November 13, 2018 at 1:00 PM - Special Population Committee Meeting

Discussion:  Call to order at 1:00 PM.  

Staff:  Deb Hericks, Priscilla Quintana, Scott Isaacson, Wade Fruhling

Guest:  Jean Anderson

Discussion:  SRS Director gave a presentation of the SRS System.  

Discussion:  Nathan Busch was out sick and not able to attend.  He will send the December newsletter when it is ready.  

Discussion:  Steve Milliken was present to share NDE Special Education updates.  There will be a meeting in December with the NDE and Special Education Directors.  Discussion on the NASES meeting will be combined into one meeting with everyone discussing and addressing issues.  This meeting will be on April 25/26, 2019 at the Emabassey Suites in LaVista.  Friday Blasts continue to be a good communication tool. Tri-state conference was held last week.  MTSS Conference is scheduled for September 4-6, 2019 in Kearney.  NDE is working to build an accountability system to help districts create outcomes for students.  Date for determiniation of disctricts will come out in December.   Could they coordinate to release information as same time as classification.  This would help to make things clearer for schools.  SRS/Advisor errors in communication, help to work through process.  Maintenance for effort exemptions - could they add this to Friday Blast or some other communication.  Not everyone is getting the same messages.  Where do people go to sign up for list serv.  PBIS Training has been very positive.  

Discussion:  Jean Anderson, ESPD Chair was present to share their discussions from the ESPD Meeting last week prior to Law Conference.  The committee created goals on how they want to improve the work with NDE.  They are working towards sharing the knowledge and expertise with each other across the state.  

Discussion:  Committee Chair shared the NDE Behavioral Health Guide provided by the Commissioner.  

Discussion:  NE Mental Health Conference will be held on June 11-12, 2019 in Kearney - HOPE (Health Opportunities Partnership and Equity).  Requests for proposal were sent out today!  

Discussion:  The ESU School Mental Health work group has created a survey and is going to be sending it out to each ESU Admin.  ESU 5 Administrator shared that the survey will be going to each ESU Administrator to fill out for their schools.  The survey should be sent out early next week.  

Discussion:  Nothing new to report, their focus has been on ADVISER and the Zend 3 conversion.  

Discussion:  Project Para Conference was a success with 368 in attendance.  Post conference tasks to help finalize the conference.  Prepared the year end fiscal year report for NDE.  Busy time of year for Para educator Self Study Program and spend time helping with registrations and questions regarding the website.  

Discussion:  The staff survived the first ADVISER upload with several challenges to wrok through.  NDE added new data rules that messed with the SRS data.  SRS didn't record exit dates from July-September and they developed a way for users to manually input data.  Many records were missing exit dates and exit reasons from the previous year.  They have identified 25 improvements that we can make to improve the functionality of the system for the next snapshot in June.  Zend 3 conversion remains on track with only 6 remaining forms to convert.  They want to have a few schools test the site during second semester and fully roll out new site next summer.  

Discussion:  Meeting adjourned at 1:58 PM.