Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County School Board, Special Education Advisory Committee (SEAC) Meeting, Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Date: Wednesday, February 14, 2024
Place: Loudoun County Public Schools / School Board meeting (see BoardDocs / LCPS-TV)
Length: 2h 26m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/913063939?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 2026-10-21. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:26] - Good evening, everyone. We are going to go ahead and get started. Thank you all for coming here tonight to spend Valentine's Day with us. I know there's nowhere I'd rather be than here at the LCPS admin building talking about some really exciting topics like meaningful inclusion, but I'm glad you guys all feel the same way.

[00:00:49] So whether you are here in person or watching from home with maybe a candle at dinner, we're glad you're here. We hope that you are able to participate wherever you may be and whatever you are doing. We have the QR code up right now and the sign-in sheets in the back. If you would like to get signed in now or later, whichever, there are also a lot of cookies and sweets in the back that I am hoping I do not have to pack up at the end of the night. So if you can all help with that as well it would be much appreciated um our first order of business today is we have

[00:01:29] an instructional framework update um and i'm afraid i'm not exactly sure who's giving it so or i would introduce you hi hi everybody my name is jeff roundsley i'm the director of teaching and learning k-12 for loudon county public schools so i oversee all of the curriculum um and for most of the contents in LCPS. It's a job I've had since September, but before that I was a middle school principal at Willard Middle School, a high school assistant principal at John Champ High

[00:02:05] School, a teacher at Parkview High School, Parkview High School graduate. My wife's a teacher at the academies of Loudon, my kids go to Emmerich and Blue Ridge, and the reason I'm telling you all that is because I think what I'm about to talk about here tonight has the potential to do a lot of good for our teachers, our community, our students, in really taking some time to define what LCPS believes is quality instruction and the kind of instruction we want to see for every child in our school system. So I'm going to take just a few minutes to introduce you to this project and the reason why is because we really are seeking a lot of input from our community to make sure that we are on the right track in defining what good quality instruction looks like

[00:02:44] and this is a group that I know is dedicated to making sure that each and every child has access to that and so this is a really important group for us to speak to and make sure that we are hearing your voice as we go through this process of defining this. So last night I was talking to LEAF, or two nights ago, but we're hitting all of these groups, so MSAC, SEAC, CTE Advisory, Gifted Advisory, all in an effort to try and make sure that we are hearing the voice of parents in our community as we go through this process. So let me just tell you what an instructional framework is. The instructional framework is our shared vision of effective instruction, and it's really important that that not be handed down from the people who work in this building, but that come

[00:03:21] from our teachers, our school-based administrators, and our parents and families and communities to make sure we're hearing all of those voices in defining what instruction looks like. It's learner-centered, that our students sit at the center of what we're talking about here, and so that you'll see that's in some examples of this as well, that we're really thinking about what's best for students as we go through this, that it's applicable across all content areas and grade levels, meaning this is not for elementary school, middle school, high school.

[00:03:47] It's an articulation of what good instruction looks like K through 12. So from your kindergartner to your senior in high school, from math class to science class, it's kind of a core set of defining principles of what you should expect to see in every classroom in Loudoun County Public Schools. And it's the foundational piece that drives daily instructional assessment practices.

[00:04:05] So this is done for teachers. We don't want it to be shelfware, sitting on a shelf somewhere collecting dust. We want it to be something that our teachers are using and interacting with and using to grow in their profession. So and let me just make sure we know what this is not too. So it's not meant to be prescriptive. It's not meant to tie teachers down who those exceptional teachers that you have who are doing unique and wonderful things in their classrooms. It's not meant to do any of that. It's meant to define for all of us what our core principles are around good quality instruction.

[00:04:36] It's also not meant to be something that teachers have never seen before. Really, we are articulating the things that excellent teachers are doing every single day and making sure that we are all on the same page in defining what those things might be. So these are the questions that we're trying to answer and the questions that I hope you'll engage with us here tonight and in the future around as well.

[00:04:56] So what do we believe about learning? What dispositions and skills are essential for Loudoun County Public School learners? And what constitutes effective and meaningful teaching and learning? and that that is really the core of the work that's happening in our schools every day. I'm not going to read all of these to you, but on the screen are some benefits of the instructional framework, and I'm really going to just kind of sum this up by talking about consistency.

[00:05:18] And so when Dr. Spence, in his entry plan, went out into the community listening sessions, when we met with principals during the superintendent's principal advisory sessions, what you hear over and over again is Loudoun County has so many resources, and the concern is around the consistency of implementation and the fidelity of the implementation.

[00:05:37] And that's what this is meant to address. Can we find some consistency in how we approach the teaching and learning work that happens in our schools every day? And that through that consistency, do we see an improvement of outcomes? Do we see more students finding success in our schools every day? And do we grow as professionals because we are all kind of working off the same definition of what good teaching and learning looks like?

[00:05:59] I mentioned this before, but this is not just one person's effort. It's not me writing the instructional framework. It's not Dr. Spence writing the instructional framework. This is a community effort to articulate what we believe about teaching and learning. So we are working with, at the top red circle, a design team.

[00:06:15] The design team is about 36 members of our school community. About 22 of them work in a school as either a teacher, an assistant principal, or a principal. Again, that idea of those voices coming from our teachers as we define this is so important.

[00:06:31] We have a project management team. what I am on along with a couple of other people. It's our job to take all of that feedback that we're getting from our teachers and from all of you here tonight and make sure that the products that we are creating that go along with this really reflect what we're hearing from our community and from our teachers. And then we have an advisory team. That would be Neil Slevin, who's the assistant superintendent of teaching and learning. Ashley Ellis, our chief academic officer. These are the people who are helping us make sure that the work we're doing is aligned to larger division priorities and initiatives.

[00:07:01] So this is all of us working together to define this. No one single person, but a community effort to create what we're trying to build here. I'm not going to go through all these pieces of the instructional framework, but really what I want you to see is in this blue, which you can't read on the screen, I don't think, but the blue vision, mission, vision, core values.

[00:07:21] So these are things that are already there. They're in our LCPS strategic plan, one LCPS strategic plan. And when we met with our design team for the first time, we rooted ourselves in our mission, our vision, and core values, to make sure that these are the things that we stay committed to. Rigorous teaching and learning, empowering students to make meaningful contributions to the world, that we are talking about putting these ideas into action through the work that we do every day. The instructional framework is meant to give teachers their how of how they instruct every day. So we have parts of this like our key components. These are the key things that our teachers are doing every single day to

[00:08:00] make teaching and learning meaningful in their classrooms. Our indicators are underneath those key components, and those are more specific examples. So when we talk about, I'll show you an example of what these look like in a second, but when we talk about what it means to design effective learning, what are we talking about?

[00:08:16] Three or four bullet points that, again, are applicable across all contents and all grade levels that truly encapsulate what it means to design effective teaching and learning for every student in LCPS. And at the bottom, the last two are descriptions and progressions.

[00:08:31] And we know that these are the things that keep this from being that shelfware that we talked about. The descriptions are about giving teachers videos, resources, things that define for them what these ideas look like, sound like, feel like in your classroom. And the progressions are how we help people grow.

[00:08:46] How do we help people take that next step forward in creating a really meaningful learning environment in their classroom? So that will be all spelled out later when you see a final product, but I wanted you know some of the things that we're working to build as we go through this process so i mentioned earlier that one of the things that i would love is for all of you to stay involved with us in this process and so the link on the screen lcps.org instructional framework is our project page it has all the information that's on here and those design team meetings that i talked about earlier there is a section there where you can access all of that information as well so you can see for

[00:09:24] each meeting what do we talk about a summary of the slides a summary of the meetings some pictures of the work that happened during that time we really do want this to be community involvement and at the very bottom of this the best part of the page is there's a let's talk button and i would love for you to use the let's talk button as we go through this whole process to share your ideas and share your thoughts we're using let's talk because it helps us keep track of what we're hearing from our community and it's been very popular so we sent out a newsletter not too long ago to our teaching and learning staff, some teachers took that information from the framework page and sent it out to all their colleagues and friends and said, make sure you share what you

[00:10:02] think. And it was fantastic because it really does help us understand what teachers are feeling and what they think about their jobs and their role in schools. So please use it. Tell us about what it's like to be a parent in LCPS. Tell us about what good teaching and learning looks like, the teachers who have helped your child, the things that we need to think about as we're putting this together okay so i just wanted to show you some examples of this so you had a visual in your mind so this is the visual that we're trying to create a graphic representation of what good teaching and learning looks like and you can click on all of these on the project page and see what other school

[00:10:35] divisions have done to create this but you'll see kind of just a graphic here but beneath that are all of those key ideas and and lesson ideas for teachers and a curriculum that's aligned to it so there's a ton of work that goes beyond just this graphic, but we wanted you to be aware of kind of what we talk about instructional framework. This is what we're talking about, creating some sort of symbol that all of us can recognize as what good teaching and learning looks like. So I'm just quickly pointing out in, we are currently in the phase that we're calling building the foundation.

[00:11:12] That's the creation of this, the engagement with our community, but we have a ton of work to do after that. So the 24-25 school year is going to be all about us being in a learning space here in LCPS, for our principals to unpack what the instructional framework really means, for our teachers to gain a greater understanding of this. We don't want our principals to stand up in August and say, we're doing the instructional framework now. That's not the point. The point of it is that this is an articulation of what we believe, and we need to spend some time making sure that everybody has a clear definition of what that means, and that we know how we support teachers in doing this.

[00:11:45] So next year is about collecting information from our teachers and principals about what do we need to bring this to a reality, this shared vision of teaching and learning, and also to communicate to our students, our families, our teachers exactly how this works and what this means for them before we fully implement it in the 25-26 school year. So again, next year we will have something, but that's more about our awareness and it's more about building a shared understanding of what we're trying to implement. And this is just meant to show you that, again, this is a community effort.

[00:12:19] So we have our design team, we have outreach to our schools, our teachers, our principals, at our principal meetings, at our teacher advisory committees. We're meeting with the student advisory committee in March to make sure our students have the same shared understanding of what great teaching and learning looks like, and also to our community.

[00:12:35] And I just, I know I keep saying this, but this is the point that I hope you hear more than anything else, is that this is a community effort to establish what this looks like. And your voice is incredibly important in helping us do that. So when we had that first design team meeting, we kind of, this is a visual reflection of what they defined as some of those important parts of what good teaching and learning looks like.

[00:12:58] So you see some words that have come up over and over and over again. Design, engage, reflecting and responding. So once we see how students are doing, what do we do about that? How do we support them? How do we give them extra intervention and extra support? How do we connect with our families and with our students to make sure students see some value in there?

[00:13:17] These words, even though we have not created an instructional framework, in every group that we've done this with, the Department of Teaching and Learning, Student Services, groups of principals, and teachers, we really see the same words coming over and over again. So it's not as if we are reinventing anything, but we are trying to bring something together and give teachers one place where they can go to understand how they best do their job and instruct here in LCPS.

[00:13:44] So we have, I mentioned one way that you can stay involved with this project is the Let's Talk button on the Instructional Framework project page. You'll see a QR code up here as well, and I also have some handouts that I'll give out as well that have this QR code. But we are asking everybody that we speak with to answer these three questions for us.

[00:14:01] What are the characteristics of grade instruction? How do you know when grade instruction is happening? And what elements of high-quality teaching would you like to see happening more often or more effectively in schools across Loudoun County Public Schools? So far, we've had over 200 people take this survey and share that information with us. We want that to keep growing.

[00:14:18] And so if you want to send this out to people at your school or share this with your PTA or PTO, we would love for this to be distributed even more widely and get as many voices as we can as part of that. So I'll pass out the handout that has all the information I just talked about and these QR codes.

[00:14:34] But I hope in the next couple of days, you'll help us out by answering those questions. And that's it for me. oh this is also where you can access it lcps bit.ly slash lcps if feedback but again I'll pass that out to you are there any questions I covered a lot there I went very quickly there are there any questions that I can answer about this yes Dr. Carter it's more of a statement one thing that I was really excited about to hear about the instructional framework was that you know science has a thing that they do and they know what good teaching looks like and math has a thing that they

[00:15:10] do and all and special ed has a thing many things you know different different things that we do and taking the best of what we do and putting them in one place in a way that's accessible to all teachers it's a really inclusive way to present what we believe in loudon county so it was it is i've been through this process in former divisions and it is it's very unifying to the work that we do and and people can actually see the commonalities across it has far-reaching impact beyond just putting it all in one place and having a pretty graphic with a sticker like you know it is it is a really meaningful a meaningful work for the division and at least that's been my experience

[00:15:49] so I'm excited about it for Loudon and that's the hope for us too there are many many frameworks in LCPS that's one of the things that teachers say there's so many frameworks how do we kind of take the best of all of those and put them together so that we all are operating from the same page thank you everybody thanks for your time and I'll pass these out so that you can contribute your voice to this as well. I appreciate it. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Okay. And now we jump into our second presentation, which is on defining meaningful inclusion. And we have a wonderful

[00:16:29] speaker this evening. We have Chris Bouguet, who is from here in LCPS, but he is a phenomenal speaker and gives presentations all across the country. So we're super lucky to have him here with us tonight. And I'll let you take it away, Chris. Thanks. Hi, everybody. Oh, you turn the lights off. Okay, so hi everybody at home. So my name is Chris Bouguet. I am the Assistive Technology Specialist, and I'm going to show you these slides here. We're going to invite you to take a second and actually use the QR code or the URL to actually get into these

[00:17:04] right now. So if you're at home, you can use these as well, because what's about to happen is more of an interactive experience than me talking to you for an hour about inclusive of design and meaningful inclusion. What we really want is your feedback and your participation, which is what we just heard about the instructional framework, right, is that we want to hear your feedback.

[00:17:27] So same thing here. So let's, I'm just taking a minute, I'm vamping, so you can get in. Is the URL working for some of you? Are you seeing it? Okay, thank you, Ms. Moran. Hopefully at home it's working. Yeah, you got it, Tedra?

[00:17:45] Okay, fantastic. Then while you're logging into that, I'm going to just give you a quick summary of assistive technology in a minute or less. So the way assistive technology in Loudoun County Public Schools is structured from a support standpoint is that we have specialized instructional facilitators for assistive technology.

[00:18:07] We have nine of them, and then I think of my job as the specialist is a support to those nine facilitators. So they spread out across the county, they each have different schools, and they work with all the schools, with any educator in the school to help them design instruction from an inclusive standpoint using technology.

[00:18:28] That said, assistive technology is, if you look at the federal definition of it, it's very broad. It's like any item used by a student with a disability, I'm summarizing it there, is assistive technology. So a lot of times that happens beyond what these people do.

[00:18:45] It's happening every day in every classroom with kids with disabilities when they're using technology. So that's our support structure. And then Tammy Davis is our supervisor. All right. Oh, I should mention, since he mentioned it too, I have a daughter at Woodgrove.

[00:19:00] She's a sophomore at Woodgrove. And my son just graduated from Loudoun Valley last year, freshman at Virginia Tech. And my wife is the assistant principal over at Legacy Elementary, so we're always talking about special ed and inclusive design and technology we can use to design it that way.

[00:19:22] Okay, did everyone get into the slides? No? You have an issue? Well, we can help you here in a minute. So, here at SEAC, right, you guys created this subcommittee on meaningful inclusion.

[00:19:38] Fair? And you were the, Liz was the committee chair, the subcommittee chair for a while. And then Mr. Ketchum has taken over that role. Is that fair? Do I have that right? And Carl is co-chair. Okay, that I didn't know. So I'm learning. And somewhere last year, you asked me to be like one of the advisory people on there.

[00:19:59] So I came and did a guest presentation. And one of the things we talked about in this subcommittee is that this exists. There's a subcommittee on meaningful inclusion. But Mr. Ketchum was really, I think you were really articulate about the fact that we don't have a definition of meaningful inclusion.

[00:20:16] So we all kind of have these ideas about what inclusion means. I know what it means to me. Maybe Ms. Crotty has an idea of what it means to her. And everyone might have these separate individual ideas of what does inclusion mean, and then what does that adjective in front of it, meaningful inclusion, mean.

[00:20:33] And so we thought, well, we should come up with a definition. And then instead of just a handful of us on this subcommittee creating the definition, we thought, again, let's get feedback from the larger community and say, well, what does meaningful inclusion mean to you?

[00:20:49] And then from that input, we can shape our definition. Sound fair? So that's the challenge today before us, is that we're going to try and come up with some ideas around a definition of meaningful inclusion with your input. That said, let's start with some presumptions or assumptions.

[00:21:07] Okay, why inclusion? Like, here I am standing sort of thinking as an advocate for inclusion like that. It's just a good thing. Well, why might I think that? Is that a reasonable assumption? So we're going to show you a couple pieces of evidence here of why inclusion.

[00:21:23] Why would we be spending our time? Why would we have a subcommittee on meaningful inclusion? Why is that something we want to put our time into? So the first leg of thinking about this, really, this is a strategy you can use teaching kids about digital citizenship or how they can find out anything is valid, one thing they can ask is, what's the science say behind whatever the structure is, whatever the thing is you're talking about?

[00:21:47] So what does the science say about inclusion? So in looking at this, how do you get consensus in a scientific community? Well, maybe two or three years ago, what I would have done is I would have gone and looked at scientific journals, and I might have been using my own cognitive bias, pick some of the journal articles that I really like to reinforce my own confidence that, yeah, see, inclusion is good because I picked these articles that say inclusion is good, but am I really getting a representative of what all the articles are, right, or is it just what I'm picking?

[00:22:23] But what's come out recently is something called generative AI, generative artificial intelligence, and one of the applications around generative AI is called Consensus. It's a consensus app, And that's what that research, see how it's a hyperlink, and you can click on it or you can scan the QR code.

[00:22:40] If we're on LCPS, I don't know that it'll work on your personal device. At home, it should be working, or if you go home, you should be able to do it. On this particular device, I think it's going to work. What this consensus website does is it, you ask it a question, like I asked it, does learning in an inclusive setting with general education peers improve outcomes for students with disabilities?

[00:23:04] that's what I asked it and then what it does is it goes out and it looks at all the scientific articles and it analyzes those and it provides a consensus right of what what those science aren't scientific articles say and spoiler alert guess what it says about inclusion I mean you can see there it says the consensus meter that it analyzed 11 different papers and 91% of those said that inclusion, does learning in an inclusive setting with general education

[00:23:38] peers improve outcomes for students with disabilities, 91% say yes, 9% possibly kind of on the fence, and then zero say no. Just also to read the quick summary there, it says these studies suggest that inclusive educational settings with general education peers improve academic and social outcomes for students with disabilities, including increased interactions, friendships, peer acceptance, and access to general curriculum content, which may lead to improved literacy, social skills, and employment prospects. That's what the science says. Now, here's the thing.

[00:24:14] If you just look at the science over the, in the past, like science used to tell us that the world was flat, right? And that there's all sorts of stuff that we learned as science gets better. So we can't just look at the science. That's just one component of why inclusion. So the next thing is, what about all the people that are educators that work in the world and have been working and trying to build inclusive practices? What do they say about it? So I thought, okay, how am I going to get consensus on professionals out there? I could go to X or Facebook or something.

[00:24:46] But there's another generative AI tool called ChatGPT. I bet many of you have used it. So ask ChatGPT, what is the professional consensus of educators around the outcomes of inclusion for students with disabilities and spoiler alert what it comes back with and if you click on these links and you sign in to chat GPT you'll be able to see the results for yourself but you could also copy and paste that into those tools and see for yourself you're gonna see that the professionals say that there's improvements in communication and social skills and academic success and

[00:25:22] And generally, emotional wellness, there are positive outcomes when we focus on inclusion. Okay, so now we've got what the science says and we've got what professionals say, but there's a third component. Any guesses?

[00:25:40] Yeah, what do the students say who participate in that, right? And so this is where we're going to start to invite you to have some, we want your input on this, is that we could have gone out and find some YouTube videos of kids talking about what inclusion meant to them, right, or found some stories, some articles, but we thought it might be more important to hear your stories about your students and what they say, and students you know, learners that you support, what do they say, both students with disabilities and without, when they are participating in an inclusive experience.

[00:26:14] So the way this works is the way you can give feedback is, one, we can chat about it here in the room, but also for the people that are not in the room, or maybe if you don't want to chat about it, you can still give your input by having what we've created here is called a Padlet.

[00:26:30] So Padlet is like an online board where you can put your ideas and this is the first place. So if you were to click on this hyperlink, it will take you to the Padlet. I already have it open. And right here, you can hit this little plus sign or you can add something over here and And you can share for a second here, what are some stories?

[00:26:52] What are some, what are the learners that, what do they say about inclusion? Okay. So I'm going to stop talking here. I'm going to let you work on that or shout it out to me and we'll talk about it. And you can scan it with your phone.

[00:27:08] Multiple means for you to get into the content. So what do your kids or what do kids that you know say about inclusive experiences?

[00:27:24] What's their feedback? I can do it. I can do the running. You like to run. I do like to run. I don't like to be behind the podium. So, as people put up ideas, this very method of feedback is inclusive of having both people in the room and online.

[00:27:45] Yes, thank you. That's exactly what we're going for. And we're going to talk about these other columns in a second. Just focus on this first column. What do learners express? What do they say? Have you heard stories? Do kids come back? Yeah.

[00:28:07] Thanks for getting us started. Sorry, I got my mic. Oh, you have a mic. So my child is not, he's not as verbal, of course. He's not going to tell me how his day is. But I can see that, and he's been in middle school, and he's now in eighth grade.

[00:28:26] And I see from sixth to eighth grade, he's been included with gen ed peers. And I see the difference in behavior. He is confident. He goes from block to block. And these are things he would not have been able to do had he not learned to watch his peers, interact with his peers.

[00:28:48] He has chorus, and they'll come out of chorus concerts and high fives, and you did a great job. And so he feels it, and you can feel how happy he is, even though he's not at all at the level they're at. But he does feel that confidence.

[00:29:06] Got all the positive outcomes. Yes, okay, great. Here we go. Thanks. So from my experience, the student with disabilities report to me that there is a sense of being lost and a sense of unable to keep up.

[00:29:27] So they are there, the body is there, but the mind and the cognition and the spirit is not engaged and involved with others. So it seems like just the sense of inclusion and giving these kids the opportunity to be there, it's just like part of the story.

[00:29:54] It has to be the tools. When we send them there, we need to hand them the tools so they can be successful. Yes, okay. That's so important, I think, because you can't just take a kid, plop them in this experience and not maybe change the experience or give them some strategies?

[00:30:13] And then also maybe can you alter the experience of the classroom so that it is more inclusive? Absolutely, I think that's great. And then you said tools. I think that's tools and strategies, I would add that as well. So when you say tools, my mind goes to technology, which certainly is a part of it, but also teaching them how to use that, teaching other people in the environment how to do it.

[00:30:34] So it's not as simple as just being in the room and being in that space, but changing the space and preparing people for that space. Is that fair? Yeah, yeah. That's more of the story than just that one part. Yeah, Nakia. So I think a lot of times when we ask this question, most people so far have answered from the perspective of the students with disabilities.

[00:31:01] But Chris was a part of another project, and it was over at Legacy, and some of us in the room were there, robots for everyone. And we heard from our students who are not students with disabilities, who were the general ed peers who worked on that project. So that's why my statement that I added to the panel was more related to what are the benefits or what is it like for their gen ed peers to be in those inclusive environments?

[00:31:25] And what we hear is we learn so much. They learn tolerance. They learn patience. They learn about diversity. They learn about the disabilities themselves and how to communicate differently. They learn how to use communication devices. So it's not just an opportunity for students with disabilities, but it's also an opportunity for students without disabilities.

[00:31:48] Awesome. All right, great stuff. Let's see what else was written in the padlet, shall we? Let's see what other people said. So we have, I love this, it's more fun. It's more fun. Okay, awesome. Students without disabilities learn so much more from working closely with students with disabilities.

[00:32:06] They can find a friend, have more connections. Again, diverse connections. with different abilities. They feel less isolated, for sure, right? They feel valued and part of the whole. Fantastic, and it provides a perspective.

[00:32:22] So I won't read them all. You can read through there yourself, but I think, would we agree, now we have three components. We've got the science that says why we should be focusing on inclusion. We have the professional consensus, and then we have the learners themselves.

[00:32:39] And just as a side note here, that trifecta, those three things together, not one, not two, but all three of those, if you can find a positive outcome for all of those, that's how speech-language pathologists define evidence-based practice.

[00:32:55] So you might hear those words, oh, it's evidence-based, but sometimes people mean that they've done some research. It's really having all three of those that we know, let's put our time and our effort behind whatever's being suggested, is that we get evidence from all three.

[00:33:12] Good stuff? Good stuff? Okay. All right, so now is where we're going to turn it loose. We're going to invite you to work either individually or in groups to answer these questions. Some people are already putting stuff in the padlet. Fantastic. Keep going.

[00:33:29] The answer to the first question is, finish the sentence. Inclusion is. What is it? How does it make you feel? How does it look? What are some examples that you can say or share? Either of stuff that's happened with kids that you know or examples out in the world that you could represent, okay?

[00:33:48] So that's number one. Number two is, well, what's it not? Sometimes it's easier to define something by saying what it's not. So how do we know when we're not being inclusive? Let's say that, okay? What is inclusion not? So what are some non-examples?

[00:34:05] What doesn't it feel like? What doesn't it look like? The next one is, what does meaningful inclusion mean to you? And this, we're really focusing on that word meaningful. So, again, to your point, it's not just putting someone in a room. It's, oh, okay, how do we make that experience meaningful?

[00:34:25] So with those three, we're going to turn off the mic. I'm going to let you work for a little while. At home, you get to work on this as well. Put your feedback in the Padlet, and then we'll come back, and we'll talk about it as a whole group. Maybe we'll take maybe 15 minutes or so to really spend some time answering those questions.

[00:34:45] Are we good? Any questions about this? Do you feel like you know what you're doing? If you don't, I'm going to run around. So you can be like, what are we supposed to do, Chris? I'll come help you. All right. Have fun. And if people want to, you can move around and get a bigger group together for those of you who are by yourselves.

[00:35:14] Or if you'd rather work by yourself, that's fine, too. That's the question. I don't know if the question's first.

[00:39:49] Good. I want to see why Kristen's back there.

[00:40:17] She's got her finger on the button. If she needs to shut it down, we can do it. Smart. Yeah. Smart. Okay. Yeah. But it's more fun. was me, I was his ECSE teacher, and he pushed in for preschool, and I was, you know, with the whatever, more fun, because it was more kids, and I was like, what do you mean? He's like, there's more kids. Yeah, it's so true. It is. Yeah, so it was just stuff to write.

[00:40:47] It's more fun, because I'll always remember that. All righty, everyone at home and everyone

[00:49:36] here in the room, we got some great, great stuff in the Padlet. What were some of the discussions you were having at your table? Let's come around and talk about it, and then we'll reflect by looking at the Padlet as well. So what are some of the things you discussed?

[00:49:53] What is inclusion? Inclusion is? So meaningful access. I know as a division, we're doing a lot better with inclusion and we're definitely getting in the room more, our students, but it's really getting an understanding and expertise of the scaffolding of all of those supports that need to be there individualized for meaningful access and participation. Sure. I'll be happy to answer

[00:50:31] again. That word access is actually woven in through here a lot. Can we talk about that for a second? What do you mean by access? So if my student's going to attend a cross-categorical academic classroom, I want them to be able to access the content and the instruction and participate and learn and be educated, not just be in the room with a teaching assistant by his side. And so that could be a lot of different things. That could be technology. That could be how we scaffold his instruction, comprehension, communication supports, a lot of different ways

[00:51:10] to access that. But I think that is the common planning time. And then the understanding-- and we were just sort of chatting here, those of us that have been sort of at this since early intervention, you know, so high schoolers now. So like for 15 years, you know, we've been saying a lot of the things that you covered in summary in the beginning.

[00:51:28] So it's nice to see now that that's sort of a standard or starting point, if you will. But again, just the entitlement through IDEA doesn't necessarily operationalize it. So understanding we have to go through a process, but what do we do while we're going through that process to understand and implement that division-wide so that student needs can be met now, I think is still the individual work that needs to be done among teams.

[00:51:58] So we can practice a little bit before we have a manual how to do it. Awesome. All right. What else? Inclusion is? I'm a teacher. I don't actually

[00:52:26] need a mic. Accessibility purpose. We don't know who has it here. That's true. Inclusion is looking at where a student is, how he learns, and moving him forward to be part of the group as they move forward in their exploration of an educational idea. Any other thoughts about what inclusion is?

[00:52:58] yes i have one word engagement can i level that up for a second you know what i mean by that so we hear this a lot and we heard this a lot during the pandemic i remember dr williams back in the days like we want it was a big chant for those of you who were here right is that we got to get kids engaged we got to get kids engaged we got to get kids engaged and in fact we have some words like empower engage and enrich something that we sort of talk about now i would emphasize the fact that Any kid that is empowered is automatically engaged.

[00:53:37] But just being engaged doesn't mean you're empowered, right? So I would maybe think about emphasizing that word empowering a lot more about how do we empower our students to take ownership of their own learning, not just engage them.

[00:53:52] Think of it this way. Have you ever gone to a movie and you watched that movie for two hours and you were completely engaged the entire time, but you didn't walk out wanting to change the world or do anything different or really learned anything, right? You just had a good time. and you're engaged, but not necessarily empowered. But if you solve some sort of problem, or you created something that you haven't created before, you're engaged that entire time, and you're empowered.

[00:54:15] Does that sound fair, is that what you're going for? - Thanks, empowerment is a great word to add, but empowerment needs the right strategies and tools.

[00:54:30] - Totally, totally. Okay, let's see what the Padlet says about what inclusion is. I have 'til 7:15, right? Yeah, okay, we're good, okay. So, it says, okay, what are some of the comments in the palette where students just want to feel like they are normal kids?

[00:54:49] And whoever wrote anonymous, what is normal? That's an interesting word, right? Is, I don't know, am I normal? I don't know, I feel like I'm not normal. I don't know what is, right? So, I think what they're getting at, though, is that have sort of an accessible experience where they're valued, right?

[00:55:11] And they're honored, okay? like any other student would be, okay? Same experience as everyone else, right? Yes, but maybe not same, like you said, you kinda gotta differentiate it, and you gotta create the environment that they can be successful in it.

[00:55:27] So it's a similar experience, but maybe not the exact same experience. Is that fair, okay? Inclusion is important to keep the playing field fair. Hear this all the time, too.

[00:55:42] So here's the thing I'd like to put in your brain, okay? Do you think of education as a competition, or do you think of education as collaboration? Because if you use this analogy of it's important to keep the playing field fair, then you're sort of thinking of it as a game that you win, right, that is a competition.

[00:56:03] But if you think of it as a collaboration, then maybe we're working together to build our skills, improve the world around us, help our community, right? So I wonder about that, about, yes, I think that's true, That inclusion does help playing field.

[00:56:19] I would love to focus more on that collaboration than competition. That's how I answer it, but I don't have all the answers. Okay, being part of the school body, for sure. Helping all students succeed. All students, yeah. Wouldn't it be great someday when we don't have to put all in front of students? It's just redundant, right?

[00:56:35] It's not right now we have to do it. Okay. Belonging, being known, and knowing others. Opportunities to succeed and fail. Equity and accessibility. That word keeps coming up. And so there's more that you can scroll through. I want to give a very simple definition of how I think of it, okay?

[00:56:54] I think of it as inclusion is, I'm going to use some strong language here. Inclusion is the fight against exclusion. So it's a mindset that you have. Maybe fight is a strong word, so maybe struggle, right?

[00:57:10] But an effort is the effort to avoid exclusion. So it's a mindset you have when you're in the planning process to think, What can I do to try and be more inclusive and fail forward? Because maybe I'll make a mistake. Maybe I didn't differentiate the right way.

[00:57:27] But I want to, right? I want to struggle against excluding people. So how can I do things differently? Fair? Okay. What is not inclusion? All right. So back to the room before we look at the padlet. What is not inclusion?

[00:57:45] So I know Carla and I didn't want to jump in immediately too much because we had a lot of thoughts about this anyway. But I wanted to tie one of the comments that I saw on the padlet back to the previous question to sort of cross these two a little bit. And that is one of the comments in inclusion is that it's not focusing on commonalities, which I think is very important because then it's a very derivative, very kind of reducive kind of approach.

[00:58:16] But I would say that one of the ways, and I like the way that you just discussed sort of the change in mindset, the change in culture, the change in thinking about, that it is, it's not providing the same experience, but it's providing a common experience to really sort of slice the difference between those two words.

[00:58:37] And you're going to draw things perhaps a little bit differently in terms of the experience, but you have a common experience among all students. They're going to access it through different methodologies, different frameworks, different technologies, whatever the tools are that we use to apply that.

[00:58:53] But at the end of the day, they have a common experience, but without focusing on commonalities, which is a very different kind of concept. I thought that was a great definition, whoever wrote that, of what inclusion is not, because it's not reductive to just looking for the small commonalities in some cases.

[00:59:16] That word common is so good. You articulated it really well. Other thoughts about what it's not? The thing that came to my mind is inclusion is not static.

[00:59:34] Ah, so you would say it is dynamic. It's not static. All right, awesome. I didn't see it up in the padlet, but this is not my first rodeo.

[00:59:49] And something I hear sometimes is that inclusion is not a place. Oh, someone said it? Okay. It's not a location. Great. So I just didn't see it. It's not possible without individual support.

[01:00:05] It's not just sitting in the class. It's not just breathing that air. I feel like I've heard that phrase before. Being separated from your general ancient peers. Uh-huh. Yeah. Okay. There it is.

[01:00:21] There's the location. It is not happening when a student is led into a class that is already bustling in the middle of the lesson and not having the content made available at their level of understanding or having the other children interact with that child. Just being present with typical peers is not inclusion if the child cannot benefit, right? What this really screams is maybe designing the experience a little bit different and preparing the student. I think it's really to your point, right? Preparing the student and designing the experience that they're going into so that they can meaningfully participate. Okay, and then the last thing is how would you define

[01:01:00] meaningful inclusion. So again, before we look at the padlet, what did you discuss? What did you come up with? What makes it meaningful? Yeah, no, I'm so glad you're participating. I would say meaningful inclusion is positive outcome, measurable outcome. It's a change and a progress in the human need for that child. And I mean by that, not only educational, but socio-emotional difference that we can see and measure from baseline to the end. I mean, after what we put

[01:01:38] that child in that classroom. Awesome. So it's measurable. Okay. So that's what something that makes it meaningful. Okay. Measurable outcomes. What else? What makes it meaningful? What's our definition of meaningful inclusion? That's a strategy, by the way. Just wait time.

[01:02:13] Wait time and eye contact. I think a happier, more confident child is a child who's included and that's more meaningful for them. They're happier, you can see it. We're also focusing on that particular student, but I think it's also going to be meaningful for the peers and the teacher, the whole class.

[01:02:37] I think Nakia was sort of getting at that point too, right? That everyone feels that there's some meaning behind it. Anything else before I go to the padlet? So the work I think that we're going to do here, just to foreshadow what I'm going to say at the end, is that the meaningful inclusion subcommittee is going to take this feedback and try and draft up some wording to bring back to the larger committee. Is that fair, Mr. Ketchum? Okay. So, let's see. The student feels a valued part of

[01:03:13] the whole class and has the same opportunities and experiences as peers. I might even change the word feels here. Do you mind if I just level that up for a second? And just the student is a valued part, right? And if they are, then they're going to feel it. It's not just making them feel that way, but it's actually them being that way. Teachers must be open to modifying the curriculum and accommodating students' varying needs. Yes, so you keep hearing, I think Jeff, right? Jeff is the instructional framework guy. He said, hey, something we keep hearing at the superintendent's listening sessions is the word designed, right? So, Mr. Ketchum, I'm just going to take a moment

[01:03:52] here, if that's okay. I'm going to show you, or Ms. Crotty, if you want to read the back of my shirt here for a second. I know. I know what I'm doing, Nakia. I'm leaving the t-shirt on. It's just the outside shirt. Okay, so this is a t-shirt, right? What does it say? Strengthening education through inclusive design using assistive technology. Yeah, the technology, the tools comes last, but the design comes first. And this idea here, teachers must be open to modifying curriculum and accommodations. Absolutely do. But I would also invite the word design there,

[01:04:31] designing things in a more inclusive way. And then the technology provides those options to design things in a more inclusive way. Fair? All through the pandemic, on the back of my Zoom or my back of my Google Meet, I had three words, technology supports design. And that's how we can use these tools that you're talking about is to help change the design of the experience to make it more inclusive. All right, so teamwork with student, family, general ed. Yes, all of these working together, for sure. An open space room where voices are allowed to be heard, even if a

[01:05:10] dissent, even in dissent where questions and questioning is encouraged, all who are present are valued. Yes. So interesting that word open space slash room, right? Something I've been challenging myself to think about is the words I use, and one of them is classroom.

[01:05:29] Like, are we designing a classroom, or are we designing learning spaces, and the classroom is one of the learning spaces, but so is the hallway, so is the cafeteria, so is the front office, right? So is the playground, foreshadowing, right?

[01:05:45] So is every space, is a learning space, so can we think about how all of those we can make more inclusive, fair? not just the classroom, okay? Meaningful inclusion, make mean inclusion a way of participating in it, uh-huh.

[01:06:03] Yes, here it is again, lesson plans. Finding a way to modify the instruction that gives all the scholars an opportunity to learn content. Notice the word scholars, someone's trying to use more inclusive language than just students. Like students feel like you're just in this class, right?

[01:06:18] But scholar means you're something you do outside. You're studying, okay? So finding ways to modify the instruction that gives all the scholars an opportunity to learn content in a different way or from a different angle regardless of ability. And then yes, it helps everybody.

[01:06:36] So those are some great ideas. We only have a few minutes left. Like I said, the idea is the subcommittee to come back and look at these and come up with an actual definition. How we kind of wanted to wrap up this experience today was to, Ms. Sola, I think this is your idea, right?

[01:06:54] Is to add this way to kind of finish this out, right? which is share an example or an experience where a learner you know was meaningfully included, right? The key I've mentioned in this program that we have called Robots for Everyone is an example, right?

[01:07:09] What is something, what's an experience you've had in Loudoun or without, in Loudoun County Public Schools or out, where your child was included? Can you think of something like that? If so, please share it here in the Padlet. And while you're doing that, I'll run around with more stories and examples.

[01:07:26] Can you think of a story where that happened or an example? So this is something I've told, I know a couple of you, so a couple of you have heard this story. But I'm enormously proud of all of my children, and particularly my son, I'll mention in this story, who, he's 22 now, but when he was in kindergarten, we were not yet using words like inclusive practices and meaningful inclusion.

[01:07:52] It was a lot about something called mainstreaming at the time, which is kind of an early stepping stone to where we are now. And that was basically getting more children into the general ed environment. And my son has various disabilities that he's gone through and continues to deal with and so forth.

[01:08:12] But there was another child named Abby, I'll just use her first name, who had particularly severe developmental disabilities. And she was in his kindergarten class. And I will give all due credit to his kindergarten teacher for what happened.

[01:08:28] They really adopted her as their little sister, so much so that they saw all the way through school that she was protected, she was taken care of, she was included. And when they got old enough to drive, they made sure that they could drive Abby to and from basketball games and football games and school dances and events.

[01:08:47] They always made sure that she was part of it. And I think that if you look at, a lot of children really start out that way. They start out with this notion of wanting to include those people because they're their friends. And I think one of the things that we can help do is to really encourage a culture as we grow into adults and a culture where that feeling never goes away, that we can take that nurturing spirit that so many children have at that young age and just allow them to continue on that way all the way throughout, not only their school career, but on through the rest of their life.

[01:09:23] So I'm enormously proud of all my children, but I just wanted to share that particular story about my son. Other stories. Thank you for sharing. Other stories like that? Okay, awesome. And you can put, yes, good stuff's going in the padlet. I couldn't agree with Mr. Ketchum more. And I think it's similar in some of the offerings that we're seeing now, for example, with United Sound and Unified Sports, that if we could really duplicate that effort in academics, that would be very powerful for our children because they're going to be more engaged and empowered if they're properly educated to meet their potential.

[01:10:01] But our United Sound programs, unified PE, as well as unified sports, when you go to these events and you see, for example, in United Sound, which essentially is a unified band, and so two typical peer mentors are assigned to a student with a disability, and there's a process, and it's the same collaborative process of related service, gen ed, special education teachers, peer support, but there's also a methodology that the nonprofit comes in and teaches.

[01:10:31] And so they basically learn to read music through a methodology, but they are paired with these peers. They get to know each other. They select an instrument together. They learn to play that instrument together. They practice together. They perform together.

[01:10:47] And what's remarkable in the same fashion with the unified sports and unified PE is really the same thing. You see all kinds of kids out there. So, it doesn't matter whether you have a very severe, profound disability, be it, you know, intellectual, mobility issue, everybody is out there and everybody is contributing and has the support and has the modification, and it's transforming for a community.

[01:11:11] I mean, you'll see parents of, you know, very competitive athletes, you know, neurotypical students, you know, with other parents of students that have these particular, you know, challenges, and it's really nice as a parent to be able to go to that and to be able to see your child have those opportunities.

[01:11:30] And so that's really the power of inclusion and the empowerment that they have. But they also need an education. I mean, we really need to be able to do this effectively in the academic environment so that they can all reach their individual potential. It's so crucial for transition.

[01:11:47] Something that really resonated with what you said was that we see this in these sorts of experiences and we actually in the meaningful subcommittee meaningful inclusion subcommittee had talked about how there's like after school clubs seem to be sometimes more inclusive um and what we're sort of now is how do we bring that like you said to our daily instruction and assessment across the whole day right exactly not that it's not it's happening in some places but how do we even make it even more pervasive right yeah okay any last thoughts here any other stories

[01:12:22] Yeah. The virtual distance learning program. I've had two children in this program. And it's an amazing program because you don't see the disabilities. You have kids with disabilities and kids without disabilities. But the kids with disabilities are able to help quicker. Or if a child has a medical disability, you don't see it. So it's a wonderful way for inclusion.

[01:12:54] See, that's designing the experience in a different way, right? It's not all sitting in rows, listening to a teacher, it's redesigning the experience so that it can be, other people can be included. All right, cool. Great stories. Please, if you have others, share them in there, those experiences. Like I said, the objective now is at, I don't know, maybe one of our next meetings, Mr. Ketchum. This is, we're going to analyze this and try and come up with some sort of definition that we can work from, from this feedback. I want to leave you with one resource that if you don't know about it, we're going to invite you to sign

[01:13:33] up for it right now. So the assistive technology team writes a blog. Anyone subscribe to the blog? Okay, four people. See, this is why we need to advertise more, right? We get tons of resources. People don't know about them. So the way the blog works is that every Friday that we have school, there is a new blog post. The blog post is meant to be short, usually a paragraph and maybe a picture or a video that goes along with it, sharing some of these stories, stuff that's happening in Loudoun County Public Schools that you don't know or

[01:14:09] that we don't hear about, sharing technologies that we use, really we're thinking about technologies that are available to everybody, we call them tier one supports, supports that are available to everybody. Like I was talking to you about immersive reader, there's examples of immersive reader in here. So there's all these different categories. You can go see the old blog post by looking at those categories. You can go do a search. But then the email comes to you every Friday and you get this short little nugget about how to use technology to design more inclusively. You're going to sign up? Tell all your friends. It's public, like anyone

[01:14:48] can have it. Give it to your friends in wherever they are. Any feedback about the blog? You you subscribe any thoughts i mean it's wonderful that sometimes you get little tidbits about great inclusive things happening around the county and sometimes you know you learn a new trick i've i've learned a few things that i did not know before and was able to quickly implement and um you know also relate to stuff that my kids were doing that they are probably learning about in school that i haven't been taught yet as parents so i think it's great and would highly encourage everyone to subscribe. There you go. Thank you. All right. Thanks, everybody. Thanks

[01:15:26] for participating today and being such an active group because it would have been really bad if nobody talked. So if nobody put anything in the padlet. So we rolled the dice and you came through. We appreciate it. Bye, everybody. My email's in there. If you have any questions, you want to, my email's in there. If you have any questions, you want to reach out, feel free. Happy to help.

[01:15:50] Thank you so much, Chris. And we are now going to take a five-minute break and then we will get into the meeting so um please grab cookies drinks you know make yourself comfortable and we'll see you uh let's see what time is it now um let's make it uh 7 20 or 7 yeah 7 23 something like that

[01:16:17] if people wouldn't mind getting back to their seats i just want to respect everyone's time

[01:23:34] and get things moving so that you all can get out of here at a civilized time and reclaim what's left of your Valentine's Day. We have the QR code up there once again where you can sign in electronically if you like. My name is Liz Crotty. I am the chair of our SEAC here and I will just go through and introduce people very quickly. We have Jennifer De Donata could not be here this evening. She's our vice chair of planning. To my left we have Carla Sola who is our vice chair of membership. To my right we have Shanaz Khan who is our SEAC vice chair of communications.

[01:24:15] Katie Rosenbrook is our SEAC secretary. And Sharon Trofe, who cannot be here tonight but is here virtually, is our SEAC past chair. We also have to our left our director of special education and SEAC liaison, Dr. Paige Carter.

[01:24:34] And then we have our school board liaison to the right here, Carrie LaBelle. And then our alternate school board liaison is Melinda Mansfield. The role of SEAC is governed by Virginia regulations. We advise the local school division of needs in the education of students with disabilities.

[01:24:55] We participate in the development of priorities and strategies for meeting the identified needs of students with disabilities. We submit periodic reports and recommendations regarding the education of students with disabilities. and then we assist the local school division in interpreting plans to the community for meeting the special needs of students with disabilities for educational services.

[01:25:16] We also review the policies and procedures for the provision of special education and related services prior to submission to the local school board, and then we participate in the review of the local school division's annual plan. First, I would like to, we have a couple of virtual participants here this evening, And I would like to go ahead and take a motion to accept these participants into our meeting.

[01:25:45] All right. Made and seconded. Do we vote now? All in favor of admitting them, please raise your hand. Aye, okay. All opposed? Any abstentions?

[01:26:02] I think they are now admitted. Thank you. All right, we are going to start with public comment this evening. We have one public comment that is being made in person this evening. So Mary, would you like to start us off? Well, do you want to, could you, I'm sorry, do you mind coming up here to the podium? Sorry. I guess it's good we didn't tell

[01:26:37] you ahead of time.

[01:26:54] Good evening. I am the virtual distance learning SEAC representative. I would like to thank SEAC, LCPS administration, and the school board for hearing and acting on a community need. You all have shown great leadership and compassion for the students who need the virtual distance elementary, and I respect and thank you for standing up for them and their education.

[01:27:25] Thank you for giving these kids a voice. As I was leaving tonight, my youngest child, who was in third grade, said, Mom, thank them for me as well, because we weren't alone when we advocated. a lot of those kids ranging in age from 8 to 18 asked to advocate and I told my little girl I will thank them on her behalf so she may be listening now so this way I'm not in trouble but thank you all thank you for every person in this room that advocates we appreciate you

[01:28:02] thank you Miss LaBelle Dr. LaBelle thank you Miss Crody um thank you Miss Richardson uh and thank you as well to you as well we appreciate all of you on behalf of the families of the distance learning program thank you thank you so much I have two other public comments that I will be reading this

[01:28:34] evening the first is dear special education advisory committee I hope this message finds you well I am writing to bring to your attention a modification request for the existing school Board Policy 8420, specifically regarding the administration of medications by students within the school premises.

[01:28:59] Policy 8420 currently allows students to carry and self-administer rescue inhalers, epinephrine, insulin, glauco, I'm sorry, with proper authorization from a licensed prescriber and parental consent.

[01:29:16] However, it does not include provisions for the self-carry and self-administration of other medications. We are seeking your consideration to add digestive enzymes to the approved list of medications in alignment with the policy implemented by Fairfax County Public Schools.

[01:29:33] In accordance with FCPS policy, Health and Welfare Policy 22102.17, students are permitted to carry and self-administer medications such as insulin inhalers, epinephrine, and digestive enzymes.

[01:29:54] This request is particularly pertinent to my son who lives with cystic fibrosis and requires digestive enzymes when consuming foods containing fat. We recently conducted his annual IEP meeting during which we discussed the possibility of him self-carrying and self-administering his digestive enzymes.

[01:30:13] His physician expressed his support for this request and is willing to include it in his medical orders. Allowing students to manage their digestive enzymes independently would provide them with the freedom to eat snacks and lunch without the need to visit the nurse's office each time.

[01:30:31] This modification aligns with the inclusive approach adopted by neighboring jurisdictions and ensures that students with medical needs, like my son, can enjoy a more seamless school experience. kindly request your careful consideration of this modification to policy 8420 recognizing the importance of accommodating the unique medical needs of students like my son thank you for your time and dedication to ensuring the well-being of all students within our school district my next

[01:31:03] public comment good evening i have attended several seac award ceremonies in the last few years and often wondered why the outstanding teachers and staff do not in addition to the wonderful thank you bags and gift cards receive time off i work for fairfax county government and i wanted to take a moment to share the way fairfax awards outstanding employees in fairfax when an outstanding employee is recognized this employee is always awarded with a certificate of appreciation and a separate certificate of administrative leave administrative leave is leave granted by

[01:31:41] to an employee by the county and paid for by the county to use this leave employees enter a code for administrative leave into their time and they are awarded time off which does not come from their earned leave bank depending on the award administrative leave agencies in fairfax also have the option to grant this type of leave during departmental level annual awards therefore i am hopeful that SEAC might also be able to inquire about and hopefully add administrative leave to the thank you bags for our upcoming and future SEAC award ceremonies nothing says thank you more than granting employees a mental

[01:32:20] health day to spend with their own families please contact me if you need any more information thank you thank you thank you all for your public comments this evening next we move on to our office of special education update Good evening, everybody, and happy Valentine's Day.

[01:32:53] I do want to share that we are currently serving 10,109 students with disabilities, with about 101 in the hopper in upcoming eligibilities, which means probably about 75 of those will be eligible.

[01:33:09] So I expect that number to go up even more next month, but I thought we'd hit 10,000 by the next time I saw you, and we did indeed. I did want to share, and I apologize, I did not include the graph for where we are. Or I included the graph, but not the numbers.

[01:33:26] So we have 43 teachers and 19 TAs, vacancies currently. And I added a trend line as a BCBA. Those make me happy.

[01:33:42] So I added a trend line to show that even though we had an uptick by two in vacancies for TAs, We are still trending downward even in February, so I'm glad about that. We are continuing to fill spots even in the middle of the year, so that's good.

[01:34:00] Okay, the monitoring update hasn't changed all that much, but I promised I would give one every month. Our cyclical monitoring is complete. We have had informal meetings with folks from VDOE and a follow-up phone call. I'm expecting the final report any day now, but they told me absolutely they are required within 90 days.

[01:34:20] I don't have quite a countdown timer on my phone at this point, but if it doesn't come soon, I'm going to count back and figure out when that 90-day mark is because I know we'll be getting close soon. But we do have some feedback from that audit, and we'll be issuing corrective action plans for schools in March and April to address some of the findings in the report.

[01:34:44] I shared some of those last month. The ones that have already gone out have to do with parental notification of meetings, both in a timely manner and making sure we're providing an actual written notice in advance a lot of times.

[01:34:59] And I think the pandemic developed this habit for us. We contact the parents. The parents say, absolutely, we'll come. And then we give them the written notice at the meeting. Now, did that email work? Absolutely.

[01:35:15] The parents are there. We're participating, but we're not meeting all of the requirements because some of the language on our notifications is part of our obligation. So we have already shared that feedback and have offered corrective action, and we'll be following up on that all throughout the spring.

[01:35:32] That was the biggest thing, Nakia, wouldn't you agree, that we felt like was most consistent across the division that we really needed to tighten up. So that was our first corrective action issued last month. And the next ones will come out in March and April.

[01:35:48] Our internal staffing audit that is being conducted within LCPS is still underway. We thought it would be a report would come out in February, but I'm thinking school visits were just finished up last week. So I would say I have a very, very explicit date for you soon.

[01:36:10] Right? So we're anticipating that we'll get that information soon, but I don't have a date for you. And I know that there's a lot going on, so we'll take that when it comes. Our VDOE fiscal audit is in May. It is scheduled for the third week in May.

[01:36:26] And then the superintendent's external audit will soon be underway. We are in the process of finding a company to conduct that external audit. All right, so I just wanted to give you a little bit of a staffing update. This was shared with principals yesterday, or will be shared.

[01:36:43] This information was shared with them, and their staffing is coming out this week. Initial staffing information, usually from special ed, comes out later in the spring because we're still having an enormous amount of eligibilities. Special permission, the window opens and happens.

[01:37:01] It changes a lot about our staffing. But principals really gave hard feedback last year to say that, you know what, if we're going to find the best teachers, we need that information in those positions to post as soon as they do for all the others. Makes perfect sense to me.

[01:37:17] we were able to work together as a team and get the staffing for cross-categorical teachers to the principals. That memo, if it didn't come out today, will come out tomorrow. So they'll know approximately how many teachers they will have, but absolutely the ones on the memo are ones that they can begin to hire for.

[01:37:36] So we'll get into the competitive market to find teachers a little bit earlier, maybe as early as two months earlier. So we're hoping that will help us with vacancies. Specialized program locations, we're working on those. We were awarded, I'm not sure if awarded is the right word, given in the budget the 33 new programs we requested, 12 of those in early childhood, and the others spread across school age.

[01:38:03] But it's exciting. We are getting two programs, intensive programs, for students with emotional disabilities at the high school level. That is something that was very much needed and was granted in the budget, and so we are determining locations for those now, and budget and finance and I have worked out that in about two weeks, all of those positions will go out to principals, so we are excited to get all of that done earlier than usual, and I know I've already

[01:38:36] said this, but special permission and eligibilities really do impact what has, what changes in numbers in schools and how many teachers they will need. So we have held back positions so that as things start to grow and change, we are able to grant more positions to schools as they need them. Okay, so that's the good news. Okay, so we have some things up here about what we got in the budget. 27 additional teachers, but 33 of those are, or there's

[01:39:11] total 33 programs 27 of those are new positions 35 additional TAs were added mainly because of those programs and 15 additional BAs or behavior assistants were added so all that together brings me to the red box so our even though and this is hard to deliver because it's it's not the best of news but but it is good news too so here in the county our cross cat staffing standard is one to ten that's where we start that is how we determine how many teachers we will receive

[01:39:50] and that's based on numbers that are estimated by our growth each year and numbers that are taken in the fall in the winter in the spring to really make a good estimate of how many we will need Right now, it's looking like we'll start the school year with a cross-cat average across the division of one teacher to every 12 students.

[01:40:15] Now, we also know that no teacher will have more than 15. At that point, we will need to add, rearrange, or add another teacher. TA ratios are going to increase as high as one to every 19 students.

[01:40:32] and we are more accustomed to 1 to 14 or 1 to 15. So that is where, if you do the math, we added 33 additional programs. Programs have a lot of TAs and BAs. We got 35 and 15, so we had to adjust our staffing to make sure that the programs had the staffing that they absolutely require while also dividing staffing out to cross-categorical.

[01:40:58] We have, again, a holdback of TAs so that when we see where needs present themselves and unique situations, we can add those as we learn more as we go into the spring. But it is really exciting to be able to share information this early in the year with a plan going forward.

[01:41:19] So while those numbers don't make me super excited, that's just what we're looking at right now, knowing that we have a bit of a holdback and several different avenues for flexible staffing throughout the year. So I feel confident that we will be able to meet the needs, but I wanted to present it to you in a transparent way.

[01:41:37] Those are what the ratios are looking at right now. but that middle bullet the state regulations um is one that says one to 24 one to 22 um is where uh is where we like to be but we don't even nearly approach that with our enhanced staffing standard so we should feel really good about what we're doing all right that's me any questions about any of that i know it was a lot a lot more than i normally do yes oh sorry i was just curious

[01:42:14] whether the cross-categorical ratios are the same age at any age? They are. That staffing standard of 1 to 10 is the same across the division, and that 1 to 12 average is across the division.

[01:42:31] But when we are allocating staff, we do look at existing staff in the building. How many grade levels are you serving? A middle school serves three grade levels, and an elementary school serves six. When you have IEPs, it's really hard to get to sixth grade levels, depending on what your staffing is.

[01:42:49] So we do consider all that to make sure that the IEPs can be implemented. But it is a division average when it comes to us from budget and finance. Thanks. Dr. Carter, just had a quick question on the special education staffing audit that the new auditor is doing.

[01:43:14] And just generally, like, what is the intention of that? Is that just to get out there and see what we're doing generally to just try to get a handle on the numbers? Or what is the intention of the audit that we're doing within the division? I was not privy to when that came up.

[01:43:31] But I will tell you that as I've worked with the folks doing the audit, it seems to me that we're really looking at how we staff and who makes decisions and how are we considering, like, just what I talked about, about their sixth grade levels versus three or four, you know, and how we staff.

[01:43:51] So I think it's really looking at our processes and procedures around staffing to make sure we're maximizing what we are given. Anybody else?

[01:44:08] Okay. Well, thank you for your patience with the delivery of that number-heavy presentation. Good evening. It's wonderful to see you all, and happy Valentine's Day to everyone.

[01:44:24] I know that Mrs. Karate is going to highlight our budget celebrations, but did just want to celebrate and extend sincere thanks to Mrs. LaBelle for her role on the board. So in addition to the 99.2 positions that we advocated for in the FY25 budget, Mrs. LaBelle and her colleagues on the board added a new supervisor position with a specific focus on transition and we're super super excited about that and additionally

[01:44:59] they advocated for additional adapted PE teachers so just want to say thank you for all of your hard work and collaboration and student focus so and i know liz is going to highlight all of the celebrations so i'm not going to say anything else i did have the opportunity last evening along with Mrs. Donna Smith, our Director of Procedural Support, to present our annual restraint and seclusion information to the board.

[01:45:28] This is a scaled back version. I'm only focusing this evening on restraints and seclusions of students with disabilities. So you will see that we start with a focus on looking at our LCPS school-based instances of physical restraint, mechanical restraint, and seclusion.

[01:45:49] What is highlighted on this slide particularly shows a decrease from the 21-22 school year to the 22-23 school year. So we went from 15 instances down to six for physical restraint.

[01:46:06] We had no instances of mechanical restraint and we had a reduction from five instances of seclusion down to three for the 22-23 school year. This slide captures the breakdown of students, so the number of students that contributed to the instances captured on the previous slide.

[01:46:32] So for physical restraint, there were five students that contributed to those instances. For mechanical restraint, again, there weren't any. And then for seclusion, there were three students that contributed to the instances noted.

[01:46:49] Next, the data was broken down so those two slides referred to LCPS school-based sites. The next slides refer to LCPS students that are placed in private day or residential facilities.

[01:47:10] So you will see that we did have an increase in the number of instances of physical restraints that were reported to LCPS by the private day and residential facilities serving our students.

[01:47:25] There were no instances of mechanical restraint reported for the 22-23 school year and there were 57 incidences of seclusion that were also reported by our private day and residential facilities.

[01:47:43] Here again is the child count that contributed to those instances that were reported in those private facilities. Eleven students contributed to the instances of physical restraint. There were no instances of mechanical restraint and there were six students that contributed to the instances of seclusion within the private day and residential setting.

[01:48:07] Bless you. For a complete report, you can certainly go to last night's school board meeting and you can see the breakdown of all of the data which we reported for students without disabilities, students with disabilities, as well as students that are eligible under Section 504.

[01:48:29] is all that i have to report from the department of student services again i want to make sure that mrs karate has enough time to celebrate um all of the great happenings that have been going on here in lcps so thank you again and certainly if you have any questions i remain available thank you all right we're going to move into our new business which is policy so melissa would you

[01:49:01] like to come up here craig would you we this is the qr code where you can access the draft policies that we will be reviewing this evening there are three policies one of which we have recommendations on all right so the policy and compliance subcommittee met and reviewed these three

[01:49:37] school board policies two of them we didn't find any recommendations that were needed for changes to those i know liz sent out links to all these policies so for policy 5090 and policy 8410 is there anyone in the membership who reviewed those and has any concerns to raise before we vote on that okay so for policy 5090 regarding graduation diplomas and certificates

[01:50:12] if we could get a motion from the floor to the same time okay all right so we'll just really wrap this up quick uh for both policy 5090 and policy 8410 for which the policy sub and compliance subcommittee made no recommendations if i could hear a motion from the floor to accept the recommendations of the policy committee to not make any changes to these and is there a second

[01:50:47] so all in favor say aye aye those opposed nay okay so that passes unanimously oh any abstentions and online and uh like oh sharon what's your last me hi that's it yes so the motion carries unanimously all right so the one policy that we did have a recommendation to make was policy 84 15 regarding blood-borne contagious communicable and infectious diseases and our

[01:51:25] Our concern was we wanted to be sure that in this policy, parents and guardians are being notified early on about the availability of homebound instruction. So sometimes when students are out for a while for medical reasons, there can be delays in getting information about whether this isn't even an option.

[01:51:47] Parents just don't know what they don't know. So we'd like to make sure, put the onus on the school to ensure that they're providing information about homebound services while the student's ill um as early as possible so our recommendation is there a slide on this okay good okay all right so uh here's an overview of policy 8415 the you want to this is for when a child has a big time infectious disease and is going to have an extended absence yes um so the loudon county school board recognizes the importance of protecting

[01:52:27] students and staff from the transmission of these diseases while protecting still the rights of individuals that have them. So Loudoun County Public School staff will work collaboratively with the Loudoun County Health Department on matters that may potentially affect the health and safety of the school community. I mentioned our concern already and our recommendation number one is at line 57 of the policy to change may to shall and recommendation number two is at line 58 of the policy add once a school receives notice of this extended absence the principal or designee

[01:53:02] shall provide within one school day information to the parent or guardian about the option of homebound instruction as specified in policy 5360 i'd like to propose kind of a floor amendment as i was reviewing this it dawned on me that we forgot something kind of important to our community If a student has a 504 plan or an IEP, the case manager shall consider whether a meeting is needed to revise the plan.

[01:53:36] For all students, the school counselor or designee shall consider whether a return to learn plan needs to be developed. Is there any discussion? Basically, if those meetings, these are all taking things, this whole part of the policy is what happens when the parent notifies the school system that a child's going to be out for an extended period of time.

[01:54:03] This should set some things in motion. One of them is considering whether there's an IEP implication, depends on the needs of the student, depends on how long the absence. And then the other piece of that is, for all students, we keep talking about mental health, well, what happens if there's an extended absence and then the student has to transition back?

[01:54:21] Are we making sure that we're meeting proactively to have those supports in place? Did you want to make an initial motion to amend? Since there's not a motion on the floor, we don't have to amend it. We could just have a motion to adopt with that if people think that's a good idea.

[01:54:43] Yeah. I just want to open the floor to discussion. So on that issue of discussion, what was the thought with one school day, which is obviously a very tight turn, as opposed to three days, let's say, just to suggest another number? The homebound process itself has a timeline and does take time.

[01:55:04] The idea is basically this should simply be part of the automatic response. When the parent says, my child has a serious infectious disease, it's going to be out for a while, the email should basically be, we got it, and here's the standard form that LCPS would just have a standard form and email it out and reply so that that information is there.

[01:55:26] The concern is that the policy is written, has no timelines at all for when the parents are notified and when the homebound process starts. And the homebound process could take a couple weeks to get rolling, at which point, you know, at best you've lost that educational time.

[01:55:45] But there's a very significant chance, as the policy kind of read originally, that by the time they get homebound going, the absence is over. So we need to start setting things in motion quickly was the idea. And we should just make it an automatic response.

[01:56:01] And that was the idea of the one day. It would just be a form letter or form email template. We just get emailed in response. And I'm just thinking of those edge cases, right, where that school day also happens to be a day where we have to call school early because of snow and then everybody's out and then we come back the next morning but nobody gets to it because they're dealing with everybody coming back into school the next day and the principal got sick.

[01:56:24] I just, there could be a series of issues that would create a problem with one, I mean, one school day is a very tight time frame. Well, and so originally, we meant for it to happen immediately. Upon notice of this extended absence, immediately respond back with a link or something to the information about homebound.

[01:56:43] We're not saying get it started, process something. It literally is shoot back to the parent an email. That's not going to take a lot of time. And that issue you raised about if there's a snow day or early closing is why we added give them one school day.

[01:56:59] So if you hear about it on a Friday afternoon, you get until the end of the day Monday to send the email. Yeah, and I would agree immediately is one of those squishy words that doesn't mean anything. So immediately is subject. So I think having a number in there was a good idea, just the question of whether or not one day is sufficient.

[01:57:18] But I think that makes a good case. Any other discussion? Remember, guys, you get to disagree on the floor with me, with any of us, right? So this is your right as a member, as a voting member of SEAC, and it's what makes our organization so strong, is that we value the feedback from everybody, even if you may not agree with all of us.

[01:57:43] Yeah, Dr. Carter. I just want to make the comment and agree with Tom from the perspective of the administrator who's going to need to do that. I agree that there are lots of things that can get in the way from responding within one day. I would say two days, 48 hours is much more reasonable.

[01:58:00] But in a perfect world, if there's a couple of hours blocked out for emails and no one needs you during that time, you know, that kind of thing. But I think one day is tight. But I do agree that it ought to be automatic. Like you need to be informed that that is something that is available to families.

[01:58:18] But I'm not sure if relying on the response from the administrator is the most reliable way to get it out. if that makes sense. Is there a better way? I mean, should we be specifying a certain individual who normally would handle this, or?

[01:58:35] No, I think the answer is within 48 hours rather than 24. Okay. But that, I mean, just a suggestion. Yeah, that's great. I think the distinction between one and two days is not something that we need to get.

[01:58:51] Yeah, I don't think that's a sword we want to fall on, but that's just me personally. So, again, are we amending? we have the motion we need a base motion all right so i'll make a motion to adopt the policy subcommittees recommendations on policy 8415 with the amendments as uh described by craig and the modification to uh change the language to say within two school days is there a second all right all those in favor repeat the motion oh sorry go ahead you moved in second the motion is

[01:59:30] to adopt these policy subcommittees recommendations with the amendment that i made and with modifying one school day to two school days is there any further discussion hearing none all those in favor please raise your hand and say aye opposed nay abstentions watch me your vote please aye sharon your vote please aye motion carries unanimously thanks guys thank you all all right

[02:00:10] So now we will get into our reports and updates. We are going to start with our Did You Know section on re-evaluations done by Shanaz Khan. So re-evaluations is referenced in our Virginia Code 8, VAC 20-81-70.

[02:00:33] Did you know a re-evaluation is an evaluation for students who receive special education services? It is not the same as the annual review of an IEP or just additional testing. A re-evaluation is a full look at a student's educational needs.

[02:00:52] There are two types of re-evaluations a student receiving special education services is entitled to. A triennial re-evaluation, which is your three-year review. A parent or teacher requested re-evaluation as often as once a year or more frequently if the school and the parent agree.

[02:01:11] A triennial re-evaluation does not have to be specifically requested as it is required by IDEA to happen at least once every three years. The purpose of the triennial is to identify if a student's educational needs have changed and if the student still qualifies for special education services.

[02:01:29] If the parent believes additional assessment is needed to determine eligibility or the child's educational needs, they must make the request for these specific purposes for the school to conduct the assessment. Once a re-evaluation has been requested, the school and the parent will meet to determine what areas will be assessed as part of the re-evaluation.

[02:01:52] The parent and the school may agree the re-evaluation will assess the student in one or two specific areas, such as speech and language, or educational achievement, or in all areas of suspected disability. If the parent doesn't believe, the assessments proposed by the school assess the student in all areas of suspected disability.

[02:02:13] Once the school completes the evaluation, the parent has a right to disagree with the evaluation and request an independent educational evaluation at the public expense. While a school can request a reason why the parent disagrees with the school's evaluation, parent is not required to provide a reason in virginia a student's eligibility cannot change without the consent of the parent before special education and related services for a student are discontinued the school must evaluate the students thank you shanaz now we move into the

[02:02:50] budget and for those of you who are joining us who maybe haven't been to all of our meetings we started this process quite a few months ago discussing it in our policy and compliance subcommittee we then developed recommendations that we brought to one of our regular committee meetings and had a very lively robust discussion we've collaborated extensively with the Office of Special Education and Student services and had lots and lots of questions and got lots and lots of answers, which was very

[02:03:27] helpful. We then revised our concerns and recommendations, voted on them as a body of SEAC, and then sent them off to our new school board, probably one of the first pieces of email they got, which was great. At that point then, Shanaz and I have been meeting our new school board members and trying to articulate why these recommendations are important to the special education community and we we were so thrilled to meet with each

[02:04:06] person and to really feel like each school board member was listening to us and considering what we were saying and and trying to learn because you know not every school board member has a background in special education or maybe even any experience and they were all so kind and open to hearing what we had to say and they asked a lot of great questions and hopefully we provided them with a lot of good information and then this past Tuesday was the budget meeting where some motions were made to add things on to the superintendent's

[02:04:46] estimate of needs and we were thrilled that the supervisor for transition services was added unanimously we were really happy to also see that the step program which was the preschool program for students who meet certain financial criteria it's not just expanding to half of our programs but it'll be a full expansion and this was important to the special education community because it allows opportunities for reverse inclusion for some of our preschool

[02:05:23] students receiving special education. We also got some much-needed adaptive PE teachers which we are thrilled about. I'm sure it's never enough but we'll take any additional people that we can get and and then we got our virtual distance learning for elementary school back and we were all very thrilled to see just how the school board really did come together to support these issues. It was truly a wonderful night. Shanaz and I were texting back and forth. Just we couldn't, we really couldn't believe it and we were so thankful

[02:06:01] and grateful for the reception of the school board and we really hope, we really appreciate their consideration of all of these recommendations that you all helped us put together. It was such a collaborative effort. None of this could have been done without the entire special education community, including the school administration.

[02:06:22] So really, it's kudos to everyone here and there and people who went and spoke to their school board members and helped us advocate for those issues. So I just want to thank you all and let you know that what you're doing, it makes a difference.

[02:06:39] these things matter. Hopefully we will see the results for all of our students in their classrooms and their communities. Sure. I just wanted to give a shout out to our partners across the division from other departments too, because anytime you add something, something is taken away. And I have heard from all of them in a way that I was not expecting. They were all incredibly gracious and said, if we've got to lose that position, I'm glad we lost it to special ed. So it was a really good reception and a just the camaraderie and a collaboration there was was really beneficial and

[02:07:17] I just wanted to give a shout out to those guys thank you so much Paige I appreciate that all right so the next thing I want to mention our 2024 SEAC awards June 5th at 6 30 p.m. at Rockridge High School the call for nominations is on the back table so it is now live that you can start submitting the special people in your life who you believe are deserving of a SEAC award.

[02:07:46] We've changed up the nomination form a little bit so that we hope that it's a little bit clearer exactly what we're looking for. It does look lengthy, but it's the same amount of writing that's required, so we're just trying to make it easier so you're not just thinking it's this open-ended thing, and did I answer the question, did I not answer the question?

[02:08:07] So, you know, please give us any feedback. Anytime you change something, you're always looking for a little bit of feedback to see if we improved it or made it more complicated. So on February 22nd at 8 p.m., we'll be sending out an agenda shortly, but we are going to have a virtual meeting to really start talking about the nuts and bolts of how you can get involved, how we're going to go about, you know, finding ways to recognize our winners, Um, and we would, this, this is open for the whole community and we would love to get as much participation as we can.

[02:08:43] Um, it's a great way to show these incredible educators and students and parents and community members, you know, how much we appreciate what it is that they're doing. Um, the next thing I would like to talk about, we have, um, nominations coming up.

[02:09:02] We have to elect our next year's SEAC Board Executive Committee, so I have asked Carla and Alicia if they would not mind chairing this committee, and they will be sending out communications to our membership seeking interest in holding a position on the Executive Committee next year.

[02:09:29] The presentation of the slate will occur on March 6th, and then we will vote on officers at our April 3rd meeting. So all of this is kind of coming up quickly, so we're going to just get started on it.

[02:09:45] We have obviously the role of chair, which is kind of just organizing everything, picking up whatever needs to be done. chair of planning that is coming up with our presentation schedule and who's going to be doing the presenters who's going to present things what topics we're going to do the SEAC Awards that's a really big part of it that's a big job and it takes a lot of time we have the vice chair of membership who is responsible for recruiting our members and our representatives and also they're

[02:10:25] going to be very focused on onboarding our new SEAC members and existing ones. Hopefully, you know, creating some, an event where we can do some team building and stuff like that, as well as education for our SEAC members and community. Then we have our vice chair of communications who is responsible for putting out flyers, for getting our information out on Facebook or anywhere, sending out the emails to all of our members and representatives, reminding them of meetings that are coming up, 'cause especially with all the subcommittee meetings,

[02:11:03] it can be a lot, so making sure we're really giving out that notice to everyone so everybody has as much of an opportunity to participate as they can. And then we have our secretary who takes the minutes for our meeting and is responsible for keeping track of public comment.

[02:11:23] And also, as of last night, I am thrilled to announce that we have two new SEAC members. We have Beth Carlson and Sakina Zarboz. Are either of you with us today? I don't see Beth.

[02:11:40] Okay. All right. Well, welcome. We are so thrilled to have them here with us. You know, having new members and new blood come and join us is a wonderful thing. Helps increase the diversity of opinions in our group.

[02:11:56] We're very excited to work with them. And that brings me to our membership report. We have, oh, I believe, Carly, you told me we have one addition. Do we have 78 schools now? Yes, we now have 78 schools with SEAC representatives.

[02:12:15] So only 18 schools where we need a PTA, PTO representative. So if you look on that list in the back of the room and your school does not have someone there and you would like to be that person, I would very much encourage you to reach out to Carla. We would love for you to be that person.

[02:12:32] We will continue to reach out to schools and to try and make sure that every school is getting information about what's going on in SEAC. And so we now have 20 voting members with one open membership. I will tell you, please don't be discouraged by that at all.

[02:12:49] Keep applications coming because as people roll off, We hold on to applications and we will keep those, probably reconnect with you and add people back in as spots are made available. So we have membership applications in the back of the room, but you can also go onto our website and look at the membership application there and fill it out and send it on over to Carla.

[02:13:16] And our executive committee will be meeting tonight at Clyde's after the business meeting. is open to all and now we will move into subcommittee reports and we'll just keep it really brief if that's all right we covered a lot of the meaningful inclusion activity this evening so I won't go over a lot of that but I will just maybe put in a word that our next committee meeting is next Wednesday the 21st and our committee meetings are virtual so I would invite everybody to attend where we're going to be talking about some of the things we talked about here this

[02:13:52] evening, as well as we're going to be getting a report from Dr. Carter on the feedback we're getting on the playground project that we're working on. And policy and compliance. Do you guys have an update? Okay. Skip you. And then we have specialized reading and math. Alicia or Aaron, do either of you have an update you'd like to? Here one second. Let's just get the mic so the people at home can hear. Thank you. Our next meeting is on Tuesday the 20th at 5 p.m.

[02:14:29] They're currently reviewing literacy curriculum for grades three through five and compiling a list of specialized writing programs to request quotes. We're now talking about the update for the second round of VALS, SOL read aloud accommodations, and getting some updates on classroom walkthroughs.

[02:14:49] Anything else that I missed, Erin? All right, and Shanaz or Catherine, would either of you guys?

[02:15:10] So we had our first work group meeting in January, and that was a great success. Good turnout, but we do need more voices to be heard, parents and educators. Staff would be awesome.

[02:15:27] I just lost the fourth. For the work group, yeah. Yeah, we discussed, and I think for our next work session, which is on March 4th, we're going to be focusing a lot on our community community yeah community partners she is my better half but I cannot at all talk anymore with that so

[02:16:05] yeah community partners and trying to see how we can build up some more internships for our students with disabilities we're also going to look at the independent living lab and maybe come up with some basic criteria that we would like to see in if we're going to include this in the schools that how like would be the basic minimum that we would need so our next work session is March 4th yeah and those community partners are business partners so we are always looking for names and faces to go directly to instead of going to the

[02:16:42] data center or centers that don't look like anyone actually works there but But having names of people to go directly to. So if you know of any businesses or are affiliated with any businesses that you think may be interested in, or if you have a business that you would like to engage with some awesome educators and interns, please let us know.

[02:17:08] Thank you. And Shanaz or Sharon, do you guys have a SEAC Awards planning update that you'd like to give? Sharon, did you want to chime in? So as Liz said, is she on?

[02:17:27] No, go ahead. Are you sure? Yes, please. As Liz had mentioned, we have set out our call for nominations. The next process is we'll be waiting for all the nominations to roll in. And we'll be, as the executive board, we'll be reviewing these over spring break.

[02:17:48] That's what we get to do. We don't take a spring break. We just review, and you cannot take a spring break. We reviewed the nominations, and then on February 22nd, we'll be meeting to discuss part of the planning. So anyone who's willing to donate, you know, we're always looking for gift cards, cupcakes, balloons, all of that kind of stuff to put the ceremony together.

[02:18:10] So we'll be discussing that on the 22nd. Yeah, it worked out so well last year having a lot of the PTA and PTO representatives go to their communities and you know volunteer to buy the cupcakes you know you guys can't do cash donations necessarily but you could do you could just say I will buy this many cupcakes or I will take care of the balloons and stuff so we'll put together like some sign-up sheets and things like that I think that's another great way for our schools and communities to get involved one other donation is you could

[02:18:45] donate directly to crown trophy to who we usually pick up our trophies from yes yeah so if you got all that next week the 20th the 21st and the 22nd if you really want to have an intensive SIAC week you can come and join us every evening all right um i would just like to make sure you all have on your calendar our quarter three literacy and math works next literacy and math work session

[02:19:17] will be on March 18th at 9.30. I have the time right now here at the admin building. And then our next transition work session will be on March 4th at 9.30, also here at the admin building.

[02:19:36] All right, for our SEAC representative report, really quickly. So for the Career and Technical Education Advisory Committee. We do not currently have anyone serving as the SEAC representative there. It's been, it's held at a difficult time for our members who are interested in it. It's held at 830, which for those of you who don't realize, that is right when like middle schools and high schools are getting started. And so most of our parents, you know, who have kids that age

[02:20:12] are busy helping their students get off to school and are not able to make a meeting. So their next meeting is on February 21st at 8.30, where they will be planning out their schedule, I believe, going forward.

[02:20:28] I plan to go and make a public comment to that effect, that, you know, it's being held at a difficult time for our members. And we really do need representation on this committee. It's so important that the voice of, you know, parents of students with disabilities is heard there.

[02:20:46] We also heard that our transition supervisor or a specialist does not have a seat on that committee as well, and that would be another request that we would make because that's also a very important person to represent our students with disabilities from an administrative perspective.

[02:21:09] Tom, do you have an update for the equity committee? We were waiting for the school board to approve the new equity committee process.

[02:21:26] First meeting, as you mentioned, there will be in March. I think it's actually, I don't think it's March 7th. I think it may be. When I looked at the calendar, it was. It may be. And so that'll be our first meeting of this term. But the school board was kind enough to get that organized, so we're proceeding on that.

[02:21:46] And with gifted, we did approve a new local plan, which is essentially the county's description of how and what programs and how gifted services are delivered across the district. That's required to be updated every four or five years.

[02:22:06] I forget what the number is. That has been submitted to an internal process, which will eventually go to the school board to be approved, and then we'll submit that to VDOE. yeah tom's gonna be i literally run from this room to another room down the hall yes yeah all right and now we move on to leanne from parent resource services good evening everyone i'm leanne kidwell from parent resource services my slides are a little backwards so this is how you

[02:22:45] contact me and um our upcoming workshops tomorrow night we have um high school connection so transitioning transitioning from middle school to high school with an iep and we have a middle school high school representative and two supervisors that will be presenting and then a new workshop for us next thursday the 22nd dr heather applegate if not hurt her speak she's fabulous and she's going to be talking about the problems of perfectionism so those are two workshops and

[02:23:20] then, of course, happy Valentine's Day. And I just wanted to say, if you did not have a chance to join us at When the Bus Stop's Coming, you missed a fabulous opportunity. We had great feedback. We had over 100 participants. We had 30 vendors. It was just a great morning. So it's always in February. Mark it on your calendar for next year if you are not able to make it.

[02:23:48] have a nice evening thank you Leanne and then here's another how to contact get them double all right and now we move on to our update from our school board liaison Carrie LaBelle um I just wanted to thank you all for reaching out to me with everything you wanted me to look

[02:24:22] into wanted me to do I took some notes tonight on other things that you've been mentioning and I will look into those for you as well. I'm looking forward to working with you any way that I can. Please let me know if you'd like me to come to any of your committee meetings. We're going to be working together for the next, at least with me, four years. I don't know if I'll always be on your SEAC board, but I'll be around. So please continue to reach out to me. You can go to Let's Talk. You

[02:24:56] can email me all of those options there's a phone number there for you to call on my web page if you have anything you'd like me to put in face on my Facebook page for you please just let me know so thank you for having me today thank you all right our next SEAC presentation and business meeting is March 6th at 6 p.m. where we will have our presentation on Virginia FOIA as well as an

[02:25:28] executive functioning presentation by Dr. Varya from MindWell Psychology. So we're all very excited about that. And I know she's excited to come speak with us as well. So I hope you all will be able to make it. And that concludes our meeting this evening. Thank you all so much for coming. I wish you all a wonderful rest of your Valentine's Day. And we look forward to seeing you next month.

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