ADE School Finance will move Data Quality Validation Integrity rule -10139 into production on January 26, 2023.

Any student whose membership begins on the first day of the instructional calendar, must have attendance within the first 10 days of membership.  If a student’s membership begins on the first day of the instructional calendar and the student is not in attendance within the first 10 days, Integrity rule -10139 will fail.

The current implementation of Integrity Rule -10139 is to be classified as a Warning until March 23, 2023 at which time the Integrity Rule will be changed to an Error.  Once this integrity rule is changed to an Error, any student failing the -10139 Integrity Rule will no longer generate ADM. 

Special Education Directors,

The ADE/ESS Professional Learning and Sustainability unit is pleased to announce two “grow your own” opportunities for educators in Arizona public schools.

• The General Education Teacher to Special Education Teacher (GETSET) program provides tuition reimbursement to certified general education teachers who want to pursue a career change to become certified in an area of special education. 
   

• The Special Education Teacher Tuition Assistance (SETTA) program provides tuition reimbursement to paraprofessionals and educational interpreters that leads to special education teaching certification.

Certifications that satisfy the application requirements:

1. Early Childhood Special Education, Birth–Grade 3/Age 8
2. Mild/Moderate Disabilities, K–12
3. Moderate/Severe Disabilities, K–12
4. Visually Impaired Special Education, Birth–Grade 12
5. Hearing Impaired Special Education, Birth–Grade 12

Application materials:

• SETTA Application
• GETSET Applicaton

PEAs have an opportunity to submit an application for one candidate per program. Applications earning the highest scores in the evaluation process will be approved until the funding that is set aside for the program is depleted. Applications must be submitted no later than 5:00 p.m. on Friday, February 24, 2023.

Please note:

• Applicant must have been employed by the PEA for two full school years as of June 30, 2023.
• Applicant must agree to two full years of teaching in a special education capacity at the PEA once special education certification is achieved.
• Educational interpreters are eligible to apply for the SETTA program.
• GETSET and SETTA are tuition reimbursement programs. Potential expenses are pre-approved, and reimbursement is provided after each semester is completed and program requirements are met.

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

Special Education Directors,

All school districts and charter schools are required to annually administer the State Performance Plan Indicator 8 Parent Involvement Survey to parents of students with an Individualized Education Program (IEP). The survey will open on February 2 via ADEConnect ESS Data Surveys.

New: The survey application has merged the individual student login codes and parent letters. This feature will make it easier for users to disseminate parent instructions.

If you do not already have access to the survey application or need to add additional users who should have the right to use this information and administer the survey, contact your entity ADEConnect administrator and ask to be assigned the ESS Data Surveys: User role. If additional assistance is needed to be assigned the User Role, use the Help Desk ticketing system via ADEConnect.

Please email the Parent Survey inbox with questions.

DATA MANAGEMENT ALERT    

ESS October 1 Data Collection (ODC) – SPED73 and SPED07 Reports Accurate - Phase II Due Date 1/25 

Thank you for your patience while Exceptional Student Services (ESS) worked with ADE-IT on troubleshooting issues with the reports and functionality for October 1 child count processing. 

The issues are now resolved, and the October 1 reports are now accurate. For SPED students, the AzEDS Portal SPED73 report and the ESS October 1 Data Collection application SPED07 report both provide accurate feedback for students reported in AzEDS served over October 1. 

The October 1 process will close on January 25, 2023, at 5pm. Please ensure your SPED07 count reconciles with the Verification Count submitted in November. If your counts reconcile, continue to monitor your reports through the deadline and no further action is needed.  

Please refer to the updated Important Dates document on the ODC timeline for a complete outline of the due date requirements for this data collection. If you have any questions or concerns, please email ESS Data Management at [email protected].  

DATA MANAGEMENT ALERT   

ESS October 1 Data Collection (ODC) – Phase II Due Date Extended

Exceptional Student Services (ESS) is working with ADE-IT on troubleshooting issues with the reports and functionality for October 1 child count processing.

Since public education agencies (PEAs) cannot utilize reports between systems in reconciling their October 1 counts, the October 1 process will now be closing on January 25, 2023 at 5pm.

ESS expects the reports to function accurately soon, and we will notify the field when this happens. At this time, the SPED07 report has been paused until we can work through the issue with IT. PEAs should still continue working on clearing up any outstanding integrity error  to ensure the most accurate information is submitted to the department.

Thank you for your patience and understanding. Please refer to the updated Important Dates document on the ODC timeline for a complete outline of the due date requirements for this data collection. If you have any questions or concerns, please email ESS Data Management at [email protected].

The FY2022 Superintendent's Annual Financial Report (SAFR) has been posted. 

The perpetual SAFR database has been updated to include FY2022 (now encompassing 2006-2022).

The Superintendent's Annual Financial Reports and Database can both be found on the School Finance Reports page.

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

Thank you!

Horne’s office approves nearly 25,000 overdue ESA requests from parents 

More than $22 million in delayed payments made to schools and educators

PHOENIX – The Arizona Department of Education has approved 24,366 delayed requests from parents seeking to participate in the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program. Approval was also given for payments to schools and tutors who were owed a total of $22,234,151.48 going back to the second fiscal quarter of 2022.

The department also paid more than 1,500 tutors who had gone months without a paycheck and paid a small school that had explored getting a bank loan to cover expenses because their state payments had been delayed.

“When I took office, the commitment I made is that the Arizona Department of Education is a service organization committed to raising academic outcomes and empowering parents. On my first day on the job, I demonstrated my resolve to fulfill that mission. Delays and inefficiencies of this kind are unacceptable and won’t be repeated,” Superintendent Tom Horne said. 

The department is also announcing that the ESA customer service phone lines at 602-364-1969 are now staffed every business day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. as opposed to the previously limited schedule of 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The department is also preparing to hire more staff out of the state legislature’s specific appropriation for ESAs to fill positions and serve customers more rapidly.

For more information: azed.gov/esa

DATA MANAGEMENT ALERT   

ESS October 1 Data Collection – SPED73 and SPED07 Report Inaccuracies

Exceptional Student Services (ESS) Data Management has identified an issue with some students either showing “N” for Oct 1 Eligible on the SPED73 report or missing from the SPED07 report. Our IT team is currently working to resolve this issue.  Please continue to monitor your INTEG15 report to ensure student integrity errors are corrected so they may populate your reports once the resolution is in place. 

The January 18 Phase II deadline remains in effect at this time.

An alert will be sent when this issue has been resolved. Thank you for your patience.

Please refer to the Important Dates document on the ODC timeline for a complete outline of due date requirements for this data collection, and contact [email protected] with any questions.

Per A.R.S. § 15-922 School Districts (not charters) are required to submit transportation route data with 12 days of their 100^th day of school.  The window for submitting this data is now open and will close on March 20^th.  If the 100^th day of school falls after this date, please submit a HelpDesk ticket asking for the window to be extended for your LEA.

Route Miles are submitted through the Transportation and Vehicle Inventory Application which is found in ADEConnect.  Users who submit transportation data must be assigned the role of “TransportationInventory – LEA User” in ADEConnect to access the application. 

If you do not have access to the Transportation and Vehicle Inventory Application, please contact your Entity Administrator.

The following resources have been created to assist in submitting transportation data via the new application:

• Transportation Data Submission Video
• Transportation Manual edited 1/12/22
• Transportation FAQ

Please review these resources prior to submitting your transportation data. If additional assistance is needed, please submit a HelpDesk ticket.

Special Education Directors,

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 can 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 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 ADE/ESS/Special Projects

Hosted by Littleton Elementary School District

Date: Wednesday, January 25, 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 85323

About Carlo Vialu

Carlo served as Director of Physical Therapy for the NYC Department of Education, overseeing a program with over 700 PTs working in more than 1,500 schools. He is the 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 outpatient therapy, but most of her experience and passion are in school-based practice. She coordinates the post-professional MS and OTD programs and school-based certificate programs at Tufts University. She is Board Certified in Pediatrics through the AOTA and is 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 to create an accompanying data-collection system. You will gain four tips for making this system user-friendly for different team members and help make informed decisions. You will learn and practice using 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 elevate your goals further: the Goal Attainment Scale (GAS) for more complex cases and the five steps for creating collaborative interprofessional goals.

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

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