Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County School Board, Special Education Advisory Committee (SEAC) Meeting, Wednesday, April 3, 2024

Date: Wednesday, April 3, 2024
Place: Loudoun County Public Schools / School Board meeting (see BoardDocs / LCPS-TV)
Length: 2h 13m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/930483809?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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[00:01:38] - Good evening, everyone. How are you doing? Thank you for coming and joining us on this beautiful spring day. Absolutely ideal spring weather. I'm so happy for all the rain that is making the grass super, super green, sloshing everywhere.

[00:01:59] So we are going to get started. We have the QR code for attendance that's up on the screen, so please take a moment. Let us know you're here. Also, I learned recently that on that QR code, you can enter if you want to get information from SEAC.

[00:02:17] And if you want to be added to our lists of when all of our subcommittee meetings are, you know, of course, they're posted on our website. But if you want a direct email with links to our meetings and all those reminders and stuff, and you like getting spammed by me, by all means, feel free to say that you would like to get communications, and we will get you added to the list.

[00:02:40] My name is Liz Crotty. I am the SEAC Chair. Jennifer DiDonato is our Vice Chair of Planning. She is not able to be here. Carla Sola, to my left here, is our Vice Chair of Membership. Shanaz Khan is our Vice Chair of Communications. Katie Rosenbrook is our SEAC Secretary.

[00:03:01] And Sharon Trofe is our SEAC Past Chair, and she will be joining us virtually as well. Our SEAC liaisons, our director of special education, is Dr. Paige Carter. Our school board liaison is Carrie LaBelle. She is not able to be with us tonight, but we are hoping that her alternate, Melinda Mansfield, will be able to. She said she might be a little late, so if you see someone scurry in here, don't be surprised. The role of SEAC in Virginia regulations. So the regulations governing special education programs for children with disabilities in Virginia reflect the state and federal requirements for the provision of special

[00:03:39] education and related services. The regulations mandate that an active SEAC exists as well as specific functions of the SEAC. They are to advise the local school divisions of needs in the education of students with disabilities, participate in the development of priorities and strategies for meeting the identified needs of students with disabilities. Submit periodic reports and recommendations regarding the education of students with disabilities to the division superintendent for transmission to the local school board. And that is part of what we are doing this evening with our 22-23 annual report.

[00:04:19] Assist the local school division in interpreting plans to the community for meeting special needs of students with disabilities for educational services. review the policies and procedures for the provision of special education and related services prior to submission to the local school board and participate in the review of the local school divisions annual plan and we are also doing that this evening so two things on our list tonight we will be beginning with public comments do you mind grabbing the public comment sign up we have a couple

[00:04:56] people I know who are with us. I've gotten one ahead of time and I've already met with a couple people who I know are here. So we will look and see the order.

[00:05:30] We had a point of order for whether we need to admit our virtual participants. Craig, I know we have a couple of our members who are running late this evening and I'm not and I think with them arriving we will have quorum but I was going to wait to establish quorum until give them a little grace time would that be all right with

[00:06:03] you yeah that's what i was thinking so we'll get the updates from the office of special education and student services and then we'll move when we move into our business portion we will then establish quorum and vote to admit okay perfect all right so um our first public comment signups

[00:06:30] are Kyle Boardman and Amy Stone.

[00:06:47] Hello, my name is Kyle Boardman. I am the director of the theater program at A Place to Be. I've seen some of you are a little familiar with us and what we do. We're a non-profit creative arts therapy here in Loudoun County. We've been working with LCPS for about eight to ten years now. We've come through the majority of elementary, middle, in high schools with some of our touring productions focusing on DEIA. And I have Amy here, and she's going to tell you guys just real quickly a little bit about a production

[00:07:23] that we have coming up here in a few weeks. You guys might know us for something called the Same Sky Project, which has been in the county school system for many years. But that has kind of taken a different form. It is now called Pathfinders, and we are interested in recruiting local businesses, special education providers, people technically, I'm going to be

[00:08:02] honest with you guys, people like you who are here to be our voices. We want to share our voice with you. Pathfinders is made up of two people with TBI and one person who's blind, two people with autism, and then myself and another individual in a wheelchair. And our goal is to share us,

[00:08:40] have a feeder production that is a window into our lives. But we're doing it again a little bit different this year. This year we have a lot of video footage of what goes on at home. So we have a lot of video footage of our actual lives. So it's not just a stage production where we're just there for those two minutes. It's a production that by watching it you are also seeing a piece

[00:09:20] of our lives and miss sola's son is also a part of it with us so we are very we hope to see you guys there thank you for helping us create a world where everyone is understood and heard and also just to say um everyone in our cast we have seven individuals have uh at one of the schools here in

[00:09:54] Loudoun. They grew up through the special education program. A lot of you may know them or be familiar with them. And we have a lot of people from the community, from Loudoun Chamber, DEI committee, a lot of movers and shakers within our fields here in the community coming. And we've got flyers in the back on the table. It's April 19th and 20th over at our space at the village in Leesburg.

[00:10:20] We'd love to see you guys there, anyone from the special education community here in Loudoun. It would be really great to have you guys. So, yeah, that's it. Thank you.

[00:10:39] All right, the next on our list is Mary McClintock. Good evening.

[00:11:09] I would like to talk to you about policy 6640. Please continue to provide policy updates to 6640 as it will keep type 1 diabetics students safe and healthy. This year, I'll tell you our story.

[00:11:27] This year, due to concerns for our third grade daughter's safety, we withdrew her from her elementary school. After multiple 504 meetings, school administration and student health services would not follow VDOE guidance, the DMMP, doctor's orders, and ADA recommendations.

[00:11:52] My daughter is a brittle, asymptomatic type 1 diabetic, which means she cannot feel highs or lows, does not show symptoms, and her levels can change unpredictably and quickly. Her doctor's orders stated she must be continuously monitored through a device called CGM, including when she is on the playground or in a noisy environment where the alarms would not be audible to a nearby adult.

[00:12:26] So how do you ensure continuous monitoring? The CGM would have to be monitored on a remote device at the school. However, the supervisor of student health services told us that LCPS would not do this.

[00:12:43] In our final meeting, we requested the CGM policy, and we were advised there was no policy that it was practice, as the school board had not voted on this. We have since verified with the IT department that it is possible to use outside apps through a simple vetting process where they would evaluate for use on LCPS equipment.

[00:13:11] We also asked about training levels at the school for diabetes. We received no response. We even submitted a FOIA multiple times to find out the answer, but our queries came back each time with no information.

[00:13:30] When we withdrew her, we included a comment about our reasons for doing so. We received an email rebutting our reasons, and we responded with a detailed email clarifying our reasons and requesting a response to our concerns.

[00:13:48] We have yet to receive a reply. All through the process, we have documented via email and worked with an advocate. In our case, we were denied an individual health care plan and escort to the nurse's office when she goes low.

[00:14:08] The ability as parents to come in and render care and many more accommodations. Simply treating each child as if they have a low, if they show symptoms without reading CGM data is a dangerous practice as the symptoms for highs and lows are interchangeable.

[00:14:31] Please continue to provide policy updates to 6640 as it will keep children safe. using the technology to hear a beep look at numbers and train personnel properly can avert a emergency situation thank you very much thank you our final public comment is from leslie durden

[00:15:03] according to the individuals with disability act idea schools are legally obligated to adhere to provisions outlined in a student's individualized education program, IEP. The IEP serves as a legally binding document delineating the specialized education services and accommodations a student with disabilities is entitled to receive. In the case of my child, his IEP stipulates that he will receive services once a week for 30 minutes, totaling 1,080 minutes over the course

[00:15:39] of 36 weeks. However, LCPS is utilizing holidays as a means to evade this commitment. They assert that if a holiday falls on the day when the service provider is scheduled to work with your child, that time is forfeited. For instance, during the first two quarters alone, there are seven holidays that fall on a Monday. Consequently, this translates to 38% of the time during which our children will not receive services. During a recent data review meeting regarding my child's IEP goals, it came to light that the therapist missed seven sessions within the first two

[00:16:18] quarters. Shockingly, they are asserting that they are under no obligation to make up for this lost time unless it coincided with their own absence. Can we reasonably expect our children to make meaningful progress with such significant amount of missed time? It is imperative to emphasize that my child's IEP does not dictate a specific day for services. Rather, it specifies that he should receive services once a week for 30 minutes. Therefore, it is incumbent upon LCPS to ensure they fulfill their legal obligation by providing the designated services in accordance

[00:16:56] with the IEP. If necessary, they should consider hiring outside providers to ensure that this commitment is met. Thank you to all of our public comment sign-up people. People can always email their comments to me as the chair if they do not feel comfortable reading them aloud or are not able to make it to the meeting, or you can always sign up at the beginning of our meetings in order to make public comment. Next, we're going to move on to our reports and updates and announcements from the Office of Special Education, Dr. Carter.

[00:17:38] Good evening, everyone. I hope you were able to stay dry today. I'm going to be sharing my usual updates with numbers and students that we're serving and also vacancies, but tonight I'm also going to share with you our annual plan, as is required, and we'll have some time for questions about that, and then I'm going to share the results of the most recent audit from the Virginia Department of Education.

[00:18:07] I'm going to take this off because it's making noise. Sorry about that. But we're currently serving 10,309 students with disabilities. That is about 80 over last month, so we continue to grow. And this is our chart for vacancies.

[00:18:23] We are slightly up in TA vacancies over last month, but it is my understanding since the last count that three have been hired. So we are holding fairly steady to finish out the year. I can't believe it's already April. All right. Well, we're going to talk about our annual plan. And the annual plan is something that is required. It is an application that we submit to VDOE in order to access our federal funds. The federal funds come down from the federal government to the state level. We apply

[00:18:58] for our funds and they come. It isn't a competitive grant of any kind. The amount of money that we are to receive is based on our child count from two-ish years ago. It's usually about a two-year delay and it cycles around. So it's not as if our application, if we changed it, we would get more money. It simply is an application to submit for how we're going to use the money and that we are going to follow regulations in order to implement that plan. So the other thing, it serves as a

[00:19:33] formal agreement. When we submit it, Dr. Spence signs it saying LCPS will adhere to those regulations. And funding is contingent upon approval of the plan and all the components. So it's all tied together with our federal funds. The components of the plan are the assurances and certifications I've talked about that we will indeed follow the law to implement special education with the funds we receive, that we maintain interagency agreements with jails so that our local jails, the juvenile detention center is part of that, and also the adult jail, but so that we can serve

[00:20:11] students who are incarcerated to make sure that they are receiving their education. And we do from time to time have students who are incarcerated, and we have a mechanism for learning about that and then supporting them through their IEP. In addition, there is a requirement called maintenance of effort that is a very complicated four part situation where they look at our money but basically the tenets of maintenance of effort is that we have to spend this year what we have

[00:20:44] spent before in special education. So regardless of circumstance and budget and all of those things our special ed funding cannot take a huge dive to the point of not maintaining our maintenance of effort to make sure that our students are served so that money cannot be a reason we do not provide their IEP or the requirements of their IEP. In addition there's a requirement called proportionate set aside and this is money that we have to exactly as it says set aside proportionately for students who are parentally placed or homeschooled,

[00:21:22] meaning that if a student is in a private school, for example, and they require speech and language services, we have funds set aside so that we can provide those services. And there's a calculation based on our total funding award, our total number of students, and the total number of students that are receiving those services.

[00:21:42] And so we set that money aside, and then after that is set aside, We take the sum total of what's left of our award and explain how we're going to use it. And I'm going to share that part with you now. So there is $14,765,044.60 remaining in the Title 6B 611 part of the grant.

[00:22:09] And I'm going to explain what that means. The 611 portion is for school age. So it's the part of Title VIB that is for special education for students who are in kindergarten all the way through postgraduate. And this set of money is going to purchase those positions that you see on the screen.

[00:22:28] And this is the same positions that were in the grant last year. In addition to that, the proportion that's set aside, $62,938.56 is there. And also, there was $23,930 left over, and we have set that aside for curriculum materials for instruction.

[00:22:55] Then, there is another portion of the grant that is for preschool ages 3 to 5, and that's $200,206. And as you can see, that amount of money does not go quite as far as the other. So with that, we pay for two of our ECSE teachers.

[00:23:12] then we have a small amount set aside for curriculum and materials for children ages three to five and that amount for proportionate set aside we actually have two students who fall under the proportionate set aside um in our last december one count in preschool so that's why that number is significantly smaller all right now i want to talk about just a little bit the impact to the budget so so that there's understanding um when i first started teaching the federal funds were a large portion of what was spent on special education but as special education has evolved

[00:23:49] remember I've been at this like 33 years so as it has evolved the amount of the local share has grown significantly when IDEA first was founded I believe it's 1975 for the first time the federal government promised 45 percent funding and school divisions and states states and localities would pick up the rest portion. But in reality, they've never funded over 20 percent. Right now, we're somewhere between 15 and 20 percent, depending on which statistic you look at. But IDEA, if there's

[00:24:28] ever something to lobby for at the federal level, it is full funding of IDEA, which would put that at about 45 percent. But being what it is, it is a good portion of money that we get to use, but it makes up about 4% of the total budget in the office of special education. So while the annual plan is a very big deal and we absolutely want to take advantage of this money, it is tied to all of our regulations. It is only 4% of our operating budget in my department. So I just, I wanted to make you guys aware of that because it was fascinating to me that it was supposed to

[00:25:04] cover half, but in reality it covers about 4%. Okay. So that is the annual plan presentation. I'm going to stop before I go into the other. Does anybody have any questions about that portion of our funding? I know it's a riveting presentation. Okay. The next part's better, I promise. Okay. This is our special education audit that comes through. It is cyclical special

[00:25:38] Education Audit, CSEA. The state came and met with us and have now provided their review. There were three phases to this review. The first review started in late October, early November, and I just want to give a shout out to my special education supervisors and the teams that they work with because they reviewed 584 files, individual separate files for this review and were during the self-assessment phase and then and they reviewed files that were not files of students they serve so i'm christy i see you right in front of me so i'm gonna if christy say supports harmony middle

[00:26:18] school she did not review any of the files at harmony middle school so we were very um we're very judicious about the way that we did that so that because sometimes you know if if it's something that that you were a part of you might not see an error um you would see maybe what was meant to be there. So we wanted to avoid any kind of accidental bias in that regard. So we were systematic about the way we were viewed. Then in January, right after we got back from Christmas break, like nobody sit down and warm the seat. Here they are. And so we met. They were here for three days and they visited several schools. I want to say it was 12 sites altogether. There were

[00:26:57] four teams of two and visited 12 sites. And they were able to spend a few hours at each school. they went into every special education classroom in the building and observed. They also spent time interviewing our staff while they were here and gained a lot of insight. They interviewed teachers, they interviewed administrators, and they even interviewed a few of the special ed supervisors.

[00:27:20] I spent some time with them, as did other administrators. So they got a full comprehensive view of our school division. And then, and after the on-site visit, I mean, it was a long wait from January to now. We received the final version of their letter of findings last week and that's what I'm going to review with you now. So here are the components of the letter of findings and I feel like I want to explain them a little bit because the second and third one are very similar. So identified strengths, that's easy and we had lots of them to be proud of that I'm going to share

[00:27:55] with you. There were also a category called emerging areas in need of improvement. So this is things that are going well. They are emerging, but there are components to them that we noticed that I want you to be aware of for intentional improvement. Not a bad thing, just something we noticed. Then the next area, area of focus for program improvement, were things that, you know, this was confusing or it's not non-compliant, but it needs your attention. And then there were non-compliance findings. And so I'm going to go through each one of them and tell you what our plan is going forward to address those. I'm going to start with strengths, as every good person

[00:28:33] should. They bragged about our unified programs, that we have students with disabilities and students without disabilities doing things together, sports, music, all kinds of activities in schools. They also noted good instruction and rigor of content in all the sites that they visited, which was wonderful. And I would like to point out that I did not get to select the sites for their visits. So I did make two recommendations of the 12 of places I wanted them to see,

[00:29:06] but they absolutely made the list. They noted differentiation of instruction. They talked to students as they were in the classroom. Students were aware of the processes and procedures and the items in their IEP. There was use of technology in the classroom, including assistive technology. Specialized reading instruction happened through middle school, which they were very delighted about when we met. They said often that really specialized reading instruction is only at the elementary level in lots of places they visit. And they saw it at the secondary level

[00:29:42] here, and I was really pleased about that because I knew it was happening, and I'm glad they got to see it. And we have very infrequent out-of-school suspensions of our students with disabilities. They also noted creative ways for CTE credentialing at some of our high schools.

[00:29:59] They noted our overall pass rates for students with disabilities was higher than the state average and has been for some time, I would like to note. The schools were well managed and had a positive climate, and one of the things they said was, even in the hallway, like, that was great.

[00:30:16] They also noted the scheduling of special education first in the master schedules, which is crucial for getting our students the services that they need. They also noted principals out and about and actively interacting and working with students with disabilities. They noted dual endorsement of special education staff, especially at the secondary level, so not only is the special education teacher in the algebra classroom endorsed in special education, but also endorsed in algebra. They also noted that our speech-language pathologists we're leading instruction for the whole class rather than pulling out for language in several

[00:30:53] places so and I think that is all the strengths yep so what I want to say about that is I'm going to formally celebrate these things with the school board next week in a similar presentation and we're also going to celebrate these things with the principals and we're and as a team we're going to brainstorm several of these items how we can continue and grow this for example our speech-language pathologists pushing in to really focus on language in places where that would be critical. That's an amazing use of our time, and I'm glad that they noted it. So for the identified

[00:31:29] strengths area, we want to find ways to multiply the things that they saw across the division. Okay, so the emerging areas in need of improvement, and I must admit, I must have skimmed the little directions on the letter because I thought, what do you mean? Data collection is consistent. That's not an area in need of improvement, but the letter even goes on to say that everywhere they went, there was data, there was data binders, but in the parent interviews that they did, a parent reported challenging processing getting copies of data, which we've talked about as a SEAC team before, that policy has been changed, or it wasn't a policy, it was

[00:32:08] a practice, that practice has been changed to make it easier for parents to get copies of data, and the reason that that is noted as yellow is because that is something we have already changed since their visit in January. So there'll be a couple of other things you'll see that we've noted.

[00:32:25] They also talked about co-teaching, that it was really great. It was prevalent in all the places that they visit. But during the interviews, and they did interview co-teaching pairs together, and when they did, they noted a little bit of ambiguity, that's a hard word for me, of roles and responsibilities of the teams.

[00:32:44] So some of our co-teaching pairs really don't have that down to a science, and the roles aren't super clear. Good things are happening. Co-teaching is prevalent. Students are benefiting. But those really hard-defined roles and systems for co-teaching weren't as evident in all places.

[00:33:03] And I do want to note on this report, even if they saw it in one place, they noted it. So, and I don't know how many places, but one is enough. So we're going to work through that and really beef up our focus on co-teaching and our offerings for professional development.

[00:33:20] And then the next one was caseload standards. While we are immensely proud of our caseload standards here, our staffing standards here in Loudoun, the one place where we really struggle or have struggled is early childhood special education. We do fine in the beginning of the year, sorry, in the beginning of the year.

[00:33:37] But as we progress through the year and more students, because it is rolling enrollment, you know, as students become eligible. And the classes get larger and larger and larger. And before you know it, we are past our max. And we have more than 10. We have more than 11.

[00:33:53] Last year we got to 12 in some places. We're a little better off this year. We haven't gotten to that point yet. We added some classrooms last year. But we are adding 12 classrooms. At least we are opening 12 classrooms and going to be searching for teachers for next year.

[00:34:11] And with that, with those 12 teachers on board and the trends and the growth we have every year, we should be in a much better place and no longer in need of improvement there. I probably should have colored that one yellow. But I will color it yellow when there are teachers in those positions.

[00:34:28] The next was areas of focus for program improvement. So as I said, these were things that they saw that they're not noncompliant, but it's something we need to think about. And a few of them were like, why is that on there? and I really want to share with you. So in some of the co-teaching classes, students with disabilities were pulled out for some instruction.

[00:34:50] And while I can see that as maybe a concern if we're only pulling out for instruction, but clearly we're not, it's a co-teaching situation. So I really want us to do a bit of a study on how many students are being pulled out and for what reason. I know at one of our elementary schools, students that are being pulled out to go to another setting, they're not all students with disabilities.

[00:35:12] We're just dividing the group for focus. So I'm a little, you know, confused by that one because I don't have a lot of data around it, but we're going to work to get some to figure that out to see if indeed that is a problem or if it was a misinterpretation of what was happening in the setting where they were.

[00:35:29] And it could be either one, but worth a look. And the next one is instruction in self-contained settings. They noted that some of the instruction appeared not age or grade appropriate. Some of our students may have preferences. that are beyond or below their age level but are still a preference for them and that is something that is apparent.

[00:35:50] But even in instructional practices, we want to make sure that what we are presenting is age appropriate or grade appropriate, more like what their peers would be interacting with. And they also noted that some activities had no connection to instructional goals.

[00:36:06] And while I can certainly understand that as a concern if it is prevalent and something that happens all the time, there are moments during the day when students self-select activities and do things for a break that may not be an actual instructional activity.

[00:36:24] So I want to do some observations and our team will go out and sort of look for those things to get a better handle on what exactly did they mean so we can make some improvements with professional development there. The next one was access to manipulatives.

[00:36:40] In one classroom, the actual letter that will be public-facing says, for students who still count on their fingers, give access to manipulatives. And the research says that counting on your fingers is a form of manipulatives, and it is always with you.

[00:36:57] We should not require a student to use something else if what they need is right here. and I don't know about you, but when I am taxed or tired, right here, to make sure that I have, I've remembered everything, right, or whatever. So I don't, I thought that one was a little strange, just to be quite candid with you, but we certainly do need to make sure that there are manipulatives in every setting, so that if a student needs it, they can certainly access it. And I have been to almost 75 schools, and I have yet to see a place without manipulatives. So I'm thinking that this is not a huge area of concern, but we're going to make sure.

[00:37:36] And then the next one was there were some classrooms, and I believe these were program classrooms, where visual timers, visuals, plain timers, communication devices were not used in all settings, and that warranted these supports. So I'm thinking that one of our strengths was we absolutely used those things in the classroom.

[00:37:56] So maybe when we exit the classroom to go to another class, we don't take it with us. And we certainly need to do that. So that's an area of program improvement that we can make very easily. Okay, here are the areas of noncompliance that we are going to immediately work on.

[00:38:15] The ones in yellow, we have already issued corrective action or performed a corrective action on them. And we'll continue to monitor those throughout the coming weeks and months and probably years as the state requires. So that first one, the maximum caseloads in early childhood special ed settings, that came up here again.

[00:38:36] The Child Find program, there are some requirements of screenings that we have to do. We screen for vision, for hearing, for gross motor, for scoliosis. And there was not always documentation of those screenings in the file.

[00:38:53] Now, some of our documentation is now kept digitally. So finding a way to get those noted in the actual student record will be important, but also making sure that those screenings are something that we do on a regular basis. They are required by special ed regulation, but we didn't have the documentation.

[00:39:10] And you'll see a little bit of that theme of missing documentation. Here, not missing action, but missing documentation. And then the timely processing of those referrals. if a student was referred for a hearing screening or an audiological, having the documentation and make sure that those are processed in a timely manner.

[00:39:34] Evaluation and re-evaluation, there were a few areas they noted. Our audiologicals did not always make it back to the student record, even though they were noted in the file, and the record of the trail to the audiologist and back was something we need to work on to make sure that's clean, And our HI folks have already begun that work.

[00:39:55] We also, the documentation of reports to parents at least two days in advance. They are absolutely at the school and made available two days in advance in everywhere I have checked so far. But there isn't documentation of letting parents know that they are ready and available two days in advance.

[00:40:14] It says it on one of our notifications, the parent consent for evaluation. It says that they'll be ready two days in advance, but we don't have another system of notifying parents. So we're going to be working on that and also working with our Virginia IEP to see if there's a way we can systematically do that.

[00:40:31] And in addition, there was evidence of VDOE eligibility criteria for all disability categories. We are waiting clarification on this one. In eligibility, there are 13 areas that you can be eligible for.

[00:40:50] um, under, um, under, um, Virginia regulations, and of those categories, we don't physically run down the list for every single one of them in every eligibility meeting, because there are, there are certain things that we're looking for, we're answering an eligibility question. So, our question to VDOE is, do you want documentation that we have reviewed every single one, or that we have considered every single one? And it was unclear. We do consider all the categories and note that we have, but we don't use the checklist for every single category because sometimes it's not appropriate for the student need. So we

[00:41:29] are going to work through that with VDOE and whatever their recommendation is what we will do. And then the FAPE documentation of functioning hearing aids or components. So we are required to check the functioning of hearing aids, any auditory listening device, those kinds of things, check the functioning of them, make sure the batteries are working. Are they malfunctioning? And that is something that we regularly do when we meet with students, but we did not have a systematic documentation system for that. We do now. It's already corrected and has gone out to the schools, and we are piloting that right now so that when we do

[00:42:08] our corrective action, it will be something that's ready to go. The consideration of assistive technology in our IEPs needs to be tightened up a bit, and we are certainly going to do that. They also noted that in one, and at least, it said at least one IEP, I'm not sure what that means, but at least one IEP, there was documentation of a need of the consideration for ESY, and that it would be considered at a later date that year, but the team did then not meet later that year.

[00:42:40] So really making sure that if we say we're going to consider this later, we're going to set the date before we leave the meeting or set a reminder to make sure that we're doing that and then the next one is within our IEPs there wasn't always evidence of the team members who were present there were a couple of the files that were pulled that did not have everyone listed on the front or on the notification so we are we are tightening up that process and also the use of excusal forms This is one where we say, you know, Mrs. Smith, is it okay if we excuse Tom?

[00:43:17] He's already finished with his portion of the IEP, and the parent would either say, yes, absolutely, or no, I'd like him to stay longer. And if the parent says, yes, absolutely, we have an IEP excusal form that the parent should then sign noting that Tom did not stay for the entire meeting.

[00:43:33] So, and we are not consistently using those, so that is going to be an area of improvement that we work through. And then the other one that I've already shared with you and we have already sent out to schools in corrective action is written notice of IEP meetings. What we do is we call and say, Mrs. Martinez, are you available on Friday for an IEP meeting in two weeks?

[00:43:54] And Mrs. Martinez says yes and we put it on the calendar and we invite everyone and we don't send her the written notice. And the problem with that is there is regulatory language on the written notice that parents need to receive. that one of them being that you can bring anyone you wish to the IEP meeting and there's no other place where you are informed of that right so we want to make sure that you are receiving that written notice and we have already sent that out to the schools and we'll be regularly following up on that and the last area was an area of IEP accountability which we are going to really work

[00:44:30] through our systems but during parent and teacher interviews there were some staff members mostly staff members that reported concerns about being discouraged from increasing services or moving a student to a more restrictive placement. And while that is an IEP team decision without question, and that is where those discussions should take place, I can certainly see where we have practices that protect students from being placed in a more restrictive placement as well.

[00:45:02] So if the team feels like the behavior, for example, is too much to be handled in the current setting and the student isn't making progress because of that behavior, we would ask, is there an FBA? Have we done a BIP?

[00:45:18] How is that going before we jump to another placement? So for some folks, that might feel like being discouraged. but either way IEP decisions about placement and services and accommodations and goals take place in an IEP meeting and not somewhere else so at the moment when a team like a staffing for ideas meeting or anything like that turns to any component of the IEP that's when we stop that meeting and we invite everyone to an IEP meeting because brainstorming is a natural part of our

[00:45:54] process. But we absolutely have to make sure that we are not making IEP team decisions outside of the IEP meeting. And that was the concern that was noted, or at least my interpretation of the concern that was noted in the letter. And so we're going to be talking more with VDOE as we develop our corrective action plans. And this is actually something that we're going to be talking about as a team to brainstorm how to make sure that there is a clear understanding of what is the component

[00:46:25] of an IEP meeting. But I do want to say that when I met with VDOE, they were largely positive and very impressed with what happens in Loudoun County and had ultimate confidence. The other thing that came out in the audit was that folks were concerned that people, teachers were worried about staffing, that they did not have enough staffing to accomplish it in the manner in which they thought was best to meet the needs of a student. Of course, we're always, you've heard me

[00:47:01] talk about staffing and how important it is to maintain our staffing standard because we are successful and we know that our staffing standard is part of that reason. But it is in VDOE in the letter which you guys will see um when it's posted it said that um that this we are well below the state standard and we need to make sure that our people knew that and I thought well okay but no I mean you know we do remind folks that we are um truly um we have an exorbitant staffing standard in my opinion like it's wonderful I'm very proud of it I don't want to lose it but that isn't

[00:47:41] something that I would ever hold over staff. That's something that we are, it came for a reason and we're very proud of it and would like to maintain it. It's good for students. So our next steps are to celebrate the many strengths that were noted and celebrate them widely and spread them. The next thing is that we need to do as part of this process is to create a corrective action plan for each area of non-compliance, but I am also going to add a few items that were in those things we need to work on like co-teaching um we will write an internal corrective action for that but it won't be required by the state but they will ask us about it when they monitor so we're going

[00:48:19] to be ready and um we're going to talk about um the areas of professional development that we need to do as part of that cap as well and then we're going to increase our focus on things that were noted for improvement and we're going to conduct regular fidelity checks across the division that are for everything that is in our corrective action and this is all part of the VEOE monitoring process and our cap compared to ones that I have seen is quite small and I'm very encouraged by that and when I got the letter I was very proud of the work that our teachers and administrators do in

[00:48:56] our schools so I hope you will be too I mean it's easy to focus on the areas of non-compliance but I am, I am, while we are going to work on those right away so that they will not, no longer be areas of non-compliance, I want to focus on the fact that we are doing really good things for kids and it was noted and noticed in our letter. Okay. Any questions about all of that? That was a lot of talking. Hi, I'm Jennifer Ellison. I'm the representative from Waxful. And first, I want to

[00:49:35] second, you know, all of the great work that's done across the county. I guess my one concern, you know, that I hear consistently is on the staffing, and I know you said that you're very proud of the numbers, but I think that there's a documented need, you know, so I was just a little bit concerned. I felt like that got a little bit brushed off, so I just wanted to see if you could explain that a little bit better. Sure. We are, as far as the VDOE audit is concerned, they brushed past that very quickly because their standard is based on a point system. So if a cross-categorical

[00:50:13] teacher, for example, could have up to, I think it's as high as 24, but 22 points is where a lot of people stay. So there's a little room. If you are in the classroom 100% of the time or more than 50%, you would be two points. If you're less than 50%, you would be one point. And no teacher can have more than 22 points. Well, if you had all students that were there, less than 50% of the day, which is the majority of over 80% of the students here in Loudoun County, you would have 22 students on your caseload. That's more than double of what a lot of our case managers have.

[00:50:51] So while that is the state regulation, and that is what we absolutely cannot go past, I don't want to be anywhere near that. I think when, and the way that we are thinking about staffing is if any teacher gets to that 15 level we look for another teacher we work to get an additional staff at that school and very rarely I think that's only happened this year in two places and one was because of vacancies but there were long-term subs in place and I had folks from my office in the school every single day providing instruction as well and in another place it got

[00:51:25] to 15 and we immediately added staff immediately as fast as the as fast as it turns but I absolutely don't want you to think that we're brushing past that staffing is something that I work on every single day the first question that was asked actually answered one of my questions so I only

[00:52:01] have one left there was some communication regarding and if I have this wrong correct me that there were staffs cutting for next year, two TAs and one special education teacher. Is that still happening? Right now we are basing, we are still basing it on that one.

[00:52:20] It's one to 10, an average of one to 11 is where we were staffed for this year across the division. And so based on that for teachers and our ratio for, and I think I shared this at the last CAC meeting, The staffing that we're using right now for TAs is 1 to 19 instead of 1 to 14, because there's a holdback of TAs to make sure, because in the spring we have new eligibilities.

[00:52:46] We also have a lot of movement due to special permission. I know there were around 200 that came through today. Okay, I thought that was right. Special permission requests, and that's just students with disabilities. so there's a lot of movement and then there's also transfers of students that come in and out so I have right now a hold back waiting for numbers to settle and we'll have another round of additional staff for those that are above that threshold I believe on the 15th of April I think

[00:53:18] that's the next date the next staffing comes out so yes some schools will lose had to be de-staffed but that's only because their numbers dropped below that threshold. So we have not changed that mark of no more than 15 ever, and 1 to 10, 1 to 11 being the goal is still right there.

[00:53:40] So we're still trying to keep that staffing standard exactly where it is, but yes, some schools did have de-staffing due to their numbers. For example, there was one high school that has a very small incoming 9th grade class that had a very large graduating class, So they're losing four CrossCat teachers because of the difference in size, if that makes sense.

[00:54:01] Okay. We've got some questions online, too. What exactly were the changes made regarding data?

[00:54:24] At my last data review meeting, this was never brought up, which was in January. What specialized reading instruction was noted in the secondary schools? I can answer the first part about the data review. The guidance from our office to schools now is before, if parents requested copies of data, we would say that you have to come in and have a data review meeting and you can take pictures of the data was the probably most extreme version of that practice. Now, the guidance is if parents

[00:55:01] request copies of data, we ask and recommend that you come in and have the person who took the data go over it with you, but if you do not want to do that, you do not have to, and we will provide copies of the data. So those barriers are no longer something that is guidance coming from our office that has been shared with designees, with teachers on March 5th, with principals.

[00:55:26] The practice, the official first rollout of that was near the end of January, somewhere around 18th, 19th of January. It first went out, and then it has been rolling out continually in different venues since then. So it takes a while to change a practice in a division our size but that guidance has changed. And I don't know the second part of the question. The second part was what specialized reading instruction was noted in the secondary schools? Did they note what kind of specialized reading instruction? They did not name a brand or a curriculum or anything like that

[00:56:05] but there was specialized reading instruction happening in a separate, you know, like in a resource class for students at the secondary level. And then the next question, where can we find a copy of the audit report from VDOE? That, um, I will have to ask VDOE if they're going to post it, but we're going to make it available on our website next week. Okay, final call. Any

[00:56:33] questions? Okay, thank you, Paige. All right, thank you. All right, next we have Ms. Tedra Richardson with our Department of Student Services update. Thank you, Ms. Karate. Thank you, Dr.

[00:56:57] Carter, for such a comprehensive update. That was fantastic. I have a few celebrations this evening. It's good to see everyone. Thank you all for being here. I want to highlight, reflect, and connect. Ms. Karate, this presentation is sent to everyone. Is that correct? Awesome. So if you click the Reflect and Connect link, it would take you to a site on our web page where we have our Office of Diagnostic and Prevention Services, our social and emotional learning team has

[00:57:31] partnered with communications and community engagement, and they have created a set of 52 prompts that inspire thought and conversation. It is meant to support us as adults. You can utilize these prompts with your students they're going to be used at staff meetings we've given copies of the cards to all of our school board members and so they are meant to really to build and focus on the skills of fostering listening making sure that we're talking to one another and

[00:58:05] not at each each other but actively engaged making sure that we're working on reflecting right on how we're being experienced by others making sure that we're built we're building empathy and working on having those hard conversations so just wanted to highlight that work you guys can get access when you click the link on reflect and connect wanted to give a quick budget update so first and foremost thank you all to SEAC for your for your advocacy in our

[00:58:36] budget for the 24-25 school year. I would like to recognize the support and continued advocacy of our school board, and we do have Chair Mansfield here with us this evening. She continues to collaborate with the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, and we as staff are continuing to answer any questions that they may have so that our proposed budget and adopted budget is fully funded going into FY25. We are still awaiting the final budget allocations from the state, so we are hopeful, with fingers crossed, that we'll get that information this month.

[00:59:16] Wanted to give a quick update on the superintendent's entry plan. He will be providing another school board update at the board meeting on April 2023. Some of the actions from that plan that impact the Department of Student Services specifically, looking at our multi-tiered system of supports or MTSS and student behaviors across the division, that action has been completed.

[00:59:43] We have also been providing updates on the recommendations from the mental health task force. So that action is completed. And the mental health task force has been rebranded to the LCPS Student Mental Health Alliance. And then we are in progress on our third party special education audit. And lastly, just want to highlight some of the presentations that were provided to the board in the month of March from the Department of Student Services. We did have presentations from the Office of Student Mental Health Services, as well as the Office of Diagnostic

[01:00:21] and Prevention Services. Mr. John Lodi and Dr. Stephanie LaPalla presented on MTSS. They went over the framework and talked about academics, behavior, and social and emotional learning. And then Mrs. Jennifer Evans, the director of student mental health services, gave an update on the work to date on the mental health task force that was created in July of 2021.

[01:00:46] Those recommendations have been completed. We're happy to celebrate that. And really, the rest of the presentation was focused on our forward movement, the things we have in place now, and our enhanced community partnerships. and that is my update for this evening thank you very much thank you Tedra all right new business we are going to go ahead and admit our virtual attendees but first let's um just go through real

[01:01:19] quick Carla do you want to do a roll call Elizabeth Baird I think she's virtual Zena Bellaret. I'm virtual. Sorry. Zina. Zina. Beth Carlson. She's virtual. She's virtual. Liz Crotty. Jennifer DiDonato. Virtual. She's also virtual. Catherine Lambert. I don't see her

[01:01:55] virtual. No. She was supposed to be virtual, but okay. She never requested. Tom Ketchum. He's

[01:02:04] Shanaaz Khan, Rosina Katak, Rosina, thank you, Alicia McFadden, Craig Metz, Catherine Moran, Sarah Plattenberg, Lakshmi Rakhavan, Aaron Rozelle Poe, Catherine Rosenbrook, Carla Sola, Sharon Trope, she was having trouble getting on, Melissa Waugh, and Sakina Zarbush, thank you.

[01:02:42] so do we have our 10 members 11 okay great um i will entertain a motion to admit our virtual attendees okay katie makes the motion is there a second shana seconds all right um everyone in favor raise your hand say aye aye all opposed nay any abstentions all right um beth elizabeth

[01:03:12] jennifer and melissa you guys are all admitted to the meeting yeah okay um i sent out the minutes from January, February, and March to all of our members to review.

[01:03:30] Does anyone have any changes or alterations to the minutes? Hearing none. What is it we can just say? So moved or something?

[01:03:48] Okay. Do I need a motion, Craig? Without objection, unanimous consent. Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. Now we will move on to meaningful inclusion. We had hoped to provide our inclusive playground recommendations tonight, but there were some mitigating circumstances and the recommendations weren't ready in time for us to have.

[01:04:23] For those who don't know, we have a very thorough review process. Before we bring recommendations to you all, generally we have our co-chairs writing recommendations. Then we have multiple people who go through and provide edits and suggestions and sometimes multiple times going back and forth to really try to get the wording right for you all.

[01:04:46] So because it was just so rushed and last minute, I didn't feel comfortable bringing it to you guys in this state. I want to make sure that when we do bring our recommendations, that they are very well thought out, they've gotten everyone's input, and that we are then providing something of high quality to our school board to consider.

[01:05:07] So we will, I do have the first draft of those recommendations, and we will work quickly to get through them, as well as the report and information, and then we will share that with all of you just a heads up the report I think is 43 pages long we may do some editing down to try to make it a little more digestible but so we'll give you plenty of time in order to review that prior to our May meeting but what we do have for you tonight is the meaningful inclusion

[01:05:44] subcommittee Carla would you like to speak to this because you are our co-chair but if you're busy with the, that's fine too. I can, I can, I can do this for you. I just want to make sure that I'm not stealing the microphone. So one of the things we've talked about all year long is what is meaningful inclusion? Like what is this definition? There's no set definition out there.

[01:06:08] We had our presentation on meaningful inclusion that we did a couple months back and we got input from everyone who attended. We then met again as a subcommittee and spoke about it more. We've taken, different members have taken some different tries at it to come up with different definitions.

[01:06:30] We kind of did was melded them all together. And this is what we ended up with. And I apologize because it looks like a little bit of it is cut off. So let me just pull it up so I can at least read it for you.

[01:06:51] Okay, so we champion inclusive, we champion practices and thinking that embrace our broad diversity and abilities, and we presume the potential of each learner. Everyone shall have equitable opportunities to learn, access resources, and pathways to fully explore, engage, and collaborate in all aspects of the school community as integral members. We use an intentional mindset

[01:07:29] with strategies, designs, policies, and practices to anticipate and respond to individual strengths and needs. We cultivate a welcoming, supportive, and respectful environment which provides a foundation for individual success, promoting a sense of value and belonging in all.

[01:07:47] And this is, just to provide that clarification, this is what we think LCPS's definition of meaningful inclusion should be. But we would like to bring it to you all now and get any feedback you have on that.

[01:08:07] Or, okay, I'll let Craig.

[01:08:18] I know you've been working on this a long time and I hate to be that guy, but I'm going to be that guy. This looks like this was written by like management consultants and a committee.

[01:08:36] I think we really got to tighten it up. One thing that leaps out at me is that it is not falsifiable, that we could have this. And everybody today can say we are always meaningful included at all times. There's no what this isn't. There's no way to test it.

[01:08:53] There's no way to say this is, this isn't. There's no way to look at this and know what we should be changing. So I feel like there's still a little bit of work to do here. Yeah, I think those are great points. I think one of the issues I had with what we ended up with is that it felt very long.

[01:09:12] What I was hoping that we would come to was something that felt very digestible and understandable. And that could be something that we present to our students. like at the middle school level and the high school level, and they could see this and be like, yeah, like this is what meaningful inclusion.

[01:09:29] And while I really like a lot of the words that we have in this definition, I personally feel like it's a little, it's like we, it's just like too many things in our soup, maybe.

[01:09:47] I agree with that. A term we've used in discussion as an antonym for meaningful inclusion is excluded in place. So excluded in places, an example is when we just place a student in gen ed without the supports they need.

[01:10:03] So they're physically in the room. They're just not learning or participating or accessing anything. And there are folks around here who seem to think that that's inclusion because, you know, a box got checked that their body is there in that classroom. So I think it may also help if we look at this in how would we define this in a way that we can say what it is and what it is not.

[01:10:24] Because what, of course, we're trying to do is we're trying to push more towards what we want it to be and to get more of that. But I agree with you. There's just too many philosophical words, not measurable words, frankly, squishy words or intention words, as opposed to a more operational definition or observable definition.

[01:10:43] Do you, by chance, have a definition that you had come up with? I personally really liked Liz's. She had put together, we were all brainstorming. Paige, yes, sorry.

[01:11:01] I just want to make sure that this, and I, of course, I was listening into some of the development of this definition. And I do want you to know that the committee painstakingly thought about all of this. And I think the definition of meaningful inclusion, whatever is landed on by SEAC, is something that we strive for.

[01:11:22] It is the goal. It is what we are looking for. Then from that definition of what we are looking for, and sometimes inclusion is squishy. It feels good, and I think your definition needs to include some of those things, but from that, then you operationalize and turn it into something that can be measured and observed, but I think that we have to start with more of a mindset than an operational definition when you're thinking about, you know, the thousands of folks who are, who impact and are impacted by meaningful inclusion, so I think that we need to, while I agree

[01:12:01] with everything you're saying Mr. Metz that that I like definitions that are observable we can take data on them we know it's happening um as a special educator that that's how I live my life but I also think there has to be a place from which we start and there has to be something we strive for so um I think a measure can come from whatever your definition is but but I don't want us to um lose the intent of the definition in the operationalizing either it's a balance

[01:12:46] I also think to third because there was already a second that but to third some of what we've just said while this may seem wordy right and while we may agree with that I do want us to remember that we engaged in a very collaborative meaningful activity here at SEAC and we took a lot of those what we're now saying seem to be a certain type of words that invoke a certain type of feeling but every one of those words on that screen was said by someone in this room or someone that was logged in virtually and we tried to narrow it down to the words that we felt like embodied again

[01:13:25] the goal that we are looking to strive toward for all students so we don't want to pare it down so no this wasn't written by someone outside of here it was actually written by everyone that was here that day. So we do want to make sure that our definition is still representative of the collaboration that we've done. So while it might not be at its final stage, we want to remember that it needs to be representative of what everyone in this room said was important to them and what they thought the definition for their children or everyone else's children meant. So we

[01:14:02] don't want to lose that spirit of the definition either. Just a reminder. And I think what we're going to try to, we want to find that balance of not sounding too administrative, having that feeling in there where that sense of belonging, I think that that's a very important piece of having that phrase put in there because that is what meaningful inclusion means, right? It's like a sense of belonging. And I think that part is very important. But yeah, I think what we're trying to do is just balance it so it doesn't sound like it's a really mission statement. It's more of

[01:14:42] what do we want this to be? Hi, Bridget Vinge, Dominion Trail Representative. I have a question about this, though. Definitions are so much about also messages, and messages convey concepts, and concepts are really meant to be conveyed to a specific audience or they're best written when they're intended for specific audiences.

[01:15:06] For this term, meaningful inclusion, what's its use case? What's it being used for? I mean, I think right now it's, I don't know that it is necessarily being used in a widespread way.

[01:15:25] We talk a lot about inclusion at our schools. I think there's a lot of efforts to meaningfully include. And I think it's trying to come up with a way to describe what it is that we should all, as individuals, as schools, as community members, be hoping to achieve.

[01:15:47] And just to provide some context, what we were hoping to do is to come out of this meeting or a future meeting with a definition that we feel comfortable with and then to take it to our Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility, have them take a look at it, bring it to the equity committee, have them take a look at it and see if we can come up with something that, you know, as a school division, we can all agree on.

[01:16:18] is what we're hoping to see and to shoot for aspirationally in our schools. So that there can be this common understanding that when we do talk about inclusion, like this is what we're going for so that we at least have something that we can point to as LCPS.

[01:16:39] Does that answer your question? Yes, thank you for explaining that. But I just think too, for example, definitions tend to be a little bit more succinct. I do agree with the gentleman. And while this information can absolutely be included in a broader concept when explaining the implementation of this definition, the actual wording, to me, is dancing around the actual definition, not creating it.

[01:17:06] So while I absolutely applaud all the efforts and inclusion of all the information from previous meetings, I do think it can be a lot tighter with the idea of where it's first going to be presented. To your point about, hey, we want to be able to walk into a classroom and say, this is what kids, this is what meaningful inclusion is.

[01:17:22] And my guessing is that that's going to now become a primary term used within various collateral and communication plans when speaking about DEI efforts and SPED and integration efforts. Is that correct? Yeah, I think that's the hope. Yeah, for sure.

[01:17:38] Craig? Madam Chair, I move to refer the issue back to subcommittee, back to the Meaningful Inclusion Subcommittee. Sure.

[01:17:56] Chinaz, she had asked previously if I could read the other definition. Do we want to do that first? Okay, and then we can. Okay. We did have a second. Okay. Now we can discuss.

[01:18:11] Okay. Now we can discuss. Okay. All right. So, I will tune in. Can I give us a checklist of how to do this every time? Actually, Dr. Carter gave me a nice little checklist, and I haven't looked at it yet. So, just going to me culpa.

[01:18:29] All right. So, let's see. What I had written, and actually, Shanaz and I had talked about this, and we still really liked the last sentence of the definition from the subcommittee. But what I had put in including that last sentence was meaningful inclusion is both a mindset and a practice.

[01:18:51] In LCPS, we proactively design environments, curriculum, and activities to facilitate a sense of belonging for all students. We celebrate the diversity of our student community by recognizing and working from each student's strengths and always presuming the potential of each student.

[01:19:10] And then we would go into, we cultivate a welcoming, supportive, and respectful environment, which provides a foundation for individual success, promoting a sense of value and belonging and all. Thank you.

[01:19:27] Just what I am hearing of this discussion is a broad consensus that we like the direction, but that this is not fully baked. And so that's what subcommittees are for. Perfect. Okay. All right. So is there any further discussion? Hearing none.

[01:19:44] All in favor of referring back to subcommittee? Raise your hand. Say aye. Aye. All opposed. Nay. Any abstentions? Perfect. All right. Thank you, guys. All right. Our next order of business is election of officers. So I am going to invite Carla Sola and Alicia McFadden to come up and share the report from the nomination

[01:20:18] subcommittee okay so currently the nominating committee nominates liz crotty for chair

[01:20:54] katherine moran for the vice chair of planning parla sola for the vice chair of membership aaron roselle poe for the vice chair of communications and katie rosenbrook for secretary are there any further nominations i'll take that part so you guys just present thank you guys for sharing your report at this time um we will open up the floor to any further

[01:21:21] nominations um for our virtual members no further nominations all right so um then i will go ahead and we'll entertain a motion to approve the officer slate from the nominating committee

[01:21:47] all in favor of accepting the slate of nominating committee raise your hand and say aye all opposed nay any abstentions all right then oh and sorry we're going to go through the virtual

[01:22:17] sorry i missed you guys before um beth carlson hi elizabeth bayard hi jennifer de donato hi melissa wall hi all right that carries unanimously um yes congratulations i'm very excited to work with all of my new officers and returning officers next year i think we're gonna have a fantastic year. I'm very excited. All right. So now for our reports and updates section,

[01:22:56] we have a did you know on extended school year, otherwise known as ESY. I'd heard there was a lot of chatter in the community with people coming up and asking questions and Facebook chatter and all that stuff. And so I thought this might be a good time of year, particularly with lots of IEPs going on to just do a little quick refresher on what qualifies for ESY and so Sharon has prepared a little something for all of us so Sharon are you she's on there oh sorry I didn't see her on the

[01:23:29] screen maybe not I can is she there okay Sharon I'm sorry I didn't let you vote either because I didn't see you on there. Are you able to unmute? Now I can. Yay. Welcome, Sharon. Come to let me in

[01:24:02] as a panelist. And I don't know, I don't know, always when you need to not have technology issues, you do. So, and mine was a yay, and welcome to the incoming board. So, to move on with the ESY, did you know it's that time of year? Some students with disabilities that have an IEP may require services beyond the normal school year during the summer or other school breaks in order to receive a free appropriate public education or better known as FAPE. These services are called

[01:24:41] extended school year or you'll hear ESY is their acronym. ESY services are different from summer school enrichment programs and compensatory education. The decision to provide ESY is made by the IEP team and is based on whether the child can receive FAPE without ESY. Any of the following factors alone or in combination can trigger the need for ESY if the IEP team decides that the interruption in services caused by a school break will significantly jeopardize the student's

[01:25:18] educational placement during the regular school year and or his or her ability to benefit from his or her educational program during the regular school year. These include regression and recruitment of critical life skills as a result of interruption, degree of progress towards critical life skills affected by interruption, emergent skills or breakthrough opportunities affected by interruption, impact of interfering behavior, impact on educational programming progress, the nature and severity of the disability, and special circumstances or other factors,

[01:25:58] the ability of the parents to provide educational structure at home, the ability of students to interact with students without disabilities, areas of the student curriculum which need continuous attention. ESY services are individualized. For the students, this will include instruction on specific educational subjects. For others, it may include related services like speech or occupational therapy. For some students, it will be a combination of services. Schools are only required to provide the specific services your child needs to ensure

[01:26:32] they receive faith. ESY is based only on the individual student's specific critical skills that are critical to his or her overall educational progress as determined by the IEP team. Designed to maintain student mastery of critical skills and objectives presented on the IEP and achieved during the regular school year.

[01:26:57] Designed to maintain a reasonable readiness to begin the next year and based on multi-criteria and not solely on regression. Consider as a strategy for minimizing the regression of skill, thus the short-time need to gain back the same level of skill proficiency that existed at the end of the school year.

[01:27:20] Deliverable in a variety of environments and structures. So there's just not, this is our ESY program and that's it. It has to be a variety of offerings. These could include home with the parent teaching and a staff consulting. It could be school-based.

[01:27:37] It could be school-based with community activities. It could be individual services provided in a school or community setting or related services alone or in tandem with any of the above. What is ESY not? So ESY is not a mandated 12-month service for all students with disabilities, not child care, not necessarily a continuum of the total IEP provided to your student during the regular school year, not required to be provided all day or every day, not required to be provided

[01:28:11] in a traditional classroom setting, and not a service to be provided to maximize each student's potential. Thank you, Liz. Thank you so much, Sharon, for that nice comprehensive overview of ESY.

[01:28:28] Okay, next we have our membership, and we are doing really nicely. We've got 77 schools with PTA, PTO representatives. 19, we didn't get those 19, but next year we're going to get them all.

[01:28:45] I'm confident. We have 20 voting members currently with one pending membership, which will hopefully be approved at Tuesday's school board meeting. Just as a reminder, membership application and SEAC bylaws are available on our SEAC page on the LCPS website.

[01:29:04] The executive committee will be meeting tonight at Clyde's after this business meeting. All are welcome. We met on Tuesday to discuss recommendations to be included in the school board presentation based off of subcommittee reports from 2022-2023, as well as the SEAC survey data.

[01:29:25] We reviewed SEAC award nominations over spring break. I'm going to let Shanaz give a nice update on that, so I'm not going to tell you. But winners will be announced in the coming weeks. Actually, I can't help it.

[01:29:42] The notifications to all of our nominees went out today, and my email has been getting blasted with all of these people finding out that they were nominated for their SEAC awards and seeing the principals and the supervisors are CC'd on them and seeing them write back little nice congratulatory notes is, like, awesome.

[01:30:02] It was the happiness that I needed on a dreary, rainy day. So congratulations to all of them for just being nominated. Yes, Craig, these are nominees. Winners have not been announced. This is just on being nominated, which truly is, like, such an honor.

[01:30:21] Like, someone took a very significant amount of time and wrote up, you know, very nice things about all of these people. So they should all really feel great about themselves for what they're doing. And so we did something different this year by providing these notifications.

[01:30:40] So hopefully, you know, everyone needs a little bit of sunshine and recognition for the hard work they're doing. And further announcement of winners will be coming. And we got 176 nominations. So that's, they kept us really busy over spring break, greeting them all.

[01:30:58] But it was so, it was so much fun. Okay, moving on to subcommittee reports. Carla, if it's okay with you, I'm going to skip meaningful inclusion because I think we kind of did that tonight. Policy and compliance, is there any update that you guys want to provide?

[01:31:18] Melissa? No, no updates from the policy subcommittee. Okay. Specialized program, specialized reading and math. Alicia and Erin, do you have an update you guys would like to provide?

[01:31:40] Okay, so I'll make this really quick. We've been covering a lot over the past few months. Just to kind of recap where we are, we've gone over kind of the difference between middle and high school differences between reading strategies and 21st century literacy as reading interventions for students.

[01:32:01] All-in tutoring global updates we're still waiting for. With our CIF teams, we've had 130 walkthroughs with different teachers completed. We're awaiting updates for the read-aloud accommodation criteria for the SOLs. Most recently, we discussed executive functioning skills needing to be included and taught not only for special education and Section 504 students, but for all children due to the higher demands in secondary schools, MTSS versus IEPs, understanding how your child may qualify for one and not the other, what interventions and goals are in place for MTSS students, and how that is monitored. Our next subcommittee meeting will be

[01:32:38] April 16th at 5 p.m. And the topic for our next work session is going to be on MTSS, so that'll be a really exciting one we'll have the date and time up in just a minute um shanaz do you have an update for us on transition in march we had our transition work session and to follow up on that in april we will have april 15th at 4 30 a virtual transition subcommittee meeting where we're going

[01:33:16] to sit down and discuss um all that was presented in the work session and we had renee dawson come We had some really good discussions about how we're going to move forward with our independent living labs. What are some of the basic items we would like to see that make up an independent living lab?

[01:33:37] How can we outfit some of the older schools? Because, you know, if they don't have the space, what can we do? What are some ideas that we can put together? We discussed our, you know, increasing our community partnerships, you know, for businesses.

[01:33:53] So we'll continue that discussion on April 15th. Mike, give us your SEAC Awards planning update. Shuts off after a while. So the planning update is we are going to finish reviewing all of our nominations.

[01:34:14] We are planning to get the final list out by probably, I want to say like towards the third week of April. Just get that out. And then we'll announce, once we finalize the whole list, we'll announce by the first week, first or second week of May.

[01:34:35] Then we're going to be starting to gather everybody and the SEAC members. We would really appreciate volunteers to come out and help us. We need to get sponsors. We need people to go out. And, you know, we need gift cards.

[01:34:50] We need quite a few things. And we would really love to have some help in putting this together. Our SEAC, the award ceremony is June 5th at Brockridge High School, starting at 630. So we hope everybody will attend.

[01:35:08] Yes, and Jennifer DiDonato is helping us with some of the gathering gift cards and soliciting your PTOs and PTAs for sponsorship. So she's going to be sending out an email to everyone with how you can get involved and what exactly it is we're looking for.

[01:35:28] It's kind of tricky to know exactly what we need until we have an idea of how many winners we are actually going to have. So we should have that fairly soon, and then we really can start with the targeted asks, and we'll get an estimate of how much our trophies are going to cost and all those kinds of things that are kind of contingent on how many winners we actually have.

[01:35:53] So look in your email boxes for some more information coming soon, and please talk to your PTAs and PTOs about how wonderful it would be to support this incredible event that is honoring our schools and helping to show your commitment for our students and what we're working on.

[01:36:16] Okay. Sorry. Did someone say something? Jennifer. Okay. Go for it. It's a little under the weather, so I'm going to hear this, but I guess that email should be coming out this week with the sign of genius for those items that we need, things from support for the trophies, from decor, balloons, cupcakes, all that good stuff.

[01:36:40] And then if anyone is willing or wanting to help us reach out to local businesses, whether it's for them to provide or pay for some of these items for us or local businesses to provide gift cards to their own establishments or other establishments, please let me know.

[01:36:59] we have an online tracker where we can track who's going and who's asking that way we don't either bombard someone or miss someone right in the communities to support um so if you're interested that email should be coming up please reach out to me we can use all the help we can get thank you jen all right and now moving on to the most exciting part of the evening our annual report systemic special education needs and recommended actions for 2022 2023 so we should now be moving

[01:37:34] forward caught up with all of our CX survey analysis we got this right before spring break so that was another fun part of my spring break was going through the analysis and and working on putting together this presentation and our annual report which will be sent out to all of members and representatives and post it on our website I will also we've taken the recommendations that we have in this presentation we've they will all go to the school board but we will refine what we are presenting to the school board to

[01:38:12] make sure they are the most impactful and helpful and so that they don't pull pull out a cane and drag me from the room. So, without further ado, and if you have any questions, we've got the QR code up there.

[01:38:30] It's not? It was working earlier this evening. Check it. Okay, well, there is a QR code on the flyer on our main website. If you go to that QR code, it does work. I promise. I checked that one earlier, and we did have some comments come through.

[01:38:47] So go to the SEAC webpage and then off that flyer. Sorry. Thanks for checking. Oh, recently? Yeah, no, no. We addressed those. Those were during Dr. Carter's. Yeah, we're good.

[01:39:04] No, we got those ones. Okay. So our accomplishments from the 2022-2023 school year. SEAC membership reviewed and provided feedback on 19 school board policies. We hosted the SEAC annual awards in June.

[01:39:22] had a very nice ceremony. We had a new standing subcommittee, Meaningful Inclusion, that began in the fall of 22-23. And we began a literacy subcommittee work sessions to dive deeply into specialized literacy topics, which we are still doing today, and now we have transition ones too.

[01:39:40] So that's been a really great model that we wanted to celebrate. Our survey analysis is done by Dr. Adam Winsler of Child Research Evaluation Data and Information Technology Services, in George Mason University. He has completed a number of years now of our survey analysis, which is great because we're able to do a lot of comparative analysis, which is helpful and it's consistent.

[01:40:09] So the analysis document, which will also be posted and shared, shares the overall parental satisfaction for the county, whether parental satisfaction varies according student's school district, disability category, and school level type, notable changes in parental satisfaction from the previous year to 22-23, and results from a qualitative analysis of parents' open-ended responses to the survey.

[01:40:37] So when you all get this survey link in the next month or so, this stuff is really important to SEAC. I just want to emphasize how important it is that you fill out this survey for each of your children if you have multiple children with IEPs or 504s it it really it all gets looked at when you write a comment like it's important Craig yes please please share it out to your school communities actually one of the things that I want to share with the school board is that in some of this

[01:41:15] analysis there were certain districts that didn't have enough respondents and And so they couldn't analyze it. So we really need it to be pushed in all corners of the county, or else we're not going to get a true picture of what's going on.

[01:41:39] I will share at the meeting which districts. And we're not going to go into all of these different levels of analysis tonight or at the school board meeting, because it would be ours.

[01:41:56] But it's available, and I'll try to, like, point out some highlights of things that I think would be helpful. And I think that's something the school board members can also try and champion, like, share the link, get your constituents to fill this out. So as many people as possible.

[01:42:12] So that's my plug for the survey. When you see it, hit your emails and social media. Please share it. Please fill it out. Okay. So it was administered in English and Spanish, and it had a total of 801 responses, which was more than the previous year.

[01:42:31] 712 of those were complete. 89 were incomplete, so they only looked at the 712. A further examination of, basically, that's, so what it did was it had, the 712 had information on the disability category for the student, the school district they attended, their level of schooling, whether they were preschool, elementary, middle, or high, and at least one response to a satisfaction with or agreement with survey question.

[01:43:00] Overall, the analysis across this entire school district shows that about 70 percent, with a range of 65 to 89 percent, depending on the item, of parents are satisfied with the special education services received in 2022 to 2023 but a sizable minority of 15 to 35 percent based on the question were not satisfied so we'll dive into some of that a little bit more the survey most notably outlined improvements in satisfaction from parents for ESY which is was an

[01:43:39] interesting response because generally ESY is one of the pain points for the county but I thought back to that year. And I'm pretty sure that that ESY year was the year that we increased the salary rate for our teachers teaching ESY. And so I wonder if somehow that had an impact on parents' level of satisfaction. More teachers were willing to do it. Less overcrowded classrooms. So I don't know. I'm just putting that out there. Dispute resolution improved. School placement. Most

[01:44:12] educational settings and feeling like parents are heard and valued by LCPS also improved. There was a decrease in satisfaction in staffing. This was also the year that there were a lot of cuts being made to staffing, particularly SLPs, I remember, was a big one, but also our cross-cat teachers.

[01:44:36] Reading instruction, most specialized therapy services, occupational therapy, physical therapy, interpreter, audiology, other hearing supports. Parents would like to see increased staffing, a desire for LCPS to more strongly prioritize our students with disabilities, increased communication and collaboration with parents as partners in the IEP process, enhanced efforts to ensure that meaningful inclusion takes place both in the classroom and at school events, and then transition from elementary to middle, middle to high school, and out of high school continues to be

[01:45:15] an area of concern and opportunity. Here is a summary of the qualitative responses we received. The most common responses were the ask for more staff, more resources, better training given to special education staff, increased resources and attention given to mental health for students with disabilities, a desire for LCPS to more strongly prioritize children with disabilities, A desire for more consistency across schools, teachers, and personnel.

[01:45:47] Increased communication and collaboration with parents as partners, especially with respect to the IEP process. Better and earlier transition planning for after high school. And enhanced efforts to ensure that real inclusion takes place both in the classroom and for school events.

[01:46:04] So, taking that information, and there is a lot more than just that, but taking that, taking what our subcommittees worked on, that year, and the public comments that we received, we came up with these recommendations, which we are going to share with you. We will continue to offer these recommendations. Some of them are in the same areas. Some of them are the same as what we presented in the fall, but those needs continue to impact our students with disabilities, but we look forward to partnering

[01:46:40] with the Department of Student Services and the Office of Special Education to develop a comprehensive plan that enhances the supports and opportunities that we provide to our students with disabilities to prepare them for a successful transition into adulthood and providing a continuum of opportunities for our students remains a top priority. So we've broken them up into categories. The first is equity. Educational equity means that each child receives what they need to develop to their full academic and social potential to address and achieve

[01:47:16] equity are one LCPS strategic plan for excellence, and LCPS policies and procedures must be aligned and barriers identified and addressed. There are many wonderful examples of inclusion taking place in LCPS, but there still exist many systemic needs to increase access to opportunities for our students with disabilities. So we are encouraging the school board to build special education staffing proposals from identified student and teacher needs rather than based upon administrative ratios applied to projections from the Department of Budget and Financial Services.

[01:47:50] This was one of our recommendations that we had in our budget from this year, and we continue to recommend that. Support the training for substitute teachers and teaching assistants in special education topics before working with students. Continue to fund the continuum of special education by offering a virtual option of schooling for K-12 students. Work with the Department of Instruction, Department of Student Services, and the Office of Special Education to support the efficacy of IEP services delivery for high school and middle school special education students.

[01:48:26] Particular focus on effective co-teaching models and incorporating Tier 1 accommodations, i.e. pre-printed notes, study guides, accessibility software, etc. into instruction for all students. Work with DDI and Department of Student Services to make sure our students are included on the general education roster for their grade in Phoenix and ParentVUE. This is something we've talked about for a number of years. Some of our students who are in these program classrooms, they don't receive the notifications from their general education classroom that they push into,

[01:49:04] which leads to them being left out of important things like picture day and wear a yellow shirt to school day or you know those kinds of things that really do matter for our kids and it to us seems like such a simple thing to fix just put those kids on a gen ed roster. It's apparently more complicated than that but we really are hoping that that's something that can be solved this year. At the secondary level design a course curriculum that can be used to establish peer groups as a credit bearing elective. Students that participate in the peer groups course would

[01:49:40] partner with students with disabilities to enable them to participate in more general education environments, i.e. after-school activities, lunch, study halls, academic and elective courses to facilitate more meaningful inclusion in our schools, and provide notification to parents on school flyers about who to reach out to if there is a need for support for a student due to a disability to participate.

[01:50:08] pathways for students with disabilities in all CTE offerings. We want to make sure with all these great programs that are being developed here in Loudoun County that there is a place and a pathway for all of our kids, especially the ones who really truly need it. Like this is preparing them for life. This may be their end stop of education. Let's give them what they need in order to be successful adults. Support the training for substitute teachers and teaching assistants

[01:50:43] before we've already we've already gone over this one sorry. Transition sorry I was up really late last night. Create a systematic way to track life skills and workplace readiness skills. Create a blueprint of what equipment and materials should be in every independent living lab. Identify and prioritize building needs based on school programs, capital improvement budget impact. So that's kind of in process at the moment we're working on that, but it's definitely an effort that we need to

[01:51:17] continue to prioritize. Remove the Algebra 1 SOL and PSAT admission barriers to MATA at the academies unless it's applicable for coursework. Because again, we don't want to lock our students out of these pathways that could provide them meaningful employment later on.

[01:51:41] Consider creating transition training centers to support a variety of transition training at key locations across the county. Create a community independence instruction framework and provide funding to encourage full elementary and middle school participation because transition doesn't begin in high school.

[01:52:00] it starts when they're little and we need to get these kids ready by the end of high school you can't just start it once you're in high school additional transition teachers to support middle school to high school transition and all students at the high school and a full-time transition supervisor currently transition teachers are spread too thin to provide consistent interaction and support to students with disabilities throughout high school so we are very appreciative of our school board allocating an additional supervisor for transition. In accessibility,

[01:52:38] this Department of Student Services, we encourage the Department of Student Services to partner with the Department of Teaching and Learning to create procedures and training for ensuring accessible instructional materials are available across all LCPS classrooms. The Department of Student services to provide regular training to teachers, parents, and students on tier one accessibility tools such as Google Read Write, EquatIO, Google Keep, etc. I know that I've personally found that sometimes our students get trained in something, sometimes the parents get trained in something,

[01:53:16] but unless everyone's trained in it, it's not going to get that reinforcement that you really need in order to become effective. The Department of Instruction to provide training to all general education teachers on how to include all students in the planning process for lessons, utilizing inclusive design practices such as universal design for learning, UDL, in every class and at every grade level. I think a common theme is that we want people to think about our students at the

[01:53:51] beginning when they're planning things and not having to do as much you know obviously they're getting specialized instruction but if we can make things more accessible to begin with there's less of that that needs to take place at the end and we can't expect our special educators to be doing everything it's really got to be a team effort between those gen ed teachers and the sped teachers and we encourage the school board to allocate funds and direct the department of Student Services to make our school playgrounds accessible and inclusive to all students by providing fencing around all first through fifth grade playground areas and structures,

[01:54:31] create a standard buildout for preschool through kindergarten that includes accessible, durable, commercial grade equipment. And we have not voted on our specific recommendations. Those will be forthcoming along with the report but we felt like these were things that were very obvious very achievable not that they aren't expensive but we found that there was such a concern for our program students particularly the ones who were concerned about elopement they have no access to our playgrounds because the teachers can't take them there safely

[01:55:11] and fencing those playgrounds in would immediately solve the problem. It's not spending $300,000 on a brand new playground. It's putting a fence around it and then they can go and enjoy it more so. Is it a perfect inclusive playground? No but it's a lot better than not being able to use something at all and the same for our preschool and kindergarten students there are some really lovely examples of some inclusive playgrounds but a lot of our kids basically have nothing whether they're in just a gen ed kindergarten class or a preschool

[01:55:47] class they have I shouldn't say nothing that's not fair but they they have you know commercially available equipment where you sit on a slide and you sit at the top and your feet touch the bottom you know and maybe there's some balls there's a little path you might be able to ride a bike on but it's not it's it does not compare to the playgrounds that are provided at some of our early childhood education programs at the high schools, where they do actually have nice commercial grade equipment. And we feel like this is not only an accessibility issue,

[01:56:22] it's an equity issue. We need to make sure that all students have access to something that's comparable. Okay. For literacy and math instruction, we encourage the school board to utilize TNTP key K-3 curriculum review recommendations to update LCPS practices, clearly define the implementation of policy 53-50, parent notification for screening and assessment, and define remediation framework for students not meeting benchmarks.

[01:56:57] Parent notifications remain inconsistent, and all requirements of policy 53-50 are not being followed, i.e., providing notification of intervention plan, particularly at secondary levels and a clear explanation of scores. SEAC recommends revisiting policy 53-50 regulation, so we will ask our policy subcommittee to take a look at that again. Actually, I think we had decided we never looked at the reg. I don't think we were aware that there was a reg. We looked at

[01:57:28] the policy, so we need to take a look at that reg. Ongoing concern that appropriate literacy services are not being provided to high school students who do not meet literacy screening expectations, such as iReady, something, and fast.

[01:57:49] For the reading SOL, LCPS is using an outdated predetermined score, less than 77, that inhibits the IEP team and or the Section 504 team from making decisions on the need for the read aloud accommodation based on the individual student's individual unique needs.

[01:58:11] we would this is something that Aaron mentioned before so it's something that we're continuing to work on and Margaret's been she I know she's working on that as well we're very close we're very close so hopefully we're going to knock this one off our list I would love to because it's a long list increased you want to put your mic on real quick it's been a while but it has wasn't

[01:58:43] there's some guidance from VDOE that we, or OCR complaint or something that had, you can't have a bright line rule for SOL read-alouds. Isn't that, I seem to remember that. Does anybody remember that with me? I mean, I can go look it up, but I think this has been a concern for like two or three years now and it still hasn't been addressed. Is that what I'm hearing? Increased training on teaching morphology. I know that that's also something that's going on, but we continue to think that

[01:59:20] that's an important focus. For preschool, develop comprehensive developmental monitoring tool that includes pre-academic standards and report progress at least three times a year to the parents. Develop a decision matrix to assist and provide transparency and guidance to IEP teams.

[01:59:41] And I know that is something that's also, that Margaret's been working very hard on for math, And so hopefully we'll have that in our hands very soon. Increase specialized instructional facilitator to provide one per cluster. We've heard that those are very effective, that our teachers really feel supported by having them, that they're very effective with our students.

[02:00:06] And so if that's something that we can roll out more of and increase our literacy and math instruction, we think that that's important. And that's the end of my report. So I do think we had a couple questions.

[02:00:21] Shanaz, would you like to, can you put on your mic? Sorry. It's okay. Could we recommend the school board to analyze the current programs offered and to consider alternatives, school within a school or other options for students who may need something in between general education and current programs that are offered?

[02:00:52] I think that's a good question. I wonder how our courtyards could provide a safe place to build playgrounds within. So we actually inquired about that. We met with our LCPS playground people, and they said in our courtyards they can't actually put any commercial-grade equipment.

[02:01:13] The only thing they would be able to do, and they are able to do, is to put in that rubberized soft surface. But I think the school at this point would have to pay for it themselves. And they've said they've had no one come to them asking for that.

[02:01:30] But yeah, they said you'd have to have like a crane that would like bring in the playground equipment. So that's why those courtyards are probably not a great space for our playgrounds. Craig? Two things responsive to that question.

[02:02:00] The first is, is we have been talking for years about the need for a continuum of services. We talked about that on the distance learning, but I wonder if we should expand that a little bit because the questioner is absolutely correct. This has been a perennial concern that IEP teams often find themselves with a couple discrete choices where the student's need is not quite one and not quite the other.

[02:02:22] So the continuum of services, we might want to tighten up how we're addressing that. The second is we might want to go back and pull a thread with the staff on that question of, is it just literally the logistics of disassembly and assembly in the courtyard? I can remember in my high school where a previous class disassembled a car and reassembled it in the middle of a hallway.

[02:02:45] So I'm pretty sure it's possible. Yeah, I don't know all the logistics, but I think we should press on that a little bit further. Yeah, I think what we really want to, you know, we're not trying to mandate a solution necessary, but it can't be that everything is not enough.

[02:03:02] there has to be something that is an option and whether that's using existing kindergarten space and outfitting it with equipment that would be appropriate for preschool and kindergarten because the kindergartners don't often have access to those bigger first through fifth grade playgrounds either so it seems like this would be an opportunity to equitably take care of both groups and however it is whether it's if they want to build a separate playground elsewhere by all means, go do it. If you want to put a playground in the courtyards, I guess you could do that. That

[02:03:36] doesn't help the kindergartners, though. So, you know, but there has to be something that we can do for these kids, because I think the current state of affairs is just very inequitable for our students. All right. Anyone else? We have an upcoming literacy and math work session on May 13th at 9:30 here at the admin building.

[02:04:05] So please come and join us. All are welcome. We love getting members from the community. I know Margaret loves to see my face, but she also likes to see new faces. So please come and join us. There's food, and we have a lot of fun.

[02:04:22] We really dive in deeply into topics, and I think these are incredibly helpful. And I think that people who come and join us find them that way too. And we have a transition work session coming up on May 22nd at 9.30 to 11.30 a.m., also here at the admin building.

[02:04:42] The next career and technical education advisory committee meeting is going to be on Wednesday, April 17th at 8.30 a.m. The next equity committee meeting is going to be Thursday, April 4th at 5.30 p.m. here at admin.

[02:04:59] And the next gifted education advisory committee is not until May 9th at 7 o'clock. Shanaz, do you, or no, Catherine, do you have an update that you'd like to provide? Where are you, Catherine?

[02:05:15] I know I saw you out. There you are. Sorry. Do you have an update you'd like to provide for CTEAC? I have notes all over the place.

[02:05:33] Sorry. So my role really was to listen as a stand-in for Liz for this. So there was discussion of things that are already in place, pathways within HAMSci that are accessible to students with disabilities.

[02:05:51] So the conversation is already being had and the encouragement that it continues. They have strategic plans in their action items.

[02:06:09] They have one that says, develop college and multiple accessible workforce readiness through pathways, enhanced transition programming for students with disabilities. So I honed in on that one because it's already in their framework. It's already in their thinking.

[02:06:26] And so that's somewhere that we can continue to encourage and provide resource for them. It was neat to listen to all of the updates that are happening and to hear from people who I've heard names but didn't know who they were.

[02:06:46] So that was, for me, that was great. There was one other. One thing I didn't know was the size, the scope of HAMSAI, and the majority of the conversation was around that.

[02:07:06] Two sites, Tuscarora and Briarwoods, and 75 students at each site. So I knew it was two sites, but I didn't know the number. So I thought that was an interesting thing. And then two pathways and credentialing and work-based learning.

[02:07:26] All of the things that we heard from the presentation, I guess, back in the fall. But again, really honing in on the things that they already have that they've stated in their strategic planning that we can continue building on with them in partnership.

[02:07:46] Thank you so much, Catherine. All right. And now we've got Parent Resource Services. Leanne, thank you for being so patient, as always. Oh, no.

[02:08:03] Happy April Fool's. A little late. That was so delicious. Hi, I'm Leanne Kidwell with Parent Resource Services. This is my last presentation of the school year about workshops because April is, we're done, which is hard to believe.

[02:08:27] But fear not, I am starting the planning for next year, so we're all taken care of. We're having a new workshop on the 11th of April, and it is Sexual Assault and Awareness and Prevention, and that will be here.

[02:08:43] and then the final preschool child find will be at douglas the historic douglas school in leesburg and that will be on the 16th and it's screen sense for young children and then finally inclusive practices will be here on the 18th and hello spring not today but hopefully tomorrow and then this is me again oh no thank you so much leanne and please um people come and show up for the inclusive practices when they did it last year I think it was like Shanaz and I maybe like

[02:09:22] two other people it was such a great presentation like we learned so much it was very inspirational it was exactly the kinds of things that we talk about here at SEAC wanting to see you know so I think the more parents that we get out there to see what is possible what is happening in some places the better you can advocate for wanting that at your own school so highly these these programs that they put on are bringing the best of the best of our staff for you all to come and learn from.

[02:09:57] And it's the same school team. It's going to be a fantastic presentation, so highly recommend. Also, we had a question come through asking if parents of students with disabilities who are also staff here at LCPS can attend our subcommittee meetings.

[02:10:17] The answer is absolutely yes. All are welcome. We are always happy to have anyone come and join us. And we find that staff offer very helpful perspectives. So yes, we welcome everyone and anyone to attend.

[02:10:34] It's open to the public. And now I'll turn it over to Melinda. I don't think she realized that she was going to get an opportunity to speak tonight, but here we go. Thank you for allowing me to join you tonight. it is like coming home because I was sitting in that and where you are like what maybe 10 years ago and continuing on and writing a lot of those SEAC reports especially for literacy and accessibility and so I appreciate you guys coming out and being a part of this and I don't really have any news right now I'm looking forward to you guys sharing your report at the school

[02:11:11] board meeting on Tuesday and I do I appreciate staff too for being here and for supporting us and helping us through this transition time. There are a lot of things that are coming down from VDOE about special education. And there are going to be some changes coming on.

[02:11:30] And with the Virginia Literacy Act, that's one other thing that's changing. And it's an exciting time to be here right now. So thank you all for being here. Thank you, Melinda. Our next and last CEAC meeting of the year is on May 1st.

[02:11:50] It's hard to believe. It feels like we just started the school year, but it is on May 1st. It is going to be another business meeting without the annual report presentation, but we are going to be doing subcommittee work sessions. This is where we're gonna wrap up the work from our subcommittees.

[02:12:05] We prepare reports that will then be incorporated into our annual report. It's a great time to come, and you can sit in on a whole bunch of subcommittee meetings and get a flavor for what they're about. So please come and join us. We will try to make it as fun as possible. And thank you all for being here.

[02:12:22] If you did not get a chance to sign in earlier, the QR code is up there, and we look forward to seeing you all in May. Thank you.

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