 Okay. Thank you. One more minute for people to join. Good morning, Ruth. Good morning. It is nice to be able to gather with everyone today. It is the first time that I've tried to meet with this many people via Zoom during this at the same time. So, bear with me. If it all falls apart, I'll just tape it and say it's actually. I do have a plan B and C and D. So, looks like we have 85, 86 people coming in already this morning. That's awesome. I know some people had meetings scheduled. Hey, Ruth. Yes. Will there be anywhere that we can get anything of any of this that you're going to present printed out? I'm kind of a hard copy kind of person. Yes. At the end of the webinar today, I will send you a copy of the PowerPoint and between now and noon, I will send you actual written examples of the forms for prior written notice and for what an IEP amendment may look like. They're not ready to go at this moment, but they will be by noon. Fantastic. Thank you. Ruth, can I give you a quick shout out and then I'm going to move on? Yep. So, those of you who know Ruth, as most of us do, but if you're unfamiliar with Ruth, she knows her stuff. She has not asked me to do this and say this, but if you know her, she knows what to do. She knows the rules, even as the rules are changing and they're being adapted. If you have questions, please reach out to her and she's also someone who works and works and works. So, I really appreciate that about her, but yet during this time, I actually worry about Ruth because she does so much and I get emails from her in the evening and it's just amazing her work ethic all the time, but do reach out and ask questions of her because if you're wondering, she will be in the know and if she doesn't know, she's waiting to hear from somebody else at the federal level or the state level. So, Ruth, continued support from me and appreciation for your knowledge. Thank you, Corey. You're welcome. I concur with that, Corey, and if you don't hear from Ruth right away, people, it's because she's taking care of the 50 people ahead of you. Not that she hasn't seen your email or your text. Okay. It's very sincere. Appreciation for her knowledge. Thank you and I do appreciate everyone's patience. You are all so caring about kids that you also always have that little person on your shoulder saying, the state expects forms, the state expects forms. What do I need to do? Am I meeting timelines? So, we're going to answer some of those questions today. I'm going to mute everyone so that I don't get off on bird walks so often as I will if you ask me questions in person. There is should be an option at the bottom of your screen to chat. You can put questions in there. And Jenny, may I ask you to keep track of the questions in the chat? Awesome. Thank you. So, I'm going to mute and I have three screens in front of me. So, getting my cursor to always be where I want it to be has been a challenge. The questions that we're going to answer today is what's the difference between enrichment and continued instruction? What do we do about evaluations? How can we provide services in this unusual time? Do we need prior written notice IEP amendments or both? What about extended school year? And what is compensatory education? Because you may have heard that if you participated in any of the calls with KSB, which is a lawyer form for those of you who don't listen to lawyers all the time, enrichment versus continued learning or education. At the beginning of this, when schools were first closed, the lawyers and the commissioner were making a definite distinction between if districts were only providing enrichment, then FAPE didn't need to be provided. If they were providing education, then IEP services needed to be provided. Amy Rohn, who is our current assistant director of special ed for NDE and will become the director on the 31st of March and talks with the Fed says it really doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether your district is providing enrichment or continued learning. You must provide FAPE, which includes access to materials. If the student on an IEP cannot access the fifth grade enrichment that's being sent home, then you must figure out how to provide the accommodations or access to those activities. If your district is providing continued instruction, then you must provide the accommodations, materials or services to help the student access his instruction. That doesn't mean in the same way that you've been providing it all year. It does not mean in the same amount of time that you've been providing all year. Because in most cases, your districts are not continuing to provide six hours of instruction in a day. So you would not need to provide your one hour or three hours. The key, as Amy repeated to the ESU's Fed director several times yesterday, is that after this is all over, the State Department will be looking for reasonable effort. There's no right or wrong way to provide services. NDE will look to see if your district made a reasonable effort to provide the services. Did you make a reasonable effort to make sure that services are accessible to the individual student? Those services will look different for students because of the circumstance in which they are in. Hooray for having the I in IEP. We can individualize. Some of your students will not have access to the internet. Some students are spending time with older siblings or cousins who are providing the childcare and they may not be able to help them access the internet, access things that are online, or even to work through the packets that we provide. We need to keep families well being and mental health in line in mind as we move through. So first topic that you can accomplish today, perhaps, if the evaluation has been completed, schedule an MDT meeting via Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or a phone call. Both Zoom Pro and Microsoft Teams meet the HIPAA and FERPA requirements. Meet the 60-day federal timeline. Don't let the fact that we have no school happening in school buildings give you the false sense that evaluations are indefinitely suspended. Meet the 60-day federal timeline for the evaluations that you've already completed. Document how the team members participated. Have team members email their agreement or disagreement with the decision for the verification. Keep those emails as the signatures in the student's file. If you have started an evaluation, it cannot be completed due to the need to administer tests in person or to complete observations. Notify the parents that the evaluation cannot be completed and will be resumed when school resumes after the pandemic. Follow up with prior written notice. So you're going to have a phone call with the parent and say, this is why we can't complete the evaluation. I will be sending a prior written notice form that explains the reasons why you are at the top of my list when school resumes. And that prior written notice what we need to write in the roof you will get to us today. Yes, I will. If a reevaluation is due, review the existing data that your team already has to see if there's enough data to verify that the student continues to have a disability and need specialized instruction. Do a determination. The same determination notice that you would normally do on SRS for those students with a reevaluation. If it is unclear and your team really needs some new data to continue to verify, then you're going to do a PWN that says we believe that we need some new data in order to continue this verification. I would strongly recommend that this is not the time to say, oh, sorry, we think he no longer qualifies for any special ed services because we just don't have enough data. That's going to trigger a call to advocates more than we're going to use the existing data to keep services in place for now at their next IEP meeting when we'll determine whether we need some new evaluation data. So your determination is the safest way to go with those evaluations. I know we have one district on the call today who has an evaluation process that we do need to finish in some shape or form and I'll be reaching out to that team separately. Okay, I'm jumping in. They asked does the entire team need to be involved or just a minimum team requirements? To do the determination or to do the MDT or determination. MDT meeting needs to be the full team via phone via zoom in some way shape or form because you still need to have that discussion and move towards the verification. The detail can just be one person talking with mom and saying, hey, this is why we're doing it and this is what paperwork is coming home. Okay, Gina says, what if the psych has observed has observed any valve and you can make an eligibility decision but related services OT or speech have not completed their eval? Then you could go with the verification decision based on the psych's observation and evaluation and related services could be addressed when school resumes. Okay, and the next one says, what should we do if we started an evaluation with a senior, especially since this is for the foreseeable future for the school with a senior re eval? Senior re eval do a determination. You're going to continue to provide services for the next six weeks till graduation. Okay, and I think Tosha might be thinking too what how's that work then when they go on if they need current information? The students who need current info information in the form of a psychology evaluation for developmental disability services. developmental disabilities does their own evaluation. And so you you're not stopping any services, adult services for those kiddos by not doing it now. Okay, and one more is can you repeat what we need to do in the case that more information is needed for a reevaluation? In the case that more information is needed for a reevaluation, I would do a determination to meet your deadline now because the federal government has not released any of those deadlines, you have to meet them. And in your conversation with the parent, say we're doing a determination at this point when school resumes so that we can have face to face contact with your child, we will ask for new consent for re eval. Okay, that was all of them for now, Ruth. Thank you. Services services may be offered in an alternate format, zoom packets, websites, phone calls, choose the method that meets the needs of the student and the parent. Use this time to build relationships with families, positive phone calls home about students checking to see what needs the family has, how things are going with the students are going to go a long way to building and maintaining relationships throughout this. It won't be just one phone call home, you may call home this week or next and say, I'd like to get services started. And mom's going to tell you, I'm still trying to figure out the general ed piece or I'm still trying to figure out childcare. I don't want to worry about your schedule right now. You will document that on a prior written notice, and then check back in a couple of weeks to see as things calm down for the family. Is mom now ready to say, Hey, I really would like to keep him moving forward with speech, or I didn't think I need any services, but oh my goodness, aren't we working with an OT and some sensory things and he's bouncing off the walls at home? Could I get some help with that? So continuing to be in contact with your families, even if they temporarily suspend services for for a period of time, we're going to continue to show and in every prior written notice, we're going to have that the school district is ready, willing and able to provide services when parents are ready for those services. Okay, here's another question. We were told that we cannot offer websites or zoom because of equal access. Does this not apply because of the individual education? That is true. It is an individualized education plan. So if the way to help this student right now for this individual student is to go through zoom or websites, that is what you would do for this individual student. And one more is what if after a couple of weeks they are still not wanting services? Then you do another prior written notice. You're going to get very familiar with prior written notice forms, but they're going to say basically the same thing. Each time you called, you're documenting per our conversation on April 1st. Mom does not want services at this time. We're ready, willing and able to provide them when mom is ready. And then two weeks labor on April 15th, we're going to have another phone call. If mom says, please don't call me again until August document that and go from there. But at this time, don't say, you know, mom, if you say today, I don't have to call you again to August. I won't have to call you because truly everyone is in crisis mode. Everyone is in a sense of grief. We haven't lost a family member, but we've lost access to friends. We've lost the ability to just go gather somewhere. And many other examples. So it's just like going through a normal grief process. They're not always hearing the information you're giving them at this time. So keep those relationships going by making a phone call. Okay. So then is that a discontinuation if they say don't call again until August? No, it is not. We're going to use the word suspension. We're suspending services at this time. We are not removing them from our child count. Because we are providing services in an alternate method. And at this time that those services might be just touching base with parents to coach them through through this time. Okay, and then one more says so every service may be filling out a priority notice if they turn down services for a time. No, great question, great segue. In my conversations with other special ed directors, they're like parents are overwhelmed with the number of phone calls they're getting. Think about the child who has some significant issues and they have 10 people around their IEP team table every time they meet. They do not want 10 people calling right now to ask about each individual service and trying to schedule things. Let's work through, let's work as a team through the case manager. If the case manager has too many phone calls to meet, then divide them up between members of the team. Okay, but use a way to track who on that team has actually contacted the parents. I'm suggesting Google Forms and I'll have a Google Form to share with you. I tried to put the link in the slide, but I'm not sure that it's live when you get it. So you will get it later. And that is a way to easily track contacts with parents. My speech staff is already accustomed to sharing information about students through Google because we have different people working with the same students. So let's utilize that team, put one person as the point person for each child who's going to call. And then we do the one prior written notice that covers all of the services. One more question says, Ruth, what if parents nor student continue to not answer the phone, text or email? Then I would do the same thing we do when we're trying to set up an IEP meeting after three mail a letter, three attempts to contact. When you're thinking about services, remember home or daycare is not the same as being in school for the day. So let's not try to pretend that we're duplicating the school day with six hours of instruction. That that's not reasonable for parents. When you have a conversation with parents, ask if they have internet access. Do they have a device that a student can use? Do they have too many children trying to access the internet right now? Now, if I have a college student home who's trying to finish out his senior year of college, he's going to get priority on the internet, not my five year old. Do they want services at this time? Would services in the form of a packet, a phone call that asks for ideas of what they can do? The packet might be a list of television shows that teach numbers and colors, those sorts of things. Think Nebraska educational television. I know that there's something new coming on News Channel Nebraska that's talking about elementary topics in the morning and secondary topics or classes in the afternoon, but I truly haven't seen what that will look like. It can be, and I will share, suggestions for just helping structure the child's day so that there's some time for reading. There's some time for doing things that are fine motor. There are things time for doing things that are gross motor. There are sensory breaks within the day. It's our opportunity to be individualized again. Think outside of the box. It does not and should not be a whole packet of worksheets all day long. Some of this needs to apply to their life. Lots of opportunities for language development throughout their day. If parents do not want services at this time to a prior written notice, describe what was offered, document that parents do not want the services at this time, include a contact number in case they change their mind. When you're including a contact number, and I think I have this on another slide, are they contacting you personally or are you still giving a school number that may or may not be answered? Be sure that the contact number or the email address is one that will be checked to the best of your ability throughout this situation. Call back in two weeks to see if they would like the services. Again, do a prior written notice if they say no. Offer them another way of doing the services. So maybe we were all gung-ho about we're going to do Zoom all day long. And as we've talked to parents and as parents ourselves, we've decided there are other ways that we've learned we could provide some services, offer them in a different format in a couple of weeks. Keep communicating through the last day of school that's on your 2019-2020 calendar. So no, I'm not asking you to do phone calls every two weeks from now until August through the end of whatever Stanton Public Schools, O'Neill Public Schools, Ewing Public Schools had as the last day on their 1920 calendar. Okay, someone asked for a student who qualified the day school was closed. Can I do a suspension until school resumes? They qualified and you wrote an IEP. You knew that there was a need for specialized instruction. How can we help that child start to make progress towards his at least one goal on that IEP? So we qualified for reading. Can we start some form of reading instruction during this time? Or will or parents will say he doesn't even know you. He hasn't met you. I think that would be one more stress at this time. And then you suspend to school resumes. So give them the option because we were concerned enough about the child to do an evaluation. Mom or dad were concerned enough about the child to want the services and to write that IEP. Now let's see how we can start to build a relationship with that child between the child and the service provider that was going to be providing the services. That may be conversations that may be reading a familiar book that may be starting with a few flashcards to go through. Start small. If this parent declines, again, we're going to document that the district is ready, willing and able. Here's a sample statement. I'm going to put that on an actual prior written notice form so that you know where to put it and what it should look like. What if I have an IEP do during the pandemic? Well, you must meet the due date or as close to it as you can get it. If you missed a couple last week, let's catch them up. No one knows what the right way to do the IEP during a pandemic is, but we do know we need to make a reasonable effort to provide FAPE. Document your attempts to provide that FAPE. Be willing to try different methods to adjust to changing needs of the student, the family or the provider because you all have families too. ESU employees will not be traveling to schools, homes or daycares. They will not be working with students in a face-to-face situation during the pandemic. Your superintendents were notified of that last night. That was one of my evening emails because as I was putting this together, I thought it's going to take care of getting that message out to superintendents while I'm thinking about it. So they all have all ESU 8 special education employees who would be participating in an IEP meeting or an MDT meeting or providing specialized services to students now have a Zoom Pro account or will have one by the end of the day so that they can meet HIPAA guidelines. They also will be notified today that they can apply and receive within the next couple of days an Adobe Acrobat Pro account. So when they're sending a sample IEP or sending the MDT to the parents, they can save it as a password protected document, send it to the parents, parents can open it, do it so that we're not, in my case I have too many Jenny's in my email, my address book that dropped down and if I hit the wrong Jenny, I just shared all of little Bobby's information with the wrong parent. So the password protection on the Adobe Acrobat slows that down a bit because I tend to make a password that's related to the family itself that I can give a cue or or I use the district, sorry, mascot as the password or when you're communicating with the parent you could text the password rather than putting it in the email that has the document attached and that way you know that you've protected their privacy. Okay, that with all documents but anything that has that personally identifiable information like an IEP or an MDT. If parents request a meeting in person to work with a student how do we respond? Following the guidelines of the local health department and my administration I am not able to do that at this time. If you have questions contact Ruth Miller. Do we write the IEPs as if we were in the school buildings? No. If you have a new IEP let's write it the way we're providing the services now. We're going to put this is how it's being provided during the pandemic. That gives you grace and time when school doors open to know which staff you have back after this is over to know whether when the student is back after this is over to be able to take a couple of days to assess where the child's skills truly are and update that present level of performance. That doesn't mean you're doing 50 IEPs in August. On the other hand if you write this to say this is what we're doing from now till August 15th then in August 15th if you're not able to do it you will be having 50 IEP meetings. So Amy Rohn suggested writing through using the term through the pandemic because we really don't know what that ending date is. If you're comfortable in knowing that for like it's an IEP that was due tomorrow and you already had in mind what you were going to do then you could do two sets of service lines that say these services through and I would say through September 15th to give you that grace period and then September 15th to whatever would we assume looking like normal and if it doesn't happen then you can just do a private notice again saying hey schools were closed the buildings were closed longer than we thought. Okay suggestions for how to handle parents who are set on receiving full service time. It's an IEP team consensus. We do IEPs during the school year there are some parents who would like to have you working with their child six hours a day and how do you show that they really that's not the least restrictive environment that's not what the child truly needs. It's the group talking and and coming to a Peggy those acrobat pro council be for ESU people as well. Okay for new IEPs what do we put for percent of time? Good question. An example that was given by one of the lawyers earlier last week was if in a normal six hour school day you're providing one hour of resource so that's one sixth of the time. If a school day in your school's definition right now for a third grader is one hour a day then you'll do one sixth of one hour ten minutes so you're keeping the same percentages. And then what is the start date for the IEP? The day after you have the IEP meeting that stays the same it's still for 364 days of calendar days start date being the day of the IEP or the day after in this case I would say you're doing it the day after or if you're catching up with IEPs today tomorrow the beginning of next week and you say we're going to start these services April 1st that's fine just explain why in your private notice parents agreed to start services on April 1st in this new adapted form. What if it's a preschool student and they aren't having any regular instruction for the percent of time? Then it's 100% and those percentages are not going to affect any funding or anything on a statewide basis so you're okay it's okay to get the percentages wrong for a little while. We can straighten all these out when you have your IEP meetings next year. Documentation of what we're doing and what we're changing may be in the form of a private notice an IEP amendment an IEP services page logging contacts with parents and logging what we provide for services and here's where I tried to put the link in and it's obviously not live. It was developed by one of the metro area schools so you can tweak it and when you get it it will be in view only and you will have to make a copy before you start making it look like you making it meet your needs if you're not sure how to do that within Google give me a call or contact your Google expert in your school to work through that. I'm not trying to add to your paperwork I don't want you to be all burnt out in that but I want to protect you and and document the good work that you're doing with families and the attempts that you're trying to make to continue things on. Okay prior written notice it can be formal or informal but mess contain the same elements. Lawyers will tell you to always use the prior written notice form some of your superintendents have already purchased those samples from their legal counsel whether that be KSP or PERI or someone else. If your superintendent tells you to always use that form because we're going your district's going to follow that follow the direction of your superintendent but be cautioned I have not seen these samples but in my discussion with other ESU special education directors yesterday some of them are concerned about using the word school closure rather than pandemic using discontinuation of services rather than suspension of services or provision of services in a different way so if you have one of those forms and you're required by your superintendent to use it and you'd like to have a discussion with me about changing a word or two and send me a sample I'll be happy to help you. Amy Rohn although she is the director of special education is a little more relaxed on forms a lot more relaxed on forms than lawyers are. So she stated that your prior written notice could be an email or a personalized letter that documents what was offered what options were considered why the options or services were rejected and what the district is ready willing and able to provide for services at a future date. As long as your contact information is included in that email or personalized letters so parents know who to contact if they want to access the services or if they need a change in the services and that's where I'm saying if you use the school phone number is someone actually checking that and then able to let you know in a timely matter not maybe not the same day but within a couple of days that a phone call has come in for you. So as long as your method of communication has all of the elements that are required in prior written notice it could be the email that you sent back and forth or you could state something in a letter that goes out to all parents telling why services didn't happen for the last 10 days and that you will be making every effort to contact them to put services in place on March 31st April 1st April 6th whatever you choose as your district but be consistent across the district. Okay we have some students transitioning into junior high from elementary we were planning to meet at the end of the year to plan ahead. Is it okay to contact parent and wait until the start of next year. They will still be under the last IEP not out of date. And it is okay to wait. Peggy it is the last bullet point on that slide what you're asking. Plan on doing a prior written notice for every student. Yes at least one. Every student needs a prior written notice at the end by the end of your 10 days that you have suspended normal operations of school. So most of our schools started that on March 17 and 10 school days following that I believe will end on month this coming Monday. So take a deep breath. These prior written notices once you get your samples can be copied almost word for word make sure you feel in the right student. And again it although the SRS form is awesome because it gives you all of the elements you need if you need to put it in some other format that you can quickly change a couple of pieces without having to create them all on SRS they don't need to be there. They just need to be in the student's file in some way shape or form. So Kim Thompson that should have answered your question. Crystal I have several kids that are going to kindergarten and the team needs to discuss a para being added for next year. The IEPs are do yet have those meetings by the end of the school. Yes. You'll write a prior written notice and then services might change because we really don't know what the world's going to look like in two weeks or a month. If the chosen method that you put on the original prior written notice does not work or schedules need to be adjusted determine the next methods or schedule that might be tried via conversation with the parent create and send a new prior written notice describing the changes as long as you've documented documented documented you will be fine. IEP amendments now I have one minute Bruce. Can I do prior written notice when we hold IEPs in April and May or need to do a 10 day limit. You must have a prior written notice to families at the 10 day limit next week because you have not had special education services that are listed on their IEP for up to 10 days. It's like when the student gets suspended and we have 10 days to figure out what we're going to do and to notify parents of that change. So that 10 day rule isn't in place. I went ahead to the IEP amendment slide that says amendments may be made if the parent of the child with a disability agrees to not reconvene the IEP meeting for the purpose of making those changes. You may document the proposed changes and that the parent requested the change being made. That can be on a notes page on the IEP and you would not have to bring the whole team together to make that IEP amendment at this time. However if the parent says nope I need a meeting I want to talk about this because I think that this is all hoax and you should be working with my child then make sure that that IEP team meeting includes the five required members a parent an LEA a general education teacher special education teacher or provider someone to interpret the evaluation results that can be the special education teacher or special ed service provider. If the child is deaf part of hearing or visually impaired you must have the teacher of the deaf or the teacher of the visually impaired involved in that meeting participating by phone or zoom. At this time more than ever although you are required to have them there all the time at this time they will be the ones to be able to tell you what you're proposing by zoom or what you're proposing on that website won't work with this child because of or we're typically doing large print but the same curriculum for the child with the visual impairment now what do we do because we can't always get things enlarged they're your problem solvers there they understand those sensory impairments better than anyone else on the team. So do you always have to have a meeting to amend the IEP? No if the parent says don't need a meeting understand that instead of getting two 30 minutes sessions of speech to work on his articulation errors a week here we're going to do one 10 minute session or we're going to try one 30 minute session thanks for working with me on my schedule just just write that down and I'll send you an email that says we talked the email can be the signature. If parents don't have an email address then yes send the amendment home have them sign it and and mail it back. Maybe gathering a lot of email addresses that we didn't know parents had just to communicate better during this time. So I hope this is I'm asking this right it says so prior written notice do we send out notice of meeting? If you're going to do an amendment to an IEP then yes you would have with a meeting of the team yes you will do a notice of meeting. And then so we have to do IEP amendments and prior written notice. Yes because it's like when we get to the end of an IEP we put everything we put on page 6 into the prior written notice form. If we do an IEP amendment whether it's in a meeting or it's just a phone call with mom where she says go ahead and send that to me you also need to have all of the elements that are in that prior written notice form that talks about options that talks about who to contact if you want to make a change so you will have a prior written notice regardless of whether you have an IEP and I or an IEP amendment you will have a prior written notice when you have an IEP meeting or an IEP amendment. Okay I'm trying to clarify that in my mind as well. Well I talked with a special education director at 7 30 this morning like I've got a couple of things that aren't making sense to me and she said how to resource teachers say remember we do prior written notice with every meeting and that hasn't gone away. So whether we're amending writing a new IEP making changes to an IEP we always do prior written notice. But those IEP amendments are in a notes page. Yes. It's not opening up the IEP and changing things. No. It's a notes page that can be attached. Yes. Okay. Okay I'm some here some questions getting away from me because I'm trying to clarify things in my own mind. So we need to do an IEP for all students won't this make them all do at the same time next year. No because your IEP amendment doesn't change the due date. It's an amendment to the existing IEP but the the length of the IEP stays the same. So if a parent says no meeting IEP amendment we do that on a notes page. Yes. I hope that was my question I just answered to. Yes. Okay and what do we put in the notes page. I will give you an example. Okay. And then the last question says I think we understand we need to do a prior written notice just clarify that every student also needs an IEP for just an IEP amendment not a full IEP unless the IEP's due. Yes. What I'm understanding. Yeah. So who the person that asked that question does that answer your question. Sorry all I'm seeing your last name and I don't really want to when school resumes would we just go into the amendment and state that regular services resume on whatever day. You'll do a second amendment or a second notes page that says her conversation with parents regular services are resuming on August 31st September 2nd whatever. Yeah. Okay I think that answers questions for the moment. Again some of your districts have purchased a sample IEP amendment from your district's attorney and it looks like it appears because they created this form for you that you would need to use that form for an IEP amendment. You can use your notes page include all of the elements that they listed in their sample. Or again if your superintendent says no you must use this form. Then use that. I will send you sample language for those amendments. IEP due dates IEP due dates are still due dates IEP services are for 364 days. The IEP service page may look different than it usually does. That description in the top box is more important now than ever because the description in the top box may say we'll have a statement about what is happening during the coronavirus epidemic or pandemic and then when school resumes in a school building here is what is going to happen and you can decide whether you want to write two lines of service which some of you are saying what does that mean but those of you who regularly work with children transitioning from preschool to kindergarten know or even sixth grade to seventh grade know that we say resource services from March 26th to May 20th are going to be this many minutes. Speech services are going to be this many minutes and then August 15th to May 25th are going to be this. I'm saying you may want to extend that instead of saying these services through May 20th the ending date last day of school on your calendar to perhaps being that adjusted services through like September 15th and then putting what you see as normal services in a normal school day after that. Ruth there's questions so hang on a second. I made my screen big and I'm having a problem here. Okay. How specific will prior written notice be with what services will include packets, zoom, etc. Just wondering about getting a hold of all parents and knowing by Monday. The language that I will encourage you to use, let's see if I can bring it up on another screen or if I lose my whole meeting, will say will be provided in an alternate method which may include and we'll list three or four different ways that it may include. Okay. Official prior written notice. One more time on how to amend. Amendments can be done in one of two ways. A phone call to a parent saying due to this pandemic we're going to be providing services in an alternate method. It may include one of those three things or something else that you thought of that I don't know. That means that we need to amend your child's IEP. Do you want to bring the whole team together to do that amendment or is it okay if we simply do an amendment based on our conversation saying services are going to be in this form? Mom, did you ask for a full meeting or are you okay with me sending a copy of the amendment? So ask it twice and then document that. If she says I need the whole team together, I want a meeting and you all have at least one parent who's going to say that, then you need to include the five required members and yes the district who has three parents with advocates on speed dial I can see you live so I know you're laughing at me. Send a lot of time together. Be a Zoom. If an IEP team member is unable to attend he or she may be excused with written consent of the parent. This written consent may be through an email. So again, we need to try to get all the members of the team together. If there's someone who can't be, then we need prior consent from the parent to excuse that person from attending via Zoom or phone call. Do you need a meeting notice for all amendments? No. You need a meeting notice if the team is meeting. Okay. Do not need a meeting notice if it's a conversation that's just being recorded as an amendment. Okay. So Andrea says so just getting the steps down in my mind. By Monday, I will contact all parents do a prior written notice. If they decide on how they want services, I will do an IEP amendment. If they want to hold off, I call in two weeks and do another prior written notice question mark. I understand I will be doing a lot of prior written notices, but should there only be one IEP amendment or could there be multiple ones of those? There could be multiple IEP amendments. There will be multiple prior written notices. As far as contacting all parents by Monday, the prior written notice needs to go out by Monday, saying that services will be provided in alternate form. If you're not able to contact the parents to get those specifics of what that time and service format is going to be, then you'll do another prior written notice later on next week. But we need to get one out saying, yep, we all know that we weren't able to provide those services due to the recommendation of the health department. And we're working together to get those services up and running by and set the date sometime later next week. Okay, they're asking, so back to the 10 day limit. Our school sent to review extension packets for two weeks. Students were not in the building. So exactly when is the 10 day limit up? 10 day limit has nothing to do with the review and extension packets. It has services from the special education providers stopped. And they ended for most of you on Monday, March 16. Can the contact be through an interpreter for a Spanish speaking parent? Yes. And Janita, yes, every student's going to need an amendment and a prior written notice. Yes. Sorry, I'm nodding, forgetting that only I can see myself on the camera. Sorry, that's it for questions for the moment. I muted myself. Okay. Extended school year, if they are currently listed on an IEP because you made that decision in October, or December, or January, then extended school year services must be offered in an alternate format. So they're part of what you're addressing in your IEP amendment. If ESY is not currently on an IEP, do not add it at this time. That is causing heartburn for some of you who are still in the habit of saying, we're going to talk about that in April and see if it's a critical learning time. Do not add to your stress level and their stress level at this time by saying, Oh, we're going to do ESY. Oh, no, we can't because now something happened and it's not available. So if regression has not been shown on previous breaks that you addressed in an IEP earlier this year, then do not add extended school year services at this time. Is it critical learning? Well, they've all had a two week break. Did he forget how to pronounce the R sound in the two weeks that he spent out? Will he regain it with the alternate method that you're using from now through May 20th? I don't know. You'll have to watch and see if he just figured out how to do two times two. Is it really critical that he have extended school year services in some way, shape or form, or will he be able to pick up on that again either during this time when you're doing alternate instruction or pick up on it in the first four to six weeks after school resumes? You don't have the data to support that right now. The question is, is if we have a parent who does not speak English and we have to have a translator, I have one that speaks Korean. How would I do that? Do I contact my translator who works for the health care place and have her contact parent? Yes. And if you're talking about the student that we need to have an MDT meeting for because of impairment, hang on, give me a phone call later. We'll work through it together. Compensatory education. The need for compensatory education will be addressed in every IEP meeting after the pandemic ends. So every IEP meeting you have in 2021, you're going to have some questions to answer. And I specifically asked NDE yesterday to create a technical assistance document around compensatory education. Amy boiled it down to two questions. Was there a regression that could not be recouped in a reasonable amount of time, which in ESU-8 we define as in the first four to six weeks of school? And were any services provided or offered? Is there documentation that we provided the services or documented that we offered the services and parents chose not to have them? Data is going to be very important when we are asking the questions about compensatory education and determining how much services, how much instruction the student will need in addition to what is normally on the IEP to make up for lost time. So you're going to be very good at collecting data to show that skills were retained or some growth occurred over this time while you were using alternative means of education. This all happening in March at the end of your third quarter when you just did progress reports and those progress reports should have been based on data, you have a baseline. You know where the child was when the world changed, when the services that were specifically listed on the IEP ended. That's your baseline. If you recently did DIBLS or you recently did the winter maps, you have baseline data. It is going to be very important to have that baseline data accessible to compare to when you take your first baseline when school resumes in the fall. And you're going to use that data to show this is where he was in March. This is where his skills were in September and then this is where his skills were in November or December if you're meeting in November or December for an IEP meeting. Look mom, his skills that he had in March were back in place by September. It didn't change or he showed a dip but by October those skills were back in place so we didn't have regression. We may not owe compensatory education in that skill area. The question is how exactly should we be collecting data? We are not collecting any paper from our families and technology is not being sent home at this time. Right so it's it's going to be anecdotal as you're working with him. If you're going through math flashcards in some way, shape or form and out of 100 facts, he knew 25 facts for your third quarter progress report. As you're working with him in an alternate method, you know that he has 27 or he has 28 by the time school ends on May 20th. When you get back in the fall, hey some of those things we introduced last spring or we showed parents how to do actually did over the summer and he's got 40 math facts in place out of that set when he does your first data check in September. He showed growth. If he had 25 in place and he has 22 in place or he has dropped to 15 at the first of September then he's put instruction in place and where is he at in November. Compensatory education has me concerned because it does every employer of related services. Every superintendent who's trying to make a budget for 2021. Compensatory education may not might not might not let me change my word might not be possible during the regular school year. It might be offered as extended school year in the summer of 21. But we'll work through this together. We'll have more guidance from NDE in the fall so this is not your 4 a.m. worry at this time. This is not oh Mr. Superintendent we need to hire two more resource teachers because I'm not going to be able to make up all the time I missed last spring. Now did you make a reasonable effort to provide services to your students? And can you document and show that you made that reasonable effort? You're going to be okay. Questions on that Jenny? I needed myself. Hang on there was a question. A couple of them here. How will we do progress reports in May? You will do progress reports in the same way that you did them in March. They may say little or no progress shown due to the coronavirus pandemic and education being provided in a different way or no progress shown because parents requested a suspension of services or break-in services during the pandemic. So you have to do the form. You may not have as many amazing pieces of growth as you would typically see in fourth quarter but you will need to do the form. Paige what do you mean by your question? I'm not sure what you're saying. And you mute yourself page if it's easier to ask. It says something about 10 days but I'm not oh wait a minute here she comes. Sorry I accidentally typed that out meant to type in my word document. That's fine thank you. Okay what if our goal objectives are social interacting with classmates et cetera. This is where we're going to get creative but we also have to be creative and not break confidentiality. So I know that was a question that's been asked in one of the multiple Zoom meetings I've had with other SPED directors and I will look back through my notes to see what creative ways they have been using. I think in the sample Google form that I send out to you regarding documenting that you've met with the student or you talk with the parent it has a social interaction goal in there and I think they put something about coaching mom and how he could practice social skills with his siblings or his cousins or via FaceTime with the cousins and I have a six-year-old niece who her mom send a snap to me that she's still getting she's spending time on FaceTime with a cousin of the same age in another state who has the same set of books because mama sells us born books and together the two six-year-olds read 17 books together one morning because they just were enjoying showing each other how they could read and they were interacting by FaceTime so could you give mom some suggestions of how they could FaceTime with a a cousin or a peer and mom hears some things to look for or how you could set that up and my speech therapist and you resource teachers may have some fabulous ideas of activities that could be part of that social interaction mealy is having a bear hunt right now if you go drive down main street and some of the residential streets people are put bears in the window so that families who are out for a drive can look see how many different bears they can find i put a bear in my window this morning at my office so on that bear hunt when they got home um johnny could FaceTime or call his little buddy paul and say i saw five bears today and and what was your favorite bear or oh i didn't get to go and i'm sat oh you're sad let me tell you about and just you know social interaction is taking turns and and having conversations as well as playing games with mom or playing games with the sibling to practice those skills my biggest concern and the one that we cannot replicate with our learning center students is job shadowing we can't make progress on that part of their transition skills um so but keeping some of those skills in place is going to involve coaching moms or dads or grandmas in you know he really does know how to wash a table and when he comes back we're going expect him to still know how to wash a table or five at um pizza hut so could you please make that his new job at home yes he really does know how to wash the table this is how we do it and coach mom through it so that at every day after lunch he has to continue that part of his job skills training okay the question is speaking of confidentiality if we're providing zoom for a child in daycare setting would it be sufficient to a parent sign a release form to allow for SPED instruction in that setting with the provider overhearing the instruction i would certainly get a release before i would do that yes okay kami go ahead and unmute and ask your question all right somewhere i was reading in some paperwork that if you have a student that moved and it's a student on an IEP that you are still responsible for their services um i don't know if that's accurate or not uh we had a student that moved probably the week before we released from school i was in Mexico so i don't know when he left exactly i'm sorry no i'm glad you had to go yes um these rules still are in place if a student moved into your district you need to be reaching out to that family once they have enrolled in school to try to put services in place for them if your student moved out of the district follow what you would normally do with the student who moved out okay so i guess my question is he moved out and we received information from the new school asking for his IEP and MDT does that mean i'm still responsible for providing services for him or is the new school responsible now the new school is responsible now thank you so much okay what okay leah did that answer your question then because my question is Ruth i had somebody ask me what if they came from out of state then you're going to give prior written notice are you there yeah i am i'm thinking okay sorry i will i have i don't yeah sorry i you can't see me so um my first response is you need to give prior written notice because we can't do the evaluation at this time however backtrack on that once you receive the records review the records with your school psychologist and see if there's enough evidence within that and the IEP form that comes from the previous state for you to be able to do it a multidisciplinary team decision at this point if there's if there isn't we can try to put services in place normally that would be 30 days so we're we only have about that many days left of school to put services in place in this alternate method and then put them at the very top of the evaluation list for august okay i'm very very lucky they just had similar testing done in their former state that um Anna or Matt or Kathy can review and say yep there's plenty of evidence let's meet as an MDT team and get this going if there's not then you always take a look at the IEP from out of state and try to replicate it in some form of providing services while you're gathering that evaluation so what if the aunt is going to be coming to the child's house mom verbally told me that she will be with child during the day is verbal consent or okay or should we get written as well i would get written i would and that can just be an email that he mom you said you'd like services even though you're not at home is it okay that we are providing some information whether that's coaching or the aunt is seeing what skills he's actually working on and when she sends an email back this is yep she knows everything about my son or yep she needs to learn a little bit more about him because she's taking care of him for the next six weeks um then you have your permission i do want to emphasize that prior written notice does not require a parent signature so you're not going to ask the parents to send back all of those prior written notice forms prior written notice does not require a signature and amy ron emphasized that yesterday it does not require a signature that's why we do not have a signature on the form the only prior written notice that requires a signature is initial consent for placement so if you're finishing up an mdt for a child who's qualifying for the first time and having their first iep meeting then your prior written notice is that initial consent for placement and that does require a signature that you're going to try to get in some form but the hundred prior written notices that you're sending out to say hey we've been um we've we suspended special education services for this period of time we'll be working with you to get them reinstated in an alternate format does not require a signature from the parent okay janelle i'm going to assume you're talking to somebody else and it came to everybody but if you're not let me know um can the prior written notices be emailed to parents if you normally um send forms back and forth to parents via email yes if you've never ever sent them a special education document via email i would call and say or text and say may i send prior written notice form to you via email today and document that you got consent does an amendment to iep require parent signature i will have to look at the sample form that i have for iep amendments um i assume a text can also be written permission as an email can if you can save it in some way shape or form screenshot it however you can do that upload it to your email and print it out for their file yes i don't know who the tammy is retiring in may but i sure wish i could join you is the new sped teacher responsible for services that mom has asked to do to not do it now but in july um give me a phone call with that question because i i have a feeling there are more parts than we can talk about that's what there is for questions at the moment and my last couple of slides are to remind all of you to take care of yourself balance the needs of your students and the needs of your family sorry i really am not sending emails to nine o'clock every night i did last night because i made a promise to you to have this ready this morning if you are working from home allow for breaks as if you are good as you are scheduling sessions with students i have already talked to a couple of my esu8 employees and said i know you have children at home they are your main responsibility right now you are still employed at esu8 we're going to make our best reasonable effort to provide services to students but figure out what that schedule like looks like in your home and in your life so could i reasonably expect that my husband's not going to walk in the house to tell me about a horrible mud is during calving season between nine and ten that might be a great time to schedule a zoom or to have sessions with students and i reasonably expect that my child who really loves to watch something on tv would not interrupt if i schedule sessions between and during that television program i can be in a separate room quiet we have a signal that house is burning down you come in or my tv show just dropped out and mom that's really going to put me into a tantrum i can knock on the door come tap mom on the shoulder and go do it i am not going to say oh my gosh that horrible resource teacher left three people walk through while she was doing reading instruction with little johnny and mom saved it and sent it to me and said this person is a horrible person no she isn't no she isn't she's making a reasonable effort to provide services and if your health changes you need to change the services if your schedule changes you're going to do a prior written notice you can have a conversation with your parents they will have built a relationship with you because you've reached out to see how they are and have a stiff drink tonight for me will you Larissa it helps shut the brain it helps shut the brain down i think it might if i walked in anywhere and ordered one of those they would think the world was coming to an end well you can't walk in anywhere anyway so you've got to be a drive-through they have to bring it curbside right restaurant until then it's still open so this is kill and i would like to add how hard this is right now for me to be interpreting this as i'm like mentally um bawling for you ruth not because i feel bad for you because i'm so proud of you and so thankful for you meanwhile trying to carry on with the conversation and keep abby up on it so i'm going to unmute and try and continue again okay beef um and there was one more concern here ruth really fast um my internet home is not strong enough to video chat then don't offer that as the solution that's realistic you can't video chat hey mom i live in tilled in Nebraska and i'm lucky to get cell phone service much less dependable internet but i can give you a phone call i can send a packet we can work through it together or because i have a copy of the same thing i'm sending your son we can work through it on the phone that's that's a reasonable attempt to provide some services i think we're going to find with some parents that they discover skills they didn't have and they're going to become so um accustomed to us coaching them they're going to ask for that in the future that's not a bad thing we're going to change education through this so look um seek assistance from your team members i could not have made it through this this morning if i'd been reading chat questions at the same time that i was trying to stay relatively on schedule so i reached out to jenny she jumped right in my my team's been awesome through this they've asked what can i do to help and i've asked them so your school psychologists your lmhps are part of your team they not may not be on your ip teams for your students but they are part of your team and if you need to reach out talk to them um do that we're not billing you for that time or we're not billing you billing your district with your name on it oh my goodness cammy told called me 15 times today because this is just too much nope cammy what do you need let's get through this together again case manager has primary responsibility for doing the prior written notice for making that initial contact with parents right now but case managers if you need help with paperwork or contacting families or providing services ask other members of the iep team it's okay um to do something very similar to what we do with birth to three in looking for a primary service maybe mom says i know he's getting speech resource ot pt i can't schedule all of that right now my biggest worry is fill in the blank is her biggest worry right now making progress with those communication goals then it's okay to have the speech therapist be that primary contact throughout this process and be the primary provider and then if mom says you know things have settled down and he's asked me about math and working with mrs x on math can you contact her and let's get something started again for math that's okay it's okay to think outside the box right now a little bit but you can't think outside the box to the point of i'm not doing any paperwork sorry we still have paperwork so the student health and safety is the primary goal during this time families are stressed students are stressed you're stressed let's keep everyone as healthy as we can making some progress and then in one of the many calls that i had or maybe it was when i was listening to news someone quoted the count of money crystal and i know i didn't um give all the citation right but in that story the main character has been in quarantine or in isolation for a very very very long time and said all human wisdom is summed up in these two words wait and hope we have hope and for some things we can wait right now and we'll do it together so if you have additional questions um that you didn't ask during the zoom meeting or you are in cognitive overload new term i learned two weeks ago and it describes me at about three o'clock every afternoon it's just time to take a break take a walk watch watch a funny video listen to some good music take time to process the information that you heard today i will be sending out a powerpoint for sure in a few minutes the recording i'm going to need some help from my friends and how to get that up into youtube that i have great friends at the service unit and he'll help me with that call me so far i'm coming into the office at least four days a week primarily because the internet at my house is not dependable and i can't do all of these zooms whether it's on the receiving end or the sending end with the internet i have at my house um cori and i had a discussion this morning about as things change i may need to just use alternative methods of communicating with people and and stay home or i might be the only person coming to the office um which is okay with me too i will send out emails um with the frequently asked questions that i receive after this webinar today or as i obtain other information that i need to send to you and to clarify so again give me a call send me an email the email might not be answered in five minutes but you will get an answer um at some point i'm going to focus over the next hour or so on getting the samples of the pwn and the iep amendments to you as i promised if there's something else i said oh i'm sending that to you during the webinar and you don't see it by the end of today um like the link to that google doc send me an email and and i will not be offended i'll be like yes i made that promise thanks for letting me know and then i'll get it out to everybody there are a couple questions on here ruth um are you there i am i muted no you're talking okay sorry will clc student services be taken care of by clc staff or is the district responsible for those oh i am so sorry that should have been on like my first slide i called your superintendents but i didn't let you know clc elc and clc sales will be taken care of by their learning center teachers um the learning center teachers were reaching out to them yesterday today to first see if families know how to access the food and other services that their resident districts have been offering to all students because we were concerned that perhaps they're not on your calling lists um and so they they made that reach uh outreach to them and then um we will put some form of alternate and services in place for them also that that's a real challenge um because they're so used to concrete and hands-on doing things so we're going to get very creative at how we can coach parents into you know you could do sorting with legos you could do sorting with silverware here's other things that we're doing with those goals um so that we can continue but for them um maintaining the relationship with their teacher whether it's a phone call or a brief zoom chat and taking care of the parents um because it's not easy to find child care for them over the summer i can't imagine that it's been easier easy at all to make those arrangements um with very little notice so thanks for asking about them but um one less family for you to contact because our learning center teachers have reached out and they will be doing the private notice for those learning center kiddos um if you have someone who's bandied in wastetown wastetown closed so you need to reach out to wastetown to see if they did a private notice or if you need to i have no idea what an amendment would look like for that child but i know that stewart-clark was working on what that might look like for kids at tower and he would share with me if i ask so if you need that need some ideas let me know what about the students on i fsps i fsps was a whole different set of emails that went out with guidance and so if you work with students on i fsps and you need that send me an email if you're asking as the district manager services for children with i fsps are also being offered in an alternative format reaching out with parents meetings are continuing as scheduled via email or zoom they were actually the first group of providers to be given permission to gather emails emails as signatures for services if we get new referrals we're going to use the information we have along with asking daisy questions daisy is the instrument that we use to gather some more data and then we will go ahead with qualifying and getting services in place as an alternate format because we we cannot let those babies can't wait that's been our motto for 20 years babies can't wait we need to get things going for that so you as a district manager don't need to reach out with prior bit notice their services really haven't been interrupted they're just in an alternate format okay as a service provider that is not a case manager and she's just clarifying we need to wait and hear from our case manager in regards to who is wanting what services yes or call your contact them contact your case manager and say yeah are there a couple of if you have the best relationship the most frequent contact with a certain parent hey can i make the call to johnny's mom today or how many people on your list uh cammy or rosemary would you like me to pick up and make those calls for so i i imagine a little smaller little group meetings amongst your providers and the case managers in your district trying to divide up those lists today or tomorrow okay so the remote ips need a real signature from the parent correct does team attendance need a real signature or can participated by phone be good and where do parents send the signed ips back okay the um participated by phone is how you as the case manager will document on the first page the team members can follow up with an email to to verify that they attended the meeting that day or that they uh sorry for mbt's they would follow up to give their signature you're going to for all team members just verify that they participated by phone by writing participated by phone or zoom on the front page mom or dad needs to sign um the ips to show that they were in attendance and to answer those four essential questions that are at the bottom of page one or two depending how it prints so they can verify they received their parental rights they understand what the ips is contained and that they have a copy of the ips so those signatures are still important from the parent um you decide will it be emailed back and forth to you will it be mailed back to the school to be filed at a later date although you won't know it's come back unless it comes to you if you don't want to reveal your your home address then have it sent back to the school and go into the school at seven o'clock at night when no one else is around to check your mailbox my and i will clarify as though my esu eight staff are not going to school for meetings or to work with kids if they have need access materials contact you and say could you let me in at eight o'clock tomorrow morning i just need to get to my room for something and get back out they have permission to go there if they need to is that the same for i f s p's um i f s p's has a whole different protocol and i'm not going to pretend to have that memorized this morning i think they need emails from everyone as a signature okay and then does the school district and learning center each need to complete a prior written notice if time is split no work with the learning center teacher on doing one i think that's the questions i saw if i didn't see your question please respond right now and i don't want anybody to think that doesn't know me that i'm promoting drinking all the time because i'm really not it's ruth has not been sleeping in neither of high so anything to shut the brain down i think i'll take a walk through all those newborn baby calves i as a farmer's wife truly i am not as concerned about anyone in my house getting corona at this in my house getting corona at this time as in getting run over in the mud by an angry cow i take a corona with a lime right now um yes we can under zoom happy hour and it is not too early for mimosas and yes you probably should wear your mud boots especially if it rains like it's supposed to yeah it's five o'clock somewhere i agree i think alcohol consumption amongst educators is rising across the board okay thank you guys for your humor thank you for your humor thank you for all your good work um take care of yourselves reach out and ask me those questions um i i will i keep i do turn my cell phone off at nine o'clock at night and don't turn it back on until six in the morning i also um typically don't check email after eight o'clock at night last night was an exceptional so if you send them because that's when your worries are i'll answer about seven o'clock the next morning so hang in there thank you for your time and attention this morning thank you ruth any other questions we got people logging off already anyway okay i'm sure i have questions for you but i'll be talking to you okay thanks jenny for your help thank you bye