, because it is the largest
growth of population in our system, and because it is, parents are not as loud as they should be, in my opinion, and the kids are the ones who lose that advocacy and fall through the cracks and the gray zone
areas. And then we're trying to play catch up in middle school and high school when honestly, it's a little bit too late. And I have personally seen many children graduate from our school systems without the skills who were born and raised
in Montgomery County, who have a hard time reading and writing, who are never, ever identified and that should not be able to happen. And a wonderful county that we have with so many resources and services. But I also believe that
representation is very important. I think. One more quick question. Yes, just one quick. It's not so much just a question as a please. If we can please do this prior to you coming and to even some of you in the positions that you're in
or even coming to M.C.P.S. we had some meetings where a staff member represented that staff. When they're trained, they're not trained about specific, you know, disability diagnoses. So for example, we're not doing a training on this is what ADHD
is. And these are some of the challenges. And it might vary from child to child. It doesn't look the same in every child. And the the if I remember correctly. And maybe my colleagues if I misstate was that, well, we don't want to put labels on kids and put them in boxes and things like that.
Absolutely. We don't ever want to do that to any child or adult. But if our staff don't understand how our kids are showing up and we talk about cultural competence and we talk about not basically criminalizing behaviors, I just
have no idea how they were supposed to be able to do those things if they don't understand some of these, what we call disabilities. I don't like to refer to them in that way, but if they don't understand them to begin with. So I just I really for all of our staff, whether it's in school staff, out of school staff, board
members, right, we all have these issues come across us, you know, frequently. And so we have to understand the diagnoses that our kids are even coming into our school system with to begin with, not just how to provide an alternate testing space. Right.
Because then we're going to misinterpret or misperceive or mislabel, quite frankly, some of our children, and that really does them a disservice. Thank you. Appreciate that. And I think when we had a meeting with our folks from the ACLU, one of the things they asked about was the training for
security with special education and how how to react, you know, they're like, we need to have that training. We need to know what to do in situations so they don't make the situation worse, but they have the tools to be able to de-escalate the situation, to be able to, you
know, to come to a peaceful conclusion in a sense. Right. But if they don't have those tools, it's really hard to do that last word. Also, don't forget substitute teachers. I have had so many people come in
and like so excited. They're retired. They're coming in substitute. And like, you didn't get any training. We don't know how to manage a classroom. And so we should probably add that to another bucket. And also this family partnership. This page is so
important. I've had parents come up to me almost in tears about getting all this paperwork right before an IEP and not having time to really review it and being totally overwhelmed during a meeting and just leave in tears because
they really had no time to really prepare or even understand what was happening. So this page is really important about improvement for students and parents. So thank you so much. Great work and a lot of work to do. But I have a
lot of confidence that right here at these people at this table. Thank you. Thank you so much, Doctor Cage. And I just want to say special education touches literally every all aspects of our system. So we cannot be working in silos. We have to be being able to work
with everybody again. I feel like everybody needs to have those skills across the board. So I just want to say thank you. I will say thank you to the audience. Thank you to our staff. Thank you to our board members. Our next meeting is November 18th, and we're going to be talking about identifying
and serving students with special circumstances, including our students who are homeless, medical students, and those students with communication needs. So we look forward to seeing and I'm sure we'll see some folks from your staff at that meeting. With that being said, thank you to
all at home for watching and we are adjourned. Thank you.