The Fall River Special Education Alternative Education Subcommittee convened on June 21, 2022, to discuss the adoption of a functional academics curriculum. During citizen input, Keith Nishan and Liz Medeiros expressed frustration over the full School Committee's decision to refer the curriculum back to the subcommittee, emphasizing the extensive vetting already conducted by the Joint Labor Management Committee (JLMC) and teachers. They highlighted the urgent need for the curriculum to be approved to ensure teacher training before the new school year. Subcommittee members, particularly Mr. Aguiar and Ms. Rodriguez, raised concerns about the transparency of the curriculum vetting process, the lack of JLMC meeting minutes provided, and the late timing of the presentation. Mr. Loesch, Head of the Office of Special Education, detailed the selection process, criteria, and vendors considered. He clarified that the Styler Fitzgerald curriculum was recommended for K-8 severe autism classrooms at Henry Lord, and the Attainment curriculum for K-12 community-based classrooms (intellectual impairments/multiple disabilities) at Spencer Borden, Kuss, and Durfee, as well as 9-12 severe autism classrooms. Discussion also covered Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles, staffing support for implementation, and the potential impact of an intensive ABA-style program on inclusion and skill generalization. Ms. Rodriguez specifically questioned the use of food and sensory breaks as reinforcers. Ultimately, the subcommittee voted 3-0 to approve the recommendation for the Styler Fitzgerald and Attainment curriculums, with an emergency call of the members to expedite the purchase. The meeting concluded with plans for future subcommittee meetings to address self-contained/substantially separate classrooms and a district-wide inclusion mission statement. Discussions also touched on the allocation of the remaining $175,000 from the ARP grant for special education, which will be used for a social skills curriculum and additional intervention kits, and the ongoing search for Mr. Loesch's replacement.
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all right i'd like to call to order the special education alternative at the subcommittee meeting of tuesday june 22nd june 21 2022.
0:08please call the roll mr again here miss larabee here miss rogers here we are please rise to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice first went to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions
0:45are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible first item is citizen input we have two people signed up that are going to need to waive their rules to allow them if not living in florida emotionally motion made second all in favor aye so vote first up is keith nishan
1:13thank you at the last regular meeting i was shocked to hear uh the vote to adopt the recommendation recommended subcommittee curricula that was referred by this instructional subcommittee without any discussion it was referred favorably by the instructional subcommittee after a presentation by mr loesch and mrs delfalco in that presentation and the written request to purchase the
1:37curricula it was clear to me that there is a great need and thoughtful vetting process with teacher input that from each school that will be implementing the curriculum i respectfully ask that the subcommittee refer this back to the committee as a whole for a vote to adopt while i'm not happy with the last minute nature of this decision and i've been frustrated by how curriculum has been
1:58selected in the past i have to commend mr loesch and miss miss liz madirus as co-chairs of the joint labor management committee for their work on this their committee is the only one that continued to meet through the pandemic and into this year they led their team through the vetting process which most importantly involved getting feedback from the teachers that will be implementing this curriculum
2:20having shared the curriculum and assessment committee in the past i can attest to the fact that the evaluation of curriculum is not always collaborative and as transparent as it should be while i don't think we should be moving the hurdles in the middle of the race i'm happy to see this issue as being examined i look forward to your feedback on the evaluation process for selecting curriculum and again ask you
2:41to refer this request before you to the committee as a whole to vote to adopt thank you thank you and next up liz madirus
2:58thank you for letting me speak today my name is liz medeiros and i'm a special educator in our district as well as the co-chair of the joint labor management committee for special education i've been the co-chair for this committee since we bargained the creation of the jail mcs in 2017 and for the past three years in particular with mike close as the head of the office of special education the jlmc has
3:20collaborated to improve the systems and structures within the department including this year's recommendation of the functional academics curriculum i find it especially important to be here today after last week's school committee meeting i was very disappointed that at last week's meeting the committee of the whole failed to approve this much-needed curriculum for our community-based students as well as
3:39our students with autism the committee instead voted to send the decision about this curriculum back to the special education subcommittee which is why we're here today by forwarding that discussion though to this committee the committee delayed something that is desperately needed and the reason for this delay is unclear in the past the jlmcs have presented summary of their work to the school
4:00committee this year the instructional subcommittee members heard it for themselves you heard from deb defalco that this district has been without a functional academic curriculum for nearly 15 years if you're worried that the recommendation for this curriculum from the jlmc and the office of special education weren't properly vetted then rest easy because we've done our due diligence as explained in mike closer's
4:21presentation to the instructional subcommittee the jlmc and teachers within the specialized programs worked thoughtfully and collaboratively and spoke to their needs staff throughout the district have the opportunity to hear from multiple curriculum vendors offer feedback on what best fits their needs and help the office of special education decide which curriculum to purchase from december through april
4:43educators and of the jlmc within our high needs programs thoughtfully determine which curriculum would best meet the needs of our most vulnerable learners trust our professional judgment trust that educators in these classrooms every day know what their students need and trust that the jlmc and educators worked with them with students best interests at heart as a result of last monday's meeting
5:04it's very possible that with this delay teachers won't have access to the new curriculum ahead of the start of the school year and students won't have teachers prepared to implement the curriculum rather than trust teachers professional judgment and feedback the committee delayed something that's desperately needed in a series of quick motion in seconds isn't it is a school committee's
5:23responsibility to support its educators and students we've done our due diligence and it's my respectful opinion it's time for school committee members to do theirs thank you so i just got a couple of comments in response to both uh both members so the first thing i'd like to say is that this this subcommittee was ship is where this curriculum should have went to originally now i mentioned that as soon
5:49as it came out the superintendent funds that there's no reason why this needed to go to the instructional subcommittee when the special education subcommittee is who should be vetting issues for special education i was told at that time that this was presented to us at the last minute and we had to get this done at the meeting if we didn't get it done then there would wouldn't be training in the summer
6:10typically this would not have gone to the instructional self-committee so i i respectfully disagree with both people that we weren't doing our job quite the opposite we talk about the joint labor management committees you i could tell you right now i looked at all of the information i asked at that instructional subcommittee meeting where is the minutes to verify what happened at the meetings
6:33who asked what questions what was done who was on the committee i've seen joint labor management committee minutes i've been on this committee and i do my due diligence i have seen zero zero minutes related to the jail about to see about this or any issue related to this curriculum i couldn't tell you right now and i do my homework who was even on that committee because we didn't get any of the
6:56information what we got is a lot of things last minute and thinking okay the school committee is just going to rub and stamp things that's what the school committee is going to do school committee members at the full committee had valid concerns valid questions that we needed to answer before we're going to approve this in the past curriculum might have been just rubber stamps hundreds of thousands of dollars
7:16might have been wasted on curriculum under old administrations that's not going to happen here that's why we're here before us today so we're doing our due diligence and if it gets delayed again so be it we're doing what we need to do to ask the right questions and to get the answers that we need still right now we don't have enough information like i told you i can't even tell you
7:35who was on the committee what was looked at and where does this fit amongst the whole picture of curriculum for all of our special needs students can't figure it out right now so we're going to have a lot of questions if we get the answers we'll refer it if not we'll have to just keep it here does anybody else have anything on this issue before we start well i would like
7:54to say something sure i agree that you and i had a discussion about this mr we had a instructional subcommittee meeting scheduled we did not have a special needs altered subcommittee meeting scheduled and that is why and we had a meeting for that monday scheduled for that monday that's why mr loach approached me it is curriculum so really could have gone under each one i agree typically
8:20we would have gone through this the sped special needs altered subcommittee meeting had given had we had more time but because it was curriculum we put it in because we wanted to have the opportunity to have the questions answered have the presentation you know hear from people who were part of it and to have do our due diligence before so that we could have the materials in time yes
8:47you're correct that typically we would have gone through that subcommittee but really i want to be clear it's curriculum it could have gone before the curriculum the instructional subcommittee or the special needs subcommittee certainly had we've gone it was referred favorably had we had the opportunity at the full committee everybody on the committee would have been able to answer those questions
9:11certainly we can't turn back the clock what we can do is we have people here who co-chair that committee who can answer some of those questions as to who was on it what the process was and all of that no one no one is trying to push any curriculum we're gonna do everything i've said this many times and you know you and i have had many discussions i think that we have tried to do
9:31everything the right way so that we you know we follow protocols we intend to continue to do that we just want to make sure our teachers have the resources for when they start the school year so that our students have you know uh quality instruction in front of them that's all it's it really was not an effort to you know uh steamroll anything past the committee so if that's how it
9:54came out i will take responsibility for that but that's not what the intention was we just wanted to make sure we had an ample time to order materials if that was the case i don't saying that it's your issue at all yeah quite the opposite i know you're the superintendent but quite the opposite for me personally i've sat on this committee we've had six or eight special education subcommittee meetings on a moment's
10:15notice we schedule these meetings nowhere was this curriculum or anything that was going on with this you know any of these issues brought to the subcommittee would i take that as or rub a stamp and that's got to stop because we needed to be a part of the process nobody was even asked to be on the committee nobody was asked to talk about the committee all we get is updates we get the walker report and we
10:36had updates we got a strategic plan update all of this stuff was but all of a sudden when we're going to make the decision we don't know anything about it until two weeks before the meeting and the end of the school year that's what my frustration is and then in turn what we do is get some backlash from the two speakers here and other people well we didn't do this we didn't do that
10:53quite the opposite we're doing our due diligence but i'm not the one that told you to bring this to everybody could bring this two weeks before the end of the school year that's not what i got from anybody mrs rodriguez so i was the one that made the motion so i feel like i should clarify why i did that in the first place so a couple of reasons one um mr lotion i had a conversation
11:13after that instructional subcommittee meeting and i had a lot of questions and he answered a lot of those questions one of the things that stood out to me though is that we keep talking about how a list of curriculum were vetted but at the end of the day there were only two that mr wilsham provided to me that were actually full core curriculum choices and mr had had confirmed that that in fact out of
11:38that list there were only two so to me that looks like an illusion of choice because you're only providing two and you ultimately chose to i'm not disagreeing with anybody's decision around those two but what i do want to go back to is the walker report has very specific recommendations and so i want to go back to what was the process leading to that what we have here are dates of times that folks met
12:04and for me that doesn't give me any information about how curriculum was chosen what criteria are we looking for in curriculum specifically what programs because now i've heard a couple of different things i've heard it's only for and i don't approve of using functioning labels to talk about autistic kids but we we have a severe subset of kids and that's where we're talking about using this and then we've
12:27also talked about using it in autism classrooms so which i need to know where this is going to be used because we can't be using a functional academics curriculum in all of our autism classrooms that's not an appropriate use of that type of curriculum but i don't have those answers the other reason why i made the motion to prefer it was because that at that regular meeting it had already gone for three hours
12:53not because we wanted to get out of there because we weren't getting out of there anyway but people tune out after a while and it's really important that the families of kids in those classrooms have that information as well and at that point you weren't going to get the engagement that you had or that you needed this was one item on a really full agenda and it wasn't going to get
13:15the attention that it deserved which is why i made the promotion to bring it back to the special ed subcommittee so we could have that conversation you know the fact that we're talking about having an approval on having an approval just be rubber stamps i mean we haven't even purchased it yet so what if folks hadn't approved that what if folks didn't want to bring it back what would we have done that now
13:37we're in a position where it looks like we're horrible people because we're not allowing teachers to have that time i want teachers to have that time my son could be in any one of your classrooms and that's what i want i want teachers to have the support that they need and the tools that they need to teach our kids but at the same time we need to be able to answer those questions it's the
13:56process that is the problem not so much the curriculum itself but we need to be able to ask questions about the curriculum to understand the process so just to clarify this the one page you're not reviewed the one pager that i wrote with the curriculum description of what we're requesting yes that was review but it didn't answer well it says the office of special education is requested to purchase k-12
14:18core curriculum for severe autism spectrum disorder and intellectually impaired populations but in our conversation you had said autism classrooms and so i had kept saying are you talking about just the severe classrooms yes but that's the piece that i'm like hey we're missing some of those answers because now that appeared very unclear when we had spoken and right but so the one pager that went out to all
14:40subcommittee members that was passed on to the full committee that's what it said right but then when you and i spoke you had said all the autism classrooms you had sent autism classrooms and maybe i'm speaking in generalities but this was what was put out to everyone that had an inconcrete information that said right this is what we're purchasing and this is who it's for but this is
15:00exactly why i wanted to be able to ask those questions because again that's not even the full piece of it that was one piece of the question that was not all of it all right so that's i'm not going to get hung up on that that was one piece of the question okay i just want to clarify for the opportunity absolutely if that's what it actually does i just have one more clarification jlmc
15:27we those minutes are not shared with school committee that is those are the that's part of the cba um it's an effort to collaborate with the manager management and it's a joint labor management committee where you have teachers administrators going through the process so they take on whatever it is in this case they look at the curriculum go through the process etcetera but that's not i i
15:56heard mr aguirre say we weren't invited to be on that committee you wouldn't be invited to be i just want to make sure we know right the the the role of that committee what it is and i wasn't invited to be i'm not part of that committee mr lotion is the one who co-chairs it with so it's management and you know a teacher says joint process where they go through that so we wouldn't have um
16:19we have teachers we have administrators that are going through that process we wouldn't it's not a you know like we have interview committees and we include all inclusive that will include all other um anybody that wants to be part of it so i just want to be clear on that that's part of their that's part of in the contract that's one of the things that was negotiated that we have joint labor management committees for
16:41different um that that are made up of different teams for different purposes my only comment is if you in working with them in whatever's in the contract would like to get school committee support on these things sometimes it makes it beneficial to say here's what the minutes show here's what happened there here's what the dialogue was i think the purpose of that is to collaborate get
17:02information and feedback and questions i can't tell you for the like me right now what questions were asked who was at the table who wasn't because i have zero information that's my point i'm not asking to be on the committee but we're not only not on the committee we weren't given any of the information and i've read minutes of all of those meetings in the past that i've i've received that have said
17:23extensive work that it would answer some of the questions potentially in my opinion mrs rodricks could have read it and maybe some of the questions that she has might have been answered because this has gone up we look at the timelines were way back it's the back up needed to be more that's all i'm saying we want to vote i have one vote my vote is going to be based on the
17:44information that's presented to me not because somebody else met 16 times and said they were going to do it that's not why i'm going to vote for anything so at this point we need to get some more we need to try to answer some of the questions i'm not trying to stop any of this stuff from going on but we need to look at it in the confines of the whole department that's
18:01so this fits right into the the first agenda item where we want to talk about the description of what the options were so i want to give mr lotion opportunity to answer some of mr roberts's questions and quite frankly i think it's a valid question how did we start off what other curriculums was there a ton of different curriculums what are the styles like amongst the curriculum just to give us some backup and then we
18:24can ask them whatever questions yep so we started the process uh by one pulling out to the other special education directors of mass urbans who have comparable size populations to see what they were using in their collect in their classrooms and whatnot the only one besides these two that we're presenting tonight were presented was edmark but we reached out to edmark to do their demos and get some materials
18:47and get some preface information they were non-responsive i don't know why um they literally just didn't respond we also had our cluster coordinators and our vcba's talk with their classroom staff to see what did they they have any ideas for any input on that end and it came back with similar results another one that was looked at was star but star is very similar to the current teach town platform that we have so we
19:11wouldn't want to be duplicative in what we bring in so in terms of the process on those those are what we pulled out between local districts who had similar size populations and then what we were looking for for internal recommendations and those what's what really came down to a few other folks put out things like reading mastery reading a to z or achieve but they were very much just in the area of like reading or
19:39english language arts which we needed something that is more expansive questions so um so the walker report had recommended that we have a set of criteria that we use to determine what we're looking for in a curriculum what criteria were we using to figure out what is it that we were looking for what were the means that they were doing yep so the top three needs we were looking for was one
20:09uh a highly one was a highly modified core curriculum that expanded all core content areas um the second piece was going to be ones that we're going to be able to span k-12 because originally when we went into this piece we really thought you know we looked at the the academic needs of both groups and we thought you know we're probably going to end up having one curriculum that's not how it actually
20:31played out because that really led to the teacher feedback um the third one was also to have especially at the secondary level a significant life skills and transition component which we know you know especially as kids get older and we're looking to work on levels of independence and to make sure that you know they're reaching their full potential we need a curriculum that was going to span those pieces as well
20:52so that our teachers had some guidance on where to go with this do we have um one of the other recommendations on there was that they were udl and light so those particular curriculum that you had again the two that were vetted and then ultimately were chosen how did you figure how did we assess with that uh i don't udl did not come up as an area to address within those two attainment we know is
21:31stylo fitzgerald is more aba based i don't know if we're going to have as much flexibility in that portion because it is more prescribed when we have kids taking a pre and a post test to find out exactly where they're at i mean udl of course is important to give our students multiple avenues for presentation for you know response and whatnot um you'd attain it like i said it undoubtedly is uh
21:56stylofit show might be a little bit heavier lift on that piece but um our teachers for for henry lord in particular really thought that that was going to be the best curriculum to meet thank you those needs so if we're following the recommendations from the walker report i just i want to know how are we then going to make sure that that piece is incorporated into that where's the flex how are we going to
22:17make sure that we have flexibility to incorporate representation and i think the flexibility is there i think it's more the oversight and the support right that when we're implementing a curriculum anywhere we need to ensure that our teachers are incorporating udl methodologies right that those pieces are putting into their instruction especially when we're observing and evaluating and looking how we support them
22:42given you know our past history with udl we've done a lot of work throughout this district to support those methods but they may need kind of a refresher coming into this year especially with two new curriculums and how to do this differently especially when it comes to transition and life skills but i think that's why we have some really good folks in place at our schools to help
23:00support this work and moving it forward and you know that's why we made our folks who are cluster coordinators at bcbas all a part of these previews to ensure that you know that this was something they recommended as well that they were going to be able to support the implementation in classrooms so that brings up a good point because we know across the country that we've been short
23:20staffed right that has been an issue everywhere and we are no different and we've talked about how a lot of our classrooms don't have special education teachers a lot of our classrooms don't have the power professionals that they need and again that is no fault of anybody here i want to make that super super clear how are you going to make sure that oversight is happening when everybody has already stretched so thin
23:42well i think one to the district's credit uh some of our folks in the back of the room here have done a fantastic job in recruiting and making sure that those positions are filled um our our supervisors did a heck of a job this year in the interview process in finding candidates to support those programs but i think on the opposite end of the spectrum there's no you know no tougher
24:02thing you can do to a new or initial teacher then not give them a curriculum to use in their classroom right because otherwise we're just sending them in there and say all right go teach good luck and and we all know it's not it's not kids enjoy right um this way you know we're at least for hopefully getting them the resources in place and we do have those support positions at every school
24:23fully staffed and ready to go to be able to support these people moving forward
24:34the um when you talk about at the beginning when we're using the term uh self-contained but you use another term substantially separate classrooms are those universally do they all look exactly the same or they what is the spectrum of what a substantial classroom for the populations so um for for asd in particular we have um which i agree with you on the names portion we've kind of we actually did reach out
25:09to staff at the end of this year to talk about naming conventions for next year because i don't think anybody likes them it's just they've never been changed so we did talk to staff about kind of readjusting these but there is our severe level typically our kids who are non-verbal we need a significant amount of modification and assistance throughout their day and we have our step up group
25:31who are anywhere from one to we'll say about three grade levels below um i'm absolutely below you know grade level expectations who also need some support in terms of behavioral and social skills then we have our high functioning kiddos who are typically at grade level but need a lot of social skill support in their day-to-day so our asd rooms are broken down into three different subgroups because they all look very
25:54different it would be very challenging to put all those kids in the same room and try and educate all at once and they do come with typically different staffing patterns to support the level of student in those rooms if you look at our community base typically those are our students who have been diagnosed with intellectual impairments but also have may have multiple disabilities
26:16not only you know in terms of cognitive but physical those rooms are like are typically on the smaller side due to one we usually have a lot of adults in those rooms because we have a lot of kids who have feeding physical support changing um but also just you know trying to keep that balance with adults and students of the world to keep that peace out uh if you look at
26:38our others in terms of our language base our emotional impairment are uh looking at studying that same 12 to 12 to one to two ratio of teacher to paraprofessional but typically our language base and our social emotional classrooms we're trying to keep them with the grade level content as much as possible we are looking at some groups using some of the wonders intervention kits for our
26:59language base and emotional impairments room for those kids who are below grade level but that's in a nutshell kind of what our breakdown looks like across the district so it just it was it's still a little bit confusing to me that it helps to explain it but i think in the agendas it kept on saying for some separate curriculum but in essence this is not what this is it's it's for the uh
27:21section of two specific areas of the sub separate so um i don't think there's anything wrong with with the terminology that you just used related to what it is you know regardless of what happens with it this is a curriculum for the asd population self contains because it i think it speaks to that that's one little section because i would be concerned about what are we doing for the rest of the
27:46sub separate classrooms as well as across all of special education and um to me it was just a little it's still a little confusing but i think you explained it yeah and this and this is one of the areas we prioritized looking at the welcome report and that the majority of our other classrooms should be accessing wonders through modifications like we said we did we do have a couple schools we've looked into
28:08the intervention kids from wonders because they do provide those modified materials from about one to three grade levels but we're trying to keep our kids as close to the core content curriculum as possible because that's where they're going to get assessed in one of the major differences we'll say between our severe level asd rooms and our community based rooms is that typically the
28:26majority of those students are mcas fault so they're accessing at a much at a different level um but at the same time we need that modified curriculum to really give our teachers those resources to show that these kiddos are making progress in their classrooms and through the content and and i think at the at the regular of the subcommittee we talked about not having basically anything so i'll still
28:52maintain that anything's better than what we had so definitely i think we're moving in the right direction but my line of question on that was when i look at the all of the tasks in the walker report over the years was the whole department included so this is just one piece but i think that needs to be made clear that we still have work to do in other areas whether it be
29:14what you're saying they should be following so when we present it if we present it as his what where our vision is for all of uh you know the special education students in the district this group is getting taken care of by this this one's getting taken so i'd feel more comfortable if we did a more comprehensive uh presentation about making sure that when we're not missing any group of
29:36students yep like we have behavior uh students that we having the curriculums or behavior plans and things that would make sense for us to know okay they're taking care of based on if their need is a behavioral if it's emotional this is how we're going to deal with it so to me as we went through the walker report and we haven't gotten an update recently but you have over the years i've said okay
29:59we're gonna making progress on that we stop this we're gonna regardless of what happens in the future i think we need to get a new update the strategic plans are most three years old already from when we started so that will be a task for for the upcoming slavery so that we kind of talked a little bit about too is the description of the evaluation process but if anybody has any questions more specifically on
30:25on that so i'll and just to know for you folks and i know it probably wasn't clear through here but the jlmc folks were invited to all of the all of the later meetings where we did all the previews as part of the selection process to give feedback along with teachers from from our school-based programs um in addition we probably ended up scheduling three to four more additional presentations just so we could get as
30:49many teacher feedback as possible i know like henry lord we definitely struggled at first but then we actually worked with dr broner to get them a presentation during the school day where they were all able to attend and really have their voice heard so you know it just took a little bit of flexibility on both sides but i'm very comfortable with the teacher steps that we got to really preview the curriculum
31:11along with the administrative presence do they have any any uh is it taped or is it a presentation yep maybe it's sending it to us on the after the meeting might help us to yeah just to see what they presented yep so we have questions that we have might be answered based on just watching the presentation but also recommend to send it to the full committee okay sure number two um i have questions about the
31:36curriculum itself okay so let's try and wrap up the evaluation process so you you took the several options met with folks at that point you recommended you know they recommended two and i don't think any didn't sound like any were thrown out they just the other one didn't even come they didn't respond we originally like we went into it initially we thought it was either going to be one or the other
32:03and our teachers advocated to move in the direction of doing the style of fitzgerald curriculum in canada eight and henry lord the remainder wanted to pursue attainment which we we thought you know really kind of spoke to the voice of the teachers uh we were wondering you know we even came back to the question to durfee of you know are you guys comfortable with just attainment you can you can do both but
32:24you just have to make sure that we order appropriately for both curriculums and they said no we think at this point attainment's going to meet the need across the board for both populations and k to aid at henry is all of them no other students that fit this criteria at other places it's awesomely elvis of eric is located which is a whole other conversation the um when you look at miss had mentioned this before about
32:57what is the mission of the um the system related to inclusion how do we get how do we maximize opportunities for inclusion amongst all of our asd population as well as others was that are we saying basically that because this is for the severe that that's not an inclusion option for any of those oh no no it's always an option it's always disgusting every team meeting and looking at kind of what is going to be
33:24the least restrictive for every student and for some students that's their entire day versus some students in certain portions but we're always you know we do a training at the beginning of every year for our team chairs and looking at what is the least restrictive option for students it's a portion we incorporate into just you know regular conversations as well to ensuring that you know we're not
33:45looking at this in terms of a box right and the kid has to fit in the box it's known we need to make sure that we're supporting students to meet their goals and needs moving forward and they're included as much as possible we just rephrase it because i'm not sure if we have a curriculum that's better than what we currently have would that that if it was successful with children would it be a an opportunity to
34:10improve those students to possibly get more inclusion than if we didn't have the curriculum as a as a benefit to a set curriculum where you were talking about data and the feedback and you know yeah i think anytime we're really working on student skills and really moving improving their skill set across the core curriculum opportunities for inclusion always increase i think that like i think as
34:33well a lot of things that play into that student's academic confidence as we're building that and their ability to really access the curriculum we're going to always really increase those opportunities naturally are you asking about the entry and exit points for using a curriculum because that's also one of the recommendations yeah somewhere in here or one of the documents you gave it talked about
34:55data collection i think mr defalco actually mentioned that at the meeting where you know not having the data that would back up what was why we're doing something or why the four of us are in the classroom i'm at a different level than she is than you are like so that you can differentiate a little better this is what i was recalling and i'm thinking that that sounds like a a desire to
35:19meet the kids where they're at but also improve them all at the same level which and therefore would create better opportunities if exactly when you i mean when you have a sub-separate classroom you're going to have kids at all different ability levels and to say i'm going to go into this classroom and teach everybody the same in my professional opinion it makes no sense right so that was one of the things she
35:40was talking about that pre and post assessment to see where kids are falling within the curriculum so they can make sure that they're meeting each kid where they're at and really pushing it forward as much as possible because you know johnny and sally might be at two different points but still be in the same classroom because of different strengths and areas of growth for themselves
36:00but that really i would say that pre and post assessment of where they fall on that is going to be extremely helpful to our teachers to be able to make sure that they're hitting kids on an individual level and moving them forward as quickly as they can so you want to are you have any questions on that you want to come to the recommendation yeah so we'll jump to number three that
36:23rep what the recommendation is and then we'll have further questions so obviously it's basically the same you're going to recommend these two programs yep so uh yeah for we're recommending styler fitzgerald for the k-8 classrooms over at henry board which is our severe autism classrooms and then attainment for our community-based classrooms which are students who have typically intellectual
36:44impairments or multiple disabilities k to 12 which falls down at spencer boarding cuss and derpy are we also using a teammate for the nine to twelve severe autism classrooms yes yep um when they evaluated it and they were looking at really the core curriculum as well as the life and transition skills um they just thought that attainments were more comprehensive and higher quality yeah go ahead and just miss fragrance
37:18we had talked about the criteria for choosing that critical we needed something that was going to be flexible for our students you also mentioned because of the very prescriptive nature of this particular curriculum that that might be tricky so i'm wondering what is our ability to modify that curriculum how do we differentiate that well i think it's when you're looking at let's say you know we know aba is done a
37:43lot in a one-to-one session or a small group it's really looking at one how we're a lot of our presentation for our students and then also you know we have to make sure that we're incorporating our students ieps until how and how they respond we know our students have all different strengths across the board and that's really one of the things in udl we need to make sure we're incorporating no matter what the
38:04curriculum is right and our teachers have that awareness as well as that they're aware that you know they can make those changes i think a lot of times our teachers at times get curriculum and think all right i have to follow this exactly the way it says but we know that that's not going to work for every student you really have to incorporate that into your instruction but that's why we have not only our
38:28special education supervisors as well as our vcba cluster coordinators and our school-based admin to make sure that support is there and that they're getting that feedback as well so i guess most of my questioning around that is so we can modify we can modify whatever we want right that's the reality okay but how does that impact i've heard people get really excited about the fact that we pull so much data
38:53from this particular curriculum how does that then impact the data because now you're changing the way that the curriculum is being presented you're changing probably supplementing with other things what does that look like certainly but i think that's what you have to note within the data right and that was there a change in presentation was there a change in selection right a lot of times when we look at aba based
39:14curriculum or methodologies right we're looking at fields and you know selection bases for students and at times we know for certain kiddos is going to have to be modified so i think that has to be noted within the data presentation right and i think a comprehensive data presentation isn't just graphs of outcomes right it's also the narrative that goes along with it and where does
39:37this what does this look like for johnny okay and said this might be the curriculum we're using but and this was the recommendation however due to we know where johnny's at this is what we this is the modification we made instead of a field of three we went down to a field of two or instead of verbal we said he's going to reply in pictures of utilizing their device just to make sure that teachers
39:58know that flexibility is there and you know that we have to be mindful of our kids needs right so i guess this is it's a technical question about the actual curriculum when it gives us that data when we're putting that stuff in when it's providing all these reports that are wonderful and lovely i love you know a good set of data but does it have room for us to account for all of that yeah a
40:26lot of it's going to be maintained by our our classroom staffs so a lot of it's going to be their input and their adjustments and they're going to be able to know where they're going to make those modifications a lot of it's going to be through our internal mechanisms not necessarily through what they have here and we've had some discussion with our vcbas on what does this look like and their
40:49to their credit and um this is you know liking what bcba skill set um they want the most accurate data possible oh yeah you know they don't want something to appear one way and really be another because that doesn't help anyone right so but that was one of the things that people were really excited about about this particular curriculum but it sounds like that's not a piece that we're necessarily even using
41:13we know it has to be accurate especially if the kid is like we said we're not going to try and fit a square back into a round hole right because that doesn't help anybody moving forward okay um you brought up a good point when you said that eba is usually done one-on-one small group right one-on-one is typically where you see a lot of the discrete trials happening can be done in small group but it's definitely coming
41:37out so how are we how are we doing that in the classroom of say 8-12 kids i think we're looking at need but we're also looking at breaking down that classroom by utilizing the staff in there you know and when we're looking at three steps right yep three sometimes four sometimes five depending on student need right and typically our students who have one-to-ones are doing you know one-to-one aba session as it is but
42:04we're making sure that our powers are trained and that they're able to facilitate those small groups and still an aba methodology that they're able to carry on instruction and once their teacher has seen them as well and maybe through guided practice it may be guiding them through some independent practice but that we're kind of maintaining that level of instruction utilizing the
42:23curriculum so that they're able to keep kids moving throughout the content and reinforcing skills as well so basically if i'm setting this up we have say four adults and all of us are students and so each of you is working with one of us at a minimum but if it's a if it's classroom of eight to twelve it's more like two to three on average and they're trying to facilitate those small groups with those students
42:47typically they will try and look to group kids by similar needs and abilities um but they're going to really look to break down that classroom so that we're highly utilizing staff i think one of our our biggest really positive outcomes of adding in our bcbas and cluster coordinators has actually been the paraprofessional pde that's that's resulted in it they have sorry the power pd that's resulted in it
43:12they've really taken a hands-on approach in building our paraprofessional skills to make sure that we're having high functioning classrooms and that our folks are being used to their highest capacity i think that was one area in past we fell a little short and that we didn't necessarily have the staff on hand to provide that pd but now they're really getting a high level of attention
43:33on pretty much a weekly basis to make sure we're building their skill sets and they're able to meet the needs of the kids in the district so that that was a lot of what that where my question was so if we have parents that are in the classroom and they're working with kids how are we ensuring that they have the support that they need to be able to actually implement that
43:54it's all fine and good that we have it you know great we can do all these things but is it feasible in order to make it happen and that was one of the pieces in the walker report that said you know we weren't doing a good job of developing our paraprofessionals which is why that was one of the components i was so stuck on for our bcbas and cluster coordinators
44:13because we needed to make sure that we were really utilizing that group to the best of their ability and we weren't but i think that's made a lot of gains over the past two to three years i think like our exemplary right now is up at the high school our bcba up there in terms of the way she's leveraged technology coming out of the pandemic and our communication to those folks has been absolutely fantastic and
44:34through our bcba cluster coordinator meetings that they have now on a monthly basis a lot of those practices are seeing popping up in other schools which is great to see because now they have a goal you know that they're able to collaborate and bounce ideas off as well so those folks are meeting monthly and how often are they actually meaning to support your coach in paris yeah weekly not only do they
44:54have formalized media but they're going into classrooms as well to model and you know help kind of facilitate within the world i want to be clear this is not a i gotcha kind of questioning right that's not my style that's not how i roll so to anyone that thinks that that's what i'm trying to do that is not at all what i'm trying to do i just get excited when i'm
45:13talking about it i i know you too i envision my son being in these classrooms and so when i envision that that's where my questions come from they don't come from i don't i don't like what you're doing or i don't trust what you're doing or don't trust me as an educator that is not true at all what i want to know if are these questions so that way i would feel comfortable sending my son in
45:36right that's why i'm asking so by no means do i ever want anybody to feel like i'm asking a gajillion questions i made up that number but it is by no means a i got you on something and you said the perfect reason why most people get involved in school companies right we want to make sure we have the best out there for all our kids in the city
45:55and mike is that middle of a road kit right and i use him as an example that if i wouldn't feel comfortable putting my baby into a classroom then how can i expect other people to feel confident about that right if i don't want to then you know that's not okay so hence all my line of questioning um so for doing a lot of this small group one-on-one how are we making sure that
46:19our kids can then take those skills that they're getting from that curriculum and generalizing those so and you know for that piece is that one in those classrooms we're not doing aba all day long right that's honestly that's my concern and we've had that question because we've had we've had that discussion because we've had we have ada as a as a social behavioral component but and now we have it as
46:40an academic piece so this becomes an intensive aba style program yeah but i'll say this for for our classrooms there they do really an incredible job and that they're looking to really still achieve that balance throughout the day and for example you know like to look at the elementary room right to make sure to make sure that morning meeting is still happening in a way that is not necessarily apa driven right but
47:03that's a common general like classroom practice that they're carrying over there that they're putting in the account proper modifications and accommodations but they're still having that time to generalize skills to be up in front of their peers at times when we know that they're you know they're doing the weather they're doing the date all those pieces still happening and those pieces are still integrated throughout
47:22the day not only in their their normal classroom but also through inclusion opportunities and then also through a lot of their lectures as well so they're not you know the last thing we want is for not to produce well-rounded students i personally think if you're doing aba all day long you don't get that opportunity i know there's a lot of people out there who disagree with me right we have multiple
47:48ends of the spectrum on this conversation but you have to give kids the opportunity to generalize um and i and i hate this term because if you don't you create robots but they can only do it in one area at one time in one setting and that doesn't do any good well we're developing those splinter skills right like we can do it here i can't do it at home over there i can't
48:09do it in pe which doesn't help anybody and that also doesn't so we've talked about inclusion at nauseam that also doesn't teach our allegedly neurotypical kids how to engage with our neurodivergent kids which is a disservice to them as well a huge disservice so how do we then incorporate more of those opportunities that are more natural because i've seen it done before in some of our schools where we
48:34have separate programming completely for things like a christmas concert or a holiday concert for school plays where our asc classrooms are completely separated from the general population so i think you know when i first entered the district we still had something else and they caught me off guard because i would hear knows i said wait a second what what's going on yeah like that's just it's just it's
48:57just not okay there's no reason to have it i think at this point we've come to a point where we're not having any of those anymore because i think folks have a better awareness of inclusion and its importance and why we need to really make these be a more inclusive environment i think like you said before one of our constant conversations with our team chairs with our cluster coordinators
49:18with our principals is how can we become less restricted i think a great example was that really the school committee took to another level earlier this year was increasing our staffing for our language-based classrooms you know we put some floaters out there to really be able to increase support in schools and build upon that piece um but you know you guys gave the feedback and we came
49:39back and really added them across the board for now there's support in the classroom but to make sure that those inclusion opportunities were consistent that our kids could get into classrooms that they still felt the support they needed to move it forward and i think you know the same thinking goes along to every program and i think you know a lot of times folks struggle with that thought because if
50:01you're not if you haven't been around disability you're not used to it you don't know how to interact you don't know what to do sometimes you get a little anxiety of how this is going to work but as long as the support is there and they're aware of what's going on and how to work with it i think it's more than feasible and i think our folks have done a really good job over the past couple
50:18years especially with the constraints we had by covin um of keeping kids moving forward in that direction and really building upon it's the other reason for why i have all of this successful questioning because we have had you know two years where two and a half years where our kids have really been separated and it's been necessary right like we really haven't had another option and so my fear with that is
50:43are we heading in that direction with kind of creating this fully intensive aba type program because that's that's essentially what that looks like yeah no i think when i whenever i probably said this way too many times especially those people in the back right um much like what you're saying of creating that aba program is like inclusion has to look different for everybody right the myth is that it's 100
51:07inclusion or nothing is doesn't exist right because you know even as we do it as an adult this time as adults as time as adults we withdraw right and there's other times we're around everybody and we want to be a part of everybody and include but it's the same for kids um and i don't think we can we can't put kids in the same room all day long not having their opportunities with their peers it's a
51:30disservice to them well we have done that and that's why i i was nervous and nervous about what things look like because we absolutely have done that and we've done it recently pre-covered and then covet i'm taking that out of the equation because our kids have been separated but again like there's they've all been separated that's a whole different conversation you know those are the things that i worry about
51:54because i'm not just pulling those things out of thin air you know they've happened in this district and they've happened very recently so i want to make sure that that's not the direction we're heading in by kind of creating this you know all intensive ada program no it's just to make sure that these folks have a consistent core curriculum that they can utilize within their classrooms yeah
52:14and i want to be clear i'm not saying that that was the intent about choosing this particular curriculum it wasn't like we're gonna pick this and now we're gonna keep all the kids up that's i know that wasn't the case i just want to be mindful that this is kind of what we're creating this really intensive type program so i would want to know what are the things that we're doing you mentioned one
52:34meeting you know i'm not asking for you to give me all those answers right now but if you can ask folks what are the things that we're doing throughout the day that helps support our kids being included in the general culture of the school right and that's going to look different lord it looks different it's important and you know all of that but i want to those are the things that i want to know
52:55what are we doing to make it look different for our kids and then there's my last question there's a big piece obviously in the curriculum and obviously ada about reinforcers what are we using for reinforcers for this particular program so i think it definitely varies it varies for student to student um you know as i've advocated in past we have to be really careful in what we're using to reinforce students it
53:27also has to be a conversation with their parents right because i know from my own child i would i honestly wouldn't want them reinforced by food because i think it becomes well-adapted so it does become harmful and so that's a piece that there are two things that i worry about yeah what did you say you said food as a result um using food and with folding sensory breaks yep well sensory breaks are necessary yeah
53:56they are necessary but i've also seen them used as a reinforcer we're going to take an extra break if you do and that's a that's a very tricky balance to keep because i think then it loses its intent with the student right right and i don't think kids should be working towards those they should they're based on need not based on did you complete the math work but i'm saying that i've i've seen it happen
54:26this whole year where we're using brakes as a reinforcer brakes that are built into a kid's iep sensory breaks are just breaks in general sensory breaks can you ask what do you mean by that so we'll have kids so i'm thinking of a couple of kids that i work with that will have them they'll go out in the hall and they will do wall push-ups or they will use a center room that their particular school
54:58building has it um or they will um they have a specific snack that they'll use like crunchy pretzels or super sour lemonade things like that that give whatever input the kid typically would need to kind of either raise or decrease their energy level to match the energy that's needed for that particular activity because you know at pe you don't want a kid who's like really down and really
55:21lethargic right you want that kid kind of pepped up it might be doing something that's more activating before that we're going to do that before we head into that or if we have to sit down and do 25 math problems it might be something that's more common i don't know any kid that doesn't need that before getting into math but yeah i think that's a discussion to have with a lot of our bcba's customer
55:45coordinators i'm going to talk about what is the reinforcement looking like across the board your school and also to make sure that we're having kind of those key touch points happen up discussing it with parents making sure they're comfortable with it well yes and for our kids what we've said to them as well is that preference assessments need to be done like you can't just say hey you're going
56:05to be reinforced by this today good luck like you actually need to see what their preferences are prior to developing any sort of reinforcement program in order to move forward with him but that our guidance i think since i've been here for for reinforces is that we need to actually conduct an assessment of what what motivates this child and again i'm asking the question because i've seen it happen so
56:30i'm putting it out there that that's why i want to know what are we actually using for reinforcers and again i know every kid what's reinforcing for me is not necessarily forcing for you so i get that completely and some of our kids don't respond to reinforcers right you can sticker chart them to death it's not going to matter ain't gonna happen right i got i have one of those two i have another one that
56:53if you give her you know half a sticker she's like i anything you want right and they're all that's how kids are right that's how adults are so i want to make sure that what we're using is based on on things that are not food related because i agree i think that's making that blanket statement that i think that's really dangerous when we start doing that especially for our kids with um
57:18uh selective eating issues and you know we're running into it's like an eating disorder in the making and so i've got a lot of concerns about that piece but also making sure that we're not using sensory breaks as a mode of reinforcement yeah especially if they're already a part of that students right especially if they're part of that kids we've already identified this as a need
57:41we can't be using it as a reinforcement yeah that's like we're not going to use this collaboration you can't use the bathroom if you do this then you can go to bed you can't do that right so we talked about sensory breaks our biological need same thing as like go to the bathroom if you complete three math problems kevin you can have you can take a breath it's essentially like what we're saying
58:03i personally would pass out of them as a recommendation but if that if if that's accurate that it is happening i think that's a serious issue to to look at if if it's in somebody's iep as mr said and they're using that in an inappropriate way just food for thought oh yeah you know check it out because the evidence is that she's saying she's seen it happen that you've heard it happened whatever in the
58:28current year that i think deserves a response at some point oh yeah offline with your staff to say here's what the updates are we can't be doing this we have a cluster coordinating bcba maybe that thursday and i never bring things up if i only hear them once um because you know those are individual things when i hear them a few times yeah that's when i go hey wait a minute we
58:50have a bit of a pattern there and that i mean like you said that causes confusion for the kid too you know oh i get this at some times but other times i have to work for it it doesn't make sense right um for now i think that's all i choose miss larry um that's much i think just moving forward uh i think we just maybe can come up with a plan
59:15say we have other issues with the special education alternative curriculum we're going to bring it back to the curriculum subcommittee and we're going to bring it back to the this committee so i think just moving forward maybe we can can we combine committees is this so is that that is this such a big beast that maybe the subcommittees can be i don't think it was an issue of um i
59:46think we should have brought it to the to this committee okay we didn't because yes here because of timing so moving forward we need to be better planned so that we don't get to this point but we brought it to a committee because it really curriculum can fit in under either one and that's the meeting that was set up right in the time table that's not what would have been done right in the
1:00:11timetable here when we did ask for the the meeting times and i mean it did go right i believe may 27th i can't even open it it doesn't matter right now may 23rd so it was right up until the subcommittee the curriculum subcommittee meeting and i respect all the work that was done um but uh i yield you said one month of course i did um so two things on that
1:00:39yeah we went up right until the end um and that's why it came late but it would be helpful if we knew that that process was happening and had regular updates along the way so that way we could ask some like hey what are we doing or even that criteria question right like what are the criteria we're using to look at a curriculum okay great go forks if we're asking those questions
1:01:01after the fact then again you look like these awful people or i look like the awful person that comes that let's face it that comes in at the end and asks all these questions and it's like sorry you put all of this on hold you know you made this big mess of things but it's like hey if we had some of this information ahead of time so it wasn't in the walker update i never saw anything
1:01:23i think it was like a process is going ongoing i think one of them was canceled you know yeah when uh point in time was cancelled because but you know but i think to to miss roderick's point we have to do a better job of planning where we're at with uh relative to the need like i think the need that was described was that we need the materials in order to get the training when the
1:01:48people are available or something like that like that right now it's one of them it's to get the materials in time from the start of the school year because we got we got i mean like we said in some of these pieces we got a little held hostage by the vendor we waited a while for their feedback for the invoices um and then i think literally like the day after they sent
1:02:06an email like hey are you going to submit your invoice soon because we're this far backed up which you know we said we met with you how many times you really should have told us this quite a bit earlier but but moving forward now if we look at the timeline we're in july like we're not meeting again as a full body until july unless we have a specialty but i think that's
1:02:30just based on what he's saying it's probably going to be like cutting a little close right the way that i see it so i think we should look into um i've been on this committee a long time and we have different ways to to get stuff approved without having a full committee meeting over it such as if it's a if it's an emergency something that's really time sensitive superintendent can send us a voice
1:02:53ask the chair to just send out something to say oh you'll pull the members i'm sure everybody's going to support it so that we can get this purchase tomorrow versus waiting until july 13th and then kick the can down the road assuming that's the case but at the same time i think that we looking at the number it said 97 000 is for these two curriculums but 275 000 was set aside yeah what is
1:03:20in what is the plan for that other so it was the arp grant which we have two years to spend uh that was allocated uh first the other pieces i mentioned uh the friday is that when we're looking at a social skills curriculum um that we do need something really that's going to be span the needs of all all the district from these classrooms to are inclusion based that it's going to be comprehensive
1:03:46because right because so especially with social skills it's going to have to be something that's transferable across all settings so like purchasing different curriculums for different types of students i think is a waste of time for that piece we're looking at and we talked about feedback from different populations specifically to see what has worked and what has not worked in terms of social skills
1:04:10instruction but i think we're going to have to collaborate with our school adjustment counselors as well as our teachers our administrators so that's guys going to be a lot much larger lift for the district but that's one of the things that's prioritized and especially for social skills curriculum there's going to be a lot of training across the board to make sure that folks really have the skills to be able to
1:04:32teach this within schools and really really reinforce with students across environments the other piece that we are potentially looking at within the next month or two is looking at additional intervention kits uh through wonders for some of our sub-separate classrooms to help them bridge the gap a little bit between wonders core and where we have some students in those classrooms the other pieces i think
1:05:01looking at our platforms just to see if they're meeting the need uh something that should be reviewed over the next year and in addition i really want to see how our new sel curriculum would play out in terms of our emotional impairment classrooms first before we made any of the decisions to pursue anything else um and then looking at the assessment piece with that but i think you know
1:05:28this was about a hundred thousand we could spend undoubtedly up to 175 on a social skills curriculum especially if we look at something uh k through 12.
1:05:38and yes we're not ready for that yes no that's going to be that's going to be teased out and tease down through this this next school year but it's going to be probably a lengthy process to look at that because i know in terms of social skills curriculum we have a lot of different options that's the stuff i get really excited about there you go because it's and it's needed tremendously especially after the way kids
1:06:00came back after go i think we have a lot of skill gaps in those areas across the board um and they're going to need some high quality instructions so when are you going to stop that's that's going to be over this this conference that's what i would anticipate the remainder of those funds by being spent on so i'd like to get just so we avoid what we have in here
1:06:26or a written solid plan or what that means so it can just be as simple as we're not going to deal with this until the end of the year then you're going to start looking at things in such and such a time so that for the remaining funds correct so that we can know i mean it says here there's 175 000 like are we going to service you know our kids special education with this
1:06:48that sounds like a mm-hmm you know why but when i look at this 275 in opera funds or essence for special education children i'm looking at where's the other 175 000 i'm going to go for these kids so what mr losch is talking about was probably a combination of both and maybe used on something else but i'm looking at this as this 175 000 worth of something else that we can do so if i'm
1:07:13a practitioner working as a principal or school vcba or whoever and i don't know that we have 175 000 available funds to provide more services better services i'm not going to come up with it but i think everybody that works in the population should know we have money what do we think we need because we do have money thankfully so i'd like to get that at some point you
1:07:35know in a one-pager but i also want to schedule another meeting of this committee over the summer when it's convenient for everyone to talk about some of the issues we just touched on self-contained substantially separate classrooms across the whole continuum of the district and what are we doing in all of those cases sort of like a an update doesn't have to be totally extensive but just so the
1:07:59committee knows what we have across all schools as well as the other topic would be inclusion we keep talking about it we keep talking about it i think we need to put pen to paper and say this is our mission about inclusion what it is what it's not like as mr loh said people have all different opinions but as a district where are we at with what is our mission for this and
1:08:21let's see where everybody stands on it but i'd like to schedule that maybe july you know early august assuming people are around um i do think the more we get on paper we're going to be held accountable you're going to be held accountable everybody can hold us accountable to having these meetings and doing what we need to do anything else yeah there was a comment made at the instructional subcommittee about
1:08:48how new teachers don't know how to write by peoples and so they kind of pull them like i think the phrasing was they kind of pull them out of thin air or nowhere how do they learn how to write iep goals because that worries me we hire a lot of new teachers they don't want to write iep goals how are we teaching them so our our supervisors meet with schools on a monthly basis
1:09:13they have a lot of time in the contract which they make themselves available for that and as well as the team chair is available for that as well um and they do do extensive work the comments one on one yeah no well i think it's just more that they don't know how to do it that needs a guide point to do it i think deb was referring to that this curriculum is
1:09:30going to help them do that because it has that resource but i think this is a team chair she'll tell you she probably spends a considerable amount of time hopefully only in the beginning of the school year right but certainly as people get hired because other time as well and i would argue that we all need help with that along the way we fall into patterns and we need to train absolutely
1:09:53and it's it's it's also it's challenge it's one of those challenging things not to fall into that habit you know these are the numbers i use and it's not as individualized as it could be uh but it needs to be like we've also brought in um a couple of people we would really call specialists um what's allen's last name do you remember who allan bloom who um really like he's like
1:10:16he's like the iep guru of massachusetts um who's coming and done professional development um both for teachers and team chairs really to help them move their practice forward um and break down really the science of kind of like writing an iep um and he's been fantastic he he's presented one time this year he's certainly available to come back so he probably won't the question the comment was made and so
1:10:42it stuck out to me because it was you know teachers don't know how to write them and they're kind of pulling maybe sort of like oh oh boy yeah i think it's an area in terms of teacher development especially for special ed teachers that they get one person and maybe some reinforced reinforcement going along the way that means a little bit more more time spent clinical psych students get one course
1:11:06in writing a treatment plan and they don't get practice and writing goals but yet that's 90 well not nine percent but it's ninety percent of their paperwork are right in those schools but they get one force and very little practice so no i it's complicated so that's why it stuck out and i think she meant she meant it in a positive way i think though what i took that was that the teacher
1:11:30that doesn't understand how to write it has to now reach out to you to the team just everybody else to try to get and then ultimately it all gets approved anyway because people look at it better i think it was more like here's a better starting point yeah i don't think anybody wants to just check the box no you know all of that so anything else so i'd entertain a motion to approve
1:11:53with an emergency goal of the members if anybody felt so motioned made by ms larabee second by mr roderick's to approve positively with an emergency calling other members so we can order the materials as soon as possible please call the road miss dragon yes miss laravey yes mr rodriguez yes thank you very much anything on the new business i had just one uh you know comment slash question so mr
1:12:33losch this will be his last subcommittee meeting i want to thank you for your service here to the district we do appreciate it um knowing that you'll be moving on madame superintendent can you just tell us where we're at with are we posting for miss deloshes are we already posted do you need anything from the committee or the school committee related to that um we actually just had this
1:12:52conversation we met today as a senior staff team so we are going to post it this week um we're going to put an interview team together we'll reach out to people we'll get a cross-section of folks throughout the district so that we can start generate a pool and then get some people on board so that will be posted this week and mr loch is time like you your time was close between meetings july 15th you know
1:13:21whatever that was so i think if if this goes through if i'm just playing it out and it gets approved post that's up to you guys whether you know you're at the last meeting or not yeah i've told the story yeah whatever's needed i'm just saying if we do it this way i don't necessarily think exactly we have to extend anything but with that being said i want to thank you again for
1:13:39your service to the district we do appreciate it thank you would that take a motion to adjourn so made seconded all in favor heights i so voted thank you very much everyone thank you have a great day