Special Education Teacher Advisory Committee (SETAC)-Revisions in red 11.20.14
November 13, 2014; 4:00 – 5:00pm
Student Services Conference Rooms
Introductions and
Welcomes
Jean Rice
Jean Rice – SpEd Director; Erica Bowman, Kate Rodriguez
Staff Introductions – name and building
Jean will be scheduled to visit each of your schools if she hasn’t already.
If you would like to schedule a meeting regarding instruction or anything else with Jean, please call Tracy Dabney
at x57879.
Assessment Team –
Melissa Thompson,
Emily Scott, Alanna
Engel, Effie O’Neal,
Nichole Alvarez
Melissa
Thompson
District Assessment Team (DAT)
 DAT provides consistency for eligibilities and evaluations and to maximize district resources
 The number of evals. has far exceeded what was predicted
 DAT is involved in every evaluation plan with direct input for SED, TBI, ID, OHI, and some SLD who aren’t
making progress or are low across the board with the exception of SLI
 DAT is 1.0 FTE down and are inundated with requests but are trying to get to you asap
o Protocol – working towards sending eval. report home 10 days before the IEP meeting; however, due to
current load that has not always been possible
 If report is not ready 3 days prior to the meeting, Jean advised sending home the partial eval.
report with the verbiage, complete info will be coming, rather than waiting too long to send it
home
 DAT is revising their plan and training BTLs to try to make the 10 days
 BTLS were given 10 Easy Steps…to help plan ahead
o Next semester, if the 10 Easy Steps…are not followed, you will not be given priority over BTLs who
have followed the process
 Question – will more support be added for bldgs. that got cut last year?
o Jean – will re-evaluate all buildings and needs in January but it depends on the Dec. count
 Google doc is highly recommended so that everyone can add their piece – big time saver, can work on it from
anywhere
o Google doc is required if DAT is doing testing
 You can support DAT by basing information on complete and thorough file review by BTL and SpEd team
 DAT has worked with school teams to have positive outcomes for the students
 DAT thanks you for your help participating in this process
Roles and
Responsibilities – see
10 Easy Steps to
Working with DAT,
CLD, and Autism
Handout
IEP Team – Sundee
Pietsch, Jen WCampbell, Nadine
VanAlstine, EdyKay
Ward, Carol Messier
Jen Campbell
IEP Team
 Jean – teacher feedback is very valuable to SS
 Deb Puccetti and IEP team are checking IEPs for Dec. count
 IEP revisions need to be made Dec. 1 for the count
 We are now on self audit (CDE)
 Will have 40 more by June 1
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Student Achievement
-Closing the gap
-Interventionists
-Assistive Tech
-Student Services
Support Team
Jean Rice
Will have 50 more for next year’s round
IEP Team hopes they are giving you guidance and good feedback to develop your IEP
Looking at trends in Enrich i.e. ESY
Please contact them for questions and don’t hesitate to ask for support
IEP Guidance is in “Classes”
Transportation documentation
o If student qualifies mark “Yes” on IEP but add to meeting notes that you discussed transportation and
not applicable because of open enrollment
o State requires we put this in the body of our notes
o Could say “discussed all special factors”
o Question - scan, and upload meeting sign-in page – Answer: No
o If you have trouble communicating this info to parent, can ask BTL or Area Coord. to help
Scholastic was “go to” program but we cannot afford to pay for the server anymore.
We want to provide supports to assist in student learning.
Looking at instructional strategies through blended services of MTSS.
1. Working on other programs with Tori Teague, Regina Renaldi, Kathy McCall, Gayle Niss, Tara Mason
a. We have some Scholastic, Lexia, i-Ready
b. On Dec. 6, CDE is offering reading methods training for all SpEd staff
2. If you know of really good training strategies, send Jean an email; has really strong background in instruction
3. Look at instruction before putting in programs
4. Look at big picture for closing gap for student achievement
5. MTSS looks at behavior side as well as instructional strategies through blended services
6. Working with Diane Lauer/OPD for blending SpEd services
a. You can have typical students in your Tier 3 group
7. We’re finding schools are supporting Tier 1 and Tier 3 students but not much support for Tier 2
8. Tier 2 will take some of our SpEd kids if it works for the blending of gen ed and SpEd students
a. MTSS and blended services clarification from Jean:
b. Have had conversations with various district staff regarding our model of MTSS
c. Do not have a very sustainable Tier 2 system throughout the district
d. MTSS system may look very different from school to school
e. Blended services can happen but this would be a bigger conversation between the building
principal, SS, and SpEd team
f. Parent permission is dependent on the MTSS model in place in your building and if the parent
was involved in the MTSS problem solving meeting
g. If you are receiving a student without an IEP and without having gone through the MTSS model
of tiers, that would constitute the bigger conversation about why you are being asked to put this
student into your groups
h. In order for MTSS to be successful there needs to be not only blended services, but blended
funding and FTE
9. Elem. principals – discussion about who to go to when kids in crisis; behavior management issues in building;
work study team to try to get something in place in buildings by Jan.
10. Matt Hoffmeister is a district mental health worker in Connie’s office
a. Assisting with blending of our middle school students
b. Some students don’t qualify for Tier 4 but need mental health services
11. Tier 3 gen ed student could be in your reading group if they don’t qualify for SpEd
a. Your caseload must be at least 51% SpEd
12. Blending services has been well received on both sides; if you are getting overloaded – call area Area Coord.
13. Sometimes you need to work on behaviors, not just academics, to get the student to engage before learning
14. Question – do we have to get parent permission to put gen ed student in your Tier 3 class? – See Item 8 above
15. ELL strategies are great for SpEd students to help with literacy and reading
16. SIOP Strategies are great for all students
Power Point Attached
Behavior Referrals
Kathy
McCall
Jean
Literacy i-Ready Presentation
1. Kathy working on training for elementary SpEd teachers
2. i-Ready data is in Alpine
3. Great diagnostic tools and instructional resources
4. Can use probe assessment multiple times and diagnostic assessment 3 times a year
5. Helps identify students who qualify for READ Act
6. Using with grades 1 thru 3 and any other students buildings have determined
7. Ongoing probes every other week that you could use as your progress monitoring tool
8. Assessments go up to Grade 12; instruction to Grade 8
9. SpEd should have access and log in; if not:
a. See bldg. assessment leader, principal, or Patrick Kilcullen
10. Second semester will look at piloting in middle/high school
11. i-Ready is very user friendly; unlike Lexia, could have your child in multiple instructional groups
12. Will give lexile scores that correlate with SRI and can use in your IEP
13. Regina is looking into the phonics portion of i-Ready; have been getting low scores – Jean will check
14. Since third graders are required to take i-Ready, they wouldn’t have to take the SRI test
15. There is no specific sub test break down in the progress monitors
16. Planning a training after Thanksgiving break
17. Jean warned – don’t qualify kids for a disability i.e. conduct, anxiety kids if they can have their needs met
through Tier 3, school counselor, or social worker
18. SpEd – has to be educationally impacting to qualify
19. We have a study group to look at the Tiers and why we are jumping from Tier 1 to Tier 3
a. Need tools to work on behaviors and anxiety
Discussed in Student Achievement above
Accommodations and
Modifications
Jean
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PARCC
Accommodations
Attached
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Accommodations in CMAS should be discussed during IEP meeting
CDE website has Colorado Accommodations Manual – Hit Control and click on link below:
o http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdesped/accommodations
o Has good questions to use with your team
Misconception between accommodations and modifications
o Generally modifications should be happening with students below 70 IQ or EEO
There are no modifications for students that are receiving standards based instruction
Question: Who enters this info into Alpine?
o It’s a building decision; may not be your responsibility to enter info but you need to get info to the
person who is entering the info
Accessibility feature is not turned on; need access from Tori Teague or Kim Wiggins
o Question: Can be turned on for everyone because it will crash the system? – See Jean’s answer below
11.20.14
o Answer: Overloading the system – there is no anticipated problem.
Your building DACs are getting great guidance from the CMAS/PARCC training. Please follow their
instructions when setting the accommodations for these assessments.
Review of communication from Student Services to BTLs at meeting with Kim Wiggins/Assessment
Coord.:
o Parent meetings – be specific about the differences between Text-to-Speech and Oral Script
o Oral Script would be the like the human voice accommodation
o Oral Script should be removed from student’s IEP in most cases unless the entire team agreed
that the accommodation of human voice was the best choice
 It was stated that this choice should be very rare
o When a student moves, these State Accommodations should be transferable by another state
 If there is an issue in transferring the IEP, it will be rewritten by the receiving state
o Further questions – consult with the bldg. DAC or your area coordinator