The chapter for Arizona Online Instruction Issued 9-2024 has been updated and posted on the School Finance webpage under School Finance Guidelines & Manuals . The updated manual provides guidance on reporting student membership data for Arizona Online Instruction (AOI) programs. The guidance includes student Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) calculation and documentation requirements.

This chapter is posted under the accordion titled “AOI Participation.”

If you have questions, you can create a HelpDesk ticket for the School Finance Analyst Team.
 

What is the Summer 2024 Farm Fresh Challenge? 

The Summer 2024 Farm Fresh Challenge is an HNS initiative designed to empower CNP operators to cultivate excitement around fresh and locally sourced foods. Participating operators must complete challenges that promote participants' tasting, teaching, and connection to foods local to Arizona within the month of June.

What are the Summer 2024 Farm Fresh Challenge rules?

Participants of the Farm Fresh Challenge completed all TASTE, TEACH, and CONNECT activities for the challenge to be considered complete. 

• TASTE Arizona: Serve a minimum of three locally-sourced meal components (e.g., grain, dairy, fresh fruits or vegetables, eggs, or meat) during the week of your challenge to encourage your community to eat fresh, locally grown food.
• TEACH Arizona: Host a minimum of two educational activities during the week of your challenge. These educational activities included taste-testing local products, virtual or in-person field trips to local farms or farmers’ markets, inviting a farmer to visit your meal service, pen-pal programs with farmers, reading an Arizona agriculture-based book, virtual or in-person garden-based learning activities, or educational lessons focused on Arizona foods and agriculture.
• CONNECT Arizona: Share a minimum of one promotional material with your community that highlights your challenge activities (e.g., social media post, newspaper feature, newsletter, school website feature, posters or banners, etc.). Use #AZF2S or #FarmFreshAZ to expand the reach of your promotional efforts on social media!

Celebrate our Summer 2024 Awardees!

The following entities completed all TASTE, TEACH, and CONNECT activities during the month of June and were awarded the Gold tier! These sites met the minimum criteria of procuring three local menu items, hosting two educational activities, promoting the challenge, and went above and beyond by incorporating at least two additional hard-to-reach local food items in their menus.
Congratulations to our awardees!

• Humboldt Unified School District
• Madison Elementary School District
• Osborn School District
• Tucson Unified School District
• Washington Elementary School District

We look forward to seeing you participate in future challenges and how your participants TASTE, TEACH, and CONNECT with Arizona grown foods!

If you need any assistance throughout the challenge, please email [email protected].   

The State Educational Agency Communication Disability Council (SEACDC) is made up of SLP contacts from various state departments of education across the United States. The Arizona Department of Education, Exceptional Student Services is represented in this council. The SEACDC is hosting a free, virtual School-Based Speech-Language Pathology Symposium on Oct 17–18, 2024.

The symposium will cover various topics from national-level presenters who have graciously volunteered their time to provide state-of-the-art information relevant to school-based practice.  SEACDC is not an American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) continuing education (CE) provider. However, a certificate of attendance for professional development hours will be generated for each session attended. These will be accepted for renewal of ASHA CCC. SLPs do not need to be ASHA members to attend. These sessions will not be recorded. Please share this with your speech-language pathologists. Flyer may be found here.

Thursday, October 17, 2024, 10:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m. (1:00–5:00 p.m. EST)

Session 1 - Inclusive Preschool Services - Stephanie Bear

Session 2 - Multilingual Learners - Hunter Smith 
Session 3 - Speech Sound Production - Kelly Farquharson

Session 4 - IDEA and Eligibility Determination - Angie Neal

Friday, October 18, 2024, 10:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m. (1:00–5:00 p.m. EST)

Session 1 - Collaborative Goal Writing - Charity Avery & Amy Goddard 

Session 2 - The Continuum of Services and LRE - Tiffany White 

Session 3 - Feeding and Swallowing - Kristen West 

Session 4 - Development Language Disorder (DLD) - Katharine Radville and Tim Deluca

Register for the School-Based SLP Symposium.

Special Education Directors,

We invite all educators to our upcoming free virtual professional learning series on Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

This series is an excellent opportunity to deepen your understanding of UDL principles and how they can be applied to create more inclusive, accessible learning environments for all students.

These virtual sessions will focus on providing practical strategies that can be implemented across diverse classroom settings, supporting the success of all learners. We encourage your schools to take advantage of these no-cost virtual learning sessions to deepen knowledge and understanding and enhance instructional practices to ensure every student succeeds.

The registration links are in the attached PDF flyer or on the following website: ADE UDL Virtual Sessions for September-November.

Thank you for your continued dedication to fostering inclusionary education. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact the facilitator at [email protected].

We look forward to your participation!

Special Education Directors, 

We are pleased to present “A Deep Dive into Speech Sound Disorders: Intervention Only” with Amy Graham, CCC-SLP. Too often, professional development for speech-language pathologists (SLPs) covers everything but intervention. In this full-day course, school-based SLPs will learn how to provide effective intervention for articulation errors and motor, speech, and phonological disorders. 

“A Deep Dive into Speech Sound Disorders: Intervention Only”  

Date:               Friday, October 11, 2024 

Time:               8:30 a.m.−4:30 p.m. 

Fee:                 Free (Space is limited, and lunch is on your own.) 

Where:            HELIOS Education Foundation 

Address:          4747 North 32nd St. Phoenix, AZ 85018 

About Amy Graham, CCC-SLP: Amy is a speech-language pathologist, an international speaker, a frequent podcast guest, and a creator of speech therapy resources for SLPs who treat speech sound disorders.  

Register for A Deep Dive into Speech Sound Disorders. 

Please note that each district/charter is limited to sending no more than 10 speech-language pathologists to this workshop.

If you have questions about this event, please email the ESS Recruitment and Retention Inbox.

Payment 4 will be based on data captured that is passing integrity and generating ADM in AzEDS. There is no option for districts to be paid on prior year data, or for charters to be paid on estimated counts. Actual data in AzEDS will be used to calculate ADM for Payment 4.

Please ensure data is reconciled and free of integrity errors prior to the data capture date. Review the following reports in AzEDS:

• INTEG15 – ensure data is free and clear of membership ADM Integrity errors
• STUD10 – validate all students are listed in AzEDS
• ADM15 – ensure all students expected to generate funding are indicated as fundable
• ADM20, SPED20, and EL20 – ensure ADM amounts for each ADM type 

Important Note: FY25 Calendars need to be submitted, approved, and certified for ADM and funding to be generated.

FY 2025 Monthly Payment and AzEDS Processing Schedule

If additional assistance is needed, please submit a HelpDesk ticket.

BUDG-25 reports for all school districts have been posted to the School Finance website.  FY 2024 Statewide Recalculation (SRC) BUDG-25 reports have been calculated using the FY 2024 Statewide Recalculation (SRC) BSA-55 information.

• District BUDG-25 reports are available to download from this School Finance website. For further instructions on how to navigate the website, please view this Hot Topic.

• District BUDG-75 reports are available to download from the School Finance website:
  • First, select a school district and then click “Go!”
  • Next, click “Switch to Budgets” from the top right corner of the menu bar and then click “Reports” from the middle of the menu bar.
  • Finally, select fiscal year 2023 and then click “Go!”. The BUDG-75 report will appear.
  • Please note that School Finance has not yet run FY24 BUDG-75 reports.

• District BSA-55 reports are available to download from the School Finance website:
  • First, select a school district and then click “View Reports”
  • Next, scroll down the page to the “School District Reports” section.
  • Finally, click the SRC “PDF” button. The SRC BSA-55 report will appear.

Please contact the Budget Team ([email protected]) if you have any questions.

For immediate release: September 5, 2024
Contact: [email protected]
 

Horne expands statewide school safety partnership

Off Duty Management efforts equal more officers

PHOENIX - State schools superintendent Tom Horne has extended the Department of Education’s agreement with Off Duty Management through 2026 at multiple schools in six counties as part of Horne’s goal to make sure students, educators and staff are protected by armed and uniformed School Safety Officers.

Last October, Horne announced the partnership with Off Duty Management to facilitate the placement of armed, uniformed police officers in school campus officer positions despite an ongoing shortage of police officers in many communities.

Sixty districts or charters in Maricopa County will benefit from this program. Schools in Apache, Cochise, Pima, Pinal and Yavapai counties will also receive added staffing.

Horne stated, “The safety of school campuses is a priority for my administration. If some armed maniac should try to invade a school, the most effective response is to have well-trained armed law enforcement officers to protect everyone on campus. Our partnership with Off Duty Management is a vital part of ensuring safety. It is proving to be a successful, effective public-private partnership and the first of its kind in the nation.”

Mike Kurtenbach, Arizona Department of Education’s Director of School Safety, added, “This agreement with Off Duty Management is a complement to the School Resource Officer program and illustrates how police officers who work as School Safety Officers also are trusted role models for students, which brings a sense of safety to the school campus.”

Off Duty Management was founded by former law enforcement officers designed to support law enforcement initiatives. The company works directly with local law enforcement agencies and school districts to fill vacant School Safety Officer positions. Off Duty Management’s OfficerTRAK® software and mobile app make it easy for officers to schedule an off-duty job opportunity as a School Safety Officer at various schools in participating Arizona school districts.

Kurtenbach added, “By working with law enforcement agencies utilizing the Off Duty Management solution, an off-duty officer from one jurisdiction can elect to work in a school within the jurisdiction of another law enforcement agency. With this innovation, an officer can be provided to a school even if the community where that school is located has a shortage of its own officers. Cross-jurisdictional sharing of resources makes perfect sense to use this strategy to protect children and others in schools. More than 700 officers are trained and eligible for School Safety Officer assignments.”

###

School Finance has completed the FY24 Statewide Recalculation (SRC). Please view the FY24 SRC BSA-55 and corresponding BSA-64 reports on the School Finance website to review these adjustments.
 

The SRC adjustments include specific adjustments for CTEDs regarding 9th grade funding and continuing education (13th grade) funding. These two adjustments are included in the Adjustment Base Support Level (BSL) on the BSA-55 reports.
 

For more information regarding these, please review the following spreadsheets:

•   CTED 9th Grade Funding Adjustment for FY24 SRC
•   CTED Continuing Education (13th Grade) Funding Adjustment for FY24 SRC
   

If you have any questions, please contact the School Finance Payment Team at [email protected].
 

Thank you!

The FY2024 Statewide Recalculation has been completed. Please review your Statewide Recalculation adjustment through your FY2024 SRC BSA-64 report found on the School Finance Reports website.

Positive SRC Adjustments will be included in the FY2025 September payment as a lump sum adjustment to the FY2025 Equalization as shown on the BSA-64 report for the September 23, 2024 state aid payment.

Negative SRC Adjustments will be included in the FY2025 September payment as an adjustment to FY2025 Equalization as shown on the BS-A64 report for the September 23, 2024 state aid payment and will be taken over the entire fiscal year; 3/12ths will be taken in September and 1/12th each payment thereafter.

Pursuant to A.R.S § 15-915, hardship requests are available. Please complete the Hardship Application and submit to [email protected] by 9/30/2024.

With the hardship application, a minimum of 75% must be adjusted in FY24 and 25% will be adjusted in FY25. Adjustments will begin with the September payment. Please include all questions regarding these adjustments in your e-mail with the completed form attached. Exceptions for severe scenarios may be made.

Questions or concerns regarding the recalculated ADM/SPED should be submitted through a Help Desk School Finance Account Analyst Support Request.

Please see Guidelines for Requesting Prior Year Corrections to State Aid or Budget Capacity (ARS § 15-915)