 Good morning. Welcome to ESU 8 COVID Impact Statements and Services. It's difficult to give specific directions related to COVID, as the advice varies in each presentation that we hear at the federal and state level. So I'm going to share with you today the information I have received as of August 5th, 2020. As there are updates throughout the year, I will share with them with you via webinar or an email. When school resumes and students are back, IEP teams need to take into consideration if there was a significant loss of learning by the student during the remote learning time. They also need to consider whether or not, on an individual basis, services need to be adjusted due to the student's changing performance and needs. These decisions should be data-driven. You should consider parent input and you should look at new needs the child might have academically or behaviorally. A COVID impact statement is not a one and done. It's something that we need to address throughout the year. NDE is hoping that teams look at some really good alternative ways of meeting the needs in the free appropriate public education that is offered to students. So our goal is still faith. We need to look at alternative ways of meeting those needs. They could be adding a service, increasing the amount of time or the frequency of instruction, monitoring the progress more frequently, such as doing maps in the fall and again in winter to see if the student has made progress and recouped any loss learning that was evident in the fall. Extended school year services are not a guarantee because of loss of skills. Students may make progress during this school year and not need extended school year services in the summer of 2021. We need to take a look at where each individual child is in the fall of 2020 and make decisions that would help them meet the goals that are on their current IEPs. How are we going to determine whether a child needs additional services, more frequent services, or different services? Well, we're going to connect the dots like we do with any IEP. We're going to take a look at the student's present levels. Consider their academic, social, emotional and communication skills. Were any of those skills impacted by the COVID closure or remote learning? What are their academic communication and social, emotional behavior and transition goals on the current IEP? And what services or accommodations do we need to make sure that we meet those goals within the timeline of the current IEP? What is the least restrictive environment in which the services can best be provided? Or what is the placement for the child for this year? There's no one size fit all COVID impact statement. You are not going to write the same impact statement for every child who has a learning disability and reading. Or for every child who is in preschool. Or for every child who was working on ours because the children that we work with are individuals. Each one has had unique circumstances since March of 2020 to deal with. And we need to take a look at the individual child needs. Remember the I in IEP. When you're considering the impact, are you using the data for that individual child? Dibbles or Acadians, maps, behavioral data, attendance data, etc. Did all students in first grade lose skills? You'll be looking at Acadians and Maps from the fall to determine that. Did it take this student longer to regain those skills? As you meet for the IEP meetings throughout the year, you're going to be doing a bit of a comparison on whether it took longer for them to regain skills that they lost during the time. And remember not all students will have lost skills. Some continued to make progress because of opportunities that they had at home. I participated in speech therapy during April and May or had some extended school year services this summer. Look at the data, not your gut feeling. Not every student needs a new IEP in August or September. So you can celebrate that. You don't need to have 25 or 50 IEPs between now and the end of September. I'm going to take a look at doing their IEPs when they're regularly scheduled throughout the year, but make sure with every IEP as part of the present level of performance, you are documenting the impact that remote learning or break in services had on the child's progress towards goals and their skills. How do I determine whether to have an IEP for a child in August? Well, let's take a look at their current IEP and the most recent prior written notice that you have given to the family. Does it adequately describe the program? Is the program currently appropriate for this child? It is likely that teams will have more than one IEP meeting on most students this year. It doesn't mean every IEP meeting will be long. It's just that we may have to have more than one IEP meeting as circumstances change and as the school year progresses and we watch the child's performance in many classes and in social emotional situations. Make sure that you give notice that it is an IEP meeting every time you have an IEP. Every IEP should include a COVID impact statement. If your school district has KSB as their law firm, that statement is true. It will say COVID impact statement and your administrator will be receiving examples from KSB. If your school attorney is not KSB, then they have said it doesn't have to be labeled COVID impact statement. It just needs to be included within the present level of performance. Students may be owed additional or different special education services in light of the fact that they didn't have in-person instruction during the fourth quarter or because they lost some significant grant. This is not compensatory education. Please don't call it compensatory education. It is still part of their fate. It's free appropriate public education. Compensatory education is a legal remedy that's assigned by courts as a punishment for services that a school district did not provide. So if it hasn't been ordered by a court of law, you haven't been in a due process hearing that it is not compensatory education. Always consider the individual needs for each child. Make sure that you're upholding the fate as written in the IEP. Consider skills that may have been lost, including social, emotional and behavior skills. Consider assessing the child to determine if services were missed and what impact that they had if any. Don't place the blame. Just take a look at what really happened. Document these skills and needs on page three of your SRS IEP form within the present level of performance. When you're having a conversation with parents, especially if you're meeting in August and you really don't have all of the data yet, have a conversation about how you will be monitoring recruitment of skills throughout the year. You will be able to tell them at the next IEP meeting whether their child was able to recoup the skills in six weeks, nine weeks, or if it took longer. You as a team need to decide does this student need specialized instruction for recruitment or will participating in tier one or two instruction suffice. You also need to look at any services that did not get provided during the closure. If something was not provided, you do not need to provide all of the missed time or services. You need to determine what time or service should or could be provided this school year to help the students meet their annual goals. After school resumes, take a look at what the data is stating. Have we talked about data over and over today? Yes. Collect how many if any sessions were scheduled and attended. You should have that stored away from last spring. Take a look as a team at sessions that were missed goals that were set during last year's IEP and whether the child was on track in March before services changed. You need to individually determine whether you need to have an IEP and revise things to help with the student's present level. So who do we meet on first? Well, prioritized meant DTS for students who were in the initially valve process and it was not completed in the spring. A couple of the people who we've watched and reviewed their presentations say that there should be a COVID impact statement within their initial IEP. What is that going to look like? It's going to say he was struggling in reading prior to March, not having individualized instruction or small group instruction in title or tier two services from April to May, causing him to fall further behind and so we realized that and this is what we're going to do as a part of his individual education plan and his free of public, appropriate public education this fall. You will also need to have IEP meetings for those who didn't receive anything. Doesn't matter why they didn't receive anything so be kind to not put statements in the IEP. Mom did not get up on time in the morning to get him connected to Zoom ever. Be kind. We're still maintaining relationships with families. If the student didn't receive anything, check to see how far they've regressed, monitor their progress, prioritize IEPs for those students to be held in August or September to say, Hey, we've taken a look at the data. He's at we are or are not going to adjust the amount of time that he spends with resource speech, OTPT, and your reasons for adjusting or not adjusting the time. Then taking a look at the goals and assuring parents that you're doing all you can to help them meet their annual goals, as we had determined them to be last year. If we provide something we will likely not see as much regression or we may see some progress that we may still need to discuss whether new or additional services are needed. Still murky on how do we who do we meet on first. Well, hang in there. We have some solutions. Let's also take a look at your prior written notices that you sent out. Remember that prior written notices are to document provisions of fate, such as when you change services, when you discontinue services, when you a student is removed from the environment for 10 or more days. You may be writing prior written notice if a child is in quarantine for more than 10 days, you're going to need to put some different services in place until they return to school. Also do a prior written notice if there's a change in services goals or placement placement is not location. So you don't necessarily need to do a prior written notice if we're still doing speech but it's via zoom rather than in the speech room, or we're doing speech in the speech room, rather than in the preschool house area, as we'd originally intended. Here's a link to a document that will help you decide whose IEPs need to be scheduled this fall. Make sure that you make a copy of the Google sheet before you enter students names. Again, if you've not used Google before, or even if you have it's very important that once you click on the link and go to the form. So here to make a copy and put in your school district and click OK. Now looking up here to make sure you are on the form that only you can see until you share it with other team members of your IEP teams. Then you can start to enter students names, the date that you reviewed the IEP and the data, the grade level the child's currently in, the data source, and I know I keep using Divils rather than Acadians. Any parent input that you've already received parents have been calling you and emailing you so if they say hey my daughter little sample cries whenever we leave our house. She's six years old and we've told her over and over again that she couldn't go to the swimming pool because of the bad bug. She couldn't go play with her friends or have a sleepover because of the bad bug. So now we're going to say she can go to school and she's crying. This is unusual behavior for sample and developed during the closure. And so we want to keep an eye on that. But Acadians wise, Divils wise, her scores are at grade level. She participated in some fourth quarter remote learning. The data indicates that she was not impacted through that learning because she's at grade level, and we're going to not need a new IEP for that at this time. But socially she's crying. She's crying. She has separation anxiety. She has some fears. IEP needed or further data needed before we scheduled the IEP. We could say we're going to watch sample for the first two weeks of school and then make a determination based on that data regarding her crying that will help us to determine if we need to meet. Has mom actually requested an IEP meeting at this time? No. Mom is comfortable with saying yes. Let's see if once she's back with her friends and her teachers she's feeling okay. So you have it documented. If a student did not participate in anything and the data indicates that the student was significantly impacted, she has lost some skills then we're going to mark here what those skills are and we're going to say yes we need an IEP meeting and the team is going to determine whether that should be held this week or next week or that we know that it's going to be in August or September. Okay, now we've determined that we need to have some IEPs this fall. And as we're meeting, we may want to consider developing a contingency plan while we have all members of the team present. These pivot plans, encase plans, contingency plans are made by the IEP team during the IEP meeting. We can discuss what we would do if we were the district were to move to remote learning or if the child was quarantined for more than 10 days. And we will document in the narrative portion of page six on the SRS IEP document. Again, in the narrative it is not necessary to list it below in those lines of services with start dates and end dates because you do not know what the start and end dates are. If you have it documented within the narrative, it will help when you need to make that shift to remote learning for whatever reason, whether your risk dial indicates all children in the school are going to remote learning, or this particular student is quarantined and is going to be out of school for longer than 10 days. We have this plan that we talked about at the IEP meeting so you can grab that information out of the narrative and put it in the prior written notice and move forward with the services that you discussed at the time. It may not be possible to develop that contingency plan for all of your students at this time. If it's not possible just be prepared to have to meet often as things change throughout the year. Again, the contingency plan is not a requirement. It's just a suggestion to help make everyone feel more prepared. Why would we even consider doing it? Well, it may save more meetings. The discussion can be upfront and that helps level out the emotion. Instead of having spur of the moment, oh my goodness, my family, my child's in quarantine. He was just starting to make some progress in reading and what am I going to do? What's the school going to do to help him? Oh yes, we talked about if he goes into quarantine then the service is going to happen remotely in this way. It also means that the entire team knows what will happen if we move into remote learning and all of the team members have a voice in the process. Your deaf educator, your teacher, the visually impaired, the speech language pathologist, the school psychologist who's been working with the child with social emotional needs all have a voice in the process. The high school science teacher who says I am using Canvas, high school math teacher who says I am using Google Classroom all have an opportunity to talk about what we may have to do to prepare the child for this contingency plan, what we may have to do to help parents because some parents need a little bit of technology training that we weren't able to help to offer or provide last spring. If we can provide that this fall before we move into the contingency plans, that will be most helpful for everyone. We have COVID impact statements. We have contingency plans. What else could we consider for this fall? Well, we may consider providing related services via Zoom from the get go. Even if we're in person, we may want to do at a district level, speech, OT, PT, other related services via Zoom because we need to think ahead about how many people are impacted if an SLP goes from room to room to room and is exposed to someone positive, then all of those classrooms may be forced to quarantine because that SLP tested positive for COVID or she goes from district to district to district and the OT tests positive for COVID. Do you know which students she had contact with and which staff members she had contact with when she was in your district? It's going to be very important to keep logs probably in the main office where itinerant staff sign in and sign out with times and dates and please notify them if a student that they've worked with or a student in the classroom they've been in test positive so that we can slow the spread to other districts. This is not a decision for an individual education plan team. This is a district level decision. It's not a parent decision to say, I don't want the speech therapist to do in person therapy with anyone or I don't want my child to work with Sally's speech therapist who goes from school to school. If mom has a concern about in person therapy for her child, she could request and the team could consider that child zooming from a corner of her classroom to the speech therapist that's in the speech room but she can't make a decision for the entire school. That's a district level decision to be made by your administration and working with your related service providers. What about masks? You should probably be discussing masks at each IEP meeting. Masks for this individual child. Does the nature of the disability indicate that the student cannot wear a mask or that they must wear a mask due to health needs? Talk about whether that mask or face covering could be a cloth mask, a clear mask, or a shield. Face shields do not provide the same level of protection as masks, but they may be the alternative that is best for the child due to communication needs. Then you put a statement within the IEP. For example, all staff members when working with Johnny will wear a clear face mask due to Johnny's hearing impairment. Document on the accommodations page that this is an accommodation that must be made for Johnny during this IEP term this year and make sure that all staff members who work with the student know about the accommodation. All staff members, teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria servers, the playground para who is supervising wherever that child with the hearing impairment is, which staff member in that situation needs to know they're going to wear a clear mask when they're doing recess for Johnny's class because Johnny reads lips and needs to be able to see their whole face. Is the accommodation you're talking about reasonable? Is it needed for this child? You cannot dictate district policy for all students through the IEP. You cannot say all students in the class must wear face shields versus masks if the requirement of the district is masks. You cannot say all students will do XYZ, but you can make an accommodation for this child. And again, it is an accommodation. It's not a related service. So documented in the accommodation portion, you may have an accommodation that a mask must be worn by adults working with a child with a health condition if they're going to be within a certain distance of the child. On the opposite side, masks may impede communication for some of our students. So take a look at what is the reason that mask is needed. You may also have children who cannot wear a mask in a room that you're expecting everyone to wear that. Is that because of medical reasons or behavioral reasons? If the child is not wearing a mask because of behavioral reasons, what services and instruction can we provide to help that child feel more comfortable in a mask? We've all been through the process of helping a child be more comfortable wearing his glasses or helping a child be more comfortable wearing her hearing aids. A mask can be taught and we can do some incentives for wearing that mask if it's needed. If the child cannot wear a mask due to medical needs, what other options are available to protect students and staff from potential infection? And work with your school nurse or the child's doctor with that. We also must take a look at our transition students. Our high school students who have transition plans, transition goals, transition activities written into their IEPs, we may have to reimagine those community activities. We may have to reimagine the job sites. This is an IEP team decision. Not the job coach's decision that she doesn't want to be at the senior citizen center helping to clean tables. It's can this student safely participate in the job site at the senior citizen center or at Walmart stocking shelves. In this time, parents have input into that if they may say, well, as long as he's wearing a mask while he's out there, I'm okay with him continuing because that's why we have the transition goal. Or they may say, no, I'd like to limit because of health needs, we need to limit his exposure out in the community. Coming to school is a big step. What can we do within the school building or the school grounds to help the student work on transition goals. Community activities may be things in the park, things outside rather than going to a movie theater to watch a movie this fall. Again, those are decisions to be made by the IEP team. Adjust your goals or accommodations or activities for transition accordingly. These restrictive environment and fate. If your district is offering a hybrid model or allowing parents to choose whether their children are participating in school online or in person, then parents of students with disabilities get the same choice. You cannot say it is a choice for family A, whether they're online or in person, but family B, you have a student who needs to come to the resource room for math and so we're only doing that in person. Your child needs to be in person, but all the other fifth graders get to have a choice of staying home. Parents of children with disabilities must be afforded the same choice in that hybrid model as parents of students without disabilities. When you are considering services for this year in the IEP, parents cannot pick and choose which services to accept and which to say no to. As in any other year, it is not a buffet. We do not as an IEP team say he needs resource, speech, occupational therapy and physical therapy in order to meet the goals that we determined based on his needs. And then mom says, well, we really don't need PT and OT, we're only going to take that resource and only if it can be online. Our individual education plan offer is the complete program that we as an IEP team believe constitutes a free appropriate public education for this child. Parents can choose to take the whole IEP or to remove their children from services. Attendance. As more research is done on the state and federal level, we understand the impact of attendance on all children's learning academically, socially and emotionally. This year, it's been brought to even more closer. We're looking at it even more closely because some students were not attending when we were in remote learning. So IEP team should include attendance information this year and in years to come. When they are considering the child's overall strengths and needs. The students attendance is either a strength to be recorded as a strength on page two. Sally has super intend attendance. She is here. 99% of the time. Or it's a need to be addressed in the section on page two where behavior impedes learning. Sally is not in school on Mondays. She misses three Mondays out of four. This is due to. Is it due to a transition back from dad's house to mom's house or vice versa? It's due to a work schedule. That means she's going to childcare earlier. So she's not attending on Mondays because she's tired, hungry, etc. What can we do? What positive behavior supports can we put in place to address that attendance issue? Put that in the behavior impedes learning section on page two and implement it, then continue to monitor attendance on Mondays if that's the issue. Or Tommy does really well in the mornings that leaves math class at one o'clock every day. Why is Tommy leaving math class at one o'clock every day? Let's take a look at whether the instruction is appropriate. Is there something else going on that we need to build in some positive behavior supports to make sure that he's in attendance for math class every day and address that in the behavior impedes learning? Our goal would be to turn the attendance issue from a behavior that impedes learning into a strength in the next year or within the next couple of years. Attendance status should be included so the team can discuss whether it's a strength or a need, act accordingly, and start to see patterns that we need to intervene. If it is that Johnny gets sent to the principal's office every day during social studies, what is happening? Is it something physiological that he's just seeking to be out of the classroom? Is it something academic that he's seeking to be out of the classroom? Is there a social interaction that's inappropriate at that time causing anxiety that's causing him to leave the classroom multiple times a week during that same subject? As you work through all of these new things to discuss in your IEPs throughout the 2021 school year, avoid statements such as, all students in special education will or we never do that. All students throughout the building will. Our district never, the team is developing an individual plan for the student. So if there is a request or a need identified and you're responding to know, make sure the know is based on what is best for that student. All right. I'm sure that you have questions. I did this as a webinar rather than a live meeting because I knew that it would be difficult to find a time that worked for all. So if you have questions, please submit them in this Google Docs so that they do not get lost in my email inbox. I will respond with a group email or follow up with the webinar next week that answers the questions. This is what your Google Doc looks like. You do not need to make a copy of this one. Just know that you will see all of the questions from your peers popping up in here too. Sample teacher says, how will I survive another round of PWNs? Susie speech therapist says, I really just need to remember what it is we do with students who've moved in from out of state. The next resource teacher says, I've never worked with a child who only speaks Spanish before. Can you help fill in those questions? I will respond with an email or a webinar opportunity or maybe some open office time at the end of next week that you can join me and I'll answer questions. Thank you. Have a great year.