Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County School Board, Special Education Advisory Committee (SEAC) Meeting, Wednesday, January 11, 2023

Date: Wednesday, January 11, 2023
Place: Loudoun County Public Schools / School Board meeting (see BoardDocs / LCPS-TV)
Length: 2h 44m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/788451312?rel=0
BoardDocs (School Board): https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/loudoun/Board.nsf/Public

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-22. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:00] and activities put together by Mary Ann Moore with the Virginia Department of Education. She's in the Office of Special Education Program Improvement, and she is a specialist for secondary transition. In her role, she provides resources and assistance in the areas of graduation, dropout prevention, IEP compliance for transitions, focused IEPs, a post-secondary survey.

[00:00:24] Mary Ann, can you hear me? Mary Ann?

[00:00:47] Oh, we lost her.

[00:01:03] I got it. I got it. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Hi, everyone. Thank you for inviting me to speak a little bit on my favorite topic of secondary transition.

[00:01:29] But I'm going to stay focused today on talking about transition services and activities that can be added into the IEP as the student goes through school that helps the student get closer to their post-school goals.

[00:01:48] And I think you all are using the Virginia IEP. Am I correct? I can't see anybody. I'm sorry. My video is not working. And if I plug in an external camera, it knocks off my audio.

[00:02:04] Can you all see? We can. We're on the same page, so you can just go ahead and talk. Okay, great. So this is, you know, I'm going to be using templates with Virginia IEP, and I have sent the slides to several people in Loudoun.

[00:02:27] I hope I've got the QR code on a way. So, you know, as we write that IEP, sorry, and, you know, there's lots of information in the present level of performance In addition, you have, you're going to be writing post-secondary goals.

[00:02:50] So let's say you've written those goals and you've got those annual goals that support the students in terms of academics and behavioral issues and all those other things. So now you get to that page on the IEP, you've developed the IEP.

[00:03:08] Well, actually, you're not quite there yet. And we know that the topic of the – or the focus maybe of your IEP meeting is that transition services and post-secondary goals. So you put that, of course, on your IEP, but that's why we're here.

[00:03:27] We're developing an annual – it's an annual review, and we're really going to get a focus in on the IEP post-secondary goals and services. So one piece that we have about why is it so important to be sure that the meeting is in your documentation.

[00:03:53] Well, a piece of it is that you want a student to prepare, be able to prepare if they attend the IEP. They also need to be prepared because the teacher has to get information from the student, and the parent has to also get some information from the student if they're not going to be at the IEP meeting.

[00:04:11] This is about what that youth wants to do after high school ends. So we're going to, and you just let everybody at the meeting know, yes, be prepared. We're going to talk about the post-secondary goals and how we're going to get the students closer to those goals.

[00:04:28] And, of course, if you're inviting an outside person, somebody who is not employed by the school division, or an outside agency, for example, a DARS counselor, somebody from a community service board, a social worker.

[00:04:50] I'm trying to think of some of the other apps. And maybe somebody who wants to talk about pre-employment transition services, CREAT, they don't work for the school division. So you need to get permission or consent to parents.

[00:05:07] And you also, if the student has reached the age of majority, you need to, and the right to transfer to that youth, You need their permission to invite an outside person. So that has to happen. And it happens prior to sitting down at the meeting, at the table.

[00:05:26] Does anybody have any questions at this point? Because I don't see anybody. I'm just seeing my slides. Does anyone have any questions at this point? No questions thus far. Okay. And when it is possible that if the student has reached the age of majority and they sign, They certainly, many times and most times, and in my opinion, probably the best case scenario is that parent also attends, and it's fine with the youth, that parent gets invited as well.

[00:06:00] And from my perspective, this is kind of a team sport, teachers, outside providers, parents, to help get that student where they need to go. So move to the next one. Of course, if it's an agency, you need to acknowledge that it is an agency.

[00:06:20] Sometimes it's an agency that's actually going to provide not just services, but they're going to pay for the service. So on the IEP, we have our post-school goals, and they cover employment.

[00:06:39] They cover the services and activities, but they cover that training, our post-school goals, training, and education. They might also, you might also have one for independent living.

[00:06:56] But that's all, you know, that's part of the discussion. When you have your post-secondary goal, so we'll start with the first one, an employment goal. Is that really when we know what a student thinks they would like to do for their career drives the rest of the IEP, actually?

[00:07:17] So, obviously, a goal is going to start with after high school or after the completion of high school. make sure that it's very clear that the goal is not taking place while the student is still in a public education or in high school after high school has been completed. And then whatever the

[00:07:42] goal is. So let's say Kim thinks he wants to be an occupational therapy aide. He doesn't really want to be an occupational therapist because you think, well, that's a lot of college. I'm not sure I want to do that. I think I would like to do that, and maybe later then I would do something else, but that's where I want to start. So he wants to be an occupational, what we call an

[00:08:15] occupational therapy aid or assistant. So that's where he's going after heist. Well, we have to talk about how does the course of study support that? When we talk about course of study, we're talking about what diploma is he working for, because in Virginia, the content is pretty prescribed when we know the diploma option.

[00:08:37] So we know we can look up what it takes to be an occupational therapist, assistant, or aide. He needs to go to at least a community college program and get a credential. So that means he needs to graduate from high school.

[00:08:59] So this student is on track to earn a standard diploma. Let's just say that. So how does this course of study support that? We just write in there, Timothy Kess is interested in being an occupational therapist assistant, and that requires at least two years of a community college.

[00:09:24] And so, therefore, he is working towards a standard diploma. And that's really all you have to say on that. And now this, I know, is really, it might be for you as well, difficult to read. But once we have that post-secondary goal, now we're going to look at some of the services or transition activities that he might be engaged in during this year.

[00:09:52] So the first one is instruction. So when we read the present level, maybe we find out that Kim sometimes doesn't get all of these assignments done. So maybe one of the things that the teacher is going to work on instructionally is him completing an assignment book and then he does it accurately.

[00:10:15] But the teacher might not be checking it every day. Maybe the teacher is going to check it, let's say, once a week to make sure he is kept up with his assignment. And that, he shows him how to do that and how to fill out his book that has those, has the agenda, I guess it's called, has the agenda information.

[00:10:40] And that would be then what, that's an activity that he's doing. And how do you know what happens? Because the teacher's going to check and they're going to check, let's say, weekly. Maybe later on you go, you do less. So, again, what is the activity or the service, how does that support the goal, who's responsible, and in this case, it's the education agency and him.

[00:11:07] They're responsible to make sure that it's done. And we will put the date to complete, and we might say we're only going to do this first semester because if we can do it for a semester, we know we can do it for the rest of the year. There are some places, like let's say now let's go to the related service.

[00:11:29] Does Tim need a related service this year in school so that he can get progress and move closer to his secondary goal? Tim has never in the history of being in school or there's nowhere it's indicated in his present level of performance that he needs a related service.

[00:11:53] He doesn't need C, he doesn't need OC or PT, he doesn't need a service, related service. So we put in there, considered, but it's not appropriate at this time. So that is how you complete that component or that one piece of going through all these services and activities.

[00:12:15] And again, the parent has input, him has input. Then we come down to community experience. So you might think, well, what would be a community experience? Let's put him as a ninth grader. And so he may be a little young to have a work-based learning experience, but we might consider that in the spring, he'll be 16, it might be very appropriate for him to interview somebody who's an occupational therapist.

[00:12:47] And so we can arrange that. So that might be something, even though he's not in the community, or he might even go in the community to interview that person, or he might just go and observe. What do these people do and spend half a day doing that? That could be the community experience.

[00:13:03] So you would just describe that. Second semester, Tim will spend an hour observing an occupational therapy officer. We might have him go to the community hospital and observe what does an occupational therapist do, what does the aide do, what does that all look like, and who are the people that you've served in that setting.

[00:13:29] He might not really know much about that. Then we go down to, we've talked about his employment goal. So what kind of employment activity or service might we provide? Well, one thing that we might do, again, that could be first semester or second semester, is have him look at some of the websites that have information about occupational therapists.

[00:13:56] And one really good website is called O-Net because you can find out how many occupational therapists are needed in the medical community. The salary, those might be things that he could do just by looking at that website.

[00:14:14] If you use a resource called Castle, which the DOE has provided, it has videos so a student can see this is what it looks like to work with an occupational therapist and work in that setting.

[00:14:29] This is what an assistant or an attendant does in that setting. We can actually see that. So that might be one of the things that you could put in there. But there's a variety of things that you can do. That might not be the activity.

[00:14:46] You might come up with something else in conjunction with the family and him. So then the next thing on the list is functional vocational evaluation. And that typically is done by somebody who has a credential who is certified.

[00:15:02] to do a more comprehensive evaluation to help determine what other things might Kim need to do this. Or maybe through the evaluation process, Kim says, hey, you know what? I can't be an occupational therapist.

[00:15:19] I don't need this. I might want to change that goal. So that's a very comprehensive assessment. Generally, the person who does that has some kind of credential so they can do that because They're expert at putting together a variety of assessment information.

[00:15:38] Sometimes we call it triangulate. Find all the things that Kim needs to know and Kim needs to do, physically even, to do that particular job. We have that service at Wilson Workforce and Rehabilitation Center up in Fisherville.

[00:15:57] It's one place that young people can get that evaluation. They have to be a SAR client. that requires a referral. That also requires him to pull up and send some time at the center to get that kind of a comprehensive evaluation. While he's up there, he might be doing various activities and actually discover, this isn't really what I want to do. I had this opportunity.

[00:16:22] I tried this. I really love this. And I want to go into manufacturing. I just think that looks like the greatest thing ever after he does some evaluation. So that also, those opportunities can change what people want to do. But again, he would not do that prior to being involved with the agency DARS. There are very few certified folks that aren't connected to an agency that can do this kind of evaluation.

[00:16:56] So then if we look at daily living and adult living, does he need to have any skill or activity for that? And when we think about that, we might say, well, no, or maybe we scheduled him to take a class when he has health, that he's going to learn about nutrition, and so that's really all he needs to do.

[00:17:19] You could document that he's going to take a health class for a semester and put that information in, and that's the activity or the service he's receiving, an educational service. In terms of adult living, typically we would look at adult living.

[00:17:41] Kim has an independent living post-secondary goal. So that might be one we'd check that really isn't necessary at this time. Does anybody have any questions? I think, unfortunately, right now, I think there's several.

[00:18:01] I've gotten a few that they are not able to hear the presentation as well. And I don't know if we're live streaming as well at this point. I think Channel 18 might be having a little issue hearing.

[00:18:19] But that was the only comments I had. And I can't address it without actually coming on the mic and saying I'm not sure what we can do about the audio going through there. It's just a few technical difficulties for the live stream, but we don't have any questions coming in directly to you.

[00:18:40] Just as a reminder, you can scan the barcode or the QR code on the slides, and you can type in live questions to the speaker. So you can go ahead, Marianne. I think we'd like you to do this after we're done is do a recording of the slides and then send that to you all.

[00:19:01] That would be fantastic. Okay, I'm sorry about all these questions. So, the other thing I think it's important, I'm sorry, okay, the other thing that's important to understand is that if you decide it's not appropriate at this time, to have a discussion about that and explain it.

[00:19:22] Maybe the student is too young to go to Wilton Workforce for that comprehensive assessment, and you don't have anybody in your community that does that assessment. There's all kinds of reasons. Or you didn't write a post-secondary independent living goal when it comes to that area, so you don't even have to address it.

[00:19:42] Remember, we're addressing these areas based on an employment goal, a training goal, an education goal. We might not even have a post-secondary goal for independent living. So, again, these services are supposed to report every post-secondary goal in the IEP, the services and activities.

[00:20:12] And it doesn't always have to be, when I say a service, I mean, it might be that the teacher is going to provide an additional service and provide another transition assessment that they're qualified to provide to get additional information.

[00:20:28] So that would be a service if the teacher completed a referral form for pre-EP, pre-employment transition services, which could start at 14, but that requires parental permission. So the teacher might put down that they've completed the referral form and it's been sent to the parent, pending parent approval, then you can start those pre-ETS services.

[00:20:54] And that typically, again, is a person that comes in from outside the school division and provides those services. and it's sometimes it's one-to-one, and working through pre-ex as the student gets older, that service might be an internship in a hospital in an occupational therapy setting.

[00:21:18] So there's a lot of positives to that, but again, that's something that requires parental permission. Now, something I get asked about quite a bit when you write your post-secondary goals, Do you have to write separate post-secondary education goals and a separate post-secondary training goal?

[00:21:41] Or can you combine education and training? And they frequently go hand in hand. We've talked about that. It is permissible to combine them, but it's really important that everybody at the meeting understands how they connect.

[00:22:00] So I like to use the example of driver's education. This is an example. People understand, everybody understands education versus training. In driver's education, the component where the student is sitting in the classroom, they're reading chapters, they're maybe writing some assignments out, they're doing worksheets, they might be doing videos.

[00:22:23] That's the education component. The training component is behind the wheel, the doing part. So if somebody says, I want to be a principal teacher, great. The education part is the classes that you take. The training part is your internship or your student teaching, so that's the doing part.

[00:22:43] It's very permissible to combine them, education and training, as long as it's very, very clear. We also have careers like cosmetology, where you need a state license to be a cosmetologist. You cannot sit for your license if you haven't done that internship or that training component.

[00:23:04] All those pieces are really important for families to understand. It requires maybe the teacher to have some understanding beyond maybe the academic component. Or meet with a CTE teacher if you have a program in your division.

[00:23:21] The other thing, again, is we have a lot of online resources through O-Net, through PASPOL, which is, again, it's a virtual program that students can have a subscription to and utilize, and that helps them with that academic and career plan.

[00:23:43] So then when you get to independent living, your team might have decided, my student doesn't need an independent living goal, so we don't need to do that. On the other hand, if they did need an independent living goal, then you'd be determining what will that be?

[00:23:59] Well, what do we think the students, what would their life be like If they're independent of maybe living with the family or they can get around the community without any assistance.

[00:24:16] So, and a variety of things like that. So, we might not even have an independent living goal. Each one of those, employment, education, training, education and training, who are the teacher is going to have to go through with parents and students and talk about those different kinds, those different areas.

[00:24:40] And I'll flip back to this. Do we need the instruction? What kind of activity? And some instruction actually could come from 3S. And so we might want to know DARS is helping with that. And then cover those things like related service, community experiences, employment, functional vocational assessment, daily living skills.

[00:25:05] And if we don't have a post-secondary employment or independent living goal, we just go on. We don't need to address that because we don't have that. Okay. So I want to go in just a little bit, and I'll go quickly, about assessment.

[00:25:25] Good transition assessment is what really informs the activities and But it's based on an age-appropriate assessment. And we say age-appropriate because if someone has a developmental delay, we don't want to look at what their developmental disability is.

[00:25:46] We don't want to look at the developmental. We want to look at what's appropriate for a 16-year-old, for a 17, 18, 19, 20-year-old. What's an age-appropriate assessment? Because we're trying to figure out what we need to do to help that person live in the community, have friends in the community, have a job, employment that they like, a career.

[00:26:09] So we're looking for the student's preferences, interests, needs, and strengths. And sometimes we call this spin. We take it out of order. What's your spin? And the student can tell us what their needs are, their strengths, their preferences, and their interests. That does help process secondary goals.

[00:26:26] But, again, that's assessment. And then as we get further into this, we often need to do additional assessments to identify even what transition services we might need, that service specially designed instruction.

[00:26:43] Is it a related skill? Maybe it's that community experience or employment and independent living or living skill that the student might need. So those are all things based very much individually. But again, assessment is really where we get our rich information.

[00:27:02] So assessment is age-appropriate, again, because developmental would not be appropriate. So if a student, if someone says, developmentally, this 16-year-old functions as an 8-year-old, it would not be appropriate because we want to move the student to post-secondary life.

[00:27:25] Anyway, they're structured, they're coordinated. They really pick up a lot of data on strengths, preferences, and interests, and they should be related to that post-secondary goal. And when we talk about if you want to have the student involved, again, we have some things that are free on the Undetermined webpage, the one-pager where students actually describe their, what do I think my strengths are, and go through that process.

[00:27:56] For students who don't have a lot of written skills, new pictures, that's fine as well. So, again, we talked about age-appropriate, and there are inventories that have pictures of people doing things, videos.

[00:28:14] Parent observations are helpful. The student might have a related service provider who can be of great help moving forward. We know that we have to look at where they are academically. It's always good to do that community internship so that we see students doing things.

[00:28:36] Sometimes students are doing things already, and so we can get information from a parent about that or someone else. And then, of course, like I said, there are the comprehensive evaluations. Another really important way to get information is through that student interview.

[00:28:56] What does that student really want to do and start asking those kinds of questions? So I wanted to leave you with or give you some websites. The Occupational Network is fabulous. They do have videos that can talk about what the average salary is for a particular job in your area even.

[00:29:17] It just has so much information. And it also has, like if a student says, and again, I use occupational therapists, but maybe they might not have the ability to get a college degree or get certified.

[00:29:34] It lays out all the different kinds of jobs that relate to that. So occupational therapist is one job or employment career, but there are several other things that that person might do in that career area. We also have a Virginia Wizard.

[00:29:52] That has been improved quite a bit. I don't know if your parents are using it. All students are supposed to have the ability to be able to use that and their work saved. Again, the potential for a vocational assessment through PERT.

[00:30:12] PREET provides some assessment information and some activities for situational assessments where we have a student actually someplace doing a job, and we watch how they do it, what's difficult, what's not, what is, if we even give them verbal information out there in a situational assessment, can they take in that verbal correction and follow through with that?

[00:30:37] Parents have a great deal of information to share, as do the students. There's a website called Transition Tennessee, and they have a really fabulous assessment matrix. If you haven't gone to that site and registered and looked at that matrix, you should probably go ahead and do that, particularly if you're an educator.

[00:31:03] The Zaro Center at the University of Oklahoma has a really good assessment called TAG. There's other assessments, but some assessments must be provided by a specially trained evaluator. Because, again, like I said, somebody with a degree in vocational evaluation actually knows how to give many of the standardized tests and triangulate that information, formal and informal.

[00:31:31] They know how to gather the information from multiple people. So some assessments are appropriate, but some might not be because you can get the information other ways. And it's important to know who can help in your community.

[00:31:47] Social services, if you're working with a child in foster care, they actually have a transition plan. So you might contact the social worker. Family services, GBHDS, that's the Department of Behavioral Health Developmental Services, DARS, and also the Division for Blind and Visually Impaired, BBDI.

[00:32:11] All of those agencies, whether they're local or national or statewide, have a wealth of information to share and can always assist families in gathering that information and moving forward. Of course, I'm always going to say that I'm determined to website and have a lot of information, a lot of it for students and teachers, but there's also a lot of good information for parents.

[00:32:35] And it's really focused about students leading their own life. Then we have a Center on Transition Innovation. I would say all the materials on Undetermined and Center on Transition Innovation are free. There's online classes, the Center on Transition Innovation.

[00:32:55] There's classes for students that they can do that are online, for your teachers to do. So it has a wealth of information. They do fast facts. They do like a one-pager with lots of information. So if you go to the website and get on their mailing list, you will point out about all the resources they have.

[00:33:13] And then again, when I talked about O-Net earlier, that's what the website is like. So it has a lot of fabulous information as well. The Iris Center is at Vanderbilt, and that can, if you're a parent and you're saying, I really am not sure about the transition process, they have a class that's online that's self-directed, And you can do that if you want to find out more about it.

[00:33:44] You know, you want to go to that IEP meeting really well-informed. Our National TA Center, the Collaborative, also has a wealth of information about assessment, about what works, high-leverage practices that work and help children move forward.

[00:34:03] And again, if you go to the Vanderbilt site or the Transition Tennessee site or the impact site, you're going to have to register. And it's not so that they can send you, so that they can hound you and ask for donations. They're all on several dollars.

[00:34:20] And so they have to report annually how many people use their website, what things did they use on the website, what components, were they more interested in print or assessment or employment information. So it's really for them to be able to do their annual report to the federal government, not to track you.

[00:34:39] But you do have to register for any of these sites. They all offer webinars. They have great information. So I would suggest, particularly if you're teaching, to utilize these websites that are available because the information is free.

[00:34:56] And then this is the Transition Tennessee web again. Again, I like that. It's just at Vanderbilt University. And I don't think it's better than what we have in Virginia, the Center on Transition Innovation, but it sometimes offers things in a different manner.

[00:35:16] And so that can be helpful as well. Those, I think, are some of the outstanding websites that we have nationally and we have free access to. And it also provides us with a wealth of information. The end of my presentation, and I probably could take more than 20 minutes, I'm sorry.

[00:35:38] Does anybody have any questions? Yes, I do have somebody sent in the question. How often should the schools be doing transition assessments? Well, I can't give you a specific answer because that depends on the student.

[00:36:01] It depends on are they settled and this is really what I want to do, and they're on track and they're loving the courses they're taking. There might not be a need to do very much at all. But I would say it's a good idea to annually, during this IEP meeting that you have, to have that discussion.

[00:36:22] Do we need to do anything? Do we need to do more? Are we on track? What do we need to do? So there's not a set answer. The law does not say you have to have a transition assessment every year, but it doesn't say that you can't have three assessments either every year.

[00:36:43] And remember, these assessments are for the purpose of designing a program. They're not for the purpose of deciding a student isn't eligible for special education. Their purpose is to help plan for the future with the family and the student, and maybe if there's a service provider like DARS or a counselor with GBVI.

[00:37:07] So there's no set number as needed. So I'll give you an example, a quick example. I worked with some young people, and one of the students had to use transportation, public transportation, or not public transportation, had to order transportation.

[00:37:29] And he had his cerebral palsy, and his language was a little bit difficult to understand. So he was ordering transportation on the phone. So I asked, because he had to speak pathology when he was through middle school and then was signed out.

[00:37:44] I asked the psychologist to come back and just observe him doing some things and let us know what can we do to help him communicate more strongly because he's ordering transportation so that he can get from one place to another.

[00:38:03] And that becomes very important when he becomes employed. And so the speech psychologist came, listened to him as he was working on the phone, calling somebody on the phone and trying to communicate, And it wasn't another agency.

[00:38:19] It wasn't Uber or anybody like that. It was somebody else in the office, actually, on another phone, on another line. And so by observing and listening, he was able to provide some information to the student and to the teacher so that it really didn't, you know, it was more like a consult.

[00:38:39] And he didn't need to be back and teach topology once a week. And having that therapy just needed some additional reminders and some new techniques. Another example is someone who wants to do culinary.

[00:38:55] You have to stand for a long time if you're working in a kitchen in a restaurant or a big hotel. You're on your feet a lot, so you have to have some strength. If you don't have that strength, you can build it up by doing certain exercises.

[00:39:12] And there again, somebody comes in and observes the student in the setting. And then says, here's some exercises you can do to build some leg strength so you can stand longer. And if the student does that, and that may be one of those things that the teacher checks on, are you doing those exercises?

[00:39:28] Let's talk about that. That may be the assessment and the service then that they get. And it also might be something that you put on that transition, those activities or services. I hope that answers the question.

[00:39:46] If not, you're still planning to hear me, and it's a care if you can talk on the phone. Yes, I do think that answered the question, and I just want to reiterate that Ms. Moore is going to record the presentation to go along with the slides. We do have some supporting documentation that she also sent that we will post on the SEAC webpage, so I just want to thank you very much, Mary Ann.

[00:40:08] Okay, I'm sorry if I took too much time and through the glitches. That's okay. Thank you. You are welcome.

[00:40:30] We are going to transition to our next part of the presentation, which is a bit more interactive. I have Jenna Art begin.

[00:41:01] Good evening, everyone.

[00:41:27] How are you? Awesome. Thank you for being here. First and foremost, before we get going into our LCPS transition team presentation on secondary transition, if all of our transition teachers that are here with us tonight could stand up, please, so that you can be recognized for all of the amazing work that you do on a daily basis.

[00:41:52] And thank you for giving your time this evening as we are in our cluster groups. We really do appreciate you being here, helping to expand parent knowledge and participation within the transition process.

[00:42:09] So we want to, as promised, make sure that we always go back to our finding our common ground, which is an activity that we did in September to start this school year. We sat in tabletop clusters, and we talked about our loves, our likes, our passions, our hobbies, and we have always promised that we would make sure that we go back to those grounding pieces that connect us on a monthly basis.

[00:42:34] So the items that we have chosen for today from our work was we share a growth mindset. We are focused on the whole child, and we are passionate about setting our students up for success.

[00:42:52] So make sure you hold on to those concepts as we move through our interactive work today. We do have another sample of the bumper stickers that our tabletop cluster groups created from our October meeting. We do still have magnets available.

[00:43:09] There were four magnets to choose from. We really enjoyed that activity breaking out into groups, and so thank you all for being here. And certainly, if you didn't get a magnet at the last meeting, you're welcome to pick up one this evening.

[00:43:24] Let's see if I can figure out how to advance this. There we go. So I am about to hand it over to Ms. Jenna Arndt, our supervisor of the Woodgrove cluster, as well as transition services, and Ms. Suzanne Birch, our specialist for transition services.

[00:43:42] Thank you, ladies. me how to make sure I can. Was it magic? Which button did I press? This one. Okay. That one. Yes. Awesome. Thank you all for having us tonight. Beginning portion of our presentation, I'm going to move a little quicker through in the essence of time, but I do want to just talk a little bit about transition as a whole and why we do transition and why it's important. I do want the elementary parents in the room and the early middle school parents in the room to feel like you're gonna get something out of this tonight so I

[00:44:21] promise you will and then we're gonna do some interactive activities and hopefully my voice will stay with me until Suzanne's turn so our mission is to provide a full and efficient continuum of transition services empowering all students to make meaningful contributions to the world so we are in line with the LCPS mission but we're really focusing on empowering students sorry to find their passion thank you and there I was afraid if I knocked it over and broke everything to find their passion and what they want to

[00:44:59] do and how we can help them get there that's the point of transition what can we help that look like how can we get them there so we do start documenting transition in the IEP at age 14 but we don't start transition at 14 we're looking at transition in elementary school and when I say that I'll plug for a presentation we have coming at the end of the month which is how we focus on transition in the elementary school really looking at self-advocacy and self-awareness for our younger students so that they can be a participant in

[00:45:35] their planning as early as elementary school so transition is important because we want to begin with the end in mind and the end we have in mind is educated individuals who can give back to their community in some meaningful way and if we are looking at the end in mind we have to start early and start thinking about the end as scary as it is i have a nine-year-old i can't imagine life after high school yet but i need to think about it right we

[00:46:06] have to think about how we're setting up our students all of our students for success so lcps transition services look like a continuum of services with many outcomes based upon each students' desires. And I can't stress that enough. We want to know what our students want to do.

[00:46:30] I'm so sorry. We want to know what their desires are, because we want to do as much as we can to support them in navigating those waters, figuring out if that's really what they want to do. I want to work with animals, but I'm afraid of dogs, right? Like we have that happen sometimes. So we have to go through the process and make sure we really want to work with animals, or maybe we don't.

[00:46:53] So, we really want to pay attention to what the students want and work towards getting them there. So, this slide is super important because it really talks about our focus as transition and what it looks like in the different grade levels.

[00:47:13] So, K-5, we're really looking at awareness. We're exploring the concept of jobs, we're starting to develop soft skills, we're really working with our students to become self-advocates, to start to understand what they need to tick in school in the community how can they be successful in middle school we're looking at exploration we're identifying students as preference and interests and the skills that they might already have that can help them post-secondary and we're working on workplace readiness skills we're starting to demonstrate them the high school level and beyond we're really

[00:47:49] looking at that preparation and training getting students out into the community consistently spending time with them, exploring different trades, exploring different opportunities to see if there's something that they really fit into. Okay, so now we're really going to get into the meat of it, and you have a lot of papers on your table, and you were probably like, what in the world? So Susanna's going to take over, because you all don't want to listen to me anymore. Thank you. But we're going to start with, we have some tables that don't have a transition

[00:48:28] teacher at them so if you are at a table that doesn't have a transition teacher raise your hand because we have some that have multiples and so people can move around a little bit if you don't mind so definitely where we have parents we want to make sure we get someone there and smaller groupings can also combine tables if you guys don't mind i'm gonna let you take i'm gonna give up i'll help in the room no problem okay can i move this down a little bit all right how do i How do I move the screen?

[00:49:09] How do I move the slide?

[00:49:29] Yeah. Just hit the enter key. Oh, just, yeah, just left. Moved you over to assessment. Perfect. Thank you. Yeah, just left to right. Great. Awesome. Thank you. Okay.

[00:49:46] Okay. Hopefully every table has a transition teacher or the transition teacher is close enough by that you can ask them a question during this hands-on activity. Okay? So your student's transition plan includes assessments that your student completes over the course of the school year.

[00:50:06] It includes your transition plan also, your student's transition plan also includes measurable post-secondary goals and coordinated activities based on the information gleaned from the assessments. And then post-secondary transition planning can also include participation from some of our community agencies.

[00:50:25] There we go. So transition assessments. The first thing that our students work on with our transition teacher, and our goal is that this is a time where the students meet with the transition teacher in a one-on-one setting, is our LCPS transition interview.

[00:50:42] The transition interview gives a little bit of a backstory for the transition teacher, what the student's post-secondary goal is, maybe what their interests are. Do they want to go to college? Do they want to work? Do they want to join the military? It asks a little bit about how they're involved in school, because maybe there are some clubs or activities that we can connect them with.

[00:51:00] So it's really a whole child look at what they're interested in, what they've done, where they're headed. Through that, the transition teacher gets an idea of what would be some great assessments that the case manager could do with the student. The first one that every student does is the I'm determined.

[00:51:18] There is a link here, and I'm afraid if I go to it, I'll never get back, but we'll give it a try. If I can't get back, are you going to help me? Well, actually, Mary Ann showed you. Mary Ann showed you.

[00:51:33] I'm determined. I'm not clicking anything. Okay. There are also two to four transition assessments that the student will complete with the transition teacher, with their case manager usually, maybe with a teacher assistant if there's support needed, or independently.

[00:51:49] And then everyone will analyze that and look at it. So we do have a Google Drive with assessments. The assessments that are on the table are linked in this Google Drive for those who are at home or who when you want to see this presentation later there are samples of the assessments on the table if you need more of a certain assessment we have some in that back table maybe Jenna can be the she doesn't have to talk when she does that so that would be fine okay don't do the assessment yet that comes in just a minute okay so what you're going to do is you're going to choose an assessment from your table and complete it based on yourself okay consider

[00:52:27] choosing an assessment that your student may complete but if you don't see one that you think your student would complete just choose one that's interesting to you it's a variety of levels it's asking different things this is a small sample of what we use when we're working with students and there's a timer and I'm going to click the timer oh maybe maybe oh my word it seems

[00:52:59] like a lot of time right now you're gonna want to complete one of the

[00:56:38] assessments to do the next part. Just a reminder.

[01:01:14] You have about two minutes left. Okay. So we are

[01:03:19] hopefully all done with our assessment. At least one. You want to do more than one, you certainly can. Maybe not. Okay. Okay. We're going to go on to moving, building the plan now. How's that? Okay.

[01:03:42] Thank you. Okay. So now that we have, you've all completed at least one assessment, let's look at it. So try to identify one to three areas from that assessment that can be a focus in a transition plan. So here are some examples. Did you have an employment area of interest if you completed one that it asked about employment? Or in Tom's case, no employment, right? He's retiring. I don't mean he's quitting his job. Can you independently care for yourself? What do you need to know in order to do your job? These are the questions that you need to have answered by your transition assessments,

[01:04:21] OK, so look at your assessment, see if you can find an area, one to three areas that you may come up with some goals and see if your transition teachers can help you if you struggle.

[01:04:49] So, for example, an employment goal might be after exiting high school, blank will be employed as a video game designer, because maybe in that assessment you indicated a love for information technology and playing computer games and things like that.

[01:05:09] So your goal is what, after high school, we want you to accomplish because based on what you have said, that is something that you would love to do. So a coordinated activity is something that your IEP team will help you with over the course of the IEP.

[01:05:27] A coordinated activity for that employment goal could be blank will participate in lessons and activities to understand computer application development platforms. So is there a computer application class? are there gaming clubs that you can join can you take information technology I'm drawing a blank at the name of the class what's that thank you intro to cyber security any of those classes are those things that you could do within the course of the IEP to help meet this coordinated

[01:05:58] activity to help you achieve this employment goal so those are some examples yes the little it's the non-assessment it's the yeah so an education goal may be after exiting high school

[01:06:36] blank will complete a four-year college program for video game design there are video game design programs and a lot of universities some are very specific to video game and some are IT summer app development it depends a coordinated activity for that may be blank will explore the process to request accommodations through disability services at each school they are applying to so maybe this is a senior and the senior recognizes that they want to go to college, they want to complete a college program in a certain area, but there

[01:07:10] are accommodations that they will want to access or will request while they're in college. So the transition teacher, the case manager, the career center specialist can help with that process. Going to do training at work, they're going to be trained on the job, so this education might look different should they not be going to college or should they be going to the

[01:07:45] military or something like that this would be changed to reflect that path okay so a training a post-secondary training goal for this student might be after high school blank will earn a certificate in UX design I had to look up what UX design was I googled what did we certifications for game designers and that is what it is so it's UX design that is that is real okay so a coordinated activity for that, blank will research the requirements for UX certification. And maybe

[01:08:24] blank will do that with their transition teacher because the transition teacher wants to learn as well. And the last one, independent living. After high school, blank will live independently. That is a phenomenal goal for a lot of our students. And what do they need to do during the course of this IEP to help get there? Well, blank will participate in lessons on nutrition and meal preparation because they need to know how to do that. So that could be taking a gourmet foods course. It could be working with their case manager, transition teacher, health teacher,

[01:08:59] anything learning about nutrition and how to read labels and things like that. Okay. Any questions on the goals and how the coordinated activity supports the goal? And I'm just, I'm going to interject again that these are personalized to the student. So this is an example and it's a broad example. And you also heard our first presenter potentially say that an independent living goal isn't required, and it's not. But we focus on independent living because even our college-bound students maybe don't know about balancing their finances or understand that they

[01:09:39] shouldn't sign up for every credit card that they get a mailer for, or they don't know how to do laundry. So we do have to focus on independent living skills for all of our students. So we do in Loudoun County, even though it's not required. Okay, so now it's your turn.

[01:10:00] Now that you have a better idea of how we create post-secondary goals and coordinated activities, use the template provided to write your own. Okay, so at the top, it says, what transition assessment did you complete? Because in the IEP, we have to name the transition assessments that we complete and the date and a summary.

[01:10:17] So you are just going to name the transition assessment that you completed. So for each, I have to put my reading glasses on, sorry. For each area, complete a post-secondary goal and coordinated activity. So if you do not have all of the information for each of these four areas, that's okay.

[01:10:36] We just want you to have the experience of writing the goal and a coordinated activity for it. So in the first column, it lists the four types of goals. In the second column, what your post-secondary goal will be, and that is to complete something. It's not to explore, it's not to investigate, it's to complete.

[01:10:53] A goal is to complete something. And then the coordinated activity is what you will do over the course of the IEP. And that coordinated activity needs to support that post-secondary goal. Okay? So you have folks at your table that can help you with this, and we can walk around.

[01:11:13] And then I'm going to be done, I promise. That these goals can change. So if your child as an 8th grader or a 9th grader says they want to be a doctor, and that's what we put in the document, by 11th grade, maybe they want to be an architect.

[01:11:32] It can change, and so we're gonna look at their strengths and what they desire to do every year, and it may change every year, and it may not. A student may say in ninth grade they wanna be a lawyer, and they may get accepted to college in pre-law, and so that was what they wanted to do.

[01:11:48] Student may say that they want to work in animal care, and they may work towards working in a pet shop or at a groomers. So there are some students that stay consistent, and there are some students that change their mind.

[01:12:04] And that's okay, and it's okay for these to change. And to add to that, that is why we assess. Assess is our thing that we do. So every time we assess, we gain more information. So there is a timer for this as well. So we're going to start the timer.

[01:12:21] If I can get there. So I just have a quick question. In all these assessments, when you're taking it and putting it all together, how do the parents play a role in supporting their child in helping in this situation? At what point do the parents look at all these assessments and say, well, okay, my child was able to communicate that this is what they would like to do.

[01:12:46] Well, at that point, the parents should also be able to support them at home to work on those goals. So I just was wondering, at what point are they involved? So certainly for some of our students, you may become involved much sooner in the process because sometimes we're seeking information from you as well when it comes to writing the transition plan and getting information for the student.

[01:13:15] We recognize that parents' goals and students' goals sometimes differ. So it's important to find a balance. Ideally, you're involved in the entire process. When you get that draft, we certainly wouldn't expect that the information in the draft to be a surprise to you that that's what your student wants to do hopefully those conversations are happening beforehand with your case managers and even with the transition teachers at your buildings and just to point out every high school has a transition teacher elementary and middle schools do not but the high school that your elementary or middle school feeds to that

[01:13:52] transition teacher can support transition earlier if it's necessary if your student has a need if there's something we really need to prepare for I don't know if I answered okay and I'll add on what Jenna said. At any time, you can reach out to your transition teacher and have a meeting about transition. They're not just available at IEP meetings. They're available anytime. So if you have a question about transition, you have a question about the goals or the coordinated activities, just reach out to them and they're willing and able to help. We're going to start

[01:14:26] the timer so that you can write your goals and coordinate activities. I think we're at a point

[01:20:15] where everyone has pretty much written their plan. We wanted to see first if anyone had any questions and before we answer any questions we have some posters in the back with the transition for parents schoology group if you are not in that schoology group we would really encourage you to join is the code on okay the code's on there so you would go to schoology type in the code join the group and we share information regularly in the schoology group any questions for jenna no

[01:20:54] any questions oh no no questions for you jenna we're done okay oh here are resources here are the resources it's on there thanks there we are there we go oh yes if you do not know how to sign

[01:21:31] up for schoology we actually do have a um how to sign up for schoology group document and you can click on it and we'll tell you how to join schoology okay yeah all right okay we're going to move right into our business meeting because we have, thank you, we have a lot to cover this

[01:22:00] evening and some policy reviews to get to. So I want to start with introducing our executive committee. Good evening and thank you for coming. Thank you for our transition presentation and our interactiveness. All of our presentations will be on the SEAC webpage under the header of the date so you can get to all the resources and the links and everything you need there to go back and access those

[01:22:37] if you weren't able to write quickly enough this evening. So I want to make sure you know that they will be there. Again, my name is Sharon Trofe. I am the current SEAC chair. Nobody's paying attention. Hello. I'm sorry, everyone.

[01:22:56] We just have so much to do this evening. I hate to discourage your conversation, but I'm going to. So we have Shanaz Khan, our Vice Chair of Planning. We have Liz Crotty, our Vice Chair of Membership.

[01:23:12] Craig Metz is our Vice Chair of Communication. And Katie Rosenbrook is our SEAC Secretary. Our LCPS School Staff Liaison is Tedra Richardson. She's floating in the room. Our School Board Liaison is Tiffany Polifko.

[01:23:32] And our alternate school board liaison is Erica Ogadegbe. I'm going to skip through some of these slides pretty quickly so we can get to our actual business we need to do.

[01:23:53] So this evening, we will be going through of our role of SEAC item number three and five. Later in the evening, we're going to look at policy reviews, and then we will submit reports to the school board. So our primary role as a special ed advisory committee is to advise the school board on the needs of our special education community, and that also includes looking at policies before they go to the school board.

[01:24:24] We do not have any public comments this evening, but public comments are very important to us, and we do use those to inform our work, and they are included in our annual reports. So I had sent out to all of our members the draft meeting minutes from the December 7th meeting.

[01:24:46] Are there any concerns or questions or alterations to those meeting minutes that were sent out? Seeing none, we will post those meeting minutes on our SEAC webpage. Excuse me.

[01:25:04] I have some agenda's frog in my throat. So we do need some SEAC member representations. and I know I've been bringing this up in the last three meetings, but we really would like to have a member on our Career and Technical Advisory Committee.

[01:25:22] They meet the third Wednesday of each month at 8.30 a.m. Our Gifted Advisory Committee meets tomorrow evening in person on January 12th. And our Equity Committee, we do need a SEAC member to serve on this committee. Mr. Metz is no longer able to serve in that capacity.

[01:25:39] He's served on going to that committee for the last two years. So the school board is specifically asking that we have a member so we can provide it to them by they're giving us an extension to January 19th so they can be approved at the January 24th meeting.

[01:25:59] So I am asking for one of our members to please step forward and take on this role. The equity committee meets the first Thursday of every month. If you have any questions about the committee, You can, you know, we were here after the meeting.

[01:26:18] You can ask Mr. Metz those questions. Like I said, he's been a faithful attendee for the last two years. Our 22-23 concerns, these concerns have been ongoing since the beginning of the year, and each of these concerns have been turned over for the 22-23 community concerns to a subcommittee.

[01:26:43] So the subcommittees will be looking at these and reporting out the community concerns. Last year, we had a nice presentation on the Policy 5350, and we have requested an update on the implementation and how services are being provided once a student is identified of not meeting benchmark at the secondary level, meaning middle school and high school.

[01:27:09] So we have reached out to the Office of Special Education to see if we can coordinate an update there. The executive committee will be meeting this evening after this meeting over at Clyde's. Everyone's welcome to come. Our SEAC awards date has been published as June 6th, and our open awards nominations will open at the end of February.

[01:27:34] We're currently working on making sure those are ready to go. The SEAC survey data for 21-22, we are the Office of Special Education, And SEAC is meeting on January 17th with Dr. Winsler, who's done the survey analysis to review and plan for that analysis of that data.

[01:27:56] And I did present to the school board on December 13th, and it was very well received. We got a lot of positive feedback and acknowledgement of our concerns. And the next time I will present to the school board is on March 14th. And the executive committee is in the process of putting together our nominating committee for our new executive board.

[01:28:20] PTA, PTO membership, we currently have 64 schools. We have 31 schools that do not have a rep that we're working on filling those positions. We actually have now 17 voting members. Tom Ketchum is our new member.

[01:28:37] We're very excited. The school board approved him. Yay. So we're very excited for him to be here. He did attend last month's gifted committee meeting. We were there virtually, and I know he has a strong interest in serving on that committee as our liaison on that committee.

[01:28:58] Again, our SEAC membership information is on the back table and on our website, and any of the executive committee would be happy to speak to you about becoming a SEAC member. The Office of Special Education will provide a response to our request from our meeting in December at our February 8th meeting on talking about OCR's findings for Fairfax County as they relate to our students here in Loudoun County, and these are things related to providing compensatory and recovery services.

[01:29:36] Our subcommittee reports, Shanaz, can I get an update on where we are? I don't believe the Policy and Compliance Committee has a current meeting scheduled, but there will be one scheduled later this month.

[01:29:53] I know that the Policy and Compliance Committee has not been able to get to these agenda items because we've been swamped with policy review. So as soon as those settle down, we'll be able to tackle these issues. Transition?

[01:30:09] we will be meeting on january 17th at 4 30 we'll have our transition subcommittee meeting it will be virtual and i will be sending out the agenda by tomorrow and i'll send it out we'll have it sent out to the members as well so even our pta ptr reps we would love for you to join in the

[01:30:35] meeting and provide input for specialized reading lorraine so january 18th at what time okay so

[01:31:32] 5:30 will be a virtual meeting and the agenda will be posted tomorrow get it to me tomorrow I will make sure it gets posted and she also mentioned that we're working on doing some daytime collaborative work sessions that will be also posted okay and those are action items on the agenda thank you meaningful

[01:32:07] inclusion Liz so we haven't had a meeting since our last SEAC meeting but But our next meaningful inclusion meeting will be Tuesday, January 24th at 7 p.m. It will also be virtual, and we would love to have as many people attend as possible.

[01:32:26] We'll send out an agenda as soon as we have it finalized. Thank you. Parent Resource Services. I know the flyers are in the back of the room.

[01:32:43] Okay. Oh, sorry. I never know. Where's my, just this way? Good evening, everyone.

[01:33:01] I'm Leanne Kidwell with Parent Resource Services, And I have four upcoming workshops this month that I wanted to highlight. Tomorrow is laws. The Latin Abuse Women's Shelter is doing a training at Rockridge for healthy relationships.

[01:33:19] So please get the word out. It should be a great training. The next one, I'm sorry, technology is not my thing. The next one is middle school connection. We had a great turnout for our kindergarten connection, transitioning from ECSE to kindergarten.

[01:33:39] And I personally think that transitioning to middle school is just as hard because it's a whole different ballgame. So that will be at Light Ridge next week. So hopefully get the word out for that. Dr. Carter is going to be presenting, yay, for her first presentation and Lucy.

[01:33:59] So please, that should be exciting. The next one, I'm going to get it, is our transition team, and you saw our wonderful transition team. Our transition team is doing transition in elementary school, workplace readiness skills, self-advocacy, because it's never too early to start thinking about transition.

[01:34:26] And then the final one is, of course, the Mental Health and Wellness Conference. It's going to be very, there's lots of different sessions going on.

[01:34:41] It's really focusing on wellness this year. There's going to be some yoga, some different things, lots of vendors. And that's also going to be at Light Ridge on the last Saturday of the month. So hopefully you can join us for that. I think we have 90 people signed up right now, but we're hoping to double that capacity.

[01:35:00] We have the room. so the last Saturday of the month which is the 28th. The other thing just as an aside that's not on the agenda is one of the things that I've gotten a lot of feedback on lately is how un-user-friendly our tutoring list is so big news I am working on the tutoring list to make it user-friendly so people can find what they're looking for. I'm going to be working on that first and then the specialized reading list next.

[01:35:31] So that's been my big push right now. So that's Parent Resource Services. Thank you. So our next presentation is February 8th, and we will be doing another interactive workshop with writing SMART IEP goals, and this will be another interactive session with PITC and LCPS.

[01:35:59] So I want to turn it over to Tiffany Polizko for our school board update. Thank you so much. I did want to take a few minutes this evening to go over a few policies that we're currently looking at right now.

[01:36:15] The first one is student records, and that's policy 8610. The board actually went ahead and reviewed that during the December 13th work session in which we had documented some of the recommendations from the grand jury report and policy 8610 related to student records, some of the changes that we put into place and that have been sent back to the Student Services Committee effective.

[01:36:39] That was on December 15th, actually. I'm bringing this up because one thing that I did speak about at the December 13th meeting in that work session is the importance of ensuring that receiving schools for students that transfer within Loudoun County have access and are thoroughly reviewing student records and documents.

[01:37:03] We obviously know that there's critical information that was not known by the receiving principal

[01:37:42] at Broad Run High School when the student transferred from Stonebridge over to Broad Run. And I think it's just imperative that we make sure that we continue to talk about that and that we have those necessary changes put into this policy. We're expected to see a final review on January 19th.

[01:38:02] I wanted to fill you all in on that because I felt that it was important for us to this evening.

[01:38:31] I also wanted to talk about policy 8155, which is school assignment, and that policy, while it was in, I believe it was in student services, it is moving to the discipline committee.

[01:38:48] So that policy, and I'm actually serving on the discipline committee this year. I was assigned to that committee. So I'm bringing this up because some of the changes that we had put into place based on the recommendations relating to student, again, to student transfer that I think we need to discuss, and I know I've had this discussion briefly with Ms. Trofe is the importance of making sure that if an IEP meeting needs to be held related to a transfer of a student, an emergency IEP meeting may need to be put into place in order to properly communicate, document.

[01:39:26] We do have information about a meeting occurring between the administration of the student's current school, the administration of the student's future school, a representative from the Office of Safety and Security, a representative of the Office of School Administration, a representative of Title IX, and a representative of any outside agencies that may have any relevant information regarding the student, including but not limited to local law enforcement, court services, private providers, and the Office of the Commonwealth Attorney for the purpose of discussing any relevant safety considerations.

[01:39:57] However, what's missing right now is that potential emergency IEP meeting, or 504 meeting, if that needed to happen. So, as your liaison, I will continue to advocate for that, and I think just being able to provide you with that feedback to let you know where I stand as a board member and what I hope to see in this policy moving forward as it continues to go through review.

[01:40:21] I also wanted to direct your attention to a few House bills right now that are education bills that potentially affect special education students. Actually, they do affect special education students, but also general education students as well, at least for House Bill 1461.

[01:40:39] This is the Department of Education. They're looking to establish a uniform system for disruptive behavior. And I actually, I publicly stated my opinion about this on social media. And I, as a behavior analyst and a former special education teacher, there really is no way that you can legislate.

[01:41:02] You can't legislate behavior, but you really can't legislate a uniform system of behavior. So I'm not sure, I see someone nodding, I see you nodding your head over there, so I assume you've taken a look at this bill, and you probably have your own opinions on it, but I'm bringing this up, obviously, as we are here to represent special education.

[01:41:20] I have some major concerns over this. I certainly would not, I would hope that this bill does not get pushed through, but to me, I just see this as that there are so many holes here.

[01:41:37] And really what needs to be happening is a proactive approach to managing behavior at the school-based level. And this just, you can't legislate it from above. It needs to come from the top up. So if we are putting proactive measures in place to handle and to motivate students and to create those antecedent, we are properly pushing behavior in the direction that we want to see it go in.

[01:42:16] Obviously we will hopefully see less disruptive behavior, but there are so many potential issues with this bill. So I bring that up just because I thought it was relevant for our discussion this evening and where it is right now. And then finally House Bill 1492, special education and related services.

[01:42:35] I'm not sure if you all are aware of this, but they're looking at shortening the deadline of 65 business days from the date of receipt of referral for an initial evaluation or reevaluation of a child to determine their eligibility for special education and related services. And then finally, looking at, instead of using the 30 calendar days, they're looking at 30 business days from the date of the initial, I think it's just from the date of the, what is it?

[01:43:11] Do I have them inverted? Perhaps I do. Extending the deadline by which local education agencies are required to ensure that an individualized education program is developed by calendar days

[01:43:46] from the date of an initial or situation that a child is in need of special education services to 30 business days.

[01:44:04] So we're looking at moving from 30 calendar days to 30 business days. So I just wanted to make you all aware of that in case you aren't already. I thought that would be an important inclusion tonight. So thank you. - Thank you for that update.

[01:44:24] I want to give the Office of Special Education, Henry Richardson a time to give us an update certainly thank you Sharon well I'll start with a thank you to Sharon she did do a wonderful presentation to the school board back in December and I just want to say thank you for that it was positive and collaborative and you did a fantastic job answering questions so thank you we'll start with a sped staffing update as promised SIAC has asked for a monthly update on special education vacancies across the

[01:45:00] school division. At the elementary level, we currently have four cross-categorical teacher vacancies, three specialized program teacher vacancies, and 13 teaching assistant vacancies. At the middle school level, we have six cross-categorical vacancies, one specialized program teacher vacancy, and seven teaching assistant vacancies. At the high school level, we have eight cross-categorical teacher vacancies, two specialized program teacher vacancies, and 27 teaching assistant vacancies. I also have follow-up on parent comments and

[01:45:39] inquiries, the first being an inquiry into classrooms that are designated to serve students with disabilities in specialized programs. There were questions about those classrooms. Certainly it was recognized that they require a smaller classroom space because we don't serve as many students but us being thoughtful in our planning of making sure that those classroom areas have windows certainly as we plan for 23-24 school year we do have a practice of meeting

[01:46:09] going over their caseloads and staffing assignments and so we will look into that inquiry it's also and make sure that schools are doing their due diligence to maximize classroom space that has windows certainly we want all students to be able to see the daylight and then we are actively involved as an office in the development of our new middle school locations.

[01:46:46] I've been involved personally and been invited to some meetings and we've been able to very thoughtfully and meaningfully contribute to the planning of the new architecture in those facilities. The second parent comment was pertaining to professional learning for staff, making sure that they are knowledgeable of what is necessary for participation for students with disabilities in the PSAT.

[01:47:13] We have and will be planning to provide training to special education designees next week at our meeting, making sure that they are knowledgeable and know the role and how they need and what information needs to be shared with parents because the college board does require that parents apply for the appropriate accommodations on the PSAT.

[01:47:36] We have also made sure in collaboration with our LCPS assessment office that the appropriate school-based stakeholders have also been informed of this information and that we're actively sharing it at IEP meetings.

[01:47:50] And in November, there was an inquiry about a staff, a former staff member that was serving in the capacity as a behavior assistant.

[01:48:27] That person was charged with two counts of assault while serving in the role as a behavior assistant. Please note that the appropriate personal actions were taken by school administration, human resources and talent development, as well as local law enforcement.

[01:48:59] We have also taken the appropriate steps as a school division to ensure the continuity of instruction for any students. And at the school level, communication was provided directly to the families of the students in the affected classroom setting.

[01:49:16] A division-wide communication was not provided as this was an unfortunate, isolated incident. Looking forward, the Office of Special Education has scheduled targeted professional learning for specialized program teachers, teaching assistants, and behavioral assistants throughout the second semester of this current school year.

[01:49:37] We are looking to maximize the current staff workdays that we have for the remainder of the school year. We're also looking forward to expanding our professional learning options and our learning experience through our Summer Learning Institute in this upcoming summer to include SPED teacher, teaching assistants, related service providers, and behavior assistants.

[01:49:59] The next item is information sharing. We do have an LCPS pre-international baccalaureate program. You all should have gotten information through your parent portal. The lottery application system is currently open and will be open to all families across LCPS.

[01:50:18] with high school students until January 20th. The predicted sites are Heritage High School and Loudoun Valley High School. Work group, the work group does wish to partner with SEAC and specifically the Meaningful Inclusion Subcommittee on the policy creation for inclusive practices in the pre-IB program.

[01:50:43] I do have information to share, so if any of you need flyers or handouts, please do come see me after the meeting. I have information on that program. And the work group representatives have been asked to briefly come and present at the March 2023 SEAC meeting to share information and to answer any questions, which aligns nicely to the presentation for our twice exceptional learners.

[01:51:07] Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Jones. Thank you, Mrs. Truff, and good evening. Happy New Year to everyone.

[01:51:23] I will be brief recognizing we still have a lot on the agenda. If you did not have an opportunity to cue into last night's board meeting, the superintendent, Dr. Smith, shared the FY24 superintendent's estimate of needs.

[01:51:40] I will be sharing on behalf of the Department for Student Services our budget, which is included in the superintendent's estimate of needs, and that will be on Thursday, January 19th. In there, you will see some things outlined, one that dovetails nicely with the transition workshop that was given today, and I want to give a shout out and special thanks to the transition leadership team, as well as to all of our transition teachers that came this afternoon or this evening to share with you.

[01:52:12] With transition planning, a critical component of that is our school counseling programs. Our school counselors, they are not just as unified mental health team members, But they also are there for career and career planning and transition planning and supporting you with that.

[01:52:32] So please be sure to knock on your school counselor's door at the elementary, middle and high school level because we have a whole arm of career planning and workforce planning that they can certainly help you with. Enrolled in our budget request is an increase for school counselors at the elementary level.

[01:52:55] We are continuing with the phase of establishing unified mental health teams, not just at the high school level, the middle school level, but now we're really focusing on the elementary level. That's been a recommendation not just of SEAC for increasing the mental health supports for all students, but also for the previously convened superintendent's mental health task force for student mental health.

[01:53:19] So more on that. Also, I'd like to share, piggyback on what Mrs. Polifka was mentioning about proactive measures to address student needs. And in this case, her comments were focused, I believe, on student discipline. With our proactive measures, that is our MTSS model, the multi-tiered system of supports at every school and embedded in our practices, universal supports for all students academic behavioral as well as social emotional across the board and then students need more and so that's your

[01:53:56] level to your tiered approach and then some students need not just the universal supports that all students have but the targeted supports that some students might need and then fewer students might need intensive supports and that's what we call level three, tier three services through the MTSS. And you'll see that embedded in our one LCPS plan for excellence. If you have additional questions about that, your leadership teams, including your teachers at your child's school, should be able to share with you those supports that are available. Also, if you would go to the board docs, not only is the superintendent's

[01:54:36] presentation for the budget recorded, and the documents are there. The Goal 2 team also presented last night the supports that collaboratively through the Department of Instruction, as well as the Department for Student Services, specifically the Office for Special Education, are working to provide those goals and extension activities for our twice exceptional students specifically but other areas in the area of professional learning to support our students so we'll please tune into those those recordings are in board docs and we certainly can share

[01:55:14] more should you have questions thank you okay so the qr code i believe it's on the table and here on the slide you can scan this to bring up all the policies that are going to be reviewed So they were not printed and put on the back table.

[01:55:38] So we are going to try to do this electronically because there are quite a few, as you can see. So we're gonna start out with old business, which is policy 8215, in-school disciplinary measures. These recommendations coming out of the policy subcommittee have been shared with membership.

[01:55:56] So this will be a review, ready? - So we're gonna start with policy 8215, in-school disciplinary measures.

[01:56:27] and this this the policy subcommittee reviewed both the draft policy and the regulations that went with it and so we are going to go over and vote on both recommendations from both I'm confused so coming from this policy in the policy if you read the draft it states that Loudoun County School Board believes that fair and equitable discipline practices will contribute to the quality of a

[01:57:04] students' educational experience. Except as authorized by this policy, all discipline measures shall be imposed by the school's principal or designee. The principal or designee should employ practices that are positive and restorative in nature and a continuum of progress, progressive discipline, intervention, supports, and consequences that are consistent with prevention and early intervention strategies. Back in July, the SEAC Chair, Sharon, had provided the Discipline Committee and the LCPS staff with the released U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil

[01:57:43] Rights and the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services new guidance documents designed to clarify the use of disciplinary practices in school. They've issued guidance clarifying for school leaders, personnel, and contractors, including school resource officers and police, that students with disabilities must be afforded all the civil and legal rights provided under Section 504 and IDEA.

[01:58:14] So SEAC remains committed to and supports behavior policy reform, but we do not support punitive behavior consequences. As an educational institution, SEAC encourages LCPS to educate our students on self-regulation skills and executive function skills, as well as support our students' diverse mental health and sensory system needs.

[01:58:40] So just to give you a background of what we were thinking while we were putting our feedback together. Our first concern, the policy references progressive discipline and positive discipline alternatives.

[01:58:55] However, there are no charts in the regulation that defines what they are and under what circumstances they should be used, promoting transparency for students and parents. Dr. Jones, I'm not sure if this was the MTSS chart you were referring to, but we don't have a clear understanding in the regulations as to where it goes progressively.

[01:59:23] So create a chart in the regulation that clearly outlines progressive discipline and positive discipline alternatives. That is our first recommendation. Do we want to do a discussion after each one? We'll read them all. Our next concern was at line 20, intervention and counseling.

[01:59:45] Counseling is referenced in the title, but the summary talks about mostly intervention, and counseling is not addressed specifically in the paragraph. So at line 24, we're recommending that we add understanding how their behavior affects others before we're actually putting it before developing healthy relationships and making good choices to continue their learning.

[02:00:16] Our concern three, line 25 to 26 sends the student to the principal for disciplinary measures without any evaluation or counseling by the school-based unified mental health team. team so we recommended that update line 25 to add a referral to the unified mental health team concern number four for section B restorative practices is not clearly aligned with regulation 8215 with supports for the students during

[02:00:52] the process so again we would like to add line 36 add with the support of the unified mental health team in front of students may participate I'll give you guys choose just to read that concern number five lines 45 through 19 detention there are two places where the words detained are used and we thought that using the word detained kind of gives a

[02:01:31] little bit of a criminal connotation to it so and our other concerns were in line 46 to 47 engage in activities to promote positive behavior or concerns are there activities that prohibited that are prohibited that is activities that could harm a student physically or mental physical mental health line 49 there is no notification timeline for advance notice to parents for detention parents or guardians must be notified in advance of such detention parents need to be given at

[02:02:08] least one day or more advance notice to collaborate with the school and arrange alternative transportation so our recommendation is to replace the word detained in those two places with assigning assigned detention and limits to activities to promote positive behavior should be defined if not in the policy in the regulation line 49 at at least one day or more after the word

[02:02:43] notified and before the word in concern number six the act has received reports that students are prevented from accessing recess as a punishment which prohibited which is prohibited in LCPS board policy by 5011 lines 51 through 54 in section D denial of school privileges and in lines 56 to 57 work assignments so this is we're trying to make sure to ensure that recess is not

[02:03:22] used as a for is taken away as a form of punishment recommendation so our recommendation is add a reference to policy 5011 at the end of line 54 the removal of unstructured activity time such as recess and should not be used as a disciplinary consequence or to make up classwork pursuant to policy 5011 line 57 update class or lunch to class

[02:03:50] lunch, or recess. Concern 7, line 65 through 74, section F, removal from class. Concerned with students being removed from the classroom without accurate tracking and reporting of time out of the classroom away from instruction. Proposing a new section K tracking. This recommendation was presented to SEAC membership in June as part of the review for policy 8220, student disciplinary

[02:04:29] consequences. So we would like a new section, K, to be created for tracking. If any of the above disciplinary measures are implemented against a student to include early disciplinary dismissals, an incident report will be completed and shall include the length of time the student is excluded from instruction. A copy of the incident report will be provided to the parent guardian. The superintendent or designee shall provide yearly reports to the school board regarding disproportionality trends in this data.

[02:05:08] And again, this was presented previously. Recommendation seven continued. Okay, at the end of line 74, data shall be collected and maintained in the student's record and the parents or guardians shall be notified as further defined in section K tracking.

[02:05:30] In line 74, remove for more than 30 minutes for consistency with the regulation. Concern number eight, lines 87 through 97, section H, denial of school bus transportation.

[02:05:49] The policy does not have any reference to IDEA or ADA for students with disabilities. So our recommendation is lines 96, after privileges, add in compliance with requirements of IDEA.

[02:06:04] And we'll go more into this in our regulations portion of it. Concern number nine. Concern number nine deals with appeals right and procedure.

[02:06:20] parents should always have the right to appeal any disciplinary decision and should not be denied such right. So we would like to have deleted disciplinary actions in accordance with paragraphs A through G of this policy are not appealable. And modify the second sentence to read parents or guardians may petition for review of disciplinary actions taken in accordance with this policy in same manner as short-term suspensions per regulation 82 20-1 recommendation 10 update

[02:06:57] our cross references on line 124 to note the new name of policy 82 20 replace student suspension from school with student disciplinary consequences so these are all the recommendations do we want to do the voting now or you want to go through regulations i mean let's probably stop and open for just yeah let's hope there's a lot here a lot of these themes are things that we've discussed before it's this moving from a crime and punishment mindset to a teaching skills mindset and we keep

[02:07:33] hearing that we're moving towards these positive behavior systems but they never quite appear in the policies or they're not appearing in the places we're expecting to see them in the policy and then there's a lot of things that we're told aren't supposed to happen don't happen the policy should make that clear that it's not supposed to happen so that's a lot of what's going on here i know that there was just a lot presented i think the whole thing is to really focus on skills our some of our kids especially in elementary school they can be repeatedly suspended

[02:08:07] or disciplined for an action but they might not understand why this action is wrong even when you have gone through you you need to repeatedly go through with the students to make sure they understand why a certain action was considered warrant of a disciplinary action and I am happy to hear that we're getting more counselors also in our elementary schools because I do think that in the elementary schools we definitely need that more guidance be put there and more teaching of

[02:08:40] social skills and things of that nature so that our kids can better understand so everyone here probably yeah i think at this point uh why don't we just open the floor and ask if there's any discussion or concerns again i know that we there was a lot there to absorb okay i got a question thank you um could we we're gonna no but we need it for the people who are live streaming we do

[02:09:15] want to make it my question is about the unified mental health team pardon my ignorance but could you um or someone tell us which specialties comprise the unified mental health team because in recommendation four about having the support of it in terms of our special education students if the unified mental health team is supporting that action of that student who is in the team qualified to support a special education student thank you so you can visit your child's school's

[02:09:51] website and on that under mental health services you will be able to find who is on your actual unified mental health team that will be your school counselor your school psychologist your school social worker the school nurse or health clinic specialists the administrators but the school-based mental health professionals are your psychologists your counselors and your social workers as well as your student assistant specialist at the secondary level are there

[02:10:24] any other questions there any discussion thing on what I would like to ask you is if do you want to go over the regulation associated and then do all the voting at once or should we go ahead

[02:10:48] let's just get this done okay so thank you i'll second that the motion is that the membership friendly amendment adopt um the uh recommend subcommittee's recommendations as a block it has been moved and seconded is there any discussion hearing none all those in favor

[02:11:25] please raise your hand and say aye aye all those opposed please raise your hand and say nay and are there one day actually yes it is this is yes it is Yeah, so my only point is, I don't know if anybody, but there were 10 separate recommendations there affecting different areas of the policy, anywhere from disciplinary actions to unified mental health.

[02:11:57] I think to block all of them together would do an injustice to people voting for each 10. I know it's going to take a little bit longer, but, you know, I would just think we would want everyone the opportunity to voice on, because, right, the recommendations don't all have to be processed.

[02:12:13] You could do only eight out of the 10 of them. huh melissa melissa actually could you help me the problem is is that we're getting a new motion or we're in discussion while we're in the middle of the vote which is a but i do want to but as a matter of fairness the moment someone raises an objection i want to be

[02:12:34] fair to that objection but she's voting yeah but okay let me complete the first vote by asking if

[02:13:17] there are any abstentions okay seeing none are we doing a motion to reconsider okay i will entertain a motion to reconsider i think what we have to do is also we have to count the votes we need to have a count of who said yes who said no no for this no the eyes had it right the eyes had it i just want to make sure how many voting members are here oh if you want to check because call for quorum yeah i just want to make sure everyone stayed that's all i'm asking is that we

[02:13:51] make sure that everybody was here okay do we have a motion to reconsider so we have a motion to reconsider the previous motion is there any discussions sorry if i'm running rob robber's rules but is there a specific is there a specific one that you'd like to pull out and have a further

[02:14:24] discussion or separate vote or would you simply like to have 10 votes okay okay actually yeah i'm

[02:14:59] sorry but don donna's getting there okay so i just wanted to offer a counterpoint respectfully to the issue that you're raising the right recommendations one through ten are coming to the SIAC membership at the recommendation of the policy committee so for me personally I am comfortable with the process because all of these recommendations have been thoroughly reviewed outside of the context of this meeting by the policy committee and I do think if we have a majority vote by

[02:15:38] the membership to consider them as a block then that motion should carry with the majority of the membership supporting that motion so just as a quick matter of of history the reason that we started doing you know suggesting a block motion to consider was simply to respect everyone's time for many of these they're either quite technical or more just like they're not controversial among the membership and when we don't see controversy among the membership if we're all in agreement anyway we can do that in one vote instead of 10 however i want to emphasize that we always want to make sure everyone has a voice

[02:16:18] and i would rather slow down if anyone has a concern i would rather us slow down and make sure that it's heard because sometimes just like it's happening now maybe it's not the majority concern but i think it's it's actually what makes us a good body is that we stop and think and talk about everyone's concerns because that's how we learn and share our concerns and you know what it has happened time and time again that we've started out on one page and thought about it and changed our mind which is also a great thing so i don't want to make sure i want to make sure

[02:16:50] everyone is included and everyone has a voice that we save all of our voting until the last part of these meetings i know that i have a hard stop at 8 30 another siak member has a hard stop at 8 30 so i think a recommendation had been made to the chair that if we really need quorum and we we need votes, we need to perhaps flip our agenda so that we're not leaving all of our business that requires a quorum until after 8:30.

[02:17:27] So I would like to propose that as a consideration for the Executive Committee. - That's a great idea. - This and just did them all separately, we probably would have been done by now. - Okay.

[02:17:42] - Just as a thought. - Well, we've voted now. No, we have to still do the vote. - Yeah, we have to vote to reconsider. I mean, okay. Yes, so the motion is to reconsider.

[02:17:58] A vote that is aye, correct. A vote that is aye to reconsider is effectively we're going to reverse the choice to adopt them as a block. A nay is that we will stand by the previous vote to adopt them as a block, and an abstain is an abstain.

[02:18:23] Those all in favor of reconsidering say aye. all those opposed raise your hand say nay abstentions the motion fails so we will be voting as a block so now back to the base motion no i think we're back to the base motion a motion that

[02:18:56] seac adopt the recommendations of the policy subcommittee on policy 82 15. rosina seconds rosina the motion is that we adopt all 10 of the cx recommendations on policy 8215 is there any further discussion seeing none all those in favor please raise your hand and say aye aye those opposed please raise your hand and say nay any abstentions one motion carries with one abstention

[02:19:31] thank you everyone regulation i've lost my screen but i've got this thing don't worry about i'm over

[02:19:59] here you go you got me I know okay so now we have also as I said we reviewed the draft regulation and our concern number one section G procedures for bus transportation removing students with disabilities from bus transportation so according to OCR the bus is an extension of the classroom for the purpose of

[02:20:35] disciplining a student with disability students must of schools must follow the same procedural safeguards that apply to disciplinary removals OCR has stated that bus suspensions can constitute a significant change in placement if the removal is a disciplinary measure and the school provides no means of alternative transportation and we have provided references do you want so our

[02:21:10] recommendation one line 151 after designee add for students with disabilities, principals may recommend a bus removal of more than 10 days and must follow the same procedural safeguards that apply to school-based disciplinary removals of more than 10 days. If the behavior is found not to be a manifestation of the student's disability, the student may be removed from the bus for more than 10 days. However, alternate transportation

[02:21:38] must be provided. Line 159, after designee add, for students with disabilities, principals may recommend a bus removal oh we got the same language okay our concern number two removal from the classroom does not reference students with IEPs so we are recommending after line in

[02:22:12] one line line 169 add after 504 plans individual IEP plans okay you know I'm tired now they have a list of things that are special cases that say you need to be consistent with policy and they forgot IEPs in that list yes so they list 504s IEPs should be in that list and our recommendation three is update cross-reference on line 193 to add to note the new name of policy 8220 which is

[02:22:46] what we discussed in our previous recommendations for the policy so is there any discussion or are there any questions yes please let me get you a microphone where did my microphone off you thank you I'm sorry just a very quick question in the interest of time where it says Why does it say for students with disabilities as opposed to, again, saying IEPs or 504s?

[02:23:19] It's really just that a lot of our policies read that way, and that seems to be the way that we're naming it and distinguishing it. Presumably, if you have an IEP, then we've established that you are subject to all the regulations regarding IEPs.

[02:23:39] If you have a 504, students with disabilities could be... I wasn't worried about that. I was worried the other way, that somebody suddenly has a disability. Well, I will mention that the law for Section 504 and the Americans with Disabilities Act does not actually require a written 504 plan or ADA plan.

[02:24:01] So it is very possible that a student with a disability who doesn't have an IEP or 504 plan, you know, potentially could still be protected under those laws in some way. Is there interest in amending anything here?

[02:24:16] I make a motion that SEAC adopt recommendation number one made by the policy subcommittee regulation 8215 we have a motion to adopt recommendation oh wait that's not seconded I will second that now we have a motion to adopt recommendation one made to regulation 8215 made by the policy subcommittee is there any further discussion seeing none all those in favor please raise your hand and say aye aye all those opposed please raise your hand and say nay and any

[02:24:55] abstentions please raise your hand it's one abstention the motion carries with one abstention is there I'd like to make a motion that SEAC adopt recommendation number two from the policy subcommittee to regulation 8215 I will second that the motion is that we adopt regulation 82 recommendation to regulation 8215 from the policy subcommittee is there any further discussion see this is regulation we are regulation working on so we started with the policy and we had regulations that we also reviewed seeing none all those in favor please raise your hand and say aye

[02:25:34] aye those opposed please raise your hand and say nay and are there any abstentions please raise your hand the motion carries with unanimous consent I make a motion that SIAC adopt recommendation number three given by the policy subcommittee to regulation 8215 I second that the motion is that we adopt a recommendation three to power to regulation 8215 made by the policy subcommittee

[02:26:08] is there any discussion seeing none all those in favor please raise your hand and say aye aye opposed please raise your hand and say nay and are there any abstentions motion carries with unanimous consent um i do want to also reiterate that we do send out all of our policies and the recommendations to the membership before coming to the SEAC meeting so we could have discussions

[02:26:44] on each of our so our next policy is 8155 school assignment I'd like to make a point of order get a clarification if we still have quorum before we continue I would like that too thank you 17

[02:27:11] which is more than 50 13 out of 17 thank you 12 out of 17 yes 13 out of 17 okay so our concern for well okay would anyone like me to go over real quick what this policy refers to before we okay the school board shall assign

[02:27:49] students to the school that serves the area of their actual interest students will attend the school designated by the school board in the attendance zone in in which the student resides in the pupil assignment plan exceptions to school assignment will be made in accordance with school board policy 8160 exceptions to school assignment due to attendance zone changes in 8155 so we're discussing um it was brought up by our previous school board member andrew hoyler about if a sibling is um assigned to a school is moved because

[02:28:29] of a program or and having their their siblings be able to attend the same school 8155 has several things in it but the big thing that often comes up in SEAC is what LCPS calls special permission what other counties call pupil placement the idea that you can request for your child to go to a school other than the school whose boundary line you were in and so so we had SEAC had reviewed

[02:29:03] this policy back in October 8155 these recommendations were provided to the superintendent then we were there were changes made to this new draft and sent back to us unfortunately none of CX recommendations were adopted in the new draft that was sent back to us in December so the updated draft of policy 8155 is we feel is not student focused and fails to align with the one LCPS

[02:29:35] 2020 2027 strategic plan for excellence so our review focuses more on the new language that has been added and our recommendations still stand for our previous so our concern here the additional language added in lines 362 to 372 addresses LCPS administrative placement of a student at a different school other than the students home school the draft policy fails to identify or to address the student's disability related needs so our first

[02:30:13] recommendation is at line 366 change a meeting among the administration of the students current school and the administration of students future school to a meeting among staff of the students current and receiving school to include both schools the principal or designee IEP 504 case manager if applicable and and school counselor.

[02:30:43] - And I think we were actually having almost exactly the same discussion was already discussed by the school board. - I'm sorry, I don't wanna hit. And this is just an example of how it would look like.

[02:31:00] - Recommendation number two, we're adding a new section C. For students with an IEP or section 504 plan, an emergency IEP 504 meeting will be convened. For all other students pursuant to IDEA 504 child find, a team will be convening to consider making a referral evaluation for special education and related services i'm sorry i'm going to correct what i said earlier about context for these recommendations this is dealing with the situation where lcps is needing to move a student for for reasons such as a disciplinary and so we're saying yeah there

[02:31:37] should be an iep meeting right these new these new recommendations were made by lcps council So we've, like Shanaz mentioned, we've already reviewed the rest of the policy in October.

[02:31:57] So this review is only of those new recommendations of Division Council. So these are in, to the part of the COP policy that's in yellow at the very end, lines 362, I believe, to the end, which is also why I believe it was moved to the Discipline Committee.

[02:32:24] Give them votes. A motion that we adopt the recommendation number one from the policy subcommittee to policy number, I apologize, what number?

[02:32:40] 8155. 8155. I second it. The motion is that we adopt the proposed recommendations to the policy version one to policy 8155.

[02:32:56] Is there any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Opposed nay. Any abstentions? motion carries by unanimous consent we adopt recommendation number two from the policy sub committee to policy 8155 the motion is that we adopt recommendation two from the policy subcommittee to policy 8155 is there any discussion seeing none all those in favor please raise your hand and say

[02:33:29] aye aye opposed nay and are there any abstentions the motion carries by unanimous consent okay our last policy for today policy and regulation policy and regulation 3210 the office of the ombuds now this is a brand new policy SIAC is concerned that the policy has drafted okay so for this policy we don't actually have a recommendation we had more of a concern which we would like just to have some

[02:34:03] information on the purpose of the office of the ombuds is to provide students families employees and members of the school community with access to an independent, impartial individual who can facilitate a confidential and informal resolution of concerns, conflicts, and issues arising within LCPS, and who is authorized to bring systemic and organizational concerns to the attention of the Division of Superintendent for resolution.

[02:34:33] One of the points made in the policy is that the Ombuds shall not communicate with any school board member officer or employee referring an individual or group to them nor report the specifics of any resolution or concern arising out of referral to such member officer or individual except as part of their annual data report to division leadership and then only without revealing the identity of any particular individual or groups that contacted the ombuds

[02:35:06] our concerns go ahead so when the staff have been proposing this office one of the things they've been talking about is that it's a somewhat confidential process and that you have some control over you know who gets asked or what gets said and so the concern is just because that's our policy doesn't mean that virginia law or other legal process can't override that and so we want to make sure that everybody has a transparent understanding of what confidentiality protections

[02:35:41] there are and are not so siak is requesting that the school board clarify what um buds information or documentation lc lcps could be forced to disclose by subpoena or virginia foia requests i mean trust is really important to the success of this particular office and in this case you know the law is the law but transparency is the best thing we can do and our recommendation is to pose this concern to the school board i make a motion that we accept that recommendation number

[02:36:21] one from the policy subcommittee related to the office ombuds policy i second that the motion is that we adopt recommendation one to the policy for the office of ombuds 3210 made by the policy subcommittee is there any discussion seeing none all those in favor please raise your hand and say aye aye oppose please raise your hand and say nay and are there any abstentions motion carries by unanimous consent so this is a list of all the other policies the subcommittee reviewed and

[02:37:00] after reviewing them the policy subcommittee determined that no changes were recommended at this time but we did send these out to membership in case there was any need for discussion does anyone like i sorry to be noisy and new but i am the representative for hillside elementary I am also a privacy attorney and the current CISO for a large technology company.

[02:37:30] So I wanted to talk about policy 8640, Disclosure of Personally Identifiable Information. This policy right now, at best, gives us minimum coverage against FERPA. FERPA is a law to protect educational records that was developed in 1974.

[02:37:47] In 1974, they weren't thinking about electronic records. They weren't thinking that my kindergarten student has a Chromebook in which she's going in there, in which we're tracking her movements, in which we're tracking what she's putting in there, information about them.

[02:38:03] So I actually took a look at it. I'm new. I found it. I took a look at it, and I have extensive revisions that I think we should make, not necessarily just to keep us compliant with FERPA, but really in the best interest of our students' personal information and their privacy.

[02:38:22] while not interfering with any of the actions that we need to take as a school or community I think we can do a lot better to our students than what we currently have in place so I don't know the next steps on that so procedurally we could handle this kind of one or two ways the first is if you have specific things that you would like to recommend we can we can propose it tonight and we can recommend it tonight if you think that and it sounds like this might be better referred to subcommittee i think so and what we'll do everyone will hate me if yeah probably then uh what then

[02:38:58] what i would propose is this is the one we really really really want to do a slate adoption because we don't want to go one by one but we split that question so that we or just we refer that one to the subcommittee and then accept the rest that we have no feedback but i would love to have you at the policy and compliance subcommittee and let's go over it because this is an issue that we have a of general interest in we were focused in our review on special ed ide a kinds of issues but if there's interest i think that we should always be proposing yeah and we should always be willing

[02:39:33] to propose the right thing for our school board to consider yeah and as a seah community community here we know it shouldn't right where there are protections out there for ours but we also know that information about disability can be used negatively against our children in the future so i think we have an especially vested interest in making sure that this information about our children is protected is private and is secured and now you're stuck with me so it you know so for example were we to have a motion to adopt all of them except for 8640

[02:40:09] we would need a a motion from one of our voting members who are our siac who are siac members thanks rizzie want me to okay i i move that we accept the recommendation of the policy subcommittee that policies all the policies you name in policy 10 30 24 30 26 10 30 70 50 40 76 20 80 10 82 90

[02:40:45] 86 10 and 86 uh do not have any changes to be recommended at this time the move that we accept that recommendation for those specific policies i second that the motion is that we accept that the recommendation for the policies of committee that policies 10 30 24 30 26 10 2 3 0 7 0 4 50 40 76 20 80 10 82 90 86 10 and 86 50 have no recommendations at this time is there any discussion seeing none

[02:41:24] all those in favor please raise your hand and say aye aye opposed raise your hand and say nay and are there an abstentions motion carries by unanimous consent and i'd like to make a motion that draft policy 8640 be returned to the policy subcommittee for further review you can stop if you want to do that rosina seconded it the motion is that uh see i review uh refer policy 86 draft policy 8640 back to the policy and compliance subcommittee for further review is there any discussion seeing none all those in favor please raise your hand and say aye aye opposed please

[02:42:00] raise your hand and say nay one day okay one day and are there any abstentions motion carries with one day and thank you all thank you guys um one one um note of comment i would say that on as a part of our policy the lcps policy review practice all of these policies are currently posted online

[02:42:34] if you go to the school board website under or the web page on lcps website for school board go to policy and all of these policies are posted there's nothing that i understand and we appreciate the collective feedback from seac as well as our other established committee parent committees however i also want to share that any person has the opportunity to individually provide feedback that will then go to it's a form that you go to online that feedback is submitted to the liaison

[02:43:09] to the committee and all of that information is considered so i welcome you to also go to the website to insert any individual feedback that you'd like to provide this policy will be posted as I'm looking at the website until January 15th where your feedback could be submitted.

[02:43:28] And then of course with every policy, it goes through an information item process through the committee and then after it comes out of committee, then it goes to the information process through the full school board as well. So you'll have multiple opportunities to give feedback. Thank you. - Thank you, Dr. Jones for sharing that.

[02:43:46] Without any other business, we are adjourned. Thank you for your patience.

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