*2023-2024 Directors’ Meeting Schedule*

Final Meeting of the year: May 15th 9-12 AMESC or virtual

Draft agenda sent one week prior to meeting and on calendar invite

🎧

Previous months recordings and notes in the shared directors folder

Please contact Emily Menker or the restraint and seclusion mailbox if there are any questions.

Filling vacancies? Have some new hires?

Returning staff who would love to brush up on some pieces of their work?

Plan now to have these staff attend in August (before districts start back) or in September/October. This training is back by popular demand after last years successful initial sessions.

Consider browsing the recorded catalog of GoalBook Webinars from the 23-24 school year. Most recently, special education attorney Brandon K. Wright, Esq. presented on:

IDEA’s due process protections for student discipline have always been one of the most complex areas in special education law. With the rising national trend of the frequency and severity of behavioral issues, the challenges have never been greater when it comes to some disciplinary removals. The procedural protections are complex, and missteps can have serious ramifications for a local educational agency. You will learn:

• What counts as a removal? Full day? 1 hour? Bus suspension?

• When does a removal equal a change in placement?

• When is an MDR needed?

• What is the difference between a pattern of removals and a pattern of behavior?

• Considerations for student discipline and remote learning

Staying up to date on reading research while meeting and assessing the literacy needs of learners who are deaf or hard of hearing can be a juggling act. This module series is designed to provide educators and practitioners with what they need to implement best practices and provide access to reading instruction for each deaf or hard of hearing learner they serve.

This module is brought to you by The Outreach Center for Deafness and Blindness in partnership with The Teaching Diverse Learners Center at OCALI and The American Printing House for the Blind (APH). If you are providing instruction to learners who are blind/visually impaired, you can find the parallel set of modules in the APH Hive that will allow you to explore the process of teaching reading, examine how to strengthen reading skills for all students, and evaluate the impact of visual impairments on learning to read. Both sets of modules have embedded information from the Teaching Diverse Learners Center’s Ensuring Access to the General Curriculum for ALL Learners video series which explores strategies grounded in research in a 10-part resource designed to support all educators.

Literacy Academy On Demand offers short, easily-accessible courses on literacy for grades K-12. Each course is centered around a brief video of an expert in literacy instruction, along with resources, reflection questions and articles. These courses should take 30-60 minutes to complete. The goal of each course is to provide teachers, coaches and administrators with quick overviews of topics, along with tangible steps that they can take in their classrooms, coaching sessions or team meetings to improve literacy instruction. Look at all the session possibilities!

The IDEA Monitoring and Data Team will hold virtual office hours via Microsoft Teams on Thursday, May 1, from 1-2 a.m.

Bring your questions!

This information was disseminated at the SST16 November Directors meeting. It has now officially been made into a DEW document. Please share widely.

This article from ASCD has a simple and powerful premise:

I asked my students what teachers can do to enhance their well-being in school. What they told me changed how I teach.

Teaching is complex—and that’s reflected in these 22 HLPs. The practices, and the four aspects of teaching and collaboration that organize them, are complementary, and teachers often use several at once. The practices also have some intentional redundancy; because feedback is essential for all aspects of students’ learning, it appears in both the social/emotional/behavioral practices and in the instructional practices.

For details on each of these practices, including videos showing the practices in real classrooms and a professional development guide, visit here.

Be on the lookout for the May Special Education Profile Data release. The data has not been announced yet.

The third and final phase of the 23-24 School Year will include enrollment data and the remaining indicators. These indicators include:

• Math and reading assessment participation and proficiency rates (Indicator 3)
• Discipline discrepancies (Indicator 4a)
• Discipline discrepancies by race (Indicator 4b)
• Least restrictive environment for school-age students (Indicator 5)
• Least restrictive environment for preschool students (Indicator 6)
• Preschool outcomes (Indicator 7)

As a reminder, the indicators released in May do not have corrective actions connected to them but contain helpful information to help teams reflect and plan.

Each year the Department develops new English language arts, mathematics, science and social studies test items for Ohio's Alternate Assessment for Students with the Most Significant Cognitive Disabilities (AASCD) and requires a committee of Ohio educators to ensure they are aligned with Ohio's fairness and sensitivity guidelines and Ohio’s Learning Standards–Extended.

We will use Microsoft Teams for virtual meetings scheduled May 13-23 from 8:30-4:30pm each day. Training will be provided the morning of the first meeting day. If you are unable to attend for the entire 9 days, please let us know which days you can attend. Ohio’s test vendor Cambium Assessment will provide Substitute Teacher Reimbursement directly to districts or an honorarium of $75 each day for committee members who are not under contractual obligations for the dates of the meeting. The Department will provide a certificate with contact hours following the meetings.

For questions or to express your willingness to participate, please contact Wendy Stoica at Wendy.Stoica@education.ohio.gov or 614-644-7307.

The Department of Education and Workforce and Cambium Assessment appreciate your willingness to participate in this very important work, and we look forward to interacting and listening to committee member feedback.

Brianna Sarr-Kerman and Katie Thornton shared excellent information regarding their journey to support their school with trauma-informed & restorative school practices.

Project Discovery is built upon a foundation of research on the effectiveness of applied, hands-on instruction in career education and skills training. Effective instructional methods that address multiple learning styles provide support for at-risk and special populations. Recorded "Webinar Wednesdays" can be a helpful tool in considering how you currently support transition-aged students with disabilities .

From Kelly: To help bridge the gap between learning about interoception science and practical activities to nurture interoceptive awareness, I decided to drop one interoception activity every day for 30 days during the month of January 2024. I had so much fun hearing everyone’s experiences, and wanted to give back by organizing our 30 activities into a free booklet for you to download and keep handy if you ever need some activity inspo!

The Ohio Department of Education and Workforce has partnered with the Ohio Statewide Family Engagement Center to produce two new resources for families related to the Third Grade Reading Guarantee Parent Request Exemption.

While a parent has the ultimate authority about whether or not their child is promoted to the fourth grade, they need to consult with their child’s grade 3 reading teacher and school principal.

The first new resource provides information for families about the parent exemption and provides questions families can ask their child’s reading teacher and principal.

The second new resource is a sample letter that families can adapt and use after consulting with their school to communicate with the school if they do not want their child to repeat the third grade based on their English language arts test score.