November 14, 2017 at 10:00 AM - Special Population Committee Meeting

Call to order at 10:00 AM

Steve Milliken and Amy Rhone were present to give an NDE update.  they are sending out Friday Blast for information.  RTI Builders Group of school psych's and local directors to discuss identification for SLD.  The are working to move the RTI agenda forward.  They scheduled a meeting with NASES on December 16, 2017 in Lincoln.  SEAC  (Special Education Advisory Council) will be tomorrow.  They will be looking at their priorities and focus areas.  Federal regulations guide the work that they do.  They are working to  make this group much more collaborative.  They released the Shortened Day document.  This will be a focus item at the NASES meeting.  They are currently looking at the monitoring process to hep determine the focus.  Committee Director ask about the Tri-State Law Conference.  Concerns regarding no Nebraska attorneys presenting and concerns that the keynote was the same both days. 

Executive Director is working with Jennifer Irvine to schedule a meeting with HHS.

A meeting with ESUCC/ESPD representatives and University representatives has been scheduled for Thursday, November 16 beginning at 1:00 pm via zoom.  Due to scheduling conflicts Executive Director will see if he can reschedule.  Discussion the use of tele-therapy.  

Executive Director discussed the Autism Action Partnership.  They were requesting a RFP for the work to be done with Circle of Friends.  Executive Director reviewed with Committee Chair and ESPD Chair regarding timeline and unavailability of resources and decided not to submit.  

AAP Advisory Meeting was held on October 16^th.  They had representatives from Boys Town, Northeast Nebraska Juvenile Justice Services, Patrick J. Thomas Juvenile Justice Center. they went through entire site page by page collecting feedback.  Two main needs were identified:  Interoperability with ADVISER and Facilitate communication with resident school districts. Development updates include eliminating requirements on several student demographic data field and allowing AAP forms to be created without a parent/guardian record.

Nebraska Paraeducator Conference Summary:  They had 335 Attendees with 151 evaluations turned in. They are working on new unit for School Accountability.  This was going to be a part of Special Education, but they decided it warrants its own module.  This module will give context to how and why schools are accountable for the outcomes of its students and how accountability affects paraeducators.  Follow-up: I was asked to find out how many non-public schools use Project Para looking through the list, none of the districts stood out as non-public.  See Appendix A(below) for the complete list districts on Project Para.

The SRS Help Desk has been busy with NSSRS reports.  Everything went well this time around.  They will be meeting with NDE staff next week to talk about what was working and what wasn’t.  They held trainings at Santee Public Schools and McCook Public Schools.  The team created Mock-up for Prior Written Notice section on IEP form and sent to advisory board and are awaiting feedback. In development they are working on:  Multiple Notice of Meeting forms are now permitted:  Removed Alternate Assessment radio button:  Mike Danahy has figured out how to autofill Edit Student and Parent/Guardian screens from ADVISER; Building import/export system for Blair Public Schools; Fine Tuning Gretna import/export system; Developed a report which shows the type of service and the amount of that service students are receiving in a given school building or district.  This should help districts complete FTE reports.  ADVISER Update:  They have passed the last certification for ADVISER.  Next Step: Upload live data from three volunteer districts.  Mike has figured out how to import data from the ODS.  Users will be able to enter a state ID# and then automatically have the student demographics and parent data imported.  They will be providing demonstration of SRS to Illini Cloud on December 13th.  Technology Director gave an overview of the K-12 Federation grant possibilities to be used with the SRS process for them.