Special Education Directors,

It has been two years since ADE conducted the 2021 Instructional Accommodations Survey, a biennial inquiry that has informed ADE of accommodation trends since 2015. The information collected from the survey assists in planning presentations and training for the field. We invite you and other personnel, including both general and special educators, related service providers, as well as support staff, who provide instruction for students with disabilities to take a few minutes to respond to this year’s survey.

2023 ADE Accommodations Survey

This survey is intended for both general education and special education teachers. To ensure a robust, statewide sample, please forward the survey link and encourage your colleagues to respond. The survey will close on June 1, 2023. For more information, please refer to this letter. We appreciate your feedback and your dedication to students.

Special Education Directors,

The Arizona Speech-Language and Hearing Association (ArSHA) will be holding its annual convention in Phoenix on March 31–April 1. There will be hundreds of Speech-Language Pathologists, Speech-Language Technicians, and Speech-Language Pathology Assistants attending this event. 

The Arizona Department of Education sponsors the public school strand at the convention to support high-quality, relevant professional learning for school-based speech personnel. This year’s sponsored topics include remediation of speech sound disorders and developmental language disorders, assistive technology (AT), augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), and supporting students who are Deaf/Hard of Hearing.

ADE/ESS will have a booth in the exhibit hall for recruiting SLPs/SLTs/SLPAs to work in Arizona’s public schools. We plan to highlight all SLP/SLT/SLPA positions that are posted on the Arizona Education Employment Board (AEBB) by March 23. The AEEB jobs board is a free, online special education job board provided by ESS. To be included in this recruitment effort, please post your speech positions on our job board by March 23. 

Prior to posting your speech position(s), you may wish to review our “Develop Effective Job Postings” guidance document.

For additional information, please email the ESS Recruitment and Retention Inbox.

As a result of the unforeseen weather conditions in most of Northern Arizona, we would like to issue additional guidance on updating your AzEDS Instructional Calendars.

If your district or charter school is impacted by the weather which requires school closures or delays, please submit a HelpDesk ticket to modify your AzEDS Instructional Calendar date descriptors. Charter schools should also be aware that they will need to file an Instructional Days Amendment Request with the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools (ASBCS) which can be found on their website.

Per A.R.S. § 15-901 and as outlined in the Defining the Instructional Calendar guidance school districts and charters must meet for 180 days or meet the prescribed annual instructional hours per grade level. Four-day calendar types that are based on 144 days of instruction must not have less than 144 days scheduled in the fiscal year. Additionally, school districts and charter districts that are on approved 200-day calendars must not have less than 200 days for the fiscal year. Failure to meet the minimum required instructional hours or days may result in a potential impact to funding.

Districts and charters who have already submitted an approved Instructional Time Model (ITM) are encouraged to review their submitted ITM and provide remote learning opportunities if allowed. If your district or charter does not currently have an adopted ITM, please refer to the posted guidance for additional information and requirements for implementing an ITM.

Please see the following resources:

· Click here to review the full calendar memo.

· Click here to review the Calendar Integrity Reference Guide.

· If you need assistance with submitting your calendar(s), please reach out to an Analyst via HelpDesk.

DATA MANAGEMENT ALERT 

Special Education Data Updates Webinar Wednesday, March 15th   

The Exceptional Student Services Data Management team will host the next Special Education Data Updates live webinar on Wednesday, March 15th, from 2pm – 3pm. This session will cover a variety of data topics that will include (subject to change):   

• Reminders 
• Trending topics 
• Top 3 Integrity Errors 
• Q&A        

Registration is required to attend: Register for Special Education Data Updates webinar.   

For questions, please contact ESS Data Management via email at [email protected].    

Special Education Directors,

The Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) will hold its annual convention in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 1–4. Thousands of special educators and related service providers will attend this event. It also will draw large numbers of students enrolled in special education teacher preparation programs.

ADE/ESS will have a booth in the exhibit hall to recruit special education personnel to work in Arizona’s public schools. We plan to highlight all special education positions that are posted on the Arizona Education Employment Board (AEBB). The AEEB job board is a free, online, special education job board provided by ESS. To be included in this recruitment effort, please post your vacancies as soon as possible.

Prior to posting your position(s), you may wish to review our “Develop Effective Job Postings" guidance document.

For additional information, please email the ESS Recruitment and Retention Inbox.

BUDG-25 reports for all school districts have been posted to the School Finance website.  FY 2023 February BUDG-25 reports have been calculated using the FY 2023 February BSA 55-1 information. 

• District BUDG-25 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-25 report will appear.

• 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 2022 and then click “Go!”. The BUDG-75 report will appear.

• District BSA 55-1 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 February “PDF” button. The February BSA 55-1 report will appear.

BUDG-25 reports will be available until the Budget Team performs the next update (typically after each State Aid distribution). Once the updating process has begun, all BUDG-25 reports will become unavailable at that time.  Please save a copy for future reference.

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

Thank you!

The new CTEDADM15 report is now available to Career Technical Education Districts. 

The new report identifies students participating in a Satellite, Central Campus, Leased Central Campus, or Community College CTED site.  It also displays the Total Planned Hours of Instruction and Total Community College Credits Enrolled that are used to calculate Average Daily Membership (ADM) for each student.

Please Note: Currently, the Year End ADM Before Limiting and the Limited Year End ADM are based on the legacy CTED ADM calculation.  When the new CTED ADM Calculation is activated, this will be updated to show the new ADM Calculation.

This report is only available to CTEDs and not available to Member Districts with CTED Satellite campuses.

The new report is available under the “ADM” header from the reports menu in AzEDS:

Please submit a Help Desk Ticket if you need assistance with the new report.

Pursuant to A.R.S. § 15-941, teacher experience data should have been transmitted to the Superintendent of Public Instruction by October 15th at 4:30 p.m. SDER data can be modified between February 1 and March 1.

The SDER Revision Window will close March 1st and cannot be extended beyond this deadline. 

SDER data is required to calculate your district’s Teacher Experience Index (TEI) which may increase your FY 2024 budget limit and equalization assistance.

If a district’s data is not submitted and error free (File Status = Current Usable File), with teachers listed with their school's CTDS, it will not be included in the TEI calculation. Final TEI reports will be available on or before March 15, 2023.

To view additional details regarding the submission of SDER data, please review the previously posted Hot Topic at: /finance/sder-application-open-modifications-0. 

Please submit a HelpDesk ticket if you need assistance with submitting your SDER data. 

On Februrary 14, 2023, AzEDS IT and vendors met to discuss updates for FYs 2023 and 2024. An emphasis was placed on the Program Evaluation Model which is the structure being used to collect the 21st Century Community Learning Center Teacher Survey data and the Firearms Data Collection. The Use Case for the 9.0 API was updated on ADE's website to include these items. Sample JSONs are also attached to this post respective to the 21st CCLC Teacher Survey data. The meeting may be viewed at https://youtu.be/m9odvhFEM4Q.

Greetings,

Writing better goals and effectively monitoring student progress towards those goals are foundational skills for Related Service Providers. Positive student outcomes can only be achieved when school-based therapists are able to do both consistently. Good data on good goals leads to effective interventions and allows therapists to write better progress reports in less time. And we know that “time spent on paperwork” is a leading cause of therapist burnout. For all of these reasons, we are very excited about the next presentation in our series of Related Service Provider Seminars: Creating Goals that Are Easy to Monitor and a Stress-Free Companion Monitoring Tool with Carlo Vialu, PT, MBA, and Peggy Morris, OTD, OTR/L, BCP. This workshop is designed for Occupational Therapists, Physical Therapists, and Speech-Language Pathologists and will convey ASHA, APTA, and AOTA CEUs. Please share with your staff.

Creating Goals That Are Easy to Monitor and A Stress-Free Companion Monitoring Tool

Presented by the Arizona Department of Education/Exceptional Student Services/Special Projects

Hosted by Littleton Elementary School District

Date: Friday, April 28, 2023

Time: 8:00 a.m.−3:30 p.m.

Fee: $120 (lunch on your own)

Where: Littleton Elementary School District

Address: 1600 S. 107th Ave, Avondale, AZ 85323Carlo Vialu, PT, MBA

About Carlo Vialu

Carlo served as Director of Physical Therapy for the NYC Department of Education, where he oversaw a program with over 700 PTs working in more than 1,500 schools. He is project manager of research on normative data for five mobility tests for school-aged children and co-founder of SeekFreaks.

About Peggy Morris

Peggy is an OT with 30+ years of pediatric experience in early intervention, private practice, and out-patient therapy, but most of her experience and passion is in school-based practice. She coordinates the post-professional MS and OTD programs and school-based certificate program at Tufts University. She is Board Certified in Pediatrics through the AOTA and a regular SeekFreaks contributor.

Workshop Description:

Are you ready for an easy way to write goals and monitor progress? Peggy and Carlo will walk you through setting goals that are easy to monitor and creating a monitoring tool that can help you decide whether your student is on track, if it is time to change the intervention, or if it is time to work on more challenging goals.

Stress-free monitoring begins with a well-written goal. While making a goal SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-Bound) is a great start, how many times have we written a SMART goal that contained too many conditions to be easy to measure? So, in the morning, you will learn the three common problems with SMART goals and the four strategies to make your SMART goal easy to monitor. You will practice utilizing Apply EBP’s simple worksheet for goal-creation with the guidance of your instructors. You will then go through the three steps for the creation of an accompanying data-collection system. You will gain four tips for making this system user-friendly for different members of the team and helpful in making informed decisions. You will learn and practice how to use this data-collection system in making objective decisions about whether your student is on track or if it is time to change the intervention or goal.

Finally, you will learn two additional strategies to further elevate your goals: the Goal Attainment Scale (GAS) for more complex cases and the five steps for creating collaborative interprofessional goals.

Bring sample goals that you need to improve and case vignettes that you find challenging. There will be multiple opportunities to practice goal creation, monitoring, and decision-making as well as interactive Q&A discussions with the instructors. Leave the day with concrete strategies and the confidence to create goals and monitor them meaningfully!

Because this training has been rescheduled from an earlier date, please register using this link only:

Register for “Creating Goals that are Easy to Monitor and A Stress-Free Companion Monitoring Tool”

If you have questions regarding this training, please email Margaret Egan or email Mitch Galbraith