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Video-1: youtube.com/watch?v=YQan4QrMq2E

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All righty. Hold on. >> Okay. All righty. We're going to go ahead and start this meeting at 12:11 p.m. Um, my name is Christy Angel. I am the president for the citywide council for district 75 and the chair for outreach.

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Today we do have the Manhattan Psychology Center here um where they will be talking about functional behavioral assessments and behavioral intervention plans. We do have Miss Ariel Cornbloom who will be giving us the presentation and walking us through

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our Q&A on today. We also have interpretation for Mandarin, Spanish and Bengali. I would like to go ahead and give the floor over to the Spanish interpreter for your instructions. Say

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Thank you so much, Mandarin interpreters. You now have the floor to give your instructions. Thank you. Okay. >> Thank you so much. Bengali interpreters, you now have the floor to give your instructions. airport. The Bengali announcement is completed.

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Thank you all so much. Ariel, you do now have the floor. >> Okay. Good morning. Oh, good afternoon everyone. Thanks for having me. So, today I'm going to talk about functional behavior assessments or FBAs and behavior intervention plans or BIPS. So,

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usually the way I do these is I'm going to save time or I'm going to I'm going to try to talk fast so we can save time at the end for questions. So, if you do have questions, you can write them into the chat or just save them at the for the end. So, uh what are we going to talk about today? So, we're going to

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talk about what FBAs and BIPS are, right? What are the legal clinical foundations for these assessments? Um we're going to talk a little bit about how an FBA is conducted, right? What happens? What are the pieces of it? Um and what are we looking to gain from it?

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And we're going to do the same for BIPS. Um, and we're going to talk about implementation and progress monitoring. And these things are really important because FBAs and BIPS are not one-time assessments. They are ongoing. And it is so important to understand that when you are analyzing and assessing whether a

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behavior intervention plan is actually effective. So what is an FBA? So let's start a little bit with what it is. A FBA is a functional behavior assessment. And very simply put, it is designed to get at the

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why of behavior. So we know for example that if I, you know, hit someone what that is, right? It's objective. It's measurable. I could see it. I could talk about how many times it happens. But it is not clear just from watching someone hit another person why that is

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happening. So the purpose of an FBA is to understand the why or the function of the behavior. And it is rooted in behavioral science and behavioral theory that all behavior serves a function and it can be understood through the context of when it happens, how it happens, what

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it look like, what it looks like and those are the clinical foundations of why we do it. It is a precise analysis of behavior in different environments to figure out the why. Now what are the legal foundations of it? So an FBA is

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mandated under IDA which is the federal education law that guarantees access to services and to a public education for students with disabilities. So it is mandated in any case and this is I want to be super super clear about this

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because oftent times there is this misunderstanding that FBAs exist for behavior that is super duper challenging meaning it's really aggressive or really destructive and that is when we are doing FBAs and BIPs and that is simply

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not true. If there is any behavior at all that gets in the way or poses a barrier to learning in the classroom that can be analyzed and we can create a plan. So if you have a child who exhibits behavior and the school says, "Well, it's not severe enough." This

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just happened to me in an IEP meeting just last week. So it's top of mind that the behavior is not severe enough to warrant a behavior intervention plan. That is not true. Any behavior that limits access to the curriculum in the classroom can be analyzed and plans can be created. So an FBA is the precursor

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to the plan. It's just the analysis and the ending goal of it is to come up with a hypothesis as to why the behavior is happening. That is what gives us the road map in order to know what to do about it. So you know understanding why a behavior occurs is the foundational

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piece here. Can be used with any age group. You can analyze all we can analyze all of our own behavior, right? So, um, all behavior is susceptible to these environmental contexts. So, any age group, any disability category, any setting, behavior can be analyzed in all

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of these places. So, why do we do it, right? Why do we do it? So, I'm going to go back to this example of of hitting, right? Um, if I choose an intervention just based on the fact that I saw a kid hit another kid

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and it's not matched to the function of that behavior, I'm going to be throwing spaghetti against the wall, seeing what sticks. It's not purposeful and it's not exact at all. So, for example, I might hit another kid because I'm trying to,

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you know, get them to stop doing what they're doing. I might hit another kid because the teacher just gave me a math sheet and I don't want to do this math sheet. So, I know that hitting another kid will get me out of it. These are different functions of the behavior. They warrant different interventions. So, they are significantly more

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effective than just generic strategies. And a point about that that is that I do want to say is positive behavior supports which are mandated to be embedded within any educational environment are important and those are a little bit more generic and those

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should be a foundation and an FBA and a BIP is designed for individual right this is not a classroomwide indivi intervention it's for the individual again mandated by federal law IDA it's supposed to reduce the reliance on punishmentbased approaches so something

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I want to say about this is that punishments they have a time and a place but there is zero research and data to support that they have meaningful impact on long-term behavior. So part of the most important part of a behavior plan which we're going to talk about is

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everything that we're doing to set the student up for success rather than how we address the behavior when it actually happens. FBAs and BIPS they both get written into a full report. Um most of the time BIPS will have very nice um

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little charts in them that show exactly what to do before a behavior, what a behavior looks like, what to do after a behavior. And the importance of this is it's a shared framework, right? Every teacher, every related service provider year after year can come back, the school psychologist, the school social

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worker, parents can look at this and know what to do. And the way that these behavior plans are written and the FBAs are written is in a way where they can be understood that if I wrote it, anybody on this call should be able to read it and understand what I'm talking

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about and what the hypothesis is. So the ABC framework is the it's not the end all beall, but it's a huge cornerstone of FBA. So I'm sure many of you have seen ABC charts before. They're pretty all over the place, very common

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in educational environments. So the A stands for the antecedent that is what is happening immediately before a behavior. So let's say the take the example of the hitting again and the one with the teacher giving the math sheet right the antecedent would be the

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teacher putting the math sheet on the student's desk. The consequence is what happens after the behavior. So consequence in this sense it does not mean a punishment. It just means anything that immediately happens after. So let's say after the hitting happens,

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the teacher sends the child, you know, out of the room to the principal's office, right? Super generic, punishmentbased, very traditional behavioral methodology. That's what they do, right? So essentially, that's the consequence. The behavior is what

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actually happens, right? The the clinical term for it is the topography, but it just means what does it look like, right? And we want to know different things about it. the frequency which is how often the duration how long it lasts and the latency which means the

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the time in between the uh demand being given and the behavior happening. So if we take rows and rows and rows of qualitative data right so it's anecdotal information ABC charts the role of the

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clinician is to analyze all of that data to understand why it's happening right so that is our function there are four major functions that we talk about all the time the first is attention that can be access to either positive attention or negative attention from either peers

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adults anyone the second is escape or avoidance I am engaging this behavior to get away from something, to escape something, to avoid something. Um, and that could also be related to anxiety. I do want to mention that. The third thing is access to something, either an event, a thing,

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a person. And the fourth is it's a sensory thing. Meaning, and the the um sort of litmus test for this is would this behavior happen if this student was in the room all by themselves, right? It has nothing to do with anyone else or getting anything or doing anything. So

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behavior is communication. It is always telling us something. Behavior does not occur in a vacuum. It's not just random. It doesn't just pop up. With analysis, we can always figure out the environmental context that is creating the moment where this behavior can

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happen. So the hypothesis will drive everything. Right? So if our hypothesis is that this behavior, the function of this behavior is attention, then our interventions will be centered around attention. and the same for the other functions. So, how do we conduct an FBA? So, a

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thorough FBA has has a sequence of steps and really what we're looking for is data that converges on an hypothesis. Now, uh the people who can do FBAs, BCBAS, board certified behavior analysts, they are the ones who have the most training in this, but also school

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psychologists do and some special educators do. So, that's important to know as well. Okay. So, we're going to do there's a couple of different things. Indirect and direct um things that we are analyzing. So, indirect is like interviews and rating scales and things

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like that. Talking to teachers, talking to parents, talking to related service providers. And then we have direct observations across settings and times, right? Like, I want to see, you know, structured activities and two transitions from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.

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I want to see lunch. I want to see recess, right? We want to see the student in different environments. Then we take all the data, the indirect and the direct, and we identify the patterns. So basically, the clinician is going to be piecing all the things together, creating a hypothesis

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statement that links the ABCs of the behavior. The next step is to write the report. So the report will have a full history in it. Educational history, medical history of the child, um where we're at, what is the related, you know, the referral concern. it will have all

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the the rundown of what happened during the observations, the ABC charts etc. and it will show the analysis. So the point of that is that anybody can read it and understand how we got from point A to point B here. And then after that the hypothesis from the FBA goes to

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inform the development of the BIP. Once we have the BIP, the most important thing that happens is we settle on how to collect the data for that behavior intervention plan. how we are going to revise it as needed, how often the team is meeting. I'm saying that this is really an important piece of it mo

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almost the most important piece of it is because you could create a fantastic FBA and bit it could be amazing so beautifully done really on point as far as the analysis is concerned but if there is not treatment integrity on the ground with the people who are actually

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implementing the plan if there's no good ongoing data collection if things get missed if there aren't scheduled meetings if the plan isn't evolving to meet the needs of the child then it's not worth the paper it's written on. So it's so important to understand that the

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team needs to meet the plan is a living document. It should be updated very regularly. So indirect methods that you might see again interviews and then also these rating scales. So motivation assessment

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scale the fast the QABF all these things get at why the behavior is happening. full record review any prior or val incident reports medical history IEPs neurosyes OT reports anything um if appropriate and the student can

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participate their own self-report scatter plot data gives time of day like I was talking about we want data from different times of day different structured versus unstructured morning versus afternoon again we're looking at patterns um the indirect data will guide the observation but it needs to be put

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with the direct observation methods in order to create a hypothes thesis. So the ABC charts we talked about interval recording means like recording behavior during certain intervals of time again the frequency the duration the intensity of the behavior that's

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something that needs to be documented for the baseline data. Um observations need to be conducted they can't be conducted by someone else who's giving a secondhand report. The clinician doing the evaluation needs to do it. Uh the general recommendation is three to five

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observations across different times, different um different times of day, different kinds of activities in order to get a full picture. So I have examples of functional hypotheses here, but the template is above. So when this antecedent happens,

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let's go with the um when it's time for math in the classroom, the student will engage in hitting, which results in leaving the classroom. Right? So, um, here's another example. When non-preferred tasks are presented during unstructured times, Marcus is engaging in verbal refusal, table swiping, like

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swiping stuff, which results in the removal of the task and pure attention. The behavior appears to serve a function of escape from the demands and also access to attention. Super important to understand that there can be multiple functions for every behavior. That is

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honestly more likely than not. Um, behavior is, you know, we're humans. It's not super clean. It doesn't always fit into a box and it changes. So, what's the BIP? The BIP is the plan. Simply put, it's how we take all

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everything that we learned and we put it into action. It is legally required component of the IEP. So, for those of you who are very familiar with the different parts of an IEP, there is a page on the IEP where it has checkboxes for if a child requires additional

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behavioral support. If you have a child who has a onetoone behavior pair professional, you always will see the yes um box checked off here. And if it is checked off, it is legally required component of the IEP. So this is super important to understand. FBA and BIP are

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part of your child's legal educational paperwork. Just as important as the IEP FBA, the BIP is not just for like one person to do. It's not just for the parah. It's for everyone. Classroom teachers, paraprofessionals, related

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service providers, whoever is covering lunch and recess. The focus is so something I always like to tell um families is that if you focus on replacement behavior, which is something that is functionally incompatible with the behavior. So for

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example, if we go to hitting, if I am um you know writing something with my right hand, right? I can't actually hit someone with my right hand my right hand as I'm writing. So functionally incompatible. Our focus for a BIP is always on teaching replacement

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behaviors, not just reducing the problem ones. And if you work on increasing a positive replacement behavior, what will happen is the challenging behavior will just naturally drop off. And the chart should look like this. They should cross each other. So we're not just focusing

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on how to reduce the problem behaviors because we need to give the students something else to do that meets their needs. So it is a it is so important to understand if you see a behavior plan that's all about like okay when this happens this punishment happens when

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this behavior this punishment happens I promise you that is not going to work. It's absolutely not going to change the behavior. The BIP is a living document. It needs to be reviewed and revised very frequently. It is so important that as a parent you understand who is the case

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manager, who is the person who is responsible for overseeing the behavior plan and it's always grounded in the in functions. If you start to see a behavior plan and you read the FBA and it's so clear that the behavior is is mediated by um avoidance or escape, but

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that the um interventions don't seem to line up with that. That is something to note and something to ask about. So the components of a BIP right so the there are three levels the prevention right sorry um which is the antecedent

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stuff the teaching and the response. So we need to have clear observable description of the target behavior or behaviors, right? So what does that mean? It means that if I read what the definition of the behavior was and I

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understood it to look like X, I need to be 100% sure that any person who reads that same definition will also expect to see the same thing that I expect to see. So it needs to be as specific as

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possible and as objective as possible. The second thing we need to see is the functional hypothesis which is the summary of the function of the behavior or the behaviors even when there's multiple functions involved. We want to see anticedent strategies what the replacement behavior is and what the

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consequence consequence strategies are. Now not everything that I'm going to talk about applies to every plan. So if you have a student who has extremely escalatory behavior, aggressive, self-injurious, there needs to be a crisis and a safety plan in

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there. So if that behavior is coming up, you need to see that that that is reflected in the BIP. We need a data collection plan. We need a generalization plan. How is this behavior going the replacement behavior, right? The always the replacement behavior going to be generalized across

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different teachers, different settings, different times of day. Um, there needs to be a a timeline for when the first check-in is, when the second check-in is, how often, how to communicate uh data collection, um, and fidelity checks. Who's the case manager who's

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checking in? Something that I really want to say. So, um, just for a little bit of of context, I'm obviously a psychologist and a BCVI. I have written hundreds of behavior plans, and the devil is in the details in these things. things fall apart because there isn't a

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plan for how things are being communicated and who is updating the plan. Again, a plan that isn't doesn't have fatality checks. It the data collection is inconsistent. There isn't good family communication is not writ.

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So, it unfortunately really falls to the parent to make sure that you are checking in very regularly to understand how all these things are happening. If you have a question of like, hm, I haven't heard from this school about this behavior plan in in a few weeks,

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that's a problem. So, as far as advocacy is concerned, advocating for the communication and the check-in meetings is critically important. So, what are some examples of anticedant strategies? The word antecedent is a

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jargony word. It just means before. What are we doing before the behavior happens? The goal always, always, always, 100% of the time is to stop the behavior before it starts, right? Always. So, um, how can we do that? We can get set up for transitions. We can

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use visuals, schedules to increase predictability for kiddos who struggle with anxiety. Uh, I always tell parents, um, you know, anxiety thrives in the unknown. So, if you bring known to it, you're going to increase predictability, reduce anxiety, and maybe reduce

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challenging behavior. um embed preferred activities and high probability requests before harder demands. So there's a term for that primac principle. Um adjust seating, lighting, noises. If you are dealing

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with a student who has sensory concerns, um consistent routines, clear expectations, uh say what you mean and mean what you say, super important in a class. Um you know, non-contingent reinforcement might be important, especially for a child who is really attention-seeking. We might start off by

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just providing attention, positive attention before any sort of challenging behavior occurs. And then we and then we start to layer in demands and task from there. Um the last thing I think is really important to say is that behavior

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plans can't just be implemented by anyone. They require a foundation of rapport, a relationship, an understanding that you as the adult or the adult in the classroom or the parent or the related service provider is there to help the child. If there is a contentious relationship, we need to

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pair the whole thing back and start with rapport building before we get into a plan. Consequence strategies. Again, consequence doesn't mean punishment. It just means after for the sake of the ABCs, right? So um we might withhold

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consequences that maintain a problem behavior when extinction. So they would call that putting the behavior on extinction. Uh planned ignoring right withdrawing attention. Error correction which is just correcting the error. Um which is a consistent response to a

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problem but it's calm. It's brief. It's sort of like let's just get back in there and do what needs to be done. Um, we might be talking about behavior contracts, reinforcement systems, token economies, asterisk, very important for kids who respond to that kind of a thing. That is

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kind of stuff is not a great fit for every student. And it's one of these kind of things that requires a lot of ongoing support. You do not set it and forget it with a token economy system. It needs to be updated very very regularly. Natural consequences when

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appropriate, right? So logical outcomes rather than artificial punishments. Those things are really important. Um generally speaking with consequences, we want it to be as natural as possible. So we want to be able to reinforce

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differentially reinforce the replacement behavior, right? So essentially we want to be able to mostly ignore the really challenging behavior, reinforce the positive pro-social replacement behavior because again that will naturally help us get to where we're going.

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So, uh, fidelity is so important. I know I've said this a number of times already, but it really is the cornerstone. Every person on your child's team has to implement the plan consistently and as written. If it is not done consistently, what we start to see is this doesn't work, that doesn't

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work, this doesn't work, that this plan doesn't work. And unfortunately, it means a very slippery slope into reactive punishmentbased discipline. And that is exactly what we do not want. So we always want to frontload. Schedule all your meetings for 6 months out. This

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is what I do with families I work with. Let's get a monthly meeting on the calendar. Let's get our communication system set up. Let's get a Google doc going. Whatever everyone prefers. Behavior data needs to be collected all the time. Right? So, something I actually ran into a couple of weeks in a

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meeting with the school is that they were only collecting data during these uh BIP check-in times, which doesn't really make any sense. Behavior needs to be collected all the time. If there's no progress after 4 weeks, 6 weeks at a max, we got to go back to the drawing

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board, right? The the thing that's really also important here is little victories. We celebrate every single small step towards replacement behavior gains. Anything that is showing more positive behavior, more autonomous behavior, independence, communication,

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coping, those things are really important. With some kids, the steps are small. They're baby steps, but they still really, really, really matter. Again, the devil's in the details. So, as we get older and we're we're moving along and things are going well, we need

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a plan for fading the supports, self-monitoring, self- advocacy. These are behaviors that depending on the age and the support need of the student, it comes into play at different times, but we want to start to layer in the self- advocacy and the self monitoring as soon as possible so that the student can

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participate in their own support. Okay, so I got through that really quickly because I wanted to save a lot of time for um for questions. But before we get into questions, so these are some things where you can look at the idea rags, you can look a little bit about at

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the guidelines for developing a um FBA and a behavior intervention plan. Um but there there are things that I I want to say. So as a parent, if you have a child who has an IEP and you're noticing that there is behavior that's occurring throughout the day that is limiting your child's ability to learn in their

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classroom environment, right? or you're starting to see some school avoidance, some school refusal, some some of that kind of stuff that feels new, it's never too early to request an FBA from the team. If you have um you know a go-to person, a case manager for your child,

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ask them about the FBA because it is really important that you understand from the beginning how to best support your child and how you can collaborate with the school to do so. And the longer we wait, the harder it is. So, anytime you are noticing something, let's

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definitely get going with doing an FBA. So, I see that there are a bunch of questions in the chat. Um, oh, I'm sorry. I just saw the one about pacing yourself. I understand I talk fast. I apologize. Um,

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if there are any, if I missed something for any of the interpreters, please let me know and I'm happy to repeat it or send this along. Um, so first question, at what point based on FBA data and student need, is it appropriate to recommend a onetoone PAR

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as part of a BIP? Um, and what criteria or indicator should be used to make that decision? This is a fantastic question and what I will say is it depends on a lot of factors. It really if your child requires a behavior intervention plan

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that has lots of oversight involved, right? So, you know, check-ins every period, transitional supports, things like that. And you know that the teachers cannot provide that, then a onetoone parah is indicated. I would say more often than

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not for a individualized behavior intervention plan, we do require at least a part-time paraprofessional to make sure that the fidelity is there. That is certainly something that can be weaned over time. Um, back to what I was talking about the about the generalization is that eventually we

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want to be able to transition the oversight of the plan and the implementation of it from a paraprofessional to more of the teaching team. So I would say usually at the beginning if it's the you know if it's the first time or if the behavior is super severe and very impactful

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um then you know definitely the onetoone parah one more note on paras they will need to be trained on how to implement the behavior intervention plan and something that I have noticed so often in my in my meetings with schools is

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that the team will be at the meeting so like the school psychologist the social worker for the special educator, the parent, but the parah is often not there. So, it's so important to advocate for the paraprofessional to be able to attend a meeting so that you can really hear from them.

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Um, okay, I'm just reading the next question. What happens if over time, even with an IEP and a behavior plan, a child's behavior doesn't improve enough and more violent behavior occurs that really prevents learning from happening? what else can be done at that point? My

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question is about the fit of the school environment. Is the school the right fit for this for the student? Um is it the ratio? Is it the classroom size? Is it the training of the teachers? The the um modalities they use, I would really be

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thinking about that. If you're noticing that a behavior plan is not effective, you cannot a behavior plan is not a way out of an of a not a great fit in a classroom. So if the student is not a great fit for the school environment or for the program and behavior starts to

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happen, a behavior plan is not going to fix that. So, we do always want to be assessing, which we do through the FBA during the observations and the interviews and such, whether or not the school is a a good fit, and second, um if there's something else that can be

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modified within the program itself that can help. So, some kids start with like um you know, different choices during specials and things like that. Okay. Um, in order to get an FBA for my child, do I have to request it myself or it has to

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be by this? Either one. Um, so absolutely you ask if you're interested in it. Uh, the school might ask. Um, but as far as DOE regulations are concerned, an FB opening up the IEP to do an FBA is a reevaluation. Um, that's the second

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question. The doctor does not need to recommend anything. Um, you as a parent have a right to request re-evaluations for your child as often as as needed. Um, as well as as many IEP meetings as needed.

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Can you talk a bit more about independence plan or fading supports over time and what that looks like? Yes. Um, so that will look like, so let's say your child requires a behavior plan and they have a one-toone parah in place and that parah is responsible for checking in. Let's say we're doing some sort of

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reward system token economy and the chart that's set up is a check-in on three target goals, right? Um, during each period of the day, right? So first block, second block, whatever it is. uh

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how over time how could that look faded, right? So we might start off with um target behaviors being like will um you know keep hands on own body during you know transitions in and out of the classroom with two reminders or

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something. Over time we might fade that to one reminder and then no reminders. Eventually we might say instead of checking in every period we're going to check in every two periods or we're going to check in on the morning before lunch and then the afternoon after lunch. So that is how things get faded

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and it it's a a systematic process. So for example, if you have a behavior plan and it works fantastic, that doesn't mean we're just done. We have to come down the other side, right? So the weaning process and the generalization is critically important and you still

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need data that whole time. >> Um I see >> I did see one. Sorry to jump in really quickly. I don't know if you were able to answer it where someone said, "Can you revise an FBA without a re-evaluation?" Did you see that one? >> Yeah. So, I answered that. No, you need

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a reeval It's opening up an your IEP for an FBA is always a re-evaluation. Um, I see this question from Blanca that's in Spanish. I don't speak Spanish. I don't know if someone could. >> Do we have a Spanish interpreter that

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can assist? >> Yeah. >> Um, yes. Uh the question is how can I do it? How can I request more help for the child? >> Sure. So um I would identify who your

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point person is at the school. So that could either be the special educator in the classroom, school psychologist, social worker, and email them in writing that you want this. So that's that's your first step. Um, who gives the BIP training to the

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paras? Fantastic question. And that is a question that if your child has a BIP, you need to be asking. This is a place where the ball gets dropped. So, you do want to know who it is that's doing the training. The training should be the person who wrote the plan. Um the case

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manager, which is likely going to be the counselor, the school psychologist, or the special, you know, there's sometimes a like a special educator that has oversight in a school. It could also be the special educator in the classroom, but I found that to be less um less

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often that to be the case. And you want to know how they're being trained, when they're being trained, what the training looks like. Very important. Does having a BIP have an adverse impact on child's chances of securing a job later in life? No. Just the supports

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they need in order to make progress at school. Right? So, our whole goal for children in school is for them to be able to learn not just their academic skills, but for them to be able to have autonomy and independence and choice and learn daily living skills and social skills. And the purpose of a behavior

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plan is to reduce the barriers to doing those things. So school is not simply about just math and science and reading. There are all these other skills that are embedded within IDEIDA and the behavior plan is designed to access

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those things for the student. If anyone wants to unmute and ask a question, um, that works too. >> Someone said, "Can you come to an IEP meeting for my son?" Do you do that? You that I do I do do I do that I do attend

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IEP meetings on as an advocate for families. Um >> actually that's a really good point. Everyone on this call should know you are allowed to bring whoever you want to an IEP meeting as long as you tell the team that you are doing so. Um and I actually recommend it for transparency

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sake. I bring someone to my own child's IEP meetings and I've been doing this for years. it is really important to have an extra person there who understands the the lay of the land and can help advocate and can also just help you stay focused. So yes, I do attend IEP meetings as an advocate, but there

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are also many other providers and there are advocates that do as well um in general. So we should be able to get everyone a list. My I'm going to send my Is my email not in there? No. But I'm going to forward this um PowerPoint to Christie and then Christy you can you

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can share my email if you want. >> Absolutely. I wanted to ask there was a second part of that question. Um, if you couldn't come to the IEP meeting, do you look over or can you review a child's BIP to give input? >> Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Um,

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and do you have an organization where they can ask for help or should they reach out to Manhattan Psychology Group? >> Yeah, they can reach out to me and we can coordinate uh next steps as far as advocacy and help is concerned. Um,

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is busing or transportation a part of an FBA program? Yes, this is actually great question. So, if your child has um accommodations for busing, there can absolutely be parts of the behavior plan that are implemented on the bus. So, if

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you are getting a lot of complaints from the bus driver, the matron, etc. Reach out to the schoolbased team. That is part of their purview. They need to accommodate for those needs on the bus. Um, yes, we will share the PowerPoint and the recording. Right, Christristie?

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You're going to share the recording? >> Yep. Um, >> we'll share the PowerPoint and the recording for everyone who's attended, but I'll probably blast it out just to District 75 um for you guys and it'll be on YouTube as well. >> Oh, awesome. Great. Um,

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MPG does attend IEP meetings on on behalf of every family we work with. that is part of the work that we do. Um, again, it doesn't necessarily need to be a clinical services agency that's attending. You could also have an advocate. There are parent advocates who

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are super well-versed. Um, my son is in fifth grade and experiencing behaviors. For some time, I was told this behavior doesn't warrant any plan, which doesn't make sense to me. No, you just say, "I want the plan. I want an FBA." So, it is not. You're allowed to request. they have to do the evaluations and then

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consider the results of the evaluation at the IEP meeting of which you as a parent are a member of the team. So if the school is telling that you that the behavior doesn't warrant any plan, you need data, right? And you just put in writing that you are still requesting a

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functional behavior assessment. Um Christy will share my email so you can all contact me um if you have any additional questions. Uh Esther, I see you raised your hand. Go ahead. >> Hi everybody. My question was, do they

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do FBAs in the summertime? >> Oh, good question. >> If your child is in an extended school year, they should. Um I don't know if they could do it if your child's a 10-month student over the summer because it really requires school-based

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observations. Yes, he he does have a 12 month night. >> He's got 12 month. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Mhm. >> Um what what happens when the school tells you that the psychologist is not in? Is is it the psychologist who performs this FBA?

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>> Um it can be it could also be the school counselor. Um, it could also be another special educator on site if that person I know there's different people who are uh staffed into the extended school year, but like any of those there should still be staff able to do it or they should be able to send someone to do it.

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>> And and then when I put it in writing, should I explic explicitly explain all of those options viable if the psychologist who or whoever usually does perform the FBA is not there during the summer?

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Um, I don't think you need to. You just request to say that you want the evaluation and then just write why. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Um, you're welcome. Oh, yeah. So, um, Chrissy dropped my info in the chat. So, if you guys >> And then there's one more question. I

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have another question related to the BIP impacting a job in the future. Okay. We have Go ahead. the experience where a dayhab for you know for older individual 22 plus has not accepted a student due to behavior support paraprofessional um can I elaborate on this? Yes. Um I

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will say that this is this is an issue. This is certainly an issue. Um it's a lot of evidence to the fact that requiring behavior support with documented behavior challenges does you know change which kinds of programs and environments are going to be a good fit.

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What I would offer about that is you want your child whether they're young or 21 plus to be somewhere where the team can support them. So you don't the one of the most challenging things that can happen is an inappropriate placement accepts a child or an adult and then it

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doesn't work out for various reasons. So if they're not going to accept or due to the behavior support par professional and this is important this the individual needs the behavior support par profofessional because lots of times you know we don't do a great job of the

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generalization part of the plan right so that is really important that if they don't really need that kind of onetoone support but they still have it that a plan gets put in place for weaning off of it so that they can go into a program that will best serve their needs. Um,

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my son has an FBA and a BIP as well with a onetoone PAR, but the school calls me every other day that he is hitting himself and others. Um, I don't want to put him on sedative meds. I understand. Um, they should be redoing the plan then because obviously what they're doing isn't working.

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Again, it's a living document. I would request a meeting with the team to ask them to revise the plan so that it is better suited and actually makes a difference. But again, if it's not working, it's not worth anything. It's it's in it's it's

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there to make a difference. Anyone else? No. Okay. Well, thank you for having me. Um Christie, thank you again. and it's always a pleasure to work with you. And what I will say is um you know please

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Christy share my email reach out if you have any questions even if you're just you know wondering about your own child um you know I'm happy to provide whatever support I can. >> All right we have one more question before we >> I see. Is it too late to request an FBA

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if graduation is no do it today. >> Wonderful. Well guys, I want to say thank you again for coming, Ariel, as always. And no, on June 9th, we're going to have Manhattan Psychology Group back to go over um neurodeiversity assessments and things of that nature,

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which will be impactful. As you can see, they always come with great information and great resources. I want to thank you for coming to this lunch and learn. We will make sure to send out all of the information and the um video. Hopefully, if not today, we'll try to get it done by the end of the week. You guys make

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sure you have a great day on purpose. We are ending this meeting at 12:56 p.m. and releasing all interpreters. Thank you all very much. >> Bye. Thank you. >> Thank you. Wonderful work. I was