Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County Public Schools, Special Education Advisory Committee (SEAC) Meeting, Wednesday, February 11, 2026

Date: Wednesday, February 11, 2026
Place: LCPS Administration Building / School Board Room, Ashburn, Virginia
Length: 2h 22m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/1163854870?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 2026-10-12. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:02:53] I'll go ahead and get started. If everyone could please take a few seconds to scan the QR code and go ahead and sign in.

[00:03:19] Okay, we're gonna begin today with our connection activity with Kim and Margaret coming up and starting us off. - No, it's okay. - I looked around to see if anyone was...

[00:03:54] - Is everybody good? - Again. - All right, good evening. We wanted to continue some connection around the sense of belonging, which is one of Dr. Spence's strategic priorities.

[00:04:11] We know we've been focusing on that in our last few CEC meetings. We want to continue that this evening. In the center of your table, there are some paper-clipped words that are in the center of your table. If you each want to grab one of the words from that pile that speaks or resonates to you with the lens of belonging, that is going to be our first step for our Scrambled Sentences connection.

[00:04:35] I know that everyone feels different ways about having opportunities to connect. And this would probably be more meaningful if you were seated with other people. So if you are a solo table of one and you feel comfortable having some conversations with others, I would encourage you to move beyond your cluster to have those conversations.

[00:05:02] Thank you guys. - Go be a joiner.

[00:05:31] - You are going to share with your table mates, First, to the extent that you feel comfortable sharing your name and who you are and then sharing your word that you selected and maybe a brief snippet on how that resonated with you. And then what you guys are going to do as a group is take your individual words that you chose to craft one, ideally, one sentence together.

[00:05:55] You will need to use some other like connecting words, right? You can't just use the words on the table. You have to use other words. There is also an index card on the table. So we're asking you to write down that sentence that you come up with together. And we are going to try to share those out with the whole group.

[00:06:14] What questions might you have before you start sharing? Trying to center around the idea of belonging. It may be how you perceive belonging in your personal life, but we were going for an educational context, but you can interpret it how you feel comfortable.

[00:06:34] Okay.

[00:08:27] Our collective sentence surrounding belonging.

[00:09:46] And we acknowledge that that sentence may feel like a run-on and that is okay.

[00:10:16] Right.

[00:10:55] We are going to ask that you finish up your conversations so we can lift a little of this for the larger group. And I recognize that we asked some of you to move, so we are not going to force everyone to share their sentence with us.

[00:11:12] But if you are comfortable sharing your sentence, we would appreciate you doing so. At home, yes. Our four words were listening, understanding, trust, and empathy.

[00:11:32] And the sentence that we put together was, listening for understanding builds trust and leads to empathy. And we are going to collect the sentences, but we will not force you to read them.

[00:11:49] Might there be other volunteers? I chose the word presence, and Amir chose the word trust. So we thought how we are going to combine our words together in a sentence, and we decided to come up with the following sentence.

[00:12:10] If we are fully present and being in the moment in whatever we're doing, it's easier to gain trust. I was going to say, Liz, I saw your hand up.

[00:12:26] Okay, our words were voice, supportive, environment, and responsiveness. So our sentence is, giving everyone a voice creates a supportive environment, which leads to school responsiveness.

[00:12:43] So we chose four different words, which was interesting.

[00:13:02] And we came up as a combination that equity provides the foundation to consistently encourage our individual strengths. We had four words also.

[00:13:22] So our sentence was, in order to have true inclusion, you need to have community partnership in collaboration with schools and parents. Does anyone else want to share before we move into the rest of our meeting this evening?

[00:13:40] If you have your sentence, if you don't mind raising it, we will come collect it. And thank you for your participation. this evening thank you so much kim and margaret we always love our connection activities at the

[00:14:15] beginning of the meeting and gets us thinking and i like that one okay so we are going to begin with our first so we have two presentations today we have um dr walker he's going to come up and he's going to speak to us about sib shops and then we have um i'm going to do this this is kelly tushner and Carly Epling to come up and speak to us about Teach Down.

[00:14:44] So we'll start with Dr. Walker. Well, thank you so much. Hello, everybody. How are you doing tonight? You made it out at 6 o'clock on a weekday. You know, that's pretty impressive. So I love it because I'm very excited because I have a history of working with Department of Family Services in Loudoun County in mental health for about 20 years.

[00:15:04] And so I came to the schools about eight years ago to supervise the school social workers. And what's wonderful about the schools is being able to see everything from early intervention and prevention all the way up into intervention into some very serious things that are going on. So it's really kind of expanded my horizon of how much work can be done by social workers.

[00:15:24] And so tonight I was extra excited because I get to talk to you about Sib Shops. Now how many of you guys have heard the last time that I came and talked about Sib Shops? Okay, so there's been a couple of you. So for a couple of you this will be a little repeat and there'll be like, But a couple new things that I can include in there that have changed.

[00:15:41] So I'm really excited about Sib Shops because Sib Shops is just a positive, wonderful sense of belonging that we want to give our kids, our siblings, of students that have disabilities. So if you think about it, like, you know, when you go to a party, don't you try to find people that you can relate to and talk to?

[00:16:01] Or if you go to an organization like this, when you guys talk to one another, you can kind of go, you kind of feel understood quicker, right, than somebody that's never had a child with special needs or never even worked in that field with students that have special needs. Have you ever tried to talk to somebody that doesn't have any of that experience about what it's like to be a parent? And it's really hard, right? Because you're probably exhausted by the time that conversation even ends, like, because you have to explain to them everything and they still might not even fully get it, right? Because they've never worked with children with special needs and they don't have children themselves. Well, some of our kids, you know,

[00:16:38] that are growing up in families with students that have disabilities, they don't sometimes talk about that at school, right? That's not something that you bring up a lot of the time. The Sip Shops is a place where typically developing students who have a sibling with a disability receive peer and support and have fun. So it's just kind of that experience that you'd have at a party when you meet somebody that shares something in common that's important and you can kind of share based on that sometimes there's an immediate connection there so it's a place where siblings meet with other siblings to laugh and talk and talk about the good parts and the not

[00:17:15] so good parts about having a sibling with support needs they play games they celebrate you know their sibling strengths and they talk about the challenges and they learn how each other successfully navigates the relationships. So probably one of the best trainings I've ever been to, and I've been in the mental health field in general for about 30 years now. I can't believe that. And I think this is one of the best trainings I ever went to. Probably, it's got to be in my top three or five. And so we did a full two-day training with about 15 school social workers and two counselors to train them on sib shops. And what we did is the trainer wanted to have real

[00:17:51] kids there on the second day. So on the first day, we learned all about like siblings that would, you know, that would have, you know, a sibling with a disability and what the challenges might be, some of the potential struggles, you know, how the family has to change and adapt when you have a child with a disability, etc. And then we had a panel at the end of the day of these SibShop alumni that were adults that came in and talked about what it was like to grow up with a sibling with a disability. And that was riveting. And I tell you, even though I'm in the field of social work and in mental health, it didn't occur to me until that panel talked that I grew up with

[00:18:27] two siblings that had disabilities. It was kind of a profound realization. And so, but I never thought of it that way because there wasn't, I didn't have friends that could talk about what it was like. You didn't, you just didn't bring things up because it was so kind of out of the blue that people really couldn't relate to. So you just kind of learn sort of subconsciously that that's not something that you bring to the table when you're with a group of friends in general. You might bring it up if someone else brings it up. And sometimes that doesn't happen. So fast forward, we have this

[00:18:59] panel. The next day, we brought in 12 kids from across the district, ages 7 to 17. And she just performed a whole sib shop in front of us for four hours. So we played games. We sat down and had serious conversations, talked about the different challenges, what they celebrate about their sibling that's different and unusual and it was one of the most riveting experiences I've ever had because we're just instead of the training that we typically go to you're gonna get a bunch of slideshows like this but this was experiential with the kids right in the room so we were an outer circle all the social workers and the two counselors learning watching her run

[00:19:37] a live group before our eyes and then the kids would take breaks and stuff and would debrief and ask questions it was unbelievable and I think the thing that That moved me the most was to see how these kids just clicked so fast. I was really concerned. I've ran a lot of groups in my professional career, but never a SimShops group.

[00:19:56] And the way that a 7-year-old is going to connect with a 10-year-old or how an 11-year-old would connect with a 12-year-old. And certainly when it's kind of the same age, how they just kind of paired up with one another. And they just had this amazing kind of bond. And I think it was said well earlier, you said you don't only have to explain yourself.

[00:20:15] It's just understood. And that's the power of it, right? And so what was really neat, one of the things that they did, going back to this picture here, and I'll get really excited about this, so just tell me if I'm going on and on and on. I'm only going to make this a couple more minutes. So she had this rope, and if you've seen that lower picture there on the right, there was a rope.

[00:20:34] So she said, I want one volunteer to get on this end, and you're going to be the person that says, no, that's really bad, that's awful, no way. So who wants to volunteer for that? So I want people to get up and they told this, no, that's really awful. And on the other end of the rope was another student who wants to be the one that says, everything's amazing, yes, I would do that, that's wonderful.

[00:20:53] You stand over here and hold the rope. And then she'd ask a question. So this is like the Likert scale, right? On this end, everything's wonderful, I love that. And on that end, no, I don't like that, I would never do that. And the question, she asked multiple questions, but the one that stood out to me is like, do you invite your friends to your house, or do you prefer to go to your friend's house and not have friends at your house?

[00:21:17] And about an equal amount, spread out, kind of polarized, absolutely yes, absolutely not. And there was like a couple of them that were kind of in the middle and kind of undetermined. But it was younger and older kids on both sides there. And one of the cutest things that I heard was on this side where it was the yes.

[00:21:36] One of the students said, she goes, well, if they're not going to accept my brother or sister, they're not going to be my friend. So she said it's like a litmus test. She didn't use that word exactly. but if you think my brother or my sister is negative in some kind of way and you don't want to be around them, that means I don't want to be around you.

[00:21:58] I thought, wow, that's pretty powerful, right? And then there was other kids on this side that would say equally powerful things, and they would say, well, my sister just screams, and we don't know why she's screaming sometimes, and my friends wouldn't understand that.

[00:22:13] And they just didn't want to be in the position of trying to explain that, right? But they were talking about all different kinds of disabilities. It wasn't just that kind of an outburst or something, right? And what was so cool is how the kids really understood. There wasn't any questioning or debating. They sort of understood one another on why they would be in those positions, even when they were on opposite ends of the continuum.

[00:22:34] So the sib shops are interspersed with very meaningful types of activities like that, with just fun activities, just celebrating being a kid, where you're at developmentally. For teenagers, it's going to be playing a game and talking. For younger kids, it's going to be hitting the balloon around and popping them and making it into a basket and everything.

[00:22:53] It was one of the funnest, most amazing days of my career that I think I'd ever been in because of the impact that it was having on the students that were in the room. You can see some of the social workers and counselors like kind of off to the side there. You see some of them on the ground.

[00:23:08] So she included the ones that, those of us that grew up with a sibling with a disability, they were actually in the group. And I thought that was really neat because it's not really therapy that they're doing. This is just like a connection, a sense of belonging. That's why I'm so glad you guys picked that as your icebreaker because it works perfectly for this.

[00:23:25] For our kids that don't have a disability, they have a sense of belonging, think how powerful that is and how those friendships last. And there's this whole, and the greatest thing about it is a lot of packages, you've got to pay like a monthly fee, you've got to pay like an annual rate or something or ongoing supervision.

[00:23:42] Once you pay for the training, which we've already done, it's done. And it's just like free consult that we can have with them going forward. We bought the books, we got all the supplies. So I got like Crayola crayons, I got bottles of glue, I got construction paper, rope, everything that's needed for the group.

[00:23:59] And as the groups are starting, the supplies will be there for the students. Because I'm going to make everything possible for every student in this district to have, you know, the opportunity to be a part of SIP Shops if they want to be. Because it's just, you know, it's voluntary, it's totally up to them. So if you guys are interested, or if you want to spread the word, which would be even better, or get it in the newsletters, I can send you a blurb, I can send you a little, you know, just like a little paragraph, you know, with a QR code on how to sign up.

[00:24:28] But basically, all you've got to do is contact a school social worker at your school and they'll get in touch wherever the group is starting. So what we had as a goal is to start the groups in spring. So as of right now, we've got three groups that will be starting, I think, April 10th because that's a PD day. So that's the other thing, too, is that they're not pulled out of their classroom to do this.

[00:24:46] It'll be after school or it'll be a couple times during PDs, right? So the professional development day on April 10th, I believe. And so there's three of them that are going to start then, and those others will probably select other days or it'll be after school. But the QR code is right there.

[00:25:02] So that's where there's just a sign-up sheet. And so the school social worker from your school will get back with you and tell you what groups are available and what date and what time to see if it works for you. Any questions?

[00:25:29] I just asked to go back to the other slide. Yeah, yeah. So we're there. Other questions? Is it free? Of course. Part of being an LCPS, right?

[00:25:46] Is it therapy? No. Is there transportation? Parents do have to provide transportation, and we're having them in the school, so it'll be at a particular school, depending on where the kids are clustering at. Yes, we have, so at the Blue Ridge Middle School, we have somebody from Loudoun Valley, yeah.

[00:26:14] Ann Smith is the social worker out there, along with the counselor. I forget the counselor's name out there, but they're running it together. They're not on here yet. It's a little trickier with the high school students because what we're going to do is have them also as because they're so busy sometimes some some of you guys kids are so busy with all of the different activities that they're involved in that we're they're building in a mentoring part of it where some of the older high school kids could mentor some of those younger kids after they attend a couple of sip shops at the high school level so they could go help out at the elementary school level so that that

[00:26:48] serves a couple purposes there if they so choose yeah the ones that are to be determined? Yeah, those dates are just still, we're just not sure what they are, but we're definitely going to have one in the Sterling area. It could be at Meadowland. Yeah, yeah. So when you go to the QR code, then the school social worker will get in touch with you all before the group gets started to see what time works out best for you. More than likely it's going to be at Meadowland because the social worker there is really gung-ho about it. Yeah. Not a question, just an

[00:27:26] encouragement. I'm excited. Yes. And I shared with you briefly, we've, as a family, we went through sip shops with Don Meyer years ago and just an encouragement if you don't know about it if you've not experienced please do I have I have four children one with a disability three without the three without all three did sip shops the youngest is still connected to 20 years 18 years later is still connected with some of the friends that he made in the sip shops and it's amazing to be

[00:28:02] able to as a as a parent to be able to sit with other parents and not have to explain your life or your kids or whatever if you think about that for our kids to be able to do that at a point where they are um they're good grief they're figuring out life at all levels right and so this just adds like potentially another level of anxiety and groups like this that just isn't an issue it's amazing so i'm excited you said it so eloquently i mean i think that's kind of a perfect way to put it because they just they also have like you know with social media they have all these platforms

[00:28:42] now that sib shops are are still meeting the alumni are still meeting with one another across the country so so even the friendships could be even stronger through that connection but when did your kids do it like what yeah so think internet wasn't even all that you know robust yeah yeah yeah yeah and to put that kind of effort in it as kids tells you how important it

[00:29:14] was to them yeah other questions yeah so are the programs that are going to be at elementary schools are those targeting just our elementary school kids or is it going to be like a range of ages it'll target the elementary school because what we're trying to do it's tricky right because if you have a group of students with a disability and you go talk to the teacher you know the special ed teacher or you talk to if you know some of the parents you just don't know the ages of the siblings so what we're trying to do is we want to keep it so that would have elementary school age children at the elementary school so that's why we're doing it in regions and then the middle school kids at the

[00:29:52] middle school because it would be weird if you're middle school and you're going to an elementary school for some group that could be a little dicey right so same thing with high school we're gonna have them at the high school level so yeah and then just my wife calling on my phone right now because she's out of of town and i'll just put in a little extra plug because my daughter did the the program was one of the 12 students and it was fantastic she loved it she's a 14 year old so like she's super like awkward and moody and all the things and she loved it she had such she was amazing in it i mean amazing some of your kids have to grow up fast right i mean you do when you when you're when

[00:30:31] you have different challenges like that in the family and sometimes they grow up fast in a really wise old soul way so it's just yeah there is several that were a lot you could see the little seven-year-olds that were just kind of in her half like they were going to be an old soul like like your daughter it was really really quite stunning to watch it yeah it's great that'd be great i can do that tomorrow morning well thank you and if you got any other questions you can just give me

[00:31:02] a call or email me my email address i think it's in the beginning yeah right there so thank you so much just excited for this opportunity for your kids so next we will have our presentation on teach town and for those of you who are live streaming if you have a copy of the flyer there's

[00:31:40] a qr code and you can scan it and you can ask questions and we'll be able to answer them live here now thank you hi i'm kelly teshner i am one of the program specialists with the office of special ed. And I'm Carly Epling. I'm the other one. And we're going to talk to you about Teach Town. Teach Town is our adaptive curriculum in Loudoun County. And we are going to go through kind of nuts and bolts of what Teach Town is, what it might look like. And that's our supervisor,

[00:32:20] Dr. Joy Engstrom. She couldn't be here tonight, but she is our fearless leader. All right. So a little bit about TeachTown. There's multiple components to this program and so we're going to really focus in the Encore curriculum component. You have a packet on each table. I'm pretty sure we put one on each table and the things in your packet are just going to walk you through some of the things we'll talk about tonight as far as curriculum goes. So the way that TeachTown is organized there is an elementary band, there's a middle band, and there's a high school

[00:32:56] band at the elementary level it's this it's a k-5 core curriculum it does align to both SOLs and VSOLs so we know in K through 2 it's only SOLs those are the only standards that our students are learning but once we hit third grade through 12th grade students are either learning SOLs or the Virginia Essentialized Standards those VSOLs and the curriculum does address and cover many of many of the SOLs and many of the vSOLs at all levels. There are benchmarks assessments associated. There's a data component that we're going to

[00:33:33] talk about. So we're going to go through all of it. On the first page of your packet is just the parent letter from TeachTown. It just gives you a little information. At the second page we're going to go through that in a second as well and that's going to be our profile of a learner which is another really cool aspect of TeachTown. So again this core curriculum we've got elementary, we've got the middle school bands, we've got the high school bands, they're connected to our standards, which is really important, and there's an assessment piece.

[00:34:02] So when we look at the levels, so we can go, we can talk about that too. That goes with a picture. Thanks, Carly. No problem. So what LCPS purchased, which is part of the exciting part, is that we purchased the full package.

[00:34:24] So our teachers, our students that use this program have access to not only these very rich lesson plans. But now we have access to a full library of materials. The basics of the program that we're going to talk about in another couple slides is every unit has a story. And the story will connect to all content areas. So when you're reading the story, you're doing things in English language arts in that area. But then the math is in some ways going to link to that story. The science is going to be somewhat related. So if you're reading White Fang, maybe you're doing something with animals and habitats, it's all going to relate and then the social studies component as well so all

[00:35:02] of the students have the books there are some samples of books on your table you are welcome to take the packet we printed with you but please leave the textbooks the books we will take back with us at the end of the night the books are leveled so we're going to talk about that in the next slide how we kind of level our learners so that we're working on different things with different learners but these are the the physical materials the books that the kids will have their hands on there's also a manipulative kit that has math manipulatives and science manipulatives so it will link to all of the lesson

[00:35:37] plans that we're doing in our classrooms that are using this with students when you get into secondary there's also nonfiction readers so it might be a packet of poems is is some of the nonfiction things or maybe it's essays but it's very age-appropriate and so we're we have that those printed materials as well to use with our kids. All right, levels. So the way that the program is set up is in three levels. And so the goal is not that you start in level one and then you move to level

[00:36:15] two and then you move to level three during a unit. The leveling is your profile of a learner so that we're giving our kids instruction where they are. We're meeting them where they are. So we have a printout in your packet that describes different level, the level one, two, and three learners, it's a profile. So if your student is a level one learner, their expectation and their differentiation of instructions can be different than if they're a level three learner.

[00:36:44] So again, it's going to give our students instruction and meet their needs where they are, which is really nice. And then so if all the kids are reading Secret Garden I see in front of me, we're going to have different expectations for our level one learner versus our level three learner getting that instruction in that text, if that makes sense.

[00:37:04] So the Level 1 learners, we might have students who are using AAC. They might need significant supports to complete tasks. They're very concrete learners. Level 2, again, we might not need as many. We might need some picture support. These students might be able to do multiple tasks by themselves.

[00:37:24] They might need some alternate materials. And then those Level 3 learners, they're going to be our very independent communicators. They're going to use a lot of symbolic things to understand. They're going to be able to complete multi-step tasks independently, and they're going to be accessing a lot of grade-level materials with very minor modifications.

[00:37:45] All right, our Encore components. So again, we talked about all the materials that people get, but when you think about TeachTown, and when we explain this to our teachers and train our teachers, the meat of what happens is those materials. One thing we did not say, because it wasn't in my picture, is that every student has a workbook. The workbook is not a start with page one, do a worksheet, go to page two, do a worksheet. Carly's going to show it up and hold it like Vanna White. The workbook is if I'm a teacher and I need to create materials for my kids, I'm going to think about, okay, I need to

[00:38:23] teach this skill. Let me come up with some colored pictures that will teach, you know, beginning consonant sounds. I'm going to have to make those materials, then I'm going to have to print them out in color. I'm going to have to have enough for my kids. I'm going to have to differentiate it slightly. But with the books that were purchased by the county, every kid has a book of all of these color printed materials all ready to go. They still require manipulation because that's part of that teaching process, right? So nothing is intended to be a cut and paste worksheet. It's intended to be a color material that you would then manipulate, the teacher would then manipulate in some way. And so again, our kids need a lot of different things.

[00:39:03] sometimes we laminate, sometimes we blow it up and make it bigger, sometimes we cut it and use it in an interactive notebook, sometimes we make popsicle stick puppets out of it, you know, we do things differently. Our older kids do use things in different ways as well. So again, part of what we got as a district was this, all these colored materials ready to go, which again, on the teacher side, that takes a huge lift off what you need to create and come up with and then print to get ready. So the biggest part that we say to our teachers is the teaching. It's using the materials, it's manipulating those materials, it's using the books with your kids, it's following the lesson

[00:39:42] plans, it's doing all that teaching work. Another component of TeachTown, which as parents you might hear about, is this data component. And we love that. We love that there's data, everybody loves data, and that's going to be on the computer side. So there's two different pieces that students will access in the program that's on the computer. One is called a teacher-led lesson or teacher-led activity. That's the assessment. That's your testing piece. And then there's a student-led activity, and that's your student practice. So students would access this on their Chromebooks.

[00:40:16] They should be doing it independently. And the program is a smart program. So if your student is given a selection of a field of four choices and they're asked a question, the questions are asked through the speaker there's also closed captioning and if the student can't direct select that for it's going to narrow it down to a field of three a field of two a field of one and then it's errorless so again this is a leveled program and it will it will get smart and it will know where our student is what level of prompting that they need to be able to answer questions and

[00:40:53] practice those skills with them so again we've got the big teaching component We're using all of our materials. We're doing all the teaching. We're doing teacher-led assessing while we're teaching it. So we're assessing a little bit in the beginning of the unit, assessing it during it, assessing it at the end.

[00:41:10] And then all the while, the students are doing their student-led lessons on their Chromebooks to get that student-led practice. We did have a question for the workbook of does it come home? Does every student have it? Those sort of things. So the work is done in alignment in those workbooks with whatever they're doing in that lesson plan.

[00:41:29] So the lesson plan might say, you know, workbook page XYZ, and that's what accompanies the lesson that they're participating in in the classroom. You might have samples of that come home, but not necessarily the whole blank workbook would come home. They're also very thick, but they only have three units in them.

[00:41:49] So there's multiple workbooks that we receive for like middle school level, for example, because there's multiple units that are covered throughout a year. so there's multiples of those books. There's also, in the actual physical workbook, every level activity as well.

[00:42:06] So depending what level your student might be on, there's extras of, let's say if they are a level one, there's also level two and level three activities in the workbook as well, so the teachers are taking out the appropriate leveled workbook activity to do with your students.

[00:42:27] - Is that highlighted? - That's unfortunate. It was highlighted. And then I guess this is the copy that got sent. So this was a part that we put in clearly at the last minute. There are unit segments.

[00:42:42] And so this might get into the weeds a little bit as far as parents go. This is something more that we really push with our teachers when we describe what TeachTown is. What I do enjoy about TeachTown is it's not just, here's 100 pages to teach the book Secret Garden.

[00:42:58] Start at page one and go through it, and you have all this stuff. they break it into segments and the segments have different skills. And so again, as a teacher, when you think about teaching reading, there's so many different components. So segments address different components. So in ELA, there's vocabulary and sight words, there's comprehension, phonics and phonemic awareness, language and writing.

[00:43:20] When you get up into secondary school, secondary age, you're doing a lot of different word work. You're working on things like prefixes and suffixes. And so it all builds as you go through the program, whereas some of our other options in the past didn't.

[00:43:35] It was very repetitive in, like, we're going to work on addition and subtraction and counting and kind of the same things. This really builds skills over the course of the program, which is why it's so nice. And again, we are linking to standards.

[00:43:51] So your students at the secondary level would have a standard to identify a prefix. And so our kids are getting exposed to things that are standards they should be learning and practice in a way that's an adapted material that will make sense to our students. So again, math, there's different segments, number, sense, operations, measurements.

[00:44:10] You don't just learn one thing. You learn all areas of math. Even science and social studies is broken down by segments. So that's just a visual of what kind of that segments look like in the interface for our staff. So when you ask to see data, this is an example of the kinds of data you might see.

[00:44:29] So sometimes you see they're graphed, all the activities are graphed. So whether it's a teacher-led assessment, student-led practice, you're going to see a graph. And the graph is going to show you how the student did. If it's a dark color, that's with no prompting.

[00:44:46] 80% is mastery per the program. If it's a faded out color, that is for prompting. So sometimes our students need prompting, and that's what they need. But we really look for progress. So we're not going to get mastery for everything, but we do want to see progress for everything.

[00:45:03] Some activities have multiple mini activities within them. So you're going to see different colored bars, and that represents the different activities within that lesson. Sometimes you just see one because it was only one assessment on one thing.

[00:45:19] So the graphs might look a little different, but again, you can ask your teachers to see these. We can pull them up. It's just, again, it's tracking the progress, and we can actually see how the students are doing. Another thing in your packet in front of you is our pacing guides.

[00:45:37] All these are is it's the standards at that grade band. We represent specialized programs, and our specialized programs are students are grouped in grade-level bands. We have K-2 classrooms. We have 3-5.

[00:45:53] We have middle school. We have high school. And so that can be tricky as a teacher 'cause you have to teach all the standards, and that's a lot. So the way that we help to support our teachers is that we have grouped our standards, whether that's SOL or VSOL, into kind of what I call teachable units or linked to TeachTown units.

[00:46:15] So we have the different grade bands in there, so you can see at the K2 level, it's just SOLs 'cause we're all SOLs. 3.5 is tricky because there are so many V-SOLs at that level, and there are so many SOLs.

[00:46:31] In that middle and high school pacing guide, we are only doing V-SOLs at this point in a pacing guide. So while TeachTown does address SOLs at the secondary level, it's not comprehensive. So it will address some of them, but not all of them.

[00:46:47] So we work with teachers individually to help them figure out how they're going to address those SOLs with students that need that. All right, and the last part of this is benchmarks. So TeachTown has assessments on the units.

[00:47:04] So just like if you were taking-- you know, you were in history and you were-- or geography, and you were learning about the continents. And then at the end, you have an assessment. TeachTown has that related to its units of instruction. And so you have a book. You spend three weeks in that book.

[00:47:20] all of your content areas relate to that book. You take an assessment. You take little assessments along the way about things in English and language arts and math and science and social studies, and then you move on to the next unit. The benchmarks are gonna assess core skills, skills in reading, skills in math.

[00:47:38] This is a part of the program that all students can access, that all teachers can access too. And it's gonna give you, again, some more information where how your child is doing a little more globally some of those reading and math skills. So it's a it's a nice feature to the program and it's something that we might use and see in some of our present levels when we're talking about how our students are doing and one way and then we have ESY. Another nice thing about TeachTown is it also offers units for ESY.

[00:48:13] So again when our students need access to an adaptive curriculum in ESY they are providing all of the materials that we need to give our kids some robust instruction during that summertime. And this is from 2025. They usually release their ESY curriculum, I would say, around like March, April, May time frame. And it's always some sort of theme. So last year was summer around the United States and students visited, as you can see, all of the different states and learned everything was kind of centered around visiting those different locations. I think the year before was something was around the world. Yeah, around the world. And

[00:48:51] then I think the year before that was something with sports. Like there's always some sort of theme, um, for, for the lessons. So it kind of aligns too with the thought of a unit, um, and then accompanying lessons that go with it. Um, so Kelly talked through, um, Encore, which is the main, it's the curriculum, the core curriculum, but there's also other programs, um, or curriculum within Teach Town that we also have access to. So the first one is basics. Um, so this really looks at students that might be have some earlier learner needs it's aligned very closely with VB map I'm not sure if many of you are familiar with that but

[00:49:28] it's a verbal behavior and milestones assessment and so it very much aligns with skills that are in the VB map things like making requests labeling the environment echoics so repeating back what you are hearing all of those sort of things it's very much aligned with that this is where we have our teachers insert a lot of IEP goals so if you have students that are working on some of more of some more of those foundational type skills they are able to enter their IEP goals into teach town and it will actually pull resources and lessons that then align with that goal on the right side so on in the pictures you'll just

[00:50:08] kind of see examples so there is student-led activities which is that picture that has the ladybug the jellyfish that is what you might see in a student-led activity. But on that right side where it says select domain, that's kind of all of the areas that basics can cover and provide lessons for. We also have social skills. So this is something that a lot of our teachers will use to support social skills instruction in the classroom. So as you can see, there's an elementary band and then a middle school band. And then there's essentially domains or maybe units if you want to think of it in the sense of how Encore

[00:50:47] is organized and then aligned, what they call targeted behaviors, but lessons specific to what might, like following the rules. So then there's multiple lessons that go along with following the rules. Interpersonal skills, there's multiple lessons that go along with that. And a lot of this, there are lesson plan pieces of this and then also interactive videos that go along with this too, where the student might be watching cartoons kind of engage in the activity or the lesson that they are learning and being able to talk through those videos and things like that.

[00:51:20] So that's social skills. Then we also have transition to adulthood. So any of our students, especially at the high school level and our returning graduates, participate in transition to adulthood. This really focuses on those transitional life skills. It's not only vocational skills, as you can see, but there's home skills, personal skills, leisure skills, all of those sort of things that are super important to our students, especially our returning grads that need to work and really focus on those areas. So transition to adulthood just looks a little

[00:51:54] bit different. It doesn't necessarily have a scope and sequence like basics or Encore does, but it is a wealth of lesson plans and accompanying activities and videos that go along with it. So if the team is targeting a particular skill or a particular activity, the teacher can just search in the search bar for things like folding clothes, rolling silverware, taking an order, and it will bring up all of the different options of lesson plans and activities that go along with that for that particular skill that we're targeting. And it's going to be set up a lot like the social

[00:52:32] skills platform. So again, it's pretty easy for teachers to use and navigate because it's set up in a very similar fashion with the videos and lesson plans and activities. So it gives teachers a lot. Okay, so now we're just going to kind of talk through accessing TeachTown, because like Kelly shared, there is a student-led component where students are able to access it on their own devices.

[00:52:56] So we wanted to make sure we shared with you guys how your students might be able to access TeachTown if you would like them to on their Chromebooks at home. So all students access through LCPS Go. They should have an app in their LCPS Go that looks like that little Teach Town right there.

[00:53:12] So if you're not sure what their LCPS Go login is or any of those sort of things, I would reach out to their teacher to ask, what is their LCPS Go account login information? They should have all of that or be able to reset it if they need to. They can help with that.

[00:53:27] But this is where you'll have those student-led activities. When you're participating in the Teach Town activities and student-led with your student at home, please try not to do the activity for them because it will track in the system that they've done that student-led activity and it will put a bar graph in there and collect the data for it.

[00:53:49] So if you are participating with them, it might skew the data just a little bit. You know, if they're getting, if you're saying it's this answer, it's this answer, right? It still does track that in the system. So, but if you want to help them practice, you know, prompting them through it, all of those sort of things is completely fine.

[00:54:06] But it does track that still in the system as a data point if you're doing it even at home. This is just a nice video. I'm not going to play it, but it's a really great video that TeachTown has created. We linked some helpful resources, and the first place I would go is teachtown.com and click on resources.

[00:54:24] They have tons of free webinars. They have all sorts of tutorials to look through, all sorts of things. But this is just a kind of really quick, informal video about student-led activities and those lessons and what they can look like. And then this is a screenshot of what your student will see when they log into student-led TeachTown.

[00:54:43] So the first thing that pops up is this left-hand picture, and it'll go, welcome to TeachTown. And then all of the pictures will initially pop up, but then it will fade them. And so what this kind of does is they cannot click on the same activity or picture multiple times.

[00:55:00] It will fade the picture so they can't click on it. So it essentially gives them a choice, but it kind of forces them to go into the ones that we're assigning or if they've already done one, it'll make them pick a different picture, those sort of things. On the right side, that's just an example of what the student-led looks like.

[00:55:17] It will ask a question. So it might say, touch the picture with the watermelon or something along those lines. And then if there's a certain response time of wait time that the teacher can set of, you know, if it's 15 seconds, if it's 30 seconds, however long for them to respond.

[00:55:36] if the student does not respond in that amount of time like Kelly shared it will prompt fade so it will essentially either move on to another question or take a picture away so that way it's just not sitting on the same picture forever asking the same question over and over and over again that can be very frustrating for many people myself included so it will also fade so if you click on the wrong one it will ask the same question but take a picture away and maybe rearrange the pictures or have a different type of screen so again asking the same questions but fading those prompts so they're able to be as independent as possible with the system to the point where it will go to just a

[00:56:13] single picture and all they have to do is touch and then it will build them back up once we build some skills there and then that last picture kind of in the left ish middle is an example of a reinforcement option so we can also set rewards in the system it might be timed rewards or a certain amount of activities that they do and then a screen will pop up with multiple different options for them to select and they can it's little games that they can play with and engage with and interact with so that kind of reinforcement is naturally built in for them as they're doing the student-led activities and this should feel like it feels like a video game

[00:56:49] right it feels like a game it feels like a fun a fun site and a lot of our students like they they will wait for that reinforcement they they know what they like in there and so they'll tolerate those questions because they know they know it's coming for students who are really working on that direct select and how to make a choice we have to start somewhere like we have to start teaching our kids how to use these things and how to how to do assessments on a computer so everybody's in a different spot but because of that prompt fading and then again one students are doing that consistently they will add those those fields back in

[00:57:28] our students can make progress in this and so it's just a really nice feature of the program and when they're finished with it it'll also say goodnight teach town so that's also a cue to that it's all done so a lot of our students if you have students that might engage in echolalia or scripting we really started to hear though welcome to teach town and goodnight teach town very frequently so if you hear that in your home that's where it's coming from all right so we kind of talked about this before with the lesson plan we showed you those materials I think the big takeaway we we've presented this to administrators

[00:58:04] in LCPS it looks like a worksheet but it's not a worksheet so there's there's purpose with all of the color printed materials that we get and you wouldn't necessarily know by just looking at it so some things that's a cut and paste on your on your left that's a sort it's working on some language that might be a little you know easy for you to understand but if you look at that that picture in the middle you see a bird a snake a mud unless you're following a lesson plan you wouldn't know what that is so again the intent of these materials is not just a worksheet to complete it's to manipulate in some way so in this way

[00:58:40] this student is working on ending sounds or this unit is working on ending sounds and so teachers might use magnet letters they might put things on whiteboard but this is the color material that that teacher didn't have to think about they can follow that lesson plan that says, "Okay, now you're going to teach ending sounds in this section of this unit. Here's your material all ready to go. And here's other things we're going to do with this material, but it's all ready for you." So there's vocabulary all the way on the right. So again, in this situation, if you think about those levels one, two, and three, we also have different expectations for our different levels. So if we have a

[00:59:18] level one learner, they might need to know three vocabulary words. A level two might need to know six, a level three would need to know all of them. All of these materials went with the book "Hippo Wants to Dance" which is one of our K-2 level books. So again it's just a really nice set of materials that our students are getting access to that we're manipulating in different ways to reinforce and teach those standards and those skills. We did link in here something called the dig and the lesson plan. So if you want to click into it to see the difference, a dig is called the, it's their daily implementation guide. It's like the cliff notes of the lesson

[00:59:56] plan. So once your teachers get used to following a very, like a, the detailed lesson plans are pages and pages long because they're telling, they're, they're scripted. They're telling the teacher what to say. Here's level one, two, three. Here's your prompting. You're going to wait four seconds, then you're going to wait zero seconds. It's going to walk them through that in a very detailed way. But the rhythm and the procedure of all of these lessons are very similar. So once you are a seasoned teacher and you know that, the dig is going to give that teacher the cliff notes. Oh, you're going to do the phonemic awareness activity. You're going to do the comprehension. You're going to do the vocabulary. Like that's what you're going to do in your lesson today. So it'll walk them through that daily lesson

[01:00:35] expectation. And this is the difference in material when you look at secondary. So if you look here, that looks really young, right? You would expect that that's like a K-2 level classroom this has an older feel to it so this is unit 76 this is from high school great expectations you see a kwhl chart so students have to understand that vocabulary in the middle they're working on the vocabulary of the story where students are sorting by the definitions and sentences and short words and so students are really learning that what that vocabulary is and how to apply it again there's different ways that this is

[01:01:15] differentiated. It's not just meant to be just a cut and paste. They're manipulating these materials in their classrooms with their teachers. I've seen teachers put it up on the Promethean, make big posters, color code things. There's comprehension worksheets that are comprehension activities that give you the questions already. But again, you're going to manipulate that. But those photos are real photos when you get at that secondary level. So the materials look a little different and look older as the students get older. Again, this is another link to that dig, that daily implementation guide, Cliff Notes lesson, and then like what a full lesson plan might look like.

[01:01:51] And then we've linked a ton of resources. Teachtown.com, like Carly said, is the first place she would go, but there's just different links from different Teachtown materials that you can take a look at.

[01:02:07] - All of these are on Teachtown.com. We just kind of pulled so that way it's a direct link to kind of maybe highlight some of the more, I wouldn't say important, but kind of like information-heavy ones. But there's tons of free resources, webinars, all sorts of different things that are on teachtown.com, watching videos of the program that might go a little bit more in-depth than Kelly and I have done tonight, all of those sort of pieces.

[01:02:33] And they have a parent resource option as well. And then this is also, they break it down. The scope and sequence are from Teachtown. So if you want to see, like, what are all of the units that are at a grade band and what are all the skills that are addressed.

[01:02:49] They have a really nice scope and sequence. They're many, many pages long, so we did not print them for tonight, but you are welcome to click in. We were going to first. They're like, ooh, that is 67 pages long. We will get in trouble for that. So you can access those scope and sequences for all of those different areas of TeachTown.

[01:03:08] And that's it. Go ahead. Thank you.

[01:03:26] I just wanted to ask if you're going to post the presentation so that we can access the links to take care, Look at the very detailed information you described. The presentations will always be posted following the meeting on the LCPS SEAC portion of the website.

[01:03:43] So you'll be able to access all of the links shared by this team as well as Dr. Walker and others. On the Family Resource Services site. I was wondering, because of recent experience, is this something that could be communicated to teachers to parents during snow days as activities for students good thank you and we

[01:04:17] did we did recommend to a lot of our teachers that again remind remind your families that they have access to teach town on lcps go you know i think with a lot of elementary it chromebooks don't always go home every night especially at that k level so this was a good wake up to make sure that that's going to happen because yes then you have access right on their lcps go you don't need special passwords or anything like that. It's just through their login, through their Chromebook. I just had a question. Why do you have our level one and level two learners using

[01:04:51] books with symbolated text? So we didn't create the level, the profile levels. TeachTown creates that. And then they create the materials to go along with it. So the level one and level two books have both have symbols that go along with them just based on additional support for students who in both of those levels who might require that visual support of something and usually the level two texts have a little bit more words built into them than what the level one books might have so that's how they kind of defer a little bit and one thing about the books so that is and I know

[01:05:28] what you're thinking with with AAC and with learning to read and learning language and things like that the intent of the book is not necessarily for that student to read the text and read the story so the students are using the books to do a variety of things they're finding vocabulary they're using their pictures if there's a skill in there they might be working on that skill but the intent is not for every student to sit and read page one page two page three so and that's why it's so important that our teachers are using the lesson plan because again if I just looked at the book and a worksheet I'm gonna say okay guys let's read page one page two let's do this cut and paste and that's not the intent of the

[01:06:07] lesson plan so I think that if there's questions about that there's also books available that you can print that don't have any symbols that are leveled one two three as well so they do give you a variety of options of books with and without icons we just put out a couple that we had we didn't put out everything that's available yeah what level is this book on the back there should be a star that's a level one yeah so on the back of the books it has pictures and if there's one picture

[01:06:37] it's level one if there's two it's two and three pictures it's level three hi how are you um thank you so much for presenting can you go through just describing a little bit more in depth about what your teacher training looks like for this program i'm assuming that this is supposed to be mandated or are teachers fully flexible to use other curriculums that they want to use so we work we work with teach town so teach town representatives actually come and provide the training it's called there's teach town 101 102 and 103 so we require all of our specialized

[01:07:15] program teachers participate in every single one and they go in sequence so 101 first then 102 then 103 and they're offered at all of the professional development days and we also have training in the summer at our specialized program institutes where teacher teachers participate in training for it what do you do as a parent or would you suggest for parents when they see that their children are not being provided this curriculum in any capacity in their classes and that you're not seeing any of the data points or the entries or any information back home that you would expect to see? I would reach out to the school administration first to ask those specific

[01:07:54] questions and then the team can kind of assemble from there of who needs to participate in that to remedy that and address that. When you showed your scans with like the points, I apologize, I'm tired, but the graphs, do you have a system point where you can see, and I realize we do service a lot of students, but if students are not hitting any types of data points, do you have like a red flag come up where they're not accessing their curriculum online?

[01:08:24] So we're able to see, yes. So as individuals who support the whole division, we are able to see the entire division when we're looking at that data, and the teachers are able to see their specific classrooms um so we would be be able to see if students are active in in the system what that looks like all of those sort of things how long would you allow it to go on for until you interjected and that there was a point to say it looks like it's been 12 weeks and this child has not i think the first step would be meet with your school team i think that would be the first step and ask for the data say i want to see it and and the school team will provide that and whether we

[01:09:03] support that or not we'll sit down and we'll go through that data with you and then you have those conversations what should it be this is what we have and then you can make decisions and plans from there but I think first the first step would be to meet with your school team okay so it would be more not just just with the county but that the school administrators should be there and then my last question is is during those teacher trainings are the teaching assistants also provided training for this program so unfortunately there's contractual differences with TAs participating in what we can require for them to participate in when it comes to trainings. I know that frequently we will

[01:09:42] come into classrooms and coach teams and try to catch TAs in those moments because their interaction with the system also looks different than what a teacher's interaction with the system would look like. So we definitely provide those trainings but unfortunately we are very limited with the amount of training days we can have with teaching assistants just based on their contracts okay thank you so much um hi i have a couple questions um is there expectation and accountability on how much time is actually spent on device when working with teach town so for students teachers for students

[01:10:22] for students how much time is actually on the students are participating in teach town on device by themselves versus direct teacher-led instruction or group instruction? Are there expectations and accountability for that? So TeachTown has recommendations based on grade bands and ages, and then we look at individual student need, right? So if a student has never been able to access a Chromebook, they're not going to sit for 15 minutes and do a student-led lesson or a teacher-led lesson. But where do we start? The teacher-led assessments at

[01:10:58] K2 grade band especially, it's three questions. You get three stars at the top of your teacher assessment. It's one, two, three, done. So we start with, and we might chase you around the room with our laptop. We might put it up on the Promethean and make it super fun and have confetti. We're going to do different things because we have to teach our students how to access that. And so the goal would be you start with one activity or one lesson, then you're done and you move on. So I think it depends on the student. We have some students that the first time they saw it, they absolutely loved it they would sit there all day so we have to limit their time because they don't need to be on it for you know 30 60 minutes a day so I think it depends on individual students and

[01:11:36] then the teachers need to use those recommendations and the needs of their students to decide what that looks like and then with the student-led materials so is that how new is that access because I've been asking for something like that for three years and I just found out that that we have that kind of access now. And so what's the expectation of teachers to share information for to us? Like I had no idea the student-led material section. I have no idea what level my student is.

[01:12:09] Is he level one, a level two, level three? Never seen any data or that data points existed. So how do parents find out about this stuff? And then my last question is, can I email you with more questions. So yes, you can email us with more questions. Absolutely. And then the student-led has always been a part of the TeachTown curriculum. I think like Kelly shared with the snow days and all of those sort of things, virtual learning, those sort of pieces, we learned that maybe not

[01:12:48] everyone was fully aware that we could access on the Chromebooks from home, all of those sort of pieces um which is why we wanted to make sure we presented it here to you guys today so you knew that that was an option and it was available um as as maybe some potential at home it's not really necessary it's more practice the student-led is more practice and not necessarily direct instruction or learning um but just some more at-home practice that you could access and use should you want to well have to set that up no like does she have to and and can she or he assign

[01:13:23] the different materials to the student like so the way that it works the encore is the curriculum and so the students are in a unit that's what the that student is learning in the classroom and so their student-led practice and that teacher assessment it's all going to link to the unit that they're working in and the teachers set those units so when the teacher moves on to the next unit all of those student practice work is going to move to the next unit because we're not going to live in all the things that we have already done we're going to move on and we're going to keep learning it has never been an expectation that we have

[01:13:59] shared that teachers need to say this is homework so that's not an expectation and I'm I'm not clear about the homework policy in the district but we have not shared an expectation of homework so it would make sense that you might not have been shared that again this notice kind of highlighted we really need to make sure that this is that parents are aware of this if this is an option points what about the data and all that when does that come home can students share can teachers share that you can share their levels and all of that you can always ask your team that say that you would like to see the data you're interested

[01:14:38] in having that that kind of conversation and then the team can go through and show you that and the data can show us sometimes your student might be between a level sometimes you're thinking my kids should be at this level why are they at that level let's look at the data and that will that will help share with us why that why that's happening um but i would reach out to your school team with any of

[01:14:59] those questions so the question is for high school students that are more impacted and require significant modifications how are the materials in level one in the level one notebook further modified to meet each student's unique learning levels and needs so teachers will differentiate modify that material again based on that individual student need so very similar

[01:15:37] to there is not a prescribed amount of student-led minutes that a student should be participating in because it is very individualized of where that student is that is very similar to accessing those materials so if a student has specific accommodations or has specific maybe a visual impairment maybe deaf hard of hearing those sort of pieces those materials are taken and modified to meet the needs of the individual students so let's say for example you see that chart that graphic organizer in the middle that has a circle and and some some shapes around it that is a vocabulary graphic organizer and so students are learning the vocabulary that goes with the story grade expectations so that

[01:16:16] teacher in that program maybe with some level one learners they might blow up that and get them printed really big maybe they put on the Promethean they might be tactile they might add tactile things to those pictures and to the different maybe short they make something really short so the student can feel the short word goes in on the short piece and and do some matching in that way but again this is telling the teachers here's what we're gonna teach we are gonna teach vocabulary and we're gonna teach vocabulary that links to this story that our students have the right to have access to and we're gonna read this amazing story great expectations and we're gonna make all of our materials really tactile or we're gonna blow them up or we're gonna do

[01:16:55] different things with you know backing them on black the teacher is gonna take that material and manipulate it. This is just the base of what they have. So your teachers know your students. They're going to work with their teams to make sure that the materials are presented in ways that are appropriate and make sense. But this is telling them this is what you're going to teach.

[01:17:14] It's not telling you how you're going to teach that thing. We had access to be safe when it was piloted three years ago or four years ago. I don't have access anymore to be safe. Is there a plan to bring it back? So we still have licenses to be safe. We actually saw in our data not many teachers were using it so we do still have some licenses that we will assign to teachers who are using it and be safe is actually a program that TeachTown is is no longer going to use or have have available

[01:17:52] yeah support so they because of that fading process also we still can assign the licenses but it's not part of the global because not many teachers were using it consistently. So thank you guys so much for this presentation it's really helpful to hear so I recognize that teach town is like light years ahead of what we had previously and I love that it is actually aligned to standards and track you know makes a good attempt to give our students a comprehensive access to those standards

[01:18:29] my wonder is how well do you feel that an ABA curriculum meets the needs of all of our learners? So ABA is, it's a philosophy, right? It's principles of applied behavior analysis. So it's not, ABA essentially is how you're teaching those techniques, things like prompt fading, things like district reinforcement, discrete trial training, all of those, they are essentially teaching principles of just essentially teaching and how you're going to teach the material. It's not necessarily an ABA curriculum in the sense that it's, it's not targeting, right, those core

[01:19:08] standards or lessons it's just how we're going to teach those things with those principles of the prompt fading of the discrete trial of the reinforcement all of those sort of layered pieces and built into it and I guess my second part kind of goes to the other question that was asked so for our students who do have these very complex and significant disabilities like let's say non-verbal you know maturic difficulties where they aren't touching them a lot of the curriculum is very much touch this or say this and it expects you to do it within a certain amount of time you know or relies on like a visual cue that may or may not be very clear to them you know

[01:19:46] that's it's it's no longer it's very different right than what they can actually access so do you feel like it is still it still meets the needs of those learners who have our like our most complex and significant disabilities.

[01:20:05] So I think the big thing, right, is what Kelly kind of talked through and I, a little bit of that differentiation of looking at the individual students' needs. We have also worked very closely with Assistive Technology, who has also worked very closely with directly reaching out to TeachTown to support any of those needs, how they might better that program and the platform and access to very, very specific learners.

[01:20:32] Okay, I'm going to respect your time, and I really do appreciate you guys coming up. I'm going to get one more question and then anybody else who has questions, if you want to email me or you want to email Carly or Kelly directly, that would be wonderful.

[01:20:48] I just had a quick question. When the product was being demoed and LCPS was looking at purchasing it, just as an aside, I happened to be trying to explore options for my child just to figure out a solution to catch him up on all the background knowledge, vocabulary he'd not been able to achieve throughout the years.

[01:21:08] So I had spoken with the corporate office at TeachTown, and I know they were saying that they used to have, and I guess they did this with the basics product for a while for, like, homeschoolers, but that they used to have a product that parents could have access to and subscribe to. And so the conversation I had with them was would they eventually release that on Encore if you wanted to do additional learning, you know, with your student, not disrupting their data, but being able to guide them through, you know, moving through levels, et cetera.

[01:21:36] So I'm just I'm just wondering if there's been any development on that that you may be aware of or if that would be something that you'd be willing to entertain that we could as parents eventually have that for summer learning or home learning or even through the transition piece. Because, as you know, while it's great that we've expanded on inclusion and these tools over the years, a lot of our kids that are at the end and that are exiting the system are never going to be able to recoup that time.

[01:22:00] So if that's something that we could marry, you know, as something that we could help support as parents, or I would just ask more globally that as we think about meeting the needs of these young adults in the community, as we think about the transition center, and even after they leave the system, that we think about some of these things with the tools to support maybe adult ed special education, where they have an opportunity to continue their learning, to continue developing that literacy, which is just going to make them more functional adults.

[01:22:30] and contributing members of the community. So just wanted to share that with you. If you have any updates, great. If not, just thoughts I wanted to share. So I believe last I was informed or told you can buy your own license for it as a parent and access the curriculum and things like that.

[01:22:46] I'm not sure what that looks like, or we can ask definitely for more information and share that. But last that I was semi-updated or informed of was that there are parent licenses that can be purchased, I think, for the specific programs for you to be able to utilize at home.

[01:23:10] Don't have an update on that. A little transparency there. Right. We can check. We can absolutely check. Of course.

[01:23:26] Thank you. We really, really appreciate you coming out and giving us that overview. We're going to go ahead and take, I will say, like five-minute break, come back at 7.30.

[01:23:44] also please make sure you pick up the handouts in the back of the room and we have now a transition tool kit so this is anyone who needs um whose students might need transition services you want to know more about what's available please pick up a a handbook in the back for for you guys to

[01:24:07] reference hey everyone go ahead and get started on the business portion of our meeting again if

[01:32:54] If anyone didn't get a chance to, can you guys hear me, scan, anyone didn't get a chance to sign in, can you please scan the QR code and go ahead and sign in.

[01:33:17] And just go through real quick the agenda for this evening. The good news is we don't have, we have only one policy update, but we don't have policies, like long policies to review.

[01:33:38] Okay. All right. SEAC is mandated. I think everyone here pretty much knows SEAC, so I'm not going to go through this. Okay, so I'm Shanaz Khan. I'm the SEAC chair, and to my left we have Tom Ketchum, who is our SEAC vice chair of membership.

[01:33:58] Missing right now is our SEAC vice chair of planning, Catherine Moran. And next to what would be Catherine is Katie Rosenbrook, our secretary. And to my right, we have Liz Crotty, our SEAC past chair.

[01:34:15] And we have Erin Rizalpo, who is our SEAC vice chair of communications. And sitting next to her is our SEAC school board liaison, Carrie LaBelle. Today, we don't have Dr. Paige Carter with us, but she is our special ed director, but she is leaving.

[01:34:42] Our SEAC business, we would, can I have a motion to admit our virtual attendees? Second. All those in favor, say aye. Any nays?

[01:34:58] Any abstentions? Marsha, Carrie, and Sharon, welcome. Okay, so we will move approving our January meeting minutes to the next meeting only because I dropped the ball and did not send you those minutes in time for you guys to review.

[01:35:19] So I will do that next week, next month I promise. Public comment, we do have one public comment today and I'll just read my SEAC really values hearing from the public because your feedback helps guide the recommendations we make to the school board about special education needs.

[01:35:46] We do ask that the comments focus on system wide issues rather than individual students or staff. You can share your thoughts by giving a verbal comment up to three minutes, please we do ask that we do stay within three minutes, or by submitting your comment in writing to be read by the SEAC chair.

[01:36:05] And please remember to follow up with our SEAC secretary with your written comment, so it is part of the record. And Sakina?

[01:36:25] - Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I am here as a member of the community to raise an important concern about the need for stronger AAC support for non-speaking or non-verbal students in our school and throughout our community.

[01:36:46] What I mean by AAC is augmentative alternative device. Before I share my main point, I want to tell you about a 17 years old young man I know. He's non-verbal, but has learned to use his soccer proficiently, which has given him real access to the world around him.

[01:37:06] With his device, he can express his thought, participate in conversations, and even share his unique sense of humor. He's the perfect example of the potential the students have when they receive the right support, but I rarely encounter a student like him.

[01:37:30] That brings me to my main message today. AAC is not just a device. AAC is a language system. And I believe we need a system-wide shift in how we view and teach it.

[01:37:47] As someone who speaks more than one language, I can tell you that learning a language does not happen in a few weekly sessions. It takes consistent instructions, daily practice, and ongoing exposure.

[01:38:03] AEC learners deserve that same approach. They need intentional teaching of vocabulary and grammar. We start with nouns, we add verbs, and we'll build those word combinations, then sentences, and eventually we move on to more advanced language concepts.

[01:38:24] Speaking children learn language because adults talk to them throughout the day. They hear language constantly. They see it used in real situations. AET learners also need that kind of exposure.

[01:38:41] They need consistent modeling in the classroom, hallways, lunch recess, the living room, and throughout every meaningful part of their day. I deeply respect how everyone is working.

[01:38:58] and it's not about effort, it's about structure. What we need is a system-wide change. We need to shift from simply providing a device to building a language environment around the device.

[01:39:14] One practical step is to treat AAC instruction like a language course. If a child is not speaking by a certain age, we should not only provide the device and hope for the best, we should provide structured AAC language support every day.

[01:39:30] may be a structured AAC block built into the day. This can be designed by an SLP and implemented consistently with the help of trainer, educational aid or teachers, and the child receive frequented guided practice throughout the day.

[01:39:46] Let's not forget, when AAC is taught consistently, students gain not just words, but access to education, friendship, and independence. Thank you again for your time and for your continued advocacy on behalf of students with disabilities and their families.

[01:40:14] And now we will have Leanne Kidwell from Family Resource Services give us an update. Good evening, everyone.

[01:40:30] I am Leanne Kidwell from Family Resource Services. And before I get into my updates of what's to come, I just wanted to let you know if you attended when the bus stops coming last Saturday, you were in luck. We had a great turnout.

[01:40:46] We had about 100 people here. We had over 40 vendors. We did a breakout session of trainings also, so I wanted to thank SEAC for their presence. So if you did not have the opportunity to attend last Saturday, put it on your calendar for next year because it's a great event.

[01:41:06] I do want to talk about what's coming up. The first thing that I have is the 19th of February, which is the mental health folks are doing a protect your student success drug talks with your teens so that will be here at the admin building at 6 30. the other really really big thing that's happening is on the 21st it is the mental health wellness conference and they're going to have we had 41 vendors and we had a lot it was very very exciting they're going to have over 100 vendors over 30 concurrent

[01:41:43] sessions. So this is a big deal. So if you have even time to just drop in by the vendors, this is a great activity. And it's going to be at Heritage High School on Saturday, the 21st. And then the last thing that I have is the transition from middle school to high school with an IEP. It's going to be a virtual workshop from 12 to 1. Our transition from elementary to middle school, we had Over 200 people participate in our virtual workshop.

[01:42:15] So I think, you know, this is a great opportunity because then they're also recorded. So if you missed anything, you can always go back to our website and look at the recording. So it gives us an opportunity to record this session. So that's what's upcoming.

[01:42:31] This is my information. Please check out my website if you missed anything. Like I said, I post the SEAC meetings every month as well. So you have two different places to get those. And if you don't have any questions, great.

[01:42:48] I will see you all next month. With regards to the United Wellness event, I will be there. If any of our members or anybody else wants to come and join me in volunteering at one of our tables, so we will be one of those 140 vendors over there.

[01:43:14] Okay. And I got a volunteer. Yay. Okay. Thank you, Catherine. And so today filling in for Ms. Richardson is Kimberly Jones. I am honored to highlight the work that is going on from my colleagues across the Department of Student Services.

[01:43:40] I know that Dr. Walker was here and really highlighted some of the opportunities for sib shops across regions in LCPS. Additionally, right now, we are in the process of facilitating 25, or 25 of our schools are facilitating restorative practice circles around attendance, and those conversations are really focusing on the root causes of absences, the support that students and families need, and really trying to build some greater connections between students, their families, and their school communities.

[01:44:15] Additionally, we're excited to announce that Vaccines for Children is now coming to LCPS, and that will allow LCPS an opportunity to provide required school entrance vaccines for LCPS students. Additionally, both LCPS and the Department of Student Services wishes Mrs. Sarah Fowler, who I'm sure many of you have interacted with over the years well in her retirement.

[01:44:42] We are truly grateful for the service that she's provided to students, families, and schools over her years of service. And we're very excited to welcome Ms. Kelly Barva as our new supervisor of eligibility and Section 504 services.

[01:44:58] And then lastly, I know both Family Resource Services and Shanaz really highlighted the annual United for Wellness conference. But we encourage all of you to participate in some capacity on that day. this link will take you to the web page. So we're looking forward to seeing you on February 21st.

[01:45:20] And I am happy to transition to my colleague, Mrs. Christy McKee, who's going to share some updates on behalf of Dr. Paige Carter tonight. Thank you, Kim. Okay. Good evening, everyone. I'm Christy McKee. I'm a special education supervisor, and I have the privilege of supporting the Tuscarora Cluster, which is located in the central region. Tonight, I'm filling in for Dr. Carter. She sends for regards. And she has two slides that we're going to walk through this evening. This slide

[01:45:58] represents that as of yesterday, we were serving 10,679 students with disabilities. The chart captures historical data presented to you in February of 2024, February of 2025, and February of 2026. We've seen a steady increase in the number of students requiring services over the last three years. The growth rate peaked between 2024 and 25 at 3.78 percent and has since moderated to 1.79 percent in the current year. It's very important that we keep track of these trends

[01:46:36] and that'll be essential as we plan for our students and families. Before I wrap up my time with you this evening, I want to share a message from Dr. Carter who couldn't be with us this evening. As many of you know, she's preparing to retire in just a few short weeks. This slide contains her words of gratitude, reflection, and thanks, and I invite you to take a moment

[01:47:05] to read her message. Thank you.

[01:47:23] I know we are all going to miss Dr. Carter, and her collaboration with SEAC has been immensely, you know, we just really appreciated her and everything she did to support us. And now our update from Carrie LaBelle.

[01:47:54] Good evening. I'm glad to be here with you today. The biggest thing that we had happening for the last couple of months was the budget. And I will tell you that Lauren Chernoff and I worked really hard to make sure that you kept the diagnostician so that you still have 33. We would have liked to add in at least two more, but we were pushing our luck there.

[01:48:22] So thank you all for letting us know your needs. Now, one other thing, and I just spoke with Shanaz about this. We're going to be having a discussion on it. The snow days and access to education. I've received lots and lots of letters.

[01:48:42] I'll probably get lots and lots more. But what I'd really like to hear is constructive ideas. I know all the problems now. I've got a lot of those. But if you could offer us any thoughts that you might have in how to help our students access education during snow days.

[01:49:06] There's a lot of problems, a lot of different levels. And any ideas that you might have, we will certainly consider. Right now, I know there was confusion about asynchronous teaching or lessons.

[01:49:21] All that means is enrichment lessons. If the teacher's teaching a sequence, and then we have a snow day somewhere in there, she's not going to try to continue the sequence because that's too difficult, even for regular students to sometimes get.

[01:49:38] But if she can provide enrichment, which is really what asynchronous learning or teaching is, that is something that can be done. And I think a lot of people, both teachers and parents and students, were confused by that term.

[01:49:56] Asynchronous activities or enrichment activities are things that help the student broaden what the teacher is teaching as opposed to moving forward to something new every day. And this can work with our students too.

[01:50:13] If there is something, and that's why I asked my question that I asked about TeachTown, this is something that they might be able to do at home with a little bit of help from parents or other siblings to access the computer to figure out you know where to go so that's something we will be discussing but I think Shanaz and I will be meeting later this month to start talking about what we can do for our students and any ideas that you want to send us or give us we will gladly accept

[01:50:40] so thank you I did get a lot of feedback during that time and you know it is a very difficult decision to you know have because a lot of our students do not have access to asynchronous learning without supports and that's we're asking parents to be those supports so

[01:51:15] I think any ideas you have please do send it to us so that we can think about this the next time we have a week long off okay and now we will move into our did you know and Catherine Moran will present that. Did you know inclusion is a civil right? Why least restrictive environment matters.

[01:51:49] Did you know inclusion is not a program or a place? It's a civil right protected under federal law. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires students with disabilities to be educated in the least restrictive environment, meaning they learn with non-disabled peers to the maximum extent appropriate with supports and services brought to the student rather than removing the student from the general education setting. Why does it matter? Research consistently shows students with disabilities who are educated in inclusive settings demonstrate stronger academic

[01:52:25] outcomes, improved communication and social skills, higher expectations, and better post-school outcomes, including employment and independent living. Importantly, inclusion also benefits non-disabled peers by promoting empathy, collaboration, and real-world problem-solving.

[01:52:46] LRE is not one-size-fits-all. It requires individualized decision-making based on the student's strengths, needs, and goals, not convenience, disability category, or available placements.

[01:53:02] Removal from general education should only occur when education in that setting cannot be achieved satisfactorily, even with supplementary aids and services. In a nutshell, LRE is about access, belonging, which we've talked quite a bit about tonight, and opportunity.

[01:53:21] When we get inclusion right, we're not lowering standards. We're raising outcomes for all students. There are evidence-based resources that are shared with us from U.S. Department of Ed, Office of Special Ed Programs, the National Technical Assistance Center on Transition, the Collaborative, and the Council for Exceptional Children.

[01:53:43] one has either studies evidence linking inclusive educational experiences or position statements and practice standards and now I'm going to go ahead and move into our chair report I'll start with our membership Tom so we do have total 21 voting members for any PTO PTA reps in the room everybody has

[01:54:23] received an email asking you to confirm which schools you are representing so including anyone that's online please respond to that if you haven't we have about a hundred and fifty two people that are registered as school representatives that's more than we have schools which is great and I think it's wonderful that that many people are reading the newsletter I'm sure everybody reads every word of that as we send it out every month we've only had 30 people that have actually confirmed that they are currently representing a school so if we don't hear back from others then we will seek out new

[01:54:59] representatives for those schools so please respond to that and I can go ahead and do roll call if you'd like all right Carrie Adams who we believe is present virtually I'm here sorry I couldn't get my microphone off I'm here Elizabeth Crotty Jen did an auto Marsha Kelly here I'm catching present Shanaaz Khan

[01:55:31] Rosina Kattak, Laura Colossi, Mary McClintock, Alicia McFadden, Craig Metz, Stephen Meyer, Catherine Moran, Kelly Ralston, Erin Roselle-Poe, Catherine Rosenbook, Carly Sabatino, Carla Sola,

[01:56:01] Sharon Trompf, Melissa Waugh, and Sakina Zarbouche. We have 13 present in the room, three online, 16 total. And I will just add for our SEAC representatives, we do have a Facebook page where I do try to post our flyers and some information over there. So if you are a

[01:56:36] representative and want to come find us on our Facebook page, please do so. I did send an email at the beginning, like a link to the Facebook page, but if anyone needs it, please feel free to reach out okay so we will have our executive committee meeting today after this meeting usually at 8:30 hopefully I'm trying to get us out and that will be over at Clyde's it's open to the public so anyone who would like to come our policy and compliance subcommittee just met this past Monday and we will schedule another meeting as soon as those policies roll in as needed and I

[01:57:14] I will send out a link as soon as we schedule one. So now we have two subcommittees that are going to be starting up on this half of the school year. We have our SEAC nominating committee, which will be Carla and Liz Crotty.

[01:57:35] So anyone who is thinking of staying on, if you're thinking of coming off, that's our executive committee. please email both Carla and Liz and let them know, and then they'll be reaching out soon, right, to start the process.

[01:57:53] The SEAC Awards Planning Committee has also begun, and that will be Laura Colossi and, again, Liz Crotty. I just assigned Liz to everything, you know. Oh, this is so good. This default is Liz. So, yes, so we have started working with Dr. Kim Jones with us, And so we're going to be sending out the nominations soon.

[01:58:17] We're hoping to do it, I was thinking the third week of February, but we'll see. Yeah, we're thinking of sending out the nominations. We'll give one month for the nominations to come back. And then the executive committee will sit and evaluate the nominations and select our recipients.

[01:58:37] Okay. And now we will have our subcommittee reports beginning with the meaningful inclusion subcommittee. So, since I didn't want to hit everybody's email box with a lot of emails this week, you will now be receiving, shortly after this meeting, an email about signing up for one of the projects that we're working on, which is putting together these videos.

[01:59:02] I think I mentioned that at our last meeting, which are a series of short videos. We've identified about 60 or so different topics related to special education, little things like, for instance, what is an IEP? What are my rights to raw data? All of the things that we oftentimes discuss, sometimes we throw out a lot of edu-speak and a lot of acronyms.

[01:59:25] A lot of those come up in the did you know segments and so forth, and so the idea is to create a library of those kind of very quick videos that describe a lot of those for parents that are unfamiliar with them. We are spreading that across SEAC to contribute, so you'll be receiving an email shortly about the signup process, and you can learn more you come to our meeting next week specialized reading and math Aaron and

[01:59:59] Alicia so last month we had our subcommittee meeting slash work session where we did a little bit more of that discussion around math math what's available in terms of classes varying from honors all the way down and what's available to students and what that looks like we got to kind of get our hands into the math interventions that we are consistently learning about and exploring we do have our next subcommittee meeting tomorrow morning at 10:00 a.m. but something I actually spoke with Kim and Margaret prior to our

[02:00:35] meeting this evening when I'm going to meetings or even at my own child's meeting I've truly embraced something that they have put so much work into creating for our community and those are the instructional match guides these things are phenomenal they are a resource for every parent I can't even express enough what a tool this is to bring with you to the IEP table because as you're brainstorming in terms of what interventions are appropriate what we could we possibly layer on as a combination of supports that the student

[02:01:15] may need based on their unique needs and then also what's identified in their disability. These have become such a essential tool, not only for parents, but for teams too. Because a lot of times the teams aren't aware that this exists. And so we have one for reading and we have one for math. And so I can't even express this enough. I've given copies to teams when I go. These things are amazing. And so we did last minute put the link up there, but it's very easy to locate. You can literally just Google LCPS

[02:01:47] OSE specialized instruction and they're in both English and Spanish thanks Erin yes I mean I've also done the same I've taken this and I've taken to the team and it's it it really helps to have those conversations and looking at it together and trying to come up with some a good plan for your students so I would definitely recommend checking that out transition subcommittee we have Rosina and Steven and I have your slides that so the next meeting will be on

[02:02:23] Tuesday March 3rd at 10 a.m. at the LCPS building but there's so my first disclosure I was not at the last meeting but Rosina was and I think the slides are self-evident we just have three slides for you I want to thank Jenna Arndt and her crew for hosting the last transition meeting here and they had a

[02:03:02] slideshow for us that I hope she will present here in in May so we should all look forward to that can we see the so these are the pathways I mentioned them one I think two meetings ago but these are the pathways that are are being developed there you know in terms of curriculum and who's going to teach these and what the teacher ratio will be and so forth so I'll just give you a

[02:03:40] moment to look at that I think it's pretty exciting I'm going to go on to the next slide so this is the most current rendering of what the transition Center will look like there's a few on the website but this is the one that I found the most encompassing of what we're seeing the bus loop the green space

[02:04:13] and I wish I could tell you which street that is but right yeah so the new building is a building closest to us it's the white building in the drawing and so that's going to give us an enormous amount of space and parents who are driving students will leave their students off at the door which you can see and there's a door there's also another entrance around the bus circle and it's what I didn't realize it looks like we're gonna have solar panels on

[02:04:48] that's pretty good so this is this is where things are at there's a student and staff engagement sessions two of them plan to begin getting input the design development by the architects will be in the spring of 2026 there's other sessions for student and staff in May and we will have the SEAC

[02:05:22] presentation as I mentioned before here on in our May meeting there's a bidding process for construction which is in the fall and then they hope to start construction on in January of 2027 and open in the school year of 2028 and 2029 and then I just wanted to end in the back are these postcards that have the QR code that you can visit the project web page and also submit your own questions and feedback thank you and then I wanted to add one thing Carla

[02:06:01] thank you so I'm the SeaTac rep from SEAC SeaTac is the career and technical Education and Adult Education Committee. Carla was there for me because I couldn't make that either. So there's going to be a presentation this coming Wednesday on the Transition Center, the VIEW Academy, and the importance of that is that I would say two-thirds of our attendees to that meeting are from the business community like Northrop Grumman and others who are already many of

[02:06:39] them are already sponsoring programs in some of the middle schools and and elementary schools and so forth so I'm hoping this will be the beginning of a dialogue with them and actually helping to partner with us in the transition Center. So that's something I hope to figure out how we actually, SEAC, can have that outreach to these people and either get their support or ideas of others in the community that are willing to

[02:07:11] help us. So the takeaway from all of this is there has been a huge collaborative process with developing this transition center and SEAC has been working closely with Jenna, Suzanne, Sarah, the whole team and trying to come up with what would be the best outcome for our students but we really really do ask that parents please start giving input in now as we're developing this

[02:07:47] academy because it's much harder to go back later on and be like oh well we should have included this if you have input if you have thoughts we would really appreciate you reaching out and giving us your feedback and again they will come in May they will be able they will present and you will have an opportunity for feedback at that time as well but any thoughts right now would be really appreciated and when I mentioned that handbook the transition handbook that's in the back there that's a parent guide to help you through that process of transition because many

[02:08:22] parents get to that junior senior year and they don't know what was available for their student previously or what to do moving forward and so we as a SEAC really advocated for having a parent handbook that could help navigate that process so please take a look yeah and also for it's not just for our junior and senior parents there's also a section on elementary school and the things that you can start doing now with your with your little guys to help them get ready for the end so everyone should be walking out of here with one

[02:08:58] those books it's so nicely done so just a little extra plug for everybody no I appreciate that because I did start this process when my son was in elementary school and now he's a sophomore in high school and I still am figuring things out so I think that it's so important to even start at this at the young age attending when the bus stops coming I will fiercely advocate for that because it is so much information that you need to be going over and over again just to understand it so okay our next meeting will be March 4th and I do believe that

[02:09:36] it will be somebody from OSC presenting the annual plan the special education annual plan I also am preparing to put together our SEAC annual report so I will hopefully have that done and present that at our next meeting and now we're just going to wrap this up we have our policy and compliance subcommittee that met on Monday and Craig did you want to speak to this or did I just go

[02:10:08] ahead okay so policy 5330 is actually our special education policy and we did review that back in the fall and we had our recommendations and one of our recommendation happened to be also that we combine the policy that addresses eligibility with our special education policy and I think also it might have been also that it was happening anyway so the the two policies are going to become the one policy for eligibility is going to be merged into our special

[02:10:42] education policy so we met on Monday and we did a basic review of it and we provided feedback to LCPS staff we do have further questions and we wanted some clarification but we also did provide our feedback so that officially that policy has not been posted to board docs yet it has not been brought to the school board subcommittee yet and so we're waiting on them to actually bring it into subcommittee so they can have their discussions and we can actually see what is going to be what changes are going to be made after they have their

[02:11:21] discussion we will reconvene as a subcommittee again review those whatever their discussions and then we will bring it to the full SEAC for a vote and then we'll submit our recommendations so we just wanted to make sure everyone was aware that we are working on this policy but we are just doing it in a little bit step so okay any questions or a discussion oh yes I'm sorry go ahead

[02:11:51] yes I'm glad you remember so Marcia Kelly is representing SEAC on a Council that the superintendent has brought together to talk about the strategic plan. The next strategic plan for LCPS taking us to 2032. I am also on that council as a representative representative from gifted advisory and we have a bunch of other voices in the room of course from across the district and and Some voices from the community as well. Our next meeting there is a March 18th

[02:12:29] And this is a process that's going to take us at least six months or more as we go through that to reevaluate and look at some very foundational stuff. The values that are driving us forward and how we implement things at a high level.

[02:12:45] So Marcia, myself, and everyone else on that council, we wear multiple hats. We represent multiple constituencies. I don't forget about SEAC, obviously, when I'm sitting in those meetings, as well as I'm thinking about GEAC when I'm sitting in these meetings, as well as equity and the other things that I participate in so if you have thoughts if you have feedback we have already a lot of feedback from the community already that has been gathered over the last six months or so but if you have particularly thoughts that relate to SEAC or other concerns that you would like to see that group address please send those to myself or Marsha or

[02:13:24] send them to Shanaz and she can forward those on to us and we look forward to any feedback we'll have one more SEAC meeting before then so if that's something you want to sort of think about and and address with us at the next meeting that would be fine as well so that next meeting for us will be March 18th but we look forward to any thoughts that you have that we can bring forward to that group and one last thing is that please put on your calendars June 3rd that is our SEAC award ceremony and so we will have it at Light Ridge this year so just please put it on your

[02:13:58] calendar and you know we'll be reaching out I guess Laura and Liz will be reaching out for any help they will be needing and planning that so thank you all so much really appreciate everybody coming out tonight and I'll see you next month take care

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