Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County Public Schools, Special Education Advisory Committee (SEAC) Meeting, Wednesday, October 1, 2025

Date: Wednesday, October 1, 2025
Place: LCPS Administration Building / School Board Room, Ashburn, Virginia
Length: 3h 01m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/1123424547?rel=0

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 2026-10-13. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

[00:09:24] - Good evening, everyone. If you guys could please take your seats

[00:09:34] and we'll get started.

[00:10:47] Good evening, everyone. We're gonna go ahead and get started. Before we begin our presentation today, we are going to have Nakia Purnell, our Assistant Special Education Director, come up and kick us off with our connection activity.

[00:11:13] - Good afternoon and welcome back to our second DEAC meeting of the school year. So last week we talked a little bit about our division priorities and I've got my supervisor helpers out in the audience handing out some resources that you're gonna need for today.

[00:11:32] So I made a promise to you guys last month when we talked about belonging and we talked about what belonging means and we asked some different questions and you guys went around and you were good sports and we got some really good information so coming out of that i made a promise we're going to do something with that information so what i did is synthesize that information and put them into what you see in front of you a game of siak belonging bingo so you got to play along bear with me

[00:12:07] so what we are going to do is again going to get us up and moving i will promise to try to get us up and moving because you guys got to make it through the business meeting and through the snacks that Laura continues to bring. So, so that you don't get sluggish, I'm going to keep you moving, right? Because don't stop bringing the snacks. Yes. So here are the rules because I know some of the members of my team might try to break the rules. So remember the rules. See, I told you.

[00:12:37] So the rules are what we're going to do is you're going to pick one card. This is not like at the bingo hall where you can have like 10 cards laid out with your dot. One card. Everybody pick one card. We're going to start moving. I'm going to call out and I might give you guys a freebie so we can keep it moving. I'm going to call out a number. You have to find a person in the room who has experienced this particular sense of belonging and then use one of your dots to cover that space.

[00:13:15] And just like in traditional bingo, once you have diagonal or vertical or horizontal, there's no four corners and all the fancy things that they do over at the bingo hall. This isn't that. Once you have bingo, you're going to scream bingo, and then you are going to need to tell us about the person or the person can stand with you and share.

[00:13:36] And then we will have some prizes. So I'm very excited. So let's see if I can give everyone, well, not everyone, whoever has one. Number three, I think this came from me. I've been invited to sit with someone new at lunch or at a meeting.

[00:13:55] I worked in Clarksville, Montgomery County for two years, and for almost an entire year, I ate lunch by myself. And finally, I was invited to eat lunch with one of the other English teachers, and she is still my friend, one of my closest friends till today so if you have three you get to cheat because that's me I just told everyone so go ahead and put your dot on three all right so now you got to get ready to get up and move because I'm pretty sure you're not going to be able to fill up your card with

[00:14:26] the people at your table all right are we ready go number one I've been greeted by name when entering a school or meeting find somebody who can say they've experienced that guys we got to get up and move you're not gonna be able to find the answers and you get one

[00:14:56] freebie you can mark one for yourself you can mark one for yourself comes into

[00:15:30] a game or an activity by peers number two I've seen a student welcomed into a

[00:15:39] game or activity by peers number three I've been invited oh I gave you guys that one that's me number four I've experienced a teacher remembering a

[00:16:17] child's interest or favorite thing number four included when someone asks

[00:16:47] for my thoughts or opinions on something teacher check in on a student's

[00:17:12] emotions or well-being and felt part of the community I can tell you you better go

[00:17:43] find Laura I know she's volunteered at a school event number eight I've watched students with and without disabilities play together on the playground anybody have bingo yeah close close close number nine I've been a part of a school

[00:18:20] event that celebrated many cultures like multicultural night okay everybody get back to their seats okay we're gonna do a check let's do a check so Ashley

[00:18:58] Ashley Spiegel, the supervisor of the Parkview Cluster, says that she has bingo. So let's check the answers. Number nine, she's been a part, she's found someone that's been a part of a school event that celebrated many cultures.

[00:19:18] Was that yourself or someone else? Okay, yourself. Number five, I felt included when someone asked for my thoughts or opinions. Who was that? Raise your hand, because otherwise I'm going to think you put the circles on all yourself.

[00:19:40] Oh, Erin said it wasn't her. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. It was you? Okay. It was Kelly. Okay. Okay, then we have number one, I've been greeted by name.

[00:19:56] Remember we talked about that, one of the biggest forms of respect, I've been greeted by name. So, Erin, and drum roll, please, the final one, I've experienced a teacher of remembering a child interests or favorites who said that awesome bingo thank you guys so much these are all the themes that were captured from the activity that we engaged in last month so we can continue this and talking about belonging but we will certainly find different ways to connect to learn more about

[00:20:31] one another to create a sense of belonging here at SEAC to make things more engaging and more interactive as we move through the year you can leave your bingo cards on your table or you can take them with you I appreciate everything that you guys continue to do and I appreciate the growing and developing relationship that we are able to make between SIAC and LCPS thank you guys okay so before we begin I just wanted to let you all know that the public comment sheet is in the back if anyone was making a public comment just sign in underneath where it

[00:21:09] says October 1st and there are other flyers and information in the back and now Catherine Moran our SIAC vice chair of planning will introduce our presenters for tonight so I'm Catherine Moran I'm the vice player vice chair of planning and I'm also a teacher in Loudoun County in one of our cast programs with Jenna I had the privilege two Falls ago to have Chris come per

[00:21:46] Jenna's request to one of our transition teacher meetings and I don't you gave a choice of different things that we could focus on and thankfully everybody chose the AI one or the majority of the people chose it and that sparked in me something I just got excited about how we might or might not use generative AI with our students with disabilities but then also as practitioners how do we ethically responsibly with fidelity use it in planning and in practice so that

[00:22:21] sparked some fun stuff and then I had a chance last year with Mike Hendrickson to do the AI cohort that LCPS did which was awesome because that opened up a whole nother world and I just found out that we're UDL fans so yeah it's kind of like um so I wanted to this year bring this stuff together because it's not going away and there's a lot we can learn from our friends who are in the trenches for us in this realm every day and I want us to think about how we are

[00:23:01] how we're using how we're potentially using what could we do to support our students with disabilities to support our staff who support and so I just I'm really excited that we are taking some time to look at AI in education so Mike and Chris thank you thanks Catherine oh yeah we're happy excited to be here she's coming back yeah you know Catherine's not done she's got work to do yeah she does very good very good representing some of the tools that we have here in our division well my name is Mike Hendrickson I'm the instructional technology supervisor for Loudoun County Public Schools I work

[00:23:39] inside the Department of Teaching and Learning inside the Division of Professional Growth and Innovation and my work is focused on professional development largely around how do we take the tools and resources that we have inside of our schools and inside of our classrooms and help our teachers leverage those tools for maximum impact on student learning and Chris yeah I'm the special ed specialist for assistive technology I help support a team of specialized instructional facilitators for assistive technology to help design inclusive experiences for everybody and are we ready to move into our slides

[00:24:14] here okay so here's an overview of our conversation this evening we are going to spend a little bit of time talking about what is generative AI building some background knowledge we're going to share a little bit about some of the tools that our teachers have access to and show you a little bit about what those those tools can do we're going to talk about responsible use of generative artificial intelligence and then we're gonna have an opportunity to do some collective reflection on where we see some potential with some of these tools and how we might support our learners and particularly our learners with

[00:24:51] disabilities so that's our journey for the next 45 minutes or so 30 minutes or so but let's start by building some background knowledge so we might all be in different places with our experiences with generative AI some of us may have heard a little bit about it some of us may be using it every day deeply in our work so we just want to get a sense of where we are in the room so let's do just like a one two or three depending on where you are with your journey in generative AI so one is like I've dabbled a little bit the two is yeah I use it here and there a little bit I've got some experience and three is I use

[00:25:28] it every day I am deep in it and I'm an expert yeah that's right so by show of hands where where are we in in a little bit with our experience all right i see we have a good mix a lot of twos in the room which means we've got a lot of people who have some hands-on experience which is fantastic um not a lot of threes i did see a few threes i saw some threes excellent very good i sometimes i get a little bit tripped up with those kinds of activities because i don't i feel like i don't know what i don't know so i feel like giving myself a three is maybe a little

[00:26:05] bit over ambitious but I appreciate appreciate everybody's honesty and reflection on that so we're gonna watch this short video and depending on where you are right you're coming at this video from a different angle so as you're watching maybe you are looking to learn something new about generative AI or get just learn a little bit more about what generative AI is and how it works maybe you're gonna reinforce something that you feel like you already already knew about generative AI, but just as you're watching, be on the lookout for something that connects to where you are in your experience with generative AI.

[00:26:43] What exactly is generative AI? When new content is created by artificial intelligence, it's called generative AI. This could involve generating texts and images, as well as videos, music, or voices. To do this, you describe in a chat dialogue box what you want the AI to create.

[00:27:10] This description is called a prompt. The generative AI tools provide answers to all sorts of questions, summarize complex information, and generate diverse ideas quickly. Depending on how they're used, they can create short stories, paintings, pieces of code, or even musical compositions. The foundation for this creation lies in large amounts of data that the AI system accesses to identify patterns and similarities. The content produced by the AI is new. It's often

[00:27:43] impressive and challenging to distinguish from things humans have made. Generative AI can also be misused. In so-called deep fakes, AI is utilised to produce images or videos that seem real.

[00:28:01] AI-generated texts are also tough to recognize as machine-made. Moreover, the AI can provide answers that sound correct but are actually incorrect. This is called hallucinating. The quality of what's created depends on both the quality of the data used and the quality of the prompts given.

[00:28:19] To effectively utilize generative AI, we need to learn how to guide the tools with meaningful prompts and use them thoughtfully. Generative AI holds immense potential and can help us in many ways, such as serving as a writing or learning partner.

[00:28:40] However, the AI should do the hard work and humans should be responsible for the facts. Right, so maybe turn to somebody near you and just have a very brief conversation.

[00:28:56] What's something that you saw in that video that was new for you? And what's something in that video that reinforced something that you already knew about generative AI?

[00:30:14] Yeah, let's do it.

[00:30:19] Video maybe that was new for you, something that reinforced, something that you already

[00:31:07] knew about generative AI. And Chris, let's talk a little bit about some of the tools that we have here at LCPS. Yeah, so Mike and I and a couple other district leaders had this great opportunity about a year ago, kind of all last year, meet periodically with some other leaders from other districts like Henrico and Winchester.

[00:31:28] And we did this one activity that really stood out to me, but I think all of us, where we had talked about the promise of generative AI, like what could it do? What could it bring to education in general? And we did this activity, educators in the room, you're going to be very familiar, where we put up the things on the side and you had to put sticky notes on the board, right?

[00:31:48] We did the same thing. We walked around and put these different ideas and then we synthesized it down to one word. So we thought it would be interesting for you to try and guess, what do you think these district leaders from multiple school districts boiled down to the promise of generative AI?

[00:32:05] What could it possibly be? What words jumped to your mind? And if you know, then you can't say, but different, you got it right on there? Yes. Differentiation. Differentiation was the, was the word, right?

[00:32:22] It was like, yes, there's this promise here that we've, we've had this dream of personalized learning. We can differentiate instruction. very difficult to get to. But with all of this technology, generative AI, there's some promise here that we could use it to differentiate instruction. So we're gonna show you some of the tools here now.

[00:32:40] And we're gonna start with one called Read&Write for Google Chrome. Now many of you know what Read&Write for Google Chrome is. It's an extension that is actually force pushed to every single Chromebook. It should be, if it's not, we can...

[00:32:56] No, I know it is, but if you find that it's not, then let us know. But this has been a legacy tool here in Laan. We've had it over 15 years. But recently, what we're finding with many of the educational technology tools that we support, different AI portions of generative AI are finding their way into the tools.

[00:33:17] And we wanted to show you one that could directly impact your kids tomorrow on the day off and Friday when you come back to school. So one of these is Read&Write for Google Chrome and it generates, it has now, new generative ai voices built into it it came somewhere mid last year right and to illustrate what these voices sound like or what one of them sounds like we're going to do the what's it called so jumping ahead here's the did you know this is written up typically a student reads this right

[00:33:53] okay here we go did you know self-determination starts with choice when students get to make choices they learn to be more confident responsible and independent making choices builds confidence when students pick for themselves they feel proud and capable small choices lead to big skills choosing what to do each day helps prepare for bigger life decisions later

[00:34:27] choice gives everyone a voice letting students decide shows respect and helps them feel included teachers guide the way adults provide safe options so students can practice and learn from their choices i'm going to pause it there because we still want to get the point of what this is but mike just had a great idea i was thinking the same thing what if we showed you what it used to be so you could hear the difference of what that sounded like.

[00:34:52] So go over here to the settings, change the settings, go over to speech, and then I'm gonna choose, change the voice. Over here, there's AI enhanced, and this is where your students can go and choose, or you can work with them to choose what voice might work best for them.

[00:35:10] Maybe you didn't like AI enhanced Josh, that's the one that I just picked. But there's other ones there. Maybe you want the Irish voice. I don't know, there's lots of fun that you can have looking at different voices. but going back to all voices let's find one of the early ones um let's find one welsh sorry let's

[00:35:37] see scottish swedish let's try well that's ai advanced do you see one i know there's all these german here we'll just just well that's an ai in advance here we go here we go let's try this australian one this is a non-ai voice strategies start with small choices begin with easy options

[00:36:12] like which pencil to use, and move to bigger ones, like which project to complete. Use choice boards or menus. Give students a few clear options for classwalk or jobs. This keeps choice simple and fair. Ask students to reflect.

[00:36:28] After a choice, ask, why did you pick this? What did you learn? Reflection helps them grow. Dash. Resources. I'm Determine Project, Virginia Doe, ImDataMind.org student-friendly tools like the One Pager and Goal Plan to Practice Making Choices, NTACT, C, National Transition Center, Transition to our org ideas and activities that support decision-making and planning for the future, Council for Exceptional Children, SEC, DCDT, DCDT, or resources for teaching self-determination and preparing for work and adult life.

[00:37:04] So do you notice the slight difference? The cadence is different. My background is speech pathology so I can hear that it's like and it doesn't sound as fluid you see that it messed up some words like it's not sec it's CEC Council for Exceptional Children and the AI voiced which I'd hope you'd agree sounded a lot more natural a lot more easy to listen to you could probably listen to it for a lot longer did you start to phase out by the end of that second voice yeah so could you get some sustained experience if a student was listening to that new and enhanced voice so that's just a minor way we could show you of one little thing that that again could you could use tomorrow or when you go home tonight or

[00:37:43] later but now we're gonna roll into some other that that's just a portion that is already built into another tool we have now we're going to show you some AI specific tools starting with co-pilot in Gemini so I'll start off with I love

[00:38:18] chat GPT I'm kind of I do the $20 a month thing because I'm a nerd but I've really appreciated because it tracks my tone and my kind of my way of thinking which is a little odd but if I ask it to and I do this with co-pilot as well if I ask it to tell me how I might answer X question it doesn't do too shabby it's

[00:38:48] kind of fun so with with co-pilot that's going to be in your microsoft ecosystem where it's just i mean you probably have already seen the icon pop up where you anything that you're doing in microsoft what i like to use this for i'm always those courageous emails or the challenging emails when i need to check my clarity and my professional tone i will pop it in there and it normally says

[00:39:24] you're very clear but your tone sucks and it rewrites it for me i may or may not use the full way that it rewrote it because it may not sound like me but at least i've been made aware that need to check check myself simple simple ways to use with Gemini it is very similar and I like to use them asking the same prompts and seeing what I get differently from each one I don't okay to do

[00:40:00] like a quick demo okay so mmm so when I demoed this before I used a really spicy email I'm not gonna do that this time but goblin tools have you heard that one yes okay that's my go-to for reducing spice um all right so we're going to

[00:40:32] create give me and something to do on the weekend something that you'd like to do like something that you would like to do on the weekend okay create a hiking

[00:40:51] plan for Route 9 to Harpers Ferry maybe include rest stops and real bathrooms it's never gonna happen

[00:41:27] to help plan out some sort of event so we're using this all the time in that okay so here's a detailed hiking plan how many seconds was that three four all right so we've got our starting point our destination it's about 20 miles can be broken down two days i didn't ask for that um but everything rest stops and bathrooms eateries overnight options um and then your day two that's just funny um but actually those are three of my favorite restaurants in harper's ferry and i

[00:42:06] actually i would flip those battlegrounds then rabbit hole then almost heaven but it's simple the way things that i learned in the ai cohort were to bring my prompts narrow them down and be very clear and specific what i wanted and so more often than not i get what i need within the first one or two goes um instead of before when i was like well i want i want to hike and i can't i don't know i kind of want to whatever you need with clarity put it in and then you can go back so

[00:42:43] what we do with our students is so and i always say thank you and i know we're not supposed to because it uses up like space but anyway i'm still going to say great some people say it gives you Okay. Well, thank you. Please rewrite this at a second grade reading prevention level. I'm on

[00:43:19] the struggle bus on that one. All right. So what it did, if you look back up to the root overview, it didn't change a lot, but it did break the words down. And instead of eateries, which was the word I gave it, it said places to eat.

[00:43:41] So it will break down into whatever reading comprehension level that you're aiming for. And so with our students, we are, as we're exploring and expanding in our classroom, we have a range from fifth, sixth grade to pre-KK with our readers.

[00:44:01] And so we have to hit some kind of middle to make sure that everyone is accessing the work and the fun. one other thing and I think I should have pulled this up on mine so Gemini is going to give you a very similar thing one of the things just so I don't take too much time we we have a lot of big feelings happening in our room this year that we're not that are not typical and so I knew we

[00:44:39] needed to bring in some kind of SEL something it's not my wheelhouse it's not I know enough to be dangerous. So I knew that we could use weather and emotions to break down and identify sunny equals happy, snowy equals calm. But we also are on kind of a time crunch to make sure that we're building skills. And so using, we really need to start digging into Google Drive and having them

[00:45:11] build folders and move things around so I said hey create a lesson that blends weather SEO and learning how to use Google Drive I gave it a few parameters of things that I had found in research and now we have this really fun thing where we've gone through the weather words we are identifying those every day at the beginning of the day if we need a check in the middle of the day which today was the first day we didn't need a middle of the day check so and at the end of the day

[00:45:48] we're projecting how we might how we think we might feel the next day and then we're charting those in a journal in google drive so it's cool for the productivity piece and the creative piece when i get stuck and i know i want these two things to go together they have to fit somehow or maybe they don't but it gives that extended brain to be able to do that but they are they are fallible they do hallucinate you do have to still you need to know your content you still need to

[00:46:21] know work with fidelity and make sure that you are not putting anything ethically inappropriate in making sure that you're reviewing any links anything i did something for um uh disability awareness month last year every one of the links it gave was wrong it went to like some random nothingness so you have to know what you're doing it's not thinking for you it's thinking with you so for both of those those are kind of the main ways that i use those and then i turn those into

[00:46:58] brisk which i don't know if that's next but or i'm going to go next but there's a couple other - One of the things I want to guess and, Catherine. So here we were talking about the promise of generative AI that we thought it might be differentiation. So imagine what you just saw Catherine do by putting in a prompt about the hiking, but then you said, let's do that at a second grade level, right?

[00:47:21] But now imagine, let's do that at a second grade level, and we know Mr. Ketchum's favorite pet is a ferret, right? So he's really into ferrets, so can we write a little story in second grade level about ferrets, right? because it's personalized to his likes, right? And your favorite is the Buffalo Bills, right?

[00:47:37] So you want to write Shanaz's favorite team is the Buffalo Bills, go Josh Allen. So we would write a story about, could we tell a story about the Buffalo Bills using second grade, use these words 10 times in it? Like we could create experiences like that.

[00:47:53] Also, another great level up is song lyrics. So, hey, we have this kid, they're having this behavior, the one real practical one, we had a student at an elementary school stick a piece of playground, what is it, Mr. Ketchum, the playground mulch, mulch in his ear, and he keeps doing it.

[00:48:13] For some reason, he just gets a sensory kick out of putting it in his ear. Well, what are we gonna do, put earplugs, put headphones on him? No, we're going to teach him, don't stick stuff in your ear. So we put it into co-pilot and say, give us a lesson for a student at this age, come up with song lyrics, and to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, or something like that, but it has the, so now, like this, it'll create those sorts of experiences, and now we can sing a song about how you don't put stuff in your ear, cool?

[00:48:47] Those are just a couple examples, we could go all night, which we're gonna invite you to look at here in a minute, is to turn to each other and brainstorm what are some other options we can look at. We wanna show you just two other, two quick tools. Okay, so something else that the teachers have access to is called Notebook L.M.

[00:49:06] Curious, anyone here using Notebook L.M.? You see a handful of hands, Mike? All right, so for the rest of you that this is new for, this is a Google tool, and the way it works is it's called Notebook L.M., so what you're creating is a bunch of notebooks, okay?

[00:49:27] What you're looking at is my notebooks that have been created over the last, I don't know, a couple months. And the way it works is I'm going to just pick one of them. I'm going to pick the Robots for Everyone notebook. So I've created a notebook called Robots for Everyone. It's an initiative project that we have, and it's broken up into three columns.

[00:49:46] The first column is where you load information. So like you said, Catherine, you gotta be careful what you're putting into it. Well, here, I'm loading up. I'm telling the AI, this is what I want you to pull from when you're generating content. There's a little add button, and there's a little discover button so it can search the internet for more, but I load stuff up here.

[00:50:07] You, the user, load stuff up here. The second column, this larger column, is where you can create notes. Give me the top 10 takeaways from all of this information. Or summarize this in a sentence that I can give to the assistant superintendent to explain at the cabinet meeting.

[00:50:27] So that's like sort of the second. And then the third column is where it saves all the notes and where it creates different multimedia experiences around those notes. So for instance, what is robots for everyone? Here's a quick audio podcast.

[00:50:44] Welcome to the deep dive. Today, we're looking at something, well, pretty fascinating. What if robots weren't just, you know, future tech stuff? What if they and coding could actually unlock language for everyone like right now? It's a really interesting question, isn't it? It challenges how we usually think about tech in schools. We're diving into something called the robots for everyone project right and it does this amazing thing leaving together robotics uh block coding and critically language development those are not humans that's ai right so okay so do you see how

[00:51:21] now we've taken some content and we can have it in multi-modality so you can have a text version or you can have this podcast version of two people talking about the content imagine your your fourth grade sol and you're practicing for the the the regions of virginia and you can take your slide deck, put it up here, and as kids want to, they can listen to two people talking about the content. As opposed to what we showed you earlier, which was hit a play button and listen to one voice, read it. Now you're having a conversation. If you listen to podcasts, you know it's much more interesting when there's multiple people talking and sharing their ideas than just one person sort of monologuing. Okay, the other thing that is sort of really

[00:52:01] interesting about this from a teaching and education standpoint is besides the podcast is it can create videos for you. So here's a video that it created from the content. And what I alluded up to it is, just so you know what this is, there's one Google Doc that explains what Robots for Everyone is and one slideshow we've used in presentations to teachers about what Robots for Everyone is.

[00:52:25] It made this video based on those two pieces of video. So what happens when two totally different worlds, I'm talking special education and computer science, suddenly collide? Well, you get a project called Robots for Everyone. And believe me, it's an incredible story about how something as simple as a line of code can actually unlock a human voice. And really, it all boils down to this one simple but powerful question. This isn't about tech for the sake of tech.

[00:52:50] It's about this. How can a robot, a piece of plastic and circuits, genuinely help a child find their voice? That's the real story we're getting into today. Okay, so to really get why this project is so brilliant, we first have to understand the two huge, and I mean huge.

[00:53:07] Okay, I'll stop it there because you get the idea, right? It has created this video that is sort of slide-like. And just to wrap up what Notebook LM can do, there's a mind map that it can create. It takes a second to create it, and then it's this graphic organizer sort of experience.

[00:53:24] Same or similar content, but different ways to sort of dissect that content, which again is exactly what we're shooting for when it comes to a multimodal experience and differentiating instruction. All right, that's Notebook LM. I'm gonna turn it over to Mike for our newest tool to LCPS Brisk.

[00:53:47] - So the tools that we just looked at are, well, I guess Notebook LM is somewhat education specific. It was designed as a tool that can help students study, and we've identified all kinds of other creative uses for it.

[00:54:04] Copilot and Gemini are really broad tools and can be used across industries, across disciplines, whatever it is that you might need from an AI tool. Gemini and Copilot can do that for you. But we've started to see, not just in education, but in lots of industries, these little kind of niche tools that are being developed for specific work tasks or specific industries and disciplines.

[00:54:34] And education is no different. So what we have provided to our teachers this year, after a smaller scale pilot with a handful of schools last school year, we've expanded access to a tool called Brisk Teaching. And what Brisk Teaching is, is a little Chrome extension that sits on all of our teachers' computers, and it overlays on top of the things that they're already working on.

[00:54:55] So if I'm in a Google Doc, or if I'm on a YouTube video, or if I'm in a slide presentation, I might see this little Brisk icon that's floating on my screen down here in the corner. And what I can do with that is when I'm in a place where I can use it, I can pop it open, and now I have AI tools that I can use to interact with the resource that I'm viewing.

[00:55:20] So the two big ones we wanna take a look at today, there's a few different functions that this can serve for our teachers, but the two big ones we're gonna take a brief look at are create and give feedback. So if I come over here to this Google Doc, you can see I've got the Brisk logo.

[00:55:36] This is an article that I asked AI to help me generate. And it was really quick and easy. All I had to do was click on the Brisk logo here. I clicked on Create, said, in this case, I just wanted to create anything.

[00:55:53] I didn't want to use a specific pre-built idea that they've given me. So I just said, give me anything here, and I want to create an article that teaches students about life cycles.

[00:56:10] I think that's what I did here. Once I have that idea, I'll go ahead and create a new one down here so you can see how it generates it. Once I have the idea that I want, I can identify what grade level that I'm working with here.

[00:56:27] So maybe this is a fourth grade class I'm working in, and I can pick a specific Virginia standard if I want. I'm not gonna go through the steps of doing that at the moment, but I can, oop, did I just get out of that whole thing completely?

[00:56:43] I did. So, let's see, it creates an article about the life cycle, about life cycles. So once I have it dialed in the way I want it, I just click brisket, and all of a sudden it's gonna start turning out some content for me here.

[00:57:07] So inside of this tool, I could use the anything button to just create whatever I wanted, but what's really nice for our teachers is that it gives them some starting points. So it gives them some ideas about what it is they might want to use the tool to help create.

[00:57:25] So if I say I want a lesson plan, for example, I can say, just stick with my life cycles example, I want a lesson plan on life cycles for third grades, I can pick my standards and I can pick, I can hit brisk and it's gonna start generating that lesson plan for me.

[00:57:44] So there's all kinds of things that our teachers can create here in pretty quick fashion. Now, as Catherine was sharing, it doesn't mean that we want our teachers to just take these lesson plans as is the very first thing that gets spit out of the computer and take it and implement it.

[00:58:03] What we really want them to do is use the lesson, use the AI tool as a jumping off point to kind of get some ideas on paper, and then they don't have to spend all of that time just doing that initial idea generation. They can really focus in on how do I take this lesson plan? How do I tweak it?

[00:58:19] How do I modify it? How do I make sure it meets the needs of the students in my classroom? So they can really spend the bulk of their time on that 20% really heavy lift as opposed to that 80% of just idea generation. So another thing that I can do inside of Brisk here is I can use Brisk to help me give some feedback to my students on their writing.

[00:58:39] So here's a writing sample. I actually have Brisk generate this for me, but let's imagine that this is some student writing. And I'm gonna come in here as the teacher, and I say, okay, I wanna give some feedback on this, and I'm gonna go ahead and give some targeted feedback.

[00:58:54] There's a couple different models I can use to give feedback, but targeted is a very nice one to model here. I can upload a specific rubric if I have one. Let's see, but let's just say, since I don't have a rubric loaded up, let's just say, please provide feedback on word choice.

[00:59:18] Instructor. And then what the AI is gonna do is it's gonna evaluate the student's writing, and it's gonna start identifying some specific feedback that the teacher might leave for the students on the work.

[00:59:36] Now, what you'll notice is as that feedback is generated, it's not actually leaving the comment yet. It's leaving the comment open so that the teacher can go and review that comment, make sure they agree with it, revise it and refine it if they need to, and then once the teacher is comfortable with where that comment is, they can go ahead and click comment and leave that feedback for the student.

[01:00:01] So it kind of leaves space for the teacher as the human at the center of this work, to really just be using the AI as a support for their thinking, not as a replacement for their thinking.

[01:00:19] So there's all kinds of options here for our teachers and the ways that they can choose to give feedback, but we have heard from many of our teachers who've been using this tool that the feedback tool is one of their favorite tools, especially in English classrooms or secondary classrooms where teachers have a lot of writing to engage with and a lot of feedback to leave, this really is a great support.

[01:00:42] I think in one way, it can also help to create a more consistent feedback experience. If you're grading 150 papers, the level of detail and feedback you provide on paper 149 might not be to the same level of depth and precision as the feedback you gave on papers one through 10.

[01:00:58] So having some support from the AI might actually help to create a more consistent experience for our students and the feedback they're receiving. So there's lots that we could dig into about what Brisk can do, but this is a great example of a tool that is kind of targeted at the specific needs of the teachers that are working in their classrooms.

[01:01:25] So I think what we want to spend the next few minutes talking about is reinforcing some themes that have already surfaced in our conversation this afternoon. We really want to make sure that as we're working with teachers and they are learning about how generative artificial intelligence can be a support for them as we're working with students and they are learning about how generative AI can support them in their learning.

[01:01:50] We really are focused on keeping the human at the center and using the AI as a tool, as a support for our thinking, not as a replacement for our thinking. So in the slides, which I believe Catherine, this group will have access to, correct?

[01:02:07] In the slides we have linked our LCPS generative AI guide. We're not gonna go through everything that's in there this evening but I would recommend that you take a look at that document here just a quick overview of some of the things that you'll find in there we've got some guiding principles that we've developed as a school division we are outlining some of the benefits but also weighing that with challenges because there are some very real challenges with this technology we have some guidance around academic integrity and original work and how can teachers help to support students what can students do to be transparent about the ways that

[01:02:42] they're engaging with generative AI, and then we talk a little bit about data and privacy, data protection and privacy, which are important topics when considering generative artificial intelligence. So that is a wonderful resource that we would encourage you to explore if you have some time. And you've heard this theme come up, I think, from each of us this evening, that it's really about having a partner for our teachers, for our staff, for our students. It's not replacing anyone but it can be a wonderful support to supplement the thinking not replace the thinking of our staff or our students or or replace the

[01:03:21] expertise of our staff it's really just a support all the story you ever hear in the news it's because they didn't follow these four simple words someone turned something in without reviewing it they hit the comment button rather than reviewing it the student did it ask them to solve the problem without actually learning about the problem, I've yet to hear a story in the news where it couldn't have been solved if people just did with it and thought of it as a thought partner instead of a replacement. So this is why it's a central theme for us is that it is this thought partner and we do with, not for. Thanks, Chris. So I

[01:03:58] do want to leave a little bit of space for some table conversations based on everything that we have shared, what you've seen, what you learned in the video, what you saw demoed in some of the tools that we were we were showing off tonight, let's just have a quick table conversation around what are some potential, what is some potential that you see in how these AI tools might help to

[01:04:21] support teaching and learning, especially for our students with disabilities? Put those

[01:07:21] conversations if you would. Do we want to do this? So we want to see if we can highlight some of the ideas that came out of the conversations in your room. So who who might be willing to share maybe one idea that you guys discuss at your table?

[01:07:41] - Here you go, Chris. - So this is Chris, and that's Chris too. I'm just kidding. So, just like you guys were saying, is you have to be very careful with AI, and you have to be a good, use it as a good tool.

[01:08:00] So we came across some material that was good for that age of the student. It was good for what they were trying to do for a lesson plan, but the students, It was good for students that had been through trauma. So it was geared towards that.

[01:08:17] So although everything was met, the person was looking for that. It was traumatic for those kids because they've never seen that before or presented to them. So that's why I say it's very important to do just what you gentlemen are saying.

[01:08:32] It's basically review what it's telling you and make sure it's every aspect that you're looking for. And it's great for IEPs 'cause you put it in there and you can do a lesson plan and spit it right out. Thank you. - I just want to comment on something you said there, Chris.

[01:08:48] That has been the message well before generative AI, too. Meaning, we've always had to review digital materials. Stuff has been, people lie to you on the internet all the time, right? So you're constantly, and you're looking at the content that you're putting in front of kids, no matter where it was generated from. Was that fair? Which is why we spent so much time reviewing.

[01:09:05] - Yeah, whether it's, I mean, that conversation started with, you know, the advent of YouTube, right? Make sure you preview the content before you show it to your class. Make sure you've read the book before you get halfway through it and realize there's some content in there that might not be appropriate. You've got to skip some pages.

[01:09:21] So it's not a new concept for our teachers. I also just wanted to share to you, I don't know if you'll touch on it maybe later. So maybe I'm jumping ahead. Oh, okay. There's a thing, too, where the AI has a component of flattery. And if you work with it a lot, you'll start to see that.

[01:09:37] It's going to compliment you on most of what you're doing. It's going to, it's very friendly because it wants to engage with you. It wants you to keep using it. So there's a lot of like flattery involved in the way that it communicates. And so it's a problem because if you present an argument to it, unless you specifically say you want this argument critiqued and that you are looking for loopholes and weaknesses and all that sort of thing, it's going to find ways to tell you that you're right.

[01:10:05] So that was just one other thing, 'cause it can give you the hallucinations, which is just wrong information, but it will also take information you give it and make it correct for you in a way, unless you say specifically to critique it. - Thank you for that.

[01:10:26] - So what you showed us today, the presentation was wonderful. It's time-saving and effective, and it's beautiful. But my question is, for these small minds, By providing them this tool, are we not giving them shortcuts and skipping those amazing cognitive skills like building that strong memory and organization, sequencing, and those deep thinking?

[01:10:56] I know that technology belongs to our time, so we have to live with it. But how do we control it as leaders in public schools so we don't rob the students of developing those crucial skills? you said the technology is there to support our thinking and not as a replacement so my question what measure are you doing to do to do just that to support it instead of throwing yeah so thank you for that question and we kind of skipped over this slide a little bit where we were talking

[01:11:32] about the tools that we were going to model for this evening and and everything that we showed you this evening are tools that we put in the hands of our teachers and outside of just a few places where we're beginning to kind of baby step our way into students having access like the AI generated voices inside of read and write for example we are being very cautious and trying to be very thoughtful about our approach to what tools we provide the students and when and at what age and what guardrails and safeguards need to be in place before

[01:12:07] those tools are in the hands of students so you know we we have just a few examples of places where students are interacting with generative ai at the moment that that will begin to be expand more and more but that is at the forefront of our thought process is how do we make sure that what we're giving to students is appropriate for their age level their development level is has the the appropriate safeguards has the appropriate teacher visibility and all of those things which is which is why we are trying to try to go a little bit

[01:12:41] slower with what we're putting in front of our students can I add one really quick and with that so good things that we are using it in our cast room and so if we have a student who is going into DSW for their first day of work I will have the student go into co-pilot or Gemini and say today is my first day at DSW what are the three top things I should be aware of or be looking for and

[01:13:17] then it it will generate a list and it takes me out of the equation and it gives agency to that student to ask the question and then analyze the results and we're there where we're side by side doing this but it's not my voice it's my it's the students voice and so I think that's a really powerful thing as we start talking about agency and giving those self-choice where we have to be just incredibly careful with ethics and fidelity of use I get really excited

[01:13:56] when I think about the prospect of agency for some of our students who may communication is difficult and this could be a tool to help remove a caregiver or remove a person not a caregiver sorry remove a person or a step so that they have more independence and and today we started talking about interdependence so independent I'm getting the thing that I need from AI but then the interdependence is talking through it with either myself or a job

[01:14:30] coach or or in a think-pair-share where they are identifying hey this is cool or hey I don't understand this or how does this work or hey I really like this but I don't really what are these words and so do we pull out vocabulary then from that so then it kind of goes in this really cool but agency for me right now it's just something that I have been thinking a lot about having a daughter with a disability she's 22 she wants more than she can handle how do we give

[01:15:06] safely for her so I'm thinking about that when I'm with my students I'm thinking about it as a mom as well so trying not to loosening the apron strings and trying not to hold on too tightly because there's a lot that we can learn and do with this I had a question come online so these tools like notebook alum brisk and all of them are all the teachers like special ed and gen ed familiar with these do they get PD on them and about how many teachers

[01:15:46] are using this well thanks for that question so we are providing opportunities for teachers to learn about these tools in a variety of ways we have offered for the past two years we've offered sessions around generative AI to teachers through our countywide staff development days we've offered like online asynchronous courses on how to develop a good prompt and how to interact with a large language model for our teachers we haven't done anything where we have said all teachers are going to get this common experience yet but we've been trying to find ways to provide as many opportunities to teachers who are interested as possible all of our schools have instructional

[01:16:25] technology facilitators who are embedded in each building to help support the teachers in that school and we're working with them to build their skills so they have what they need to turn around and support the teachers so it's a range of things at the moment and as far as usage goes I'd have to go and look at the specific numbers in Brisk and in Copilot and Gemini but we see a pretty consistent usage but it it might might be a little bit lower than you might think as far as the number of teachers who are interacting with these tools in a given month I think we're still growing in our adoption of some of these tools.

[01:16:59] - I will add that with the specialized instructional facilitators for assistive technology, we partner with the instructional technology facilitators to learn, okay, what are you guys talking about? How are you doing it? Okay, we're gonna have a similar experience with a twist on how are we going to use it for students with disabilities.

[01:17:16] But we often partner on doing those trainings together, either doing them separately, just the content's similar, or actually partnering with together and doing it together. We also do it sort of on request.

[01:17:33] You know, this particular school might say, hey, can you come out for our staff development meeting and can you do 30 minutes on what this is? 'Cause that was awesome and I just love, you know, so there are some sort of specialized one-off when people ask for them, we accommodate. When I say we, I mean the SIPHATs, the Specialized Instructional Facilitators for Assistive Technology.

[01:17:54] - And I think that one of the things As we are looking at this and looking at how we're, you know, making our literacy better across the division, some of our significantly delayed students are still not getting that evidence-based reading curriculum.

[01:18:12] And so how can we take some of this and adapt it for our students so that, you know, they have access to that? Can I just comment on one thing about that? So when you go to an ed tech conference, I would invite everybody to shout what I'm about to tell you from the rooftops, okay?

[01:18:29] 'Cause we go to a lot of ed tech conferences and we see a lot of ed tech gurus get up and talk about how they can use generative AI to differentiate instruction, just what we were saying, right? And what we see a lot is what Catherine demonstrated. Look, I can show you how I can take this reading passage and then I can make it a third grade or a second grade and we're here to tell you we've been doing that in special ed for 15 plus years.

[01:18:52] And what we've learned is that it's a two-prong approach. So it's taking the longer passage and using Read&Write to listen to it, and then going back and decoding using what we were talking about, Mr. Ketchum's ferret passage, right?

[01:19:07] Or your Buffalo Bills passage. It's doing both. But a lot of people will not tell you that, which is why I want you to all shatter from, don't forget to listen to the longer version, don't forget to listen to that content. you are you with me I just recruited a bunch of people okay and then the one last thing I'll add is that what I've heard from the IT world is for those that have students in high school script the prompt writing has become a very big thing and that they are looking for students they're

[01:19:42] looking for these are becoming jobs and how to write the prompts and I'm seeing more and more ads out there now of you need better prompts we can help you develop prompts so I mean prompt writing is actually an art now so well thank you all for your time this evening yeah I'll just add a couple of very quick things because I think the most powerful slide in there is about do with not for this and cannot be stressed enough this has to be a set of tools for really empowerment as as opposed to building dependency,

[01:20:20] because they're very cool, and they will do a lot of things, and it's very easy to, you know, when my mom would come home and start getting papers at seven, eight o'clock at night, just hit click, click, click to that comment, right? It becomes very easy to do that.

[01:20:35] There's a problem in a lot of industries that are adopting Gen AI tools right now, a lot of worry around de-skilling. As college graduates are coming out into the work world, they're not learning some of the same thinking skills because they already are building a dependency on a lot of this output.

[01:20:55] I would also say that as these guys pointed out about the problem with hallucinations, that's not the only problem with Gen AI. There are some other ones as well, particularly around cultural bias. A lot of these engines were trained on English language documents that come from the Western world.

[01:21:15] So you have to be very aware of that. Now there are some variations and some things you can do with context windows and so forth to get around some of those problems. A lot of this does come back to the prompt engineering that Shanaaz was referring to. But then there are some other problems too and that relates to things like a derivative IP because sometimes you will get a response that could be a derivative work of somebody else's intellectual property.

[01:21:43] So you have to be cautious of those things. As Chris was saying, go back and check their sources and so forth to make sure that the material that is being generated is something that you can actually use. And the final thing I would just add is the issue around privacy.

[01:21:59] The reason that Catherine is getting such great prompts that are so relevant to her is because everything that she's putting in there is being kept. So I would urge you do not drop an IEP into Copilot or Gemini or any of those because that material is being preserved.

[01:22:19] your very use of it is being tracked. The use of your students as they may be using at home and so forth is being tracked. And so you can use it. It's a great tool. My whole career currently is based around these tools. So I want people to use them.

[01:22:36] I want people to use them properly and look into these guys to help guide us. - I just wanted to be really clear that all the directions from these guys and anyone else that is promoting the use of AI for construction of lessons or developing IEP goals or anything like that.

[01:22:54] It's a beautiful tool, but it is just a tool. And we put information in there. There is no personally identifiable information, PII, put into AI. So that has been repeated and repeated and repeated.

[01:23:10] And so if folks are listening to what we're doing and to the point of it, There would not be anything like that put anywhere where it could be found. We take great lengths to make sure that all that information is secure.

[01:23:27] But, yes, dropping an IEP in AI would not be advisable. And, by the way, if you think you could redact a document and drop it into AI, you're kidding yourself. You can un-redact documents now in AI. Thank you, Chris and Mike.

[01:23:43] We really appreciate that. That was a great interactive presentation. We will take a five-minute break before we start the business portion of our meeting.

[01:31:32] Okay, let's go ahead and get started with the business meeting portion of our day. Okay, for those of you who haven't signed in yet, please use the QR code on the screen.

[01:31:53] Those that are live streaming too, please give it a couple seconds because last time I think I went through it too quickly.

[01:32:17] Here's our agenda for today. Just kind of go through it real quick. Okay, so SEAC is mandated by the state of Virginia, and the primary role includes advising the school division on the needs of students with disabilities, helping set priorities and strategies, and submitting recommendations to the school board.

[01:32:42] It also assists in explaining special education plans to the community, reviews policy and procedures before they go to the school board, and participation in reviewing the division's annual special education plan.

[01:32:59] I'm gonna introduce our executive board. My name is Shanaz Khan, I am the SEAC chair. We have Catherine Moran, our vice chair of planning. We have Tom Ketchum, our vice chair of membership. Erin Rosalpo, our vice chair of communication.

[01:33:15] Liz Crotty, our past SEAC chair. Katie Rosenbrook, who is online with us today, who is our secretary. And we have our director of special education, Dr. Paige Carter. Our school board liaison, Carrie LaBelle.

[01:33:32] Our backup was Melinda Mansfield. So we will begin by admitting our virtual attendees. Do I have a motion?

[01:33:50] Okay, it was moved and seconded. Do we want to do a roll call? Okay.

[01:34:06] - Carrie Adams. - Present. - Elizabeth Crotty, Jen Giannato, Marsha Kelly, Tom Ketchum, Janaz Khan, Rosina Katak, Laura Colossi, Mary McClintock, Alicia McFadden, Craig Metz, Stephen Meyer,

[01:34:45] Catherine Moran, Kelly Ralston. Kelly's online. Here. Erin Rosalpoe, Catherine Rosenbook. Here. Carly Sabatino, Carla Sola, Jaron Trompf.

[01:35:07] Here. Melissa Waugh, and Sakina Zarbuch. Okay, wonderful. And to our members, I did email out the July and September meeting minutes.

[01:35:25] did everyone have a chance to kind of review it real quick any changes corrections those will be admitted in public comment does somebody want to grab this sheet see if we have any SEAC really values hearing from the public because your feedback helps guide the recommendations we make to the school board about special education needs we do ask that the comments focus on

[01:35:58] system-wide issues rather than individual students or staff you can And share your thoughts by giving a verbal comment, up to three minutes, or by submitting your comment in writing to be read by the SEAC chair.

[01:36:15] And please remember to follow up with the SEAC secretary with your written comment so it's part of the record. And we do have one public comment today. Did I read?

[01:36:32] I don't have the public comment. Can you read it? Yeah. Hello.

[01:36:56] I'm an eighth grade student and I would like to talk with you about the VDE and VDL programs and why they are very effective educational options for students with disabilities in LCPS. For students with visual impairments, health-related disabilities, anxiety, or other challenges, VDL and VDE creates a fully accessible and flexible learning environment.

[01:37:17] This makes it so such students can have fewer barriers than in traditional schools while still being able to synchronously meet with teachers and classmates. This also creates unique opportunities where students with disabilities can also take advanced academic courses, which are not always available in traditional settings.

[01:37:35] I want to encourage SEAC to recognize VDE and VDL as a really high quality placement option, not just an alternative, but a pathway to success. I also want to make sure that IEP and 504 teams are informed that VDL and VDE can support both remediation and acceleration.

[01:37:54] Lastly, to advocate for continuous investment so that this opportunity remains available to all students. I also want to encourage SEAC to consider how LCPS can better recognize VDE and VDL as a part of its commitment to equitable access and opportunity for all students with disabilities.

[01:38:12] Thank you so much. - Thank you. - Yay, now I'll have Leanne Kidwell from Family Resource Services come up.

[01:38:39] - Yes, for you. - Good evening, I'm Leanne Kidwell with Family Resource Services, and I just wanted to do a really quick overview of what Family Resource Services, what services we provide. There's really three big areas.

[01:38:56] I provide direct support to families, and that can be in the form of an email, or a phone call, or a face-to-face meeting. I had a high school student reach out to me with a question, so that was fantastic. I mostly get parents and guardians, but I talk to anyone.

[01:39:15] The other thing that I do is workshops, and I'll talk about that in a second. And then I also do resources and referrals. So if you have any questions of after-school activities or bus transportation, you can give me a call.

[01:39:33] So on my back table, I apologize last month. I did not bring the paper copies, but this month they're all there. I have both the master calendar for mental health and the master calendar for special ed. And these are our two workshops that are coming up this month.

[01:39:48] So we have Suicide Prevention on the 16th with Dr. Heather Applegate. She's fantastic. And we have a brand new workshop with our own Dr. Kim Jones and Ms. Margaret Asbury. And they're going to do Navigating Special Ed with Confidence and Clarity.

[01:40:07] So that is on the 30th of the month. And this is who I am and where you can find me. Thank you. Next we have Dr. Carter.

[01:40:28] Hi, everybody. That's our number. How many students we're serving today? 10,488. I'm going to share some celebrations with you. October is both Disability History and Awareness Month as well as Dyslexia Awareness Month. We're going to have activities and a menu of options for schools to do to celebrate these two months this during October. So just wanted to make you aware of that, that we are celebrating.

[01:41:04] We're also going to have a special event in the community that I wanted to share with you. I don't have a lot of details yet, but a place to be will be hosting a special exhibit. Our students who are served at the Adult Detention Center here in Loudoun County did a 9-11 service project where they created letters and art, various kinds of art, around the idea of serving others.

[01:41:32] And the project is, or the exhibit is going to be called The Power of Purpose, and it's going to be at a place to be. When they heard about this project and what was happening, a place to be reached out and said, we want to be a part of this. So we're really excited about it.

[01:41:47] Next month I should have much more details and a flyer, but it sounds like it would be something that we would certainly want to support as a SEAC. All right, and then something really exciting happened yesterday, our, or actually Monday. Several of our international teachers who were hired this summer have received clearance and travel and have arrived here in Loudoun County to begin their working with us and teaching our students beginning next week.

[01:42:17] These are fully licensed special educators here in the state of Virginia who are coming from various places internationally. And I just wanted to give a big shout-out to our schools who are receiving them, The agency that we use to find licensed teachers shared that some of our schools have been communicating and reaching out with these candidates since they were identified to become friends and share things about their schools.

[01:42:46] And some of them have already taken them to dinner and taken them shopping to help them feel welcome while they get settled here in Loudoun. Huge change to move halfway around the world and jump right into Loudoun County Public Schools. And so we are really excited they're here.

[01:43:03] This is a picture of Beatrice. She is definitely a leader among the group. She spoke yesterday, and our team who were there for the event said that that is just so exciting. They are so happy to be here and so ready to get started. Okay, it's budget season, we're in the throes of it, and we're currently contemplating our priorities.

[01:43:25] I know I shared with Shanaaz, if y'all have got some ideas, now's the time. But from OSE, our priorities really have not changed, but I just kind of wanted to share with you from just sort of the director lens, the things that I'm focusing on when I'm making my asks for the budget.

[01:43:43] The continuation of the staffing standard, which promotes caseloads well within the state limits. So our teachers can focus and do what they need to do. We'll need additional programs next year to support the increase in eligible students who need specialized programs.

[01:43:58] We are probably looking at around the same number that we asked for last year. It's absolutely incredible the growth that we are experiencing in special education compared to the county overall. We're also looking at the continuation of coaching support to our novice special educators in the midst of a shortage we have a lot of new and novice and provisionally licensed teachers we want to continue our support from our office we use specialized instructional facilitators to do that work and as our programs go grow by 2030 and 40 and that's just the

[01:44:33] three years that I've been a part of that growth we have not increased the number of specialized instructional facilitators that we have that serve that population, whether it be CIFs who concentrate in cross-categorical classrooms for academics, CIFs who support programs. Chris was here tonight talking about the CIFATs. There are only nine of them and we have 361 programs, 10,488 students. So it is a, you know, it is a continuous need and something that we we are focused on to make sure that we maintain and grow that

[01:45:10] that group of people as much as we can and then continued funds for curriculum and materials to make sure the students have what they need that is specially designed and differentiated for them across the levels and needs and of course coaching and professional development for our educators and our support staff focusing on TA training is something that we really are are wanting to highlight for next school year. All right. And then I just wanted to just say this special note and thank you for your advocacy. Whether it is something you are advocating for

[01:45:49] yourself, something you've experienced, or something you know that our students need, or something that I have brought to you as something that our department finds important, you have risen to the challenge every time and used your voices to make a difference for our students with disabilities and I just wanted to say thank you we're going to share some things tonight that we may need some of that advocacy for at the state level and with that Tedra is going to come up and share some highlights from the entire department but we've also got some video e news to share as

[01:46:22] well dr. Carter I appreciate that it's wonderful to be here with you all this evening since there there's a lot of information to share from the D vision level as well as the state level, I will just say that the DSS continues to impart their greatness across LCPS on a daily basis.

[01:46:46] And we'll jump into really what you guys need to know. Linked here, so when you get the presentation, it will take you to a PDF of the full school board presentation that was presented last evening by Dr. Ashley Ellis, our chief academic officer and Dr. Ryan Tyler, our director of research assessment and school improvement.

[01:47:12] So this is our student achievement data and I've been asked by SEAC leadership to give an update on how our students with disabilities are performing. We're also going to have a conversation about the changes in cut scores and that's where your advocacy is going to be needed.

[01:47:30] And we have linked some additional resources that will take you directly to some of the web resources that the Virginia Department of Education has now posted. So let's jump into SOL achievement. Of course, Loudoun County has a lot to be proud of.

[01:47:46] You can see that the blue numbers across reading, math, science, history, and writing reflect the overall performance of school systems across the Commonwealth. And you can see that LCPS, our achievement, is highlighted in that reddish pink color.

[01:48:05] So we continue to outperform the state, which should be celebrated, absolutely. Next slide, now mind you, the presentation was rather long, so I've just grabbed certain slides. But I wanted to highlight the performance of our students with disabilities, again, the The Commonwealth averages are in blue, and LCPS is highlighted in that pinkish-red color.

[01:48:32] So while we are outperforming across the Commonwealth, please note that there is still a pretty large gap between the performance of students with disabilities and those of typically de-developing peers.

[01:48:48] And here's the overall summary of how we're doing across our subgroups. The only subgroup that is not referenced here is economically disadvantaged. So again, the pink, that's for all students across LCPS.

[01:49:03] Students with disabilities, our performance is highlighted in that deep purple color. And then our English language learning students are highlighted in yellow. So the school board was able to engage with staff, ask questions about the why, have a conversation last evening about how might we begin to filter and and sort of funnel different resources to two two different places they asked really great questions about accommodations for students with disabilities and how that works when they take standardized tests so definitely know that our school board

[01:49:41] while while they are celebrating the fact that we are out achieving most of our colleagues and systems across the Commonwealth, they absolutely recognize that we still have pretty significant gaps too close, okay? Here's another big change that was discussed last evening. So approved by the Virginia Board of Education on September 25th is a change in cutoff scores for SOLs. When we were

[01:50:15] initially notified as a D vision it was told to us that it was going to be effective for this school year since then the Virginia Department of Education has sort of taken a little bit of a step back and they're saying it's going to be a phased approach but you can see currently what the cutoff scores are so table one you're looking at the recommendations the changes and cutoff scores for reading, and the second table is the performance cutoff scores for math.

[01:50:53] When you get the presentation, you can also click that link and it will take you to the Virginia Board of Education's presentation that they gave on their sort of rationale behind why we're moving towards changes in our cutoff scores. Okay?

[01:51:09] I'm going to need you to brace yourself for the next couple of slides because it shows you the impact for LCPS okay okay here's our hypothetical pass rates so we're looking at reading right now so reading scores looking at our current pass rates for third graders sixth graders and eighth graders and then our end of course reading assessments you can see again we are performing well all right the

[01:51:43] The changes in the cut scores, so the proposed changes, and if you go back, you'll look, the cut-off scores are different by grade level, okay? So notice that. Hypothetically, if we took our scores as they stand right now and applied the new cut-off scores, you could see that there is a 30% difference for third graders in the negative direction, almost another 30% for sixth grade, almost another 30% for eighth grade, and our

[01:52:19] 11th graders take about a 40% hit. That's everybody. That's everybody. That this is not just students with disabilities. This is all students in LCPS. Okay. The next slide shows you what it would be for math. So again, looking at our current pass rates, third, sixth, eighth, and algebra one, looking at our current scores that have us out achieving all school divisions across the commonwealth you can see that the hypothetical pass rate with the new cut scores

[01:52:54] it's a difference a negative difference of about 28 percent for third grade almost 33 percent for sixth grade about 26 percent for eighth grade and about 41 percent for algebra one and algebra one is the highest predictor for high school graduation of any course that you take high school passing algebra one is there's a direct correlation to graduation so the the other when i saw these i

[01:53:29] thought well everyone is going to be impacted and what would be the goal of of changing this i have all kinds of ridiculous theories on that that i'm not going to share but but i do think um i do think that it's important to note that we're not the only division be impacted by change cut scores it the entire Commonwealth is going to be impacted by this but I think what is most challenging for me is the impact to students with disabilities and I think

[01:53:58] Mr. Metz had a question yes yeah make sure that one turned on you almost started answering the question I was going to ask like you had a link to the video is rationale could you I mean even briefly summarize because I think it's useful for the discussion understand what problem are they trying solve or why are they endeavoring to do this i can make my very brief and limited statement and then tendra may have more information but as i understand it just glossing over it it is to make

[01:54:32] the sol scores correlate more with a national um a national comparison to it but okay thanks there is a but there is for me and and and my limited work when i was working on my phd you can do anything with statistics to make them say what you want them to say so I'm I'm skeptical about even the rationale that they gave but there is a document that's linked at the end I believe you linked it on the last page that Tedder's going to share from but it is it is to correlate with a national test that that

[01:55:10] is normed in a very different way and utilized in a very different way so I'm I'm struggling with it, but I just wanted to publicly say that to someone. That's a great question, Mr. Metz, and so thank you for asking it.

[01:55:26] We did receive a press release pretty late in the evening on Thursday, September 25th, and it reads as this. The Virginia Board of Education unanimously approved a set of elevated cut scores that redefine the minimum score a student must achieve to reach a performance level on an assessment.

[01:55:49] By modifying cut scores, the board ensures that proficient reflects the skills and knowledge students need to be ready for success in college, career ready, or in military pathways after high school.

[01:56:04] The new cut scores are statistically equivalent to the National Assessment for Educational Progress, or the NAEP test, which is a recognized benchmark of excellence, ensuring that student performance is measured in alignment with the highest national standard.

[01:56:26] The Virginia Department of Education emphasizes that higher expectations will be paired with data in informed, evidence-based supports for students, educators, and families. Might I say one more thing?

[01:56:44] So I just have a very quick question. So does that then put our hypothetical pass rates in line with those other states? And I would just also offer a reassuring comment, which is we changed the cut scores, and it's not so much that Algebra 1 success is no longer an indicator of graduation rates.

[01:57:08] You're right. It's going to just simply break the correlation. Correct. Very true. Yes, absolutely. And I think that most of us were expecting a public comment period for something this large. And I told the supervisors, get ready, because when they have them, we're going to move in action, and we're going to contact SEAC.

[01:57:29] We'll go together, right? And those public comment opportunities did not come in the way, you know, public hearings in the way that they do for, or used to do, for changes this big. So that was a little bit disappointing for us.

[01:57:45] We were expecting it. It is important to note that the Virginia Department of Education did emphasize that it's a multi-year phase-in and that there are provisions for the graduating class of 2026 that their end-of-course math and end-of-course reading SOLs will continue to be measured at the current proficiency cutoff score of 400.

[01:58:13] All right. Oh, question. Sorry. I'm sorry because I don't understand the difference between the state administration and the VDOE. So if there's a change in the governorship, does that affect?

[01:58:35] It could. You're welcome. So here's some still some things that are unknown specific for students with disabilities. So we don't know how these new cutoff scores are going to affect retakes.

[01:58:53] We don't know if that option will even remain available for our students with disabilities. Our Research Assessment and School Improvement Office has been monitoring and reaching out pretty regularly. And so we have been told the latest update that we received this afternoon was that we should hear about some of our detailed questions in about three weeks.

[01:59:19] We don't know the impact to special permission credit accommodations. We don't know if they're still going to remain. Are they going to revise that process? And then, of course, the local things that we're looking at is how these changes will impact students that are accessing interventions in Tier 2 and Tier 3, as well as the cadence of our diagnostic measures.

[01:59:44] Do we need to start looking at possibly changing our diagnostic measures? Because ultimately, the board, the Virginia board, not our school board, is saying that the reason for part of the change is that they're also working to enhance the rigor of the actual questions on the standards of learning.

[02:00:09] Yes. So, again, we will continue to keep you informed as we learn more information. But we wanted to make sure that you guys think about it, could take it in. Our school division is going to be issuing a press release as of 4 o'clock.

[02:00:29] We were supposed to get our final framework sort of status of our schools across LCPS, and so more information will be forthcoming. Which is also new. Yes. So we have changed the cut scores, we have changed the rigor, and we have changed how we analyze the scores.

[02:00:51] So there will not be the ability to easily correlate how they're doing right now with anything they've ever done before. But more information is forthcoming, hopefully in three weeks. Yes. All right.

[02:01:08] Also, from our achievement update from last evening, we did give a snapshot of MAP conditional growth. So, of course, that is looking at our students performing over that 50th percentile. And here's a snapshot of students with disabilities.

[02:01:26] Here's where we are with reading, and you can see our data across our demographic population. Students with disabilities are right under that 50% growth mark at 48.4. For math, we're right at 50.1, so we're right on the mark for students with disabilities.

[02:01:49] And then here's just an overview of what our trends have looked like on the math assessment going all the way back to 2020. And you can see students with disabilities, for reading, we've remained sort of pretty steady.

[02:02:08] We haven't quite met that 50 percent yet, and so while we're still making progress, we know that that's a gap area that we need to continue to focus on. But you can see for math our performance, particularly in 22, 23, even back in 21, 22, and then certainly last year we were meeting, we were spot on for where we would like to see the growth of our students with disabilities on the MAP assessment.

[02:02:39] All right, the voice of SEAC. You have a powerful presence here in LCPS. We need you to amplify that, okay? So any written feedback that SEAC can come to get, certainly you can act as individuals, of course, but I think coming together as a unified body and giving some feedback on the implementation of the SOL cutoff scores, any advocacy, they're calling the Virginia Department of Education, and I did link it, that's that VDOE webpage, that's the bottom link.

[02:03:14] That is their Roadshow for Input, Raising Expectations in Virginia K-12 Education webpage. So they are hosting virtual and in-person sessions to get feedback.

[02:03:30] So you can submit written information, you can show up in person, but certainly, if you can turn the power that you have had the ability to facilitate some amazing change here in LCPS.

[02:03:47] I have no doubt that if we come together yet again, for not just our students here in LCPS, but for all of our students across the Commonwealth, I can't imagine the impact that we may have. - Okay, and so I just, I thank you for your time.

[02:04:06] I thank you for being thoughtful about this. We will make sure that SEAC leadership has all of the resources so that they can send them out, so that you guys can take the time to read over them, and then certainly we remain available for any questions that you may have.

[02:04:24] Thank you all.

[02:04:39] - Carrie, do you have an update for us from the school board? - Not from the school board, but I was asked this evening why there seemed to be a more active security presence at the door.

[02:05:00] I think a lot of you may have missed last week, I believe you were told that according to new regulations that have been put out by the board, that more wanding and they have to check purses and you can't bring in the big tall water bottles or containers small ones are fine but the bigger ones especially if they're metal or hard plastic they said they can't do that anymore they have to follow all the no

[02:05:37] no's that they've been given on this list and so if you if you're coming in this door that as as somebody from outside the LCPS employment or agency you you need to be wanted so keep that in mind it's it's just the world we live in today I think and it's something that we need to worry about and we want to keep everybody safe so please keep that in mind the next time you come okay

[02:06:08] that's about it thank you Carrie okay and we did the did you know second we're good okay I asked miss Richardson if she would mind if she wouldn't mind presenting they call her up again the discipline data was presented once to the school board on August 12th and then to one of the subcommittees the performance maintenance committee monitoring performance monitoring I knew

[02:06:44] it's PMC but so I wanted her to just kind of go over some of the data that's come out so far from there thank you so this was a request coming from our school board in June really wanting to sort of have a sense of how we are impacted across our D vision with discipline so we have here just the slides as they pertain to students with disabilities so you will see looking at our data all all the way back to 2021 to last year,

[02:07:21] students with disabilities have about a 3% chance higher than their non-disabled peers with being disciplined, okay? Let's make sure I have my notes, 'cause this was not my presentation, so let me just make sure I have all of my notes together.

[02:07:42] The next slide, and I think this is where SEAC has been most involved. We had a meeting in July. You guys gave great feedback on the memorandum of understanding between LCPS, the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office, and Lilliesburg Police Department.

[02:08:00] Really looking at the offenses that are reportable to law enforcement, again, you can see that students with disabilities, that purple line, had about 10% of those offenses that were committed by students with disabilities were reported to law enforcement.

[02:08:20] We did have a decline last year, which is good to note. Some of the things that are required by Virginia Code, certainly anything that involves a firearm, anything that involves a weapon, stalking, possession of controlled substances, being under the influence of controlled substances, there's a pretty long list, but those are just a few things that I've pulled out from that list that are reportable to law enforcement.

[02:08:52] I know one of the larger concerns from SEAC, really when you're looking at this data, is what is the interaction of law enforcement with our students with disabilities? And so certainly it is the building level administrators that issue the discipline that lead the investigation, and we have some administrators here, so they can certainly speak to the process, but if they're looking at the SBAR, which really is our code that tells us, okay, this one is not required to be reported, but this one is, our administrators would reach out to the SRO or LPD

[02:09:33] and making sure that they are informing them. Now, it's not a direct sort of immediately law enforcement is there working with our students. we have to involve parents. It's a process, okay? And I know that we have had lots of conversation as a SEAC about what trainings are available in disability awareness and sensitivity for our law enforcement partners.

[02:10:00] And we have shared that MANT and UCARU and Understanding Disabilities, all of those resources are always offered and available to our school resource officers as well as our school safety officers.

[02:10:16] And then here is just a global sort of overview breakdown. So the first sort of box looks at the number of referrals to law enforcement students with disabilities, those without. So let's focus on last year.

[02:10:31] We had about 753. It's incidences. It's not students. Incidences, OK, that were reported for students with disabilities where we had 2,271 incidences that were reportable for students without disabilities.

[02:10:54] Then you can just get an overview. That middle chart is really looking at our overall membership. And so that fall membership data, that comes from September 30th of 2024. So at that point in time, we had 10,002 students that were eligible under the IDEA, and overall we were serving about 71,576 students without disabilities.

[02:11:22] And then the last chart is really a breakdown of the percentage of incidences that happened that were referable to law enforcement per Virginia code. For students with disabilities, that was about 7.5% of those instances.

[02:11:40] then for students without, because that's a larger N, it was 3.2%. Any other questions I can clarify? Yeah, that's a really, really weird way to devise, to derive a percentage, because you're doing a percent of incidents with the whole student population. So is there any way to break that down? Because the real problem is recidivism, right? So do we see across those 753 incidents, that's the result of maybe 300 students. So it's a very different number

[02:12:16] where students without disabilities, maybe it's 2,000, in which case then the percentages change because it's a weird way to report the percentage as that doesn't really tell you. It's not 753 students, it's incidents, and out of 10,000 students in SPED, really how many were affected?

[02:12:37] Right. And we can certainly work to disaggregate the data down further, for sure. I know that this is going to be a report that the board has asked for at a pretty regular cadence. So that's certainly feedback that I can take to the Department of School Leadership, Office of School Administration.

[02:12:56] And this is one of the reasons why I did ask for this data is because I think they're going to be coming back in January with more information. And as we keep taking a deeper dive, it would be nice for SEAC to be asking some of these meaningful questions that we can get answers to and see.

[02:13:16] One of the things I appreciated, Ms. Scanlon is the one who presented this in the September meeting. And she did mention that a lot of this we're looking at behaviors and how do we support not only our students with the behaviors, but how do we support our teachers in trying to get down to the bottom of what's going on with this data.

[02:13:42] And then there's also one other point, she had mentioned that between 2023 and 2024, I can't read from here, but there's a slight dip, and one of the things that she did mention was that the type of violations that were reported, they had taken a look at all those violations and they actually cut down the number of violations that would be reported to law enforcement.

[02:14:13] So if it were something like 60 before, it was now only 50 that were, those were the violations that would be reported to law enforcement. That is kind of why we see a little bit of a dip. But we do have a lot of additional questions to be asking, and I really appreciate you coming out and presenting this.

[02:14:31] As a, just real quick to a statistic that I'm always interested in because the state looks at it and they're, and a lot of our students with disabilities are in general education with their peers all day and kids of all kinds, whether you have a disability or not, sometimes make bad choices.

[02:14:52] A statistic that I'm really interested in is how much more likely are you to be suspended if you have a disability than if you don't? That is the statistic that the state uses to calculate the disproportionality between those two things.

[02:15:09] And so that is another way to look at this data. And every year we have to turn in this information and more, I'm sure, in the civil rights data. Yes.

[02:15:21] And so, and then we get a letter from the state talking about the disproportionality, and that is something that I really think would be a great thing to target, to bring the number down overall of incidents, of suspensions resulting from those incidents, and finding ways, alternatives to suspension, because I do think events are going to happen, but whether you have a disability or not.

[02:15:49] But I really think we need to think about behavior plans, FBAs. What could we be doing to reduce the number of behaviors for students with disabilities anyway? You basically already volunteered what I'm going to ask for, which is that disaggregated data by number of recurrences.

[02:16:11] When we look at discipline data and behavior interventions, it is useful to know, you know, first, how effective are we at preventing anything from happening in the first place? But then the second question is, when something happens once, are the interventions happening and effective to prevent reoccurrence?

[02:16:33] And so that two or more data is also very helpful because at that point, you're kind of attacking the problem differently. Now it is a known, at least potential, behavior of that student. Now have we put specific interventions in place and are they effective? But that further binning is also helpful because in the past with discipline data, we have received reports that there are sometimes cases where there are students who are simply frequent flyers.

[02:16:59] That the data can be kind of skewed by one or two cases where there's just a major recurrence. And so the number gets big, but it's really just like one or two really weird cases. And that doesn't mean that's not a problem, but that is different than there's a whole lot of twice recurrences.

[02:17:18] So, you know, I think you've already volunteered that, but having that, you know, and recurrences for that student kind of histogram would be particularly helpful. Sure. Microphone's coming.

[02:17:35] Oh, sorry. Is it on? Can I just ask, is a suicide risk deter, quality? No. Come under discipline? No, that is not discipline. If I may, I am, I'm the chairman of the Student Behavior and Discipline Committee.

[02:18:03] I'm also, I'm so lucky. I get all the referrals and the appeals. And one of the things that we've been noticing, I work very closely with Ms. Scanlon, is sometimes we get referrals of students with IEPs, but we're not getting, oh, I'm having brain trouble.

[02:18:29] It's late for me. I was up late last night. No, no, no, M. Manifests. Manifestations. A lot of times we're getting things that say, "Oh, this was not, you know, a result of his disability."

[02:18:47] But then it doesn't say anywhere in the referral what the disability was, nor do we get an IEP. So this is something that we want to work on. The other thing that we're looking at is that I'd love to see in our data that we have here somewhere, and we were just talking about that when we were talking about what AI could do for you.

[02:19:14] I'd love to be able to see by grade level, by disability, all of those things that could tell us a little bit more about why some kids seem to have, or some populations seem to have more discipline referrals than others.

[02:19:34] So that's something I think we also need to look at is get it, you know, by grade levels, schools, you could look at it also whether they are receiving special education services, what types of special education services, and all of those other items that would help us make a meaningful distinction when we are looking, I look at the appeals cases.

[02:20:04] So, you know, that would be very helpful, I think. Thank you. I've taken notes, and again, I'll take this back to the Department of School Leadership, and we'll continue to work with them. Thank you.

[02:20:27] Okay. We're going to speed through this because I really do want to get to, and hopefully it won't take us long to get through the policies, but PTA, PTO reps, do we know how many? Tom? We currently have 41, which means we need to go out and recruit the rest.

[02:20:47] That largely falls to my role. But if you guys know of people in your school districts that would like to participate or in schools perhaps that you were previously in, please refer them to the vice chair membership at LCPS and be happy to register them.

[02:21:08] And I believe we have 20 voting members. We do have quorum today. Just real quick, policy and compliance, they meet as needed as we get the policies. Meaningful inclusion. It's no longer TBD.

[02:21:23] We have our first meeting on October 15th at 6 p.m. It will be virtual, so there will be an announcement about that. We will continue to meet on the third Wednesday of the month. What I'll do is to our members, I will send out, and our PTA PTA reps, I will send out an email summarizing all of this for everyone because this is changing our special specialized reading and math we our next meeting was October 9th but we are going to move that to November just a lot of changes happened just today and so I will update this and send it out to our members transition will be meeting in person on November 11th and our EC

[02:22:03] meeting will be right after this meeting at Clyde's so if anybody would like to join us we have some good discussions um i'm hearing things that um yes they will meet 10 a.m but some days we'll do virtual some days we'll be um in person we're trying to figure out how to get some of our all of our committee members to be able to attend but

[02:22:38] we'll keep it in mind we're still working on that schedule so um so i think again i'm going to send summary of the ones that have met the subcommittees that have met I'll send it via email and just to save a little bit of time here our next meeting is November 12th we're going to have our CX Special Education Resource Fair Catherine do you want to kind of talk about that a little bit so we started this last year and it was a great well-received and just a great opportunity for us to meet and

[02:23:16] and hear about programs and things, resources within LCPS. We have some great resource fares when the bus stop's coming, which is in February. And that brings in outside providers as well as some of our internal. But this, we really want to focus on programs and support services that are special, unique to us in Loudoun.

[02:23:42] And there'll be tables set up with representatives from just about everywhere. Gosh, health, nutrition, Mantukuru, oh my gosh, the list is in my head, but just a great opportunity for you.

[02:24:06] Oh, we're going to have a table where you can ask the director and the assistant director. So, if there is something that you're dying to ask Dr. Carter, you'll have an opportunity, but we are going to make sure there's timelines so that we'll get through there.

[02:24:29] Parent Resource Services. So just come ready to mingle, meet, maybe reach out to and learn about a new resource that you are not familiar with so that if it comes up in conversation with another family or another educator, you can say, oh my gosh, I just heard about this resource.

[02:24:47] Here you go. So we're excited. Okay, and now we're going to move into our policies. There are just two calling up Craig. Craig is one of the co-chairs of the policy subcommittee.

[02:25:07] Hello, everyone. So policy 5310 is literally titled special education. It is mostly administrative and mostly just saying we're going to have special education and we're going to follow the IDEA.

[02:25:25] Hopefully that's not very controversial in this room here. However, there is one thing that's in there that the last time we looked at this led to a lively discussion among the committee, and that is the IDEA regulations have a provision that allows you to do an IEP amendment after you've developed your annual IEP, where if you, the parent, and the school have both agree that this is not a big deal change and you just want to do an amendment without having a meeting, that you can agree to do that.

[02:26:04] Years ago, LCPS allowed that. When this policy came up, I don't know, 2019, 2020, 2018, the policy subcommittee recommended that we continue to allow to having IEP amendments without a meeting.

[02:26:23] However, SEAC had been receiving some concerns from the community that parents sometimes felt pressured that an IEP amendment was being put in front of them and basically told sign this that they didn't necessarily participate or understand what was going on and they didn't necessarily understand that they could say no or say I can have I want an IEP meeting to talk about this. The other thing that happened was one of the staff members actually raised the concern on the part of the school system that it is a legal requirement to

[02:26:59] have meaningful parental participation in the administrative process and from a protecting the school system perspective, if the rule is just you always have to have an IEP meeting, that's the most protective of that right. And so this was an example of a time when the policy subcommittee made a recommendation. We had a great discussion, and in the end, the vote was to do the opposite of what the subcommittee recommended. Then COVID happened. And when COVID happened, many, let's say

[02:27:34] most IEPs needed to be changed, and quickly, but now we have this policy that says you have to have a full IEP meeting in order to do that, kind of would have been nice to be able to do that, at least, you know, for the cases where there was a broad agreement of the kinds of changes that needed to be initially made quickly and with the agreement of the parties.

[02:27:59] So, you know, that was, hopefully that's something we're not going to have to deal with again. But it was an example of a real world situation where it would have been nice to be able to do that. The other thing is, is that I think that there's a consensus from everybody that we only want to allow this for a minor change. That if you're doing it like a placement change or a major service change or something that's a big deal, you want the team to talk about it. And the team, not just like the sped teacher and the parent, but everybody on the team, including the general educator and an outside administrator, and sometimes even like the OT, SLP, everybody

[02:28:39] should be talking about how this ripples through your child's educational program, but, you know, sometimes it's literally just everybody knows what they want to do, it's not a big deal, but legally we have to put it in an IEP and you have to consent to it before LCPS can go implement that, so there was a consensus that this is really for a minor change. Back then, as now, when we talked about this in the policy subcommittee, we found that minor is really hard to define. And it's one of those things where every time we try to put a definition or any kind of like legalese language, it escapes us. And so the kind of

[02:29:16] the consensus now as was then was, if we can't define it, it's better to just leave this to the good judgment of both the teacher and the parent. As a parent, you can always say no to this. And we hope that that will be made more clear if we implement this. And from, you know, the perspective of the administration protecting the school system, you can train your staff on kind of your perspective as what should and shouldn't be done with this. And the school system too gets a say in this process and gets a, nah, this is a big deal. We really should have a

[02:29:53] meeting. But at its core, if everybody's in agreement with what's being proposed to do, then this just saves a lot of administrative time and effort for people. So once again, the policy subcommittee is going to recommend allowing an amendment to be developed if it's agreed in writing by the school and the parent.

[02:30:19] I do want to point out that the actual regulation language does not require the in writing. I think everybody was kind of on board that in writing just prevents any possibility that somebody comes back later and says, well, I didn't agree to that. And, you know, that can be as easy as an email, but the staff might develop a form or a process that's a little more formal.

[02:30:41] We'll leave that as an implementation decision. But that is a little bit of a local addition to what the regulations say. So we would be back to allowing it, which is a change from today, but we will say you'd have to agree in writing.

[02:31:01] The other thing was brought to our attention is that there's this other policy, 5330. The title of that policy is Child Find. And that, again, is just really kind of saying we're going to follow the Child Find requirements of the law. But the staff brought to our attention a concern that that may be misinterpreted as enshrining the org chart and policy and enshrining a separation in the org chart and policy.

[02:31:29] Because right now we have the Office of Special Education and then we have Diagnostic and Prevention Services, which is a different part of student services where eligibility lives. And ideally, we want both functions to be highly integrated and not segregated.

[02:31:48] In the past, the organizations might have been a little more separate. Ms. Richardson clearly does not want that to happen, nor do we want that to happen. And so there was a thought that if we put the documents together, it might just help remind everybody that there's no organizational silos here, that we're all working together.

[02:32:08] And so based on that reasoning, it seems like we should support that too. If staff believe that it's going to help reduce silos, I think we're all for that. So we have two recommendations. The first is to allow in writing with a written agreement changes to the IEP in an amendment after the annual IEP.

[02:32:34] And then the second would be to support combining those two policies. And with that, I'll just ask if there's any questions or anyone would like to discuss. We can discuss. Last time, this was a big discussion, so let's get the discussion out of the way if there is any.

[02:32:57] So you did not put in minor changes, you just put in changes. Absolutely, and the reason is we could not come up with an operational definition that worked. We did spend a lot of time on it, and we spent a lot of time on it in 2018.

[02:33:14] If you can come up with language for minor, I'd be happy to discuss it. But isn't it like minor can be interpreted however, it's just like anything else, anyone else can interpret it however they want to interpret it. That's kind of what law is, right? Just the interpretation of it.

[02:33:30] So by not putting in minor, does that mean something, that means it's an absolute that something major could change and you don't have to have an IEP meeting. But you have to remember, the parent always has that opportunity to determine whether it's minor or major to them and whether or not they want to agree to have the amendment without the meeting.

[02:33:56] And the school system. So I think where we came to is, you know, if you agree it's minor and I agree it's minor, why should someone else's definition say it's not minor? And then the other thing that swirls into this is the COVID experience.

[02:34:13] What is minor today may in some contingency become, this is what we have to do. And so this flexibility may be better. I guess the concern that I have and the question I have is, how is it being determined whether we're meeting or not?

[02:34:36] Does this in any way take away the parent's ability to request an emergency meeting or to, like, I don't know, it feels a little, I understand what you're saying as far as if everybody agrees, but if everybody doesn't, does it default to something else?

[02:35:00] Like, I don't know enough about the policy to know. It will always default to the parent's decision on whether or not we need a meeting. And that will be clear in our direction from our office and in guidance that we give if this is indeed approved by the board.

[02:35:18] So I, from my perspective as the director, there are times when we would have to ask a parent to take off of work. And depending on where they work and how they work, it could be half a day for something as simple as a clerical change. those are the kinds of changes we're talking about or oops we forgot to put that we're sending someone with him to art it's not in the accommodation that he needs assistance in the transition and we talked about it but it's not in there do you mind if we add it and send it for your signature because it is a change so those kinds of changes are what we're talking about but the important thing to remember is the default is going to be when the case manager calls and

[02:35:57] says, we need to make a change on the IEP. Here is the proposed change. Would you like to have a meeting about that? Or can we proceed with that change? And then the draft comes home for that change. If you say, oh no, you can do that. Send me the draft. And that would be, and then you would provide that in writing. And then we could, according to the way this is worded, then we could proceed and send you the change document for your approval through the system like we do for signatures. But it does not change your right to request a meeting in any way.

[02:36:34] You always have the right to request an IEP meeting, period. I'd also like to just point out, just for emphasis, I mean, that is an IDEA right, and if you request an IEP meeting and are refused it, that is a serious procedural rights violation. And if you feel that you were offered this and retaliated against because you asked for a meeting instead of this, that that is also unlawful and you may complain about that too. So we did talk in the subcommittee about how procedurally some other school systems do this and they have a process and perhaps like a form or

[02:37:13] like a cover letter that might explain some of these things and give it a really clear option. And the staff, you know, we weren't getting into too into the weeds, but it looked like the staff were going to try to copy another school system's form and process to make this super clear to everyone but we haven't done this in a while and there will probably you know with humans be some implementation hiccups and please please let us know so that we can raise it back to admin if implementation is not going in practice like it's supposed to in theory. So I wanted to clarify

[02:37:52] I actually asked for the mic like two questions ago but I do want to clarify just because I want to be sure I know a lot of times when we get into the weeds and we're looking at just one portion of something, the most important part of this statement is, as an alternative, an amendment to modify the child's IEP can be developed if agreed upon in writing by the parent, guardian, or adult student and the school team.

[02:38:23] So that clears up a ton of it. And then to add to what Craig was explaining to you all, we added a caveat to this, that we would create language that we've already drafted and shared with the SEAC subcommittee that we will be working on getting added into Virginia IEP into our division-wide forms that would be utilized for the meeting.

[02:38:48] And, in addition, we also talked about internal training opportunities, while there is quite a bit of difference of opinion or perspective around what minor might be, we will be developing training internally and providing guidance around what we consider to be acceptable for a amendment meeting without an actual meeting.

[02:39:21] So while we are not trying to get into that nuance in the policy, we will be offering training opportunities to our supervisors and designees about what we consider is acceptable to change without convening the team in person.

[02:39:39] So we have covered all of that, but we realized the level of nuance that it would require to list all of what minor might mean in a policy would just be too involved. So we will deal with that internally.

[02:39:55] Does that help clarify some of the concern or questions that you all had? - I think it's gonna open things up for bigger things. I think, what I think's gonna happen is it's, parents are gonna feel pressured to do that.

[02:40:15] Maybe they won't, hopefully they won't. But even if one or two parents feel pressured to do that, if it's a minor thing, it wouldn't really matter. That's why I think the language of something not being important, but I do hear what you're saying.

[02:40:32] did put language in like if and can but I think the realistic part of it is that when parents go into an IEP they have no idea what they're doing like I've had an IEP for two and a half years and I still have Erin come with me to every single IEP meeting because I feel like she protects us so and protects my child so I think that it can just open the door for a lot of flooding to go in but it can also work out really it could work out very very well and I think it

[02:41:08] would be fair that if you are a parent who is still in your learning journey around IEP implementation and composition and implementation that certainly should you get contact from the school to say hey we really want to add maybe the example dr. Carter just provided we want to add an accommodation because we noticed that we talked about it and we forgot to add it, but you've already provided your consent, so we can't go backwards.

[02:41:40] Absolutely reaching out to your advocate, family friend, expert in your family, attorney, whoever it is that is your person that gives you advice to say, hey, do you think it's cool that I move forward with this? And then once you receive the document back to use that opportunity to do a side-by-side to ensure that the only thing that has been amended is the thing that was agreed upon.

[02:42:06] So obviously, yes, we're always going to recommend that you utilize whatever assistance you require that makes you feel most comfortable in making the decision. And if you and that decision maker come together and say, you know what, we just feel more comfortable doing it the traditional way.

[02:42:24] I'm happy to take off or I'm happy to jump on a 15-minute virtual meeting just to have the conversation then you've already set the tone and we can't move forward so remember that mutually agreeable piece is the piece and if you feel like a conversation is happening and again this is all speculation because we haven't gotten this across um the board yet but however if you feel like you've given your answer and there's some level of persistence or prodding or prompting to do what the team wants to do,

[02:43:01] then that's certainly a concern that would raise the need for you to contact your SPED supervisor or our office. By the way, let me speculate the other direction. Because the fact that it includes the school team, I think, is really important.

[02:43:18] Because there could be a situation in which case the school team feels like, I don't think based upon the response of the parent that they really understand what we're changing in the IEP. So I think really we should have a meeting to make sure it's totally clarified. I think it's important that both parties really agree because there could be some, you know, certain situations where OSC thinks, no, we really should have that meeting.

[02:43:45] This is a tool. It can be used for good or for ill. In the past, we have received reports that parents felt that they were bullied and that this tool was used for ill. That was also, we did have some different people here. The staff have proposed, you know, specific things to try to address those concerns.

[02:44:08] There is a bit of a question mark, and there is a bit of a leap of faith. We can decide as a committee that we still think that the conservative route, the careful route, which is the current route, we shouldn't allow this. We can decide as a committee to try it, and we can collect feedback and see how it goes.

[02:44:26] And we can always come back in six months or 12 months and ask Ms. LaBelle and say, hey, we think that the school board should revise this policy and take this away because it's been misused. The question is really, are we going to try or not? And it might be helpful to some parents who are working all day, can't get to these IEP meetings.

[02:44:47] Their IEP sits at a standstill. So this could be an opportunity for them that, yes, I agree, you know, send me the draft. I'm going to look it over. But your point is valid. This is what we had the same conversation before, too.

[02:45:04] And the other thing, too, you can decide as a family, we don't make changes to the IEP without a meeting. Make that clear, not an issue. So, but I do think, I agree with Shanaz, I think for some families this is a really great alternative, especially when it's something minor or something that, not substantive, maybe.

[02:45:27] So I'll add one other scenario for this that we didn't talk about previously, and when you think about training might also be helpful to think about. There are many situations in which the IEP team has to consider a complicated problem. And what would be nice is if we get more of thinking in terms of a plan A and a plan B and a plan C.

[02:45:49] The problem is, is then you can all talk about it and this is plan A, this is plan B. But the IEP that is offered and consented is plan A. So when plan A doesn't work, how do we go to plan B? We've already talked about it. We've already, as a team, discussed it.

[02:46:05] Everybody's kind of in agreement that that's plan B. If plan A doesn't work, can we just execute on plan B? Or do we need to have a whole cycle to talk about the thing we already talked about? And I wonder if that friction prevents teams from thinking in terms of a plan A and plan B because it's sometimes difficult administratively to have that layering.

[02:46:26] So you have to say, nope, this is the one and only solution because I can only offer you one and only IEP. Craig, I think in that situation, if that was discussed in an IEP meeting, hey, we're going to try this, but you know what?

[02:46:43] We have another idea that this might work. And you know what? Someone else at the table goes, but what about this? All of those things should be documented in the prior written notice, number one. And then once all of those things are documented and we say, we are going to implement plan A from this date to this date.

[02:47:04] Should something go wrong prior to said end date, the IEP team will reconvene to discuss amending the IEP to move to plan B, and then so on and so on.

[02:47:19] So there shouldn't be any thorough, complex conversations of the nature you just described that aren't documented somewhere in the IEP. But no, there is no moving back and forth between Plans A through C that have not been documented in the services or accommodations without either an amendment without a meeting that is mutually agreed upon by all parties or convening the IEP team to come back.

[02:47:48] Right. I think I agree with you. It's just administratively if we need to go to Plan B and you've already agreed to it, you could be, you know, here is an IEP that says Plan B that we already talked about or do you want to meet? that is the possibility we could support did the policy committee unanimously agree I don't think your microphones working so I'll repeat your question did the policy committee unanimously agree with the recommendation the answer is

[02:48:26] yes after a lot of discussion Carla we had a lot as I generally since I don't go to the subcommittee meetings would agree with the consensus of the policy committee but I'm really really worried about the abuse so that's the thing that's why we bring it here we don't want you to just agree with the policy subcommittee even if we unanimous that we had long discussions this is not an

[02:49:02] easy decision we recognized that before in 2018 or 19 when we brought it up before and we appreciate everybody speaking up and voting according to the way they feel I would also just like to note that the proposed revisions have not been considered by the Student Services Committee yet because we did not have a quorum in September so if SEAC would like to get more insight or input from the discussion from the committee when the board is scheduled to

[02:49:40] meet on October 9th before making a decision this evening I would encourage you to do that so we do have two student services meetings in October again because we had to cancel our September meeting because we didn't have a quorum we meet on October the 9th and at 4:30 in room 102 A and B so it's open to the public please come and then we also meet the very next following week on October 16th again at 4:30 in conference room 102 A and B again that's

[02:50:17] a public meeting so our committee are the three members that sit on that committee haven't even had a chance to have this presented because we had to cancel the meeting so please don't feel like you have to make a decision this evening because the policy still has to go through the committee a minimum of two times and then to the board a minimum of two times so we have some time to work on this policy and those meetings are recorded as well these school board subcommittee meetings if you go back and listen if you can't

[02:50:55] attend them there anymore oh I guess my question was to the concept of scenario a scenario B's areas II I don't know I don't know how that is implemented because I've always my kids uh you can have scenario a through Z and he'll choose double c right like the possibilities are infinite is what i'm saying with that right like

[02:51:29] so how does that help on the on the side of the staff when you don't really know what's going to work from scenario a or scenario b so first of all that was not a discussion that was we didn't have that discussion in the policy subcommittee i just put that out there and probably opened a whole new can of worms at nine o'clock. I do that. But I'm merely saying that there are ways of doing

[02:52:01] things that we may have not explored simply because we could not. And so there's a possibility that with the agreement of the parents and the school, emphasis, that we can use this to do things more efficiently or do things more flexibly than we have in the past. But we need to flush that out more, and I am sorry for putting that on the table at 8.50. Right, and staff could easily train their staff and say, no, we're just not going to do that. That was a terrible idea.

[02:52:36] So, as this is a fairly simple change, even though it has a lot of complex implications, I'm going to go ahead and make a motion that we adopt the policy subcommittee's recommendations on policy 5310. Moved and seconded. Could you clarify if we're talking about the first one?

[02:52:58] there's a second there's a second one sorry the 5330 as well well right but i was only doing 5310 first okay so moved and seconded the uh motion is to adopt the this language the policy 5310 recommendation then moved and second is there any further discussion hearing none all those in favor

[02:53:24] please raise your hand and say aye aye um remember only voting members yeah why don't we count count to also count them and make sure the numbers add up. We have 11. All those who are opposed,

[02:53:54] please raise. Oh, virtual. Yes, you're correct. Katie Rosenberg. Aye. Carrie Adams. Aye. Sharon Trofe. Aye. So we have, what, is that 14? 14 eyes. All those who are opposed, please raise your hand and say nay. One, two. All those who are abstaining, please raise your hand. Any abstentions? Okay,

[02:54:25] motion carries 14 to 2. do we have a motion i'll make a motion that we adopt the policy subcommittees recommendation on policy 5330 to combine that into one policy with 5310.

[02:54:44] moved and seconded the motion is to adopt the recommendations to combine policies 5330 and 5310 are there any any further discussion hearing none all those in favor please raise your hand and say - Aye. - Aye.

[02:55:00] Opposed, nay. Any abstentions? Katie Rosenbook. - Aye. - Carrie Adams. - Aye. - Sharon Troff. - Aye.

[02:55:15] - Motion carries unanimously. Thank you, everyone. - Can I talk about that real quick? - Yes. - Real quick, isn't it? - So the staff came to us to tell us that an issue is coming up and that they would like us to start thinking about it.

[02:55:34] And it's a trade-off and it's a resource trade-off and resource trade-offs are tough. There's always somebody who benefits and somebody who doesn't benefit, when that's just sometimes what you have to do in a world of limited resources. So the concern is, right now, LCPS policy has it, policy 5320, LCPS policy has it that if you are in a specialized program in a school and they want to move that to another school, you know, actually, Paige, I may get this wrong, so be ready to correct me.

[02:56:09] If you're ready to correct me, you should just go. Okay, so right now the policy is, and this policy was created some time ago when we were much smaller, Loudoun has grown very, very fast, and the number of specialized programs grows every year.

[02:56:26] I've added 73 since I got here three years ago, specialized programs here. So the policy states that if you are in a specialized program because we assigned you there, let's say your homeschool is Arcola, Arcola was full, so I moved you to Pinebrook.

[02:56:43] and then another program opens up at, or there's a space opened up at Arcola next year, and we want to move you to your home school, your neighborhood school where everybody goes, but you really like the teacher at Pinebrook, you say, no thanks, I'm going to stay here, and we still provide transportation and everything because you said no thanks.

[02:57:03] What that has resulted in is children who want to go to Pinebrook and live next door to Pinebrook cannot go because all the spaces are full, and the law really requires that we educate students in the place they would be if they didn't have a disability to the maximum extent that we can, right? We want to try to do that in every way. Now, if you're in a small division, you have two schools, and it's all the way over there. That's different, but here we have programs at almost every school. It is less of an issue at secondary than it is at elementary because we have

[02:57:37] more programs autism and id specifically in every school and a specialized program more specialized program in almost every region less of an issue at secondary but at elementary with the growth that we're experiencing it is about half of our students that are not in their home school and can't get there because it's full now part of that space impacts that because it could be that say sterling elementary doesn't have the physical space for another program so we sort of create that problem to some degree but the majority of the problem or the problem is exacerbated that's

[02:58:14] a fair way to say it by this policy that says you can stay and we are not proposing anything at this time i brought it to the policy subcommittee for contemplation so that's really all i'm asking for now is because i understand the value of a policy like that but i also understand the impact in a division this large and if you just think about the cost per mile of transportation when we're passing three schools to get to the one you attend so we're working on the space issues with redistricting over the next several years we're working you know there are other things that are happening so it's a good time to start thinking about it that's really what I'm asking you guys

[02:58:53] to do I do want to add one thing that you offered in the policy subcommittee meeting make sure that I'm not misquoting you, but the current contemplation would include grandfathering students who are existing program placed and applying perhaps new rules to them. Exactly. Yeah. And so it's like, if you're in second grade now and you want to stay in the school you're in, that's fine. And it would take about five years to get to the point where we would say no more. But if you're entering kindergarten at the year whenever, and the board, just like the policy Tedra was talking about a few minutes ago, we can bring a change to policy at any time for consideration, and the

[02:59:32] board can say, I don't want to think about that right now, and we're done. Or it can go through the same process of consideration, and we would have to present it to them with all of the data and all of the reasons that we can find and all of that. But our intent is to not remove something that someone has had, but to just not continue it. And I think to support the reasoning why we brought it up for contemplation is because as Dr. Carter just said because the rollout will take some time to get to where we want to go we don't want to wait until 2027 which is when that policy

[03:00:12] is set to be reviewed knowing that in order to get to where we want to go it's already going to take a rollout of four to five years so we'd like to possibly after contemplation bring it up as early as we can so that we can get ahead of this rollout that we already know it's going to take up to five years to get us where we want to go.

[03:00:34] So this is not on, you know, there's no action being taken tonight. They are simply giving us the heads up, and we will discuss this further in the policy subcommittee and hopefully in the future bring something back. I don't think anyone wants any question or discussions at this point.

[03:00:52] Thank you all for coming. I want one thing before we adjourn. Tom? I just want to comment because we gave her applause, but if we have eighth graders like that in our school district they're able to speak with that level of clarity and and and she was really wonderful and that kind of person gives me just confidence in our future thank you all

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Coraggio Consulting · aguyonx.com