 Hello. Welcome to the second COVID-19 special education update. Hello. Welcome to the second COVID-19 special education update for ESU-8. When we last met, there was some concern about whether Ruth was taking some time off to relieve some stress. Rest assured that I have. Here's my latest stress relief. There are seven little kittens in that ball of fur. They are being raised by two young mother cats who always sleep this way and they sleep supporting one another now with the kittens between them. I think they're a symbol of together we can get through anything. Even COVID-19 pandemics. First I was afraid I was petrified. And again I could never keep through canvas all the time. But then I spent so many nights reading the health docs for so long. And I grew strong. I didn't have to get along. And so I'm back. The students are gone. As all my colleagues try to figure out how they're gonna get along. I should have kept up with the day. Not seen that class on course design. If I had known for just one second I'd be teaching all I go now go. Leave me alone. You can watch the rest of that video if you need to pick me up in the middle of the day. Yes, we're all wishing we had known more about tech before this started. We all wish that someone would just leave us alone. Let us work with kids in the way that we used to work. But we're not going to get that wish anytime soon. So today we're going to talk about progress monitoring during COVID-19. Compensatory education. And a few other questions regarding things that you need to do before the end of the school year. What is progress monitoring as we begin to wind down this year? Your documentation is your friend while you're doing progress monitoring. That's why we've emphasized documenting all of those attempts to reach families. All of the information that you've sent to them packets. The times that you've met with students or their families via zoom. If you go to do your progress report on SRS, you have some choices. You're going to say the goal was met. Progress was made, but the goal wasn't met. Little or no progress. Or you're going to use the category other. For many of you, this may be the first time that you've used other. And it will be your saving grace right now. You're going to choose the option that best fits the goals that you've been working on and explaining with the data that you have. How much progress the student has made. Goal met. If the goal was met prior to COVID-19, it should probably remain so. You're going to say goal was met second quarter or third quarter, then the goal was met. If progress made goal not met is the way you're gleaning. This is a little trickier. If you have numerical data, if you've been keeping track of how many math facts he's completing during your zoom session, then use that. If not, you're going to assess the goals from a narrative standpoint. Did you see the student perform this task? Did you actually work with the student one on one to be able to say. Yes, he's been making progress towards this goal. When you talk to the parent, did they provide input on things that the student has been doing. During a lesson, how did the student participate, either with you or in the in the general classroom lessons. Little or no progress from looking at the goal. What evidence do you have that progress may or may not have been made. Was this child making progress towards the goal prior to COVID, but they're not making progress now. Is there simply no data to support the goal, because you haven't worked on that particular goal or you haven't collected data as you've been working you've been using your zoom sessions, basically to maintain relationships with students. Was the goal classroom specific or oriented towards the classroom such as counting how many times the student blurts out in class. So there's no evidence. Here's some other examples. If your goal was job sites by the next IEP review date at a special will have participated in two to three community based work experiences with a job coach. You haven't been able to do those job sites. So your progress report, you will choose other and state Eddie was not able to participate in job sites during fourth quarter due to the health and safety concerns with the COVID-19. Or you will choose little or no progress and put in that narrative. Little or no progress, we weren't able to witness Eddie within a classroom environment to see if he's blurting out during directions or not. Another example is a social skills goal by the annual IEP review date Edna will sustain attention for 10 minutes to complete work for an assignment with one redirection and four of five trials in a two week time period. Progress report we have little or no progress because Edna didn't participate in the online zoom sessions with her class during fourth quarter. So data regarding this attention to instruction could not be measured. You may put that parents report that she needed multiple redirections when working on homework in a one to one setting that is some data showing that there was little or no progress towards maintaining attention for 10 minutes. The category of other while this will be your friend as far as being able to capture what's actually happened towards progress with the goals without having your usual sources of data. It can also be your enemy. If you are not careful with your wording. So you may use other if the parent was not making their child available for learning. If the child ended sessions or did not attend sessions, he started and then stopped when Sunstar shine and beginning of May. Check ins that you've made with parents garnered no new information about this goal. It didn't result in better participation throughout the time. Regardless of what happened use family friendly wording on these progress reports. The school attempted to contact the family each week. The family and school were not able to find a time for instruction that worked in the family schedule. If you are not friendlier than saying here are the 40 times I reached out to you and mom and dad, you didn't respond. You might say the family chose to suspend services during the COVID-19 outbreak. This goal will be addressed in the fall. Mom reports that student has been practicing life skills by helping in the kitchen. He is now able to set the table without cues or fold towels and washcloths without clues. Mom reports that the student is reading more fluently. Maybe that hasn't read to the teacher on Zoom because he'd rather tell the teacher all of the other fun things he's been doing. Mom knows he's been reading books to his younger sister and he's been reading to his grandma via FaceTime twice a week and she reports that to you. So in other you can say for his fluency goal. Mom reports that Eddie is reading more fluently. He's been reading to his grandma via FaceTime twice a week. Utilize your documentation. Documentation. Documentation. What lessons did you provide? Did the students turn in any work? Did you converse with mom, dad, or the child throughout this nine weeks or at any time in the nine weeks to see how they've been making progress? What did mom and dad tell you about the child or what did the child report about his math assignment being too hard or what he's learned by watching PBS Kids and boy I know all my letters down. Let me show you Mrs. Smith. May give you some information. What did the students do towards their goals? Again, parents can report progress. How should we word it? Should we trust what they tell us? If a parent says, Tommy's our sounds are better. Honor that mom believes he's making progress. You can put in the parent on the parent report progress report. Her parent report, Eddie's are sounding better and family members can understand him. Maybe mom's already sent you a video showing that. Maybe she could send you a video showing that. But don't require the video. If you receive it, upload it somewhere that you can access to show your documentation for the progress. But again, the video would not be required. You're taking mom's information as being a reliable source. What if your district during third following third quarter decided they were only going to do enrichment for sending packets home for enrichment. We are not working on new learning. We're not providing special education services. Well, if you were in a district that did that, you still need to do fourth quarter progress reports. You're going to use other and you're going to make a statement similar to our district was providing enrichment through packets. We have no evidence of progress towards this goal. The goal will be revisited or instruction will begin again towards this goal in the fall of 2020. What difference will the progress reports make anyway? Why don't we just put other on a blanket statement about Corvid 19. Well, I know you're tired. I know you don't want one more round of paperwork, but it will make a difference in the fall. It's going to save you a lot of work in the fall as we start working with students again as we have IEP meetings as families, level of distress, thinking about students coming back into school will be high. Your progress reports and your documentation are going to be your evidence in the fall of whether we need to provide compensatory education or not to your students. What's compensatory education? Why haven't we ever heard of that or had to do it before? Well, I've been providing special education for more than 30 years and compensatory education really hasn't been on our radar during that time because we live in Nebraska. We don't have very many due process hearings and we don't have due process hearings that make it all the way into a court of law to be resolved. Other districts are not so fortunate. Other parts of the country are not so fortunate. They do have hearing officers and courts that are looking at two buckets when it comes to compensatory education. One bucket is how much regression did the students make towards the goal and the other is what services didn't happen. Those questions might be considered by each IEP team in the 2021 school year. We'll look at what services towards the goals were not offered and what attempts to remedy the situation with educational opportunities we might need to provide. Either through more time in the resource room or ESY in the summer of 2021. We're not going to make any decisions about that now because the situation can be looked at in several different ways such as all children have had a break from education. All children will be showing academic or social regression when we resume school and whatever form school is in the fall of 2020. So don't worry about it now. Don't lose sleep over it. NDE is working with a task force to develop a technical assistance document for compensatory education. They will give us the guidance we need in the fall of 2020. Let's start with don't make a bigger mess. Don't plant the seeds for parents to ask about compensatory education. Don't tell them, oh, don't worry about that he's missed out on those services now or that he's shown some regression because through compensatory education will catch him up. Nope. Don't plant those seeds. Don't offend parents with the wording on your progress reports. We need to maintain those relationships for everyone's benefit, but especially for your students. We're going to start with conversations in the fall. Conversations at IEP meetings will be the first step in determining what educational needs the student has at that time. This is what we do all the time. We assess present levels and customize the goals and services to meet the unique needs of our students. Teams will look at current data when we meet again as an IEP team meeting, whether that be in the fall, winter or spring of the next school year. You need data to make decisions. We may be using maps data in the summer. We may be having students complete maps as they come in in the fall. We're going to be observing students to see what their social skills are like after being separated from their classmates for a long period of time. We'll ask what the student is currently doing and needing to make progress in in order to participate in general education or to learn new skills. We do this all the time. We take a look at when students return to school after missing school for hospitalizations, illnesses, cancer treatment, recovering from concussions, developing a traumatic brain injury because of the car accident. We stop and take a look at what the student is doing at that time, what their true present level of performance is. And then we develop goals and decide what the services will be. All students will show regression in the fall. They've all regressed in some way, shape or form, whether it be academic skills or social skills during this time. We'll be looking at all children to see what their present level of performance is, not just the students with a disability, not just the students with an IEP. There will be many personalized learning plans and MTSS interventions in addition to the IEPs that currently exist in schools when we return to school in the fall. Don't spend your spring or summer inventing your own model of compensatory education and questions to ask at IEP meetings. Wait for NDE to provide the guidance. I will share it with you when I receive it. In the meantime, keep the relationships going. Keep checking in with parents, keep checking in with students, keep those relationships going. So what do we do about parents who haven't responded to our many attempts to provide special ed activities, to reach out to them via Zoom, to make phone calls. We're sending things home and we're getting no return of materials, no feedback from the parents at all. Document, document, document. Document that you've made your best effort in good faith to reach these parents and to provide instruction or information to the students. Your efforts will pay off in the long run. Document, document, document. So besides working on your progress reports and not worrying about compensatory education, but documenting what you have done this spring, here are some other end of the year reminders. We are still taking referrals for birth to three because babies can't wait. Here are the phone numbers to contact if a parent in your community reaches out and says, Hey, I'm really worried because my two year old doesn't respond to his name. He's not making any attempt to put words together at all. Or I have a one year old who isn't crawling isn't meeting very many developmental milestones. What can I do? I bet because the schools were closed there were no services. Yes, there are services. We are doing evaluations via Zoom or using medical information if a baby is born with Down syndrome or some other medical condition that would qualify them for some services. We're getting those services started. We're doing coaching with the parents via Zoom or phone calls as hard as it is to be separated from those babies. We're still providing the services that babies and toddlers need from birth to three because they can't wait. Also, your data stewards in your districts will be working with you to clean up data. Let's make sure that public school is the services location for your students. If while you were amending IEPs or having IEP meetings in April and May, you were confused because the children were receiving their services at home. And you marked homebound go back into the IEPs and change that to public school. Your special education students were receiving their special education services in the same public school location as their general education classmates. Everyone was using e-learning. So, your homebound for 20 students in your district will be a huge red flag for the federal authorities. So, we don't want an OSEP investigation because we marked homebound in confusion during these interesting times. So, make sure everyone is in public school unless they were receiving homebound services due to their very high health needs prior to March 17. The other data cleanup is to make sure that students who have exited your district are actually exited on SRS with the appropriate code. Every student exited on SRS should also have a prior written notice that describes that exit. So, don't just mark the exit code and think, I don't have to worry about him or her. Two years from now, when your district is working on proving that they maintained effort, or they had a high need student graduate or leave the district, they are going to need that documentation. So, we need to make sure that we have a prior written notice for every student that you exited on SRS saying whether they moved to a new district, they graduated, or they were no longer qualified for services. The graduation date should be the one that was established for this school year on the calendar that was developed and shared with parents in August of 2019. So, graduation date end of services for your seniors or your students exiting because they're 21 years of age should be a May date, regardless of when the ceremony is being scheduled because services are ending in May of 2020. Make sure that you also do a summary of performance for those seniors, along with the prior written notice. Extended school year. If ESY was not already identified by the IEP team prior to March 17, we do not add it now because students have missed services this spring. We made the decision about ESY for summer 2020 based on how they did during Christmas break and during the summer of 2019. So those decisions should have been made prior to March 17. For those who had ESY on an IEP, notify parents to let them know that the services will be in an alternate format. If you haven't already done so, do a prior written notice to describe that alternate format. Are you going to be meeting via Zoom? Are you going to do phone calls with the student? How are you going to provide ESY in an alternate format? ESY should not be provided in person. Check with your local health department before you bring any student back into the school building. We do not want the news to be 10 students in Exampleville developed coronavirus after receiving speech at the school over the summer or coming into summer school over the summer. If services will be reduced due to the alternate format, do an IEP amendment, no meeting required, but an IEP amendment and a prior written notice explaining the reduction of time. If mom says, I don't want extended school year services this year, I know we talked about his needing it, but I don't want to use the alternate format. I don't want to do Zoom. We're just going to take a break. Then do an IEP amendment and a prior written notice documenting this change and remind mom that the district stands ready, willing and able to provide those extended school year services if she changes her mind. Do you have other questions? What about gold? Students who entered services anytime during the 2019-20 school year need to have entry data? That's especially true for all children, birth to three. So all children, birth to three who entered services during this school year need to have entry data. So complete the spring benchmark if they entered services in the spring. Roll back the benchmark calendar and complete the winter benchmark if they entered between November and February. And you got so busy, you forgot to put their information in. Exit data, also known as the spring benchmark, needs to be completed for any child turning three by August 1, 2020. You will complete the benchmark by May 31, but it's any child turning three on or before August 1. Also, complete the spring benchmark for any child who has an IEP. So those three and four-year-olds, you're going to do that spring benchmark regardless of how they verified for services. So it might be a student who's only receiving speech. It might be a student who qualified as developmentally delayed or hearing impaired. Going to go in and complete that spring benchmark. Use information you had gathered for third quarter parent-teacher conferences or data that you've gathered while working with the child during fourth quarter. But make sure that a spring benchmark is completed for those child children. What about non-public consultation meetings? Some of you participate in these with your superintendents each year. Districts must hold a meeting with non-public school representatives and homeschool parents by August 31. The meeting notice must be published in the newspaper. The district needs to document who attended the meeting. The information is needed for the IDEA grant application. So it's very important that they advertise, hold, and document this meeting. Our IDEA requirements have not been relaxed or set aside. We have deadlines to meet, we have paperwork to complete, and we have services to provide. What will we do in August of 2020? Well, we will not be holding an IEP for every child in August, so relax and enjoy your summer. We will start with IEPs that are in place. If those IEPs say we're doing things in an alternate format and we are very, very blessed to be back in real school doing things the way that we did them prior to March, we'll do a prior bit notice saying what services look like when we know what those services will look like in August. There's a student who typically regresses a lot over the summer or a child who will be transitioning from sixth grade to junior high, and we knew prior to the closure, we had some great concerns about the extra supports they might need to prepare for that transition because of the social situations or lack of social situations over this pandemic, we may need to hold an IEP meeting for those children in August or September so that their transition into junior high or their transition to the next grade after being away from other children for so long is more successful. Yes, I see I have a I have a typo here but I'm not going to correct it at this time. I should be there. IDA in a COVID-19 pandemic. Again, your IDA requirements have not been relaxed or set aside, meet the deadlines, do the paperwork, provide the services that you can. You're not going to meet a deadline for an evaluation. Give a prior written notice to the parents explaining why that deadline can't be met because we can't do in-person evaluations of children right now. Test would not be valid. Do that prior written notice and reassure parents that you will conduct those evaluations when it is possible to do so safely in person following the testing guidelines. If you need some additional information about remote learning or special education requirements, NDE has been updating their page. And so this is a link to remind you that NDE has many technical assistance documents. The full length version of their guidance for COVID-19 times can be overwhelming and sometimes confusing. So if you'd like the CliffsNotes version, also known as just email the question that you have for the day. Email that question to me, Ruth at ESU8.org or call my office number. I am coming into the office every day. There aren't many of us here so we can maintain our social distancing at all times. And again, take care of yourself. Maintain your relationships. Maintain communication. Those are the most important things in working with our students right now. Stay safe. Stay healthy. I look forward to working with you throughout the rest of the spring, throughout the summer, and again when we return in the fall.