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Program Area: Special Education
Special Education Directors,ADE/ESS is pleased to announce the availability of the school year 2021–2022 Programmatic Monitoring Manual on the Program Support and Monitoring (PSM) web page. The newly revised manual can be found on the PSM web page under “Resources.” Please see this memo for more information.
Program Area: Special Education
Due to the passage of HB2863 during the Spring 2021 legislative session, the Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and Blind (ASDB) is now considered a local education agency (LEA) for the provision of free and appropriate public education (FAPE), for the submission of data and other required reports, and for the provision of courses of study that lead to graduation with a regular high school diploma for all students enrolled in their campus locations. This status change began July 1, 2021 (fiscal year 2022).This memorandum addresses specific areas of responsibility that will impact both ASDB and public education agencies (PEAs) that place eligible students at ASDB through the IEP and voucher process.Updated ASDB Student Reporting guidance from ESS Data Management is available here.
Program Area: Special Education
Are you looking for Occupational Therapists and/or Occupational Therapy Assistants?In October 2021, ADE/ESS will be recruiting for OT personnel on behalf of all public education agencies (PEAs) at the Arizona Occupational Therapy Association’s annual fall conference. ESS will operate a booth in the exhibit hall to promote the advantages of working in a school setting and distribute flyers listing all current and anticipated OT vacancies in Arizona public schools. We will also run a banner ad on the conference website directing OTs to the Arizona Education Employment Board.
Program Area: Special Education
The ADE/ESS Secondary Transition (ST) Team is excited to launch a variety of webinar sessions for the upcoming 2021-22 fall semester.Transition TuesdaysTransition 101 SeriesGetting Centered on Out-of-the-Box Thinking: Person-Centered Planning for Transition-Aged Students
Program Area: Special Education
ADE/ESS is updating our contact lists of designated Lead Speech-Language Pathologists, Lead Occupational Therapists, Lead Physical Therapists, Lead Assistive Technology Specialists, and Lead School Psychologists. We intend to use the contact lists to:Keep related service providers informed of relevant PDFacilitate opportunities for developing discipline-specific professional learning networks or communities of practiceDevelop a pool of expert, experienced, school-based practitioners we may call upon for such things as surveying the need for particular topics in PD and providing content expertise to inform or review guidelines and policies developed by ADE/ESS
Program Area: Special Education
A new series of LRE decision tree documents have been made available on the ESS Data Management website. These documents will provide a roadmap and assist in determining the correct LRE code for students with disabilities. Each LRE decision tree has been separated into 5 categories:Preschool No Early Childhood ProgramPreschool with Early Childhood ProgramPublic SchoolRTCSecure Care
Program Area: Special Education
Special Education Directors,The ADE/ESS Secondary Transition Team is excited to announce a virtual professional learning opportunity on Wednesday, September 29, 2021 from 2:30–3:30 p.m. for school administrators, school counselors, Career and Technical Education (CTE) staff, and special education staff. Please share with any other stakeholder who is interested in this topic.CTE Recruitment for Inclusion of Students with Disabilities: Innovative Strategies from a Panel of Your Peers
Program Area: Special Education
The ESS Data Management team is pleased to announce that a new report is now available in the AzEDS Portal, SPED50 – SPED Concurrency Report. This report will help PEAs find concurrent SPED data in AzEDS along with the concurrent PEA, Site, and dates reported to aid in determining the accurate reporting for the student. This report will only show Primary SPED LRE data reported by your PEA that overlaps with Primary SPED LRE data reported by another PEA (Concurrency).
Program Area: Special Education
The ESS ODC application will open on Wednesday, October 6, 2021. PEAs must login to the application to submit the October 1 verification and personnel counts. All technical assistance documents and FAQs will be available by accessing the “Help tab” on the home page of the ESS ODC application.
Program Area: Special Education
ADE/ESS is excited to share updated information for our 3-day virtual event which will feature over 75 professional learning opportunities addressing legal issues, special education compliance, preschool and secondary transition, social/emotional learning, and new this year, a content strand for school-based OTs, PTs, and SLPs featuring Michelle Bradshaw, Chris Bugaj, Michelle Curcio, Lisa DeWitt, Irma Gomez, Jessica Hartrich, Amy Hill, Rebecca Lopez, Mike Marotta, Jeff Meeks, Fe Murray, Beth Poss, Linda Rudd, Judith Schoonover, Sarah Ward and Elisa Wern.
Program Area: Special Education
The ADE Math Team has scheduled office hours to allow educators to meet together to network, problem-solve, and develop solutions to allow all Arizona teachers and students to continue to feel supported and to be successful.Grade-band meetings are provided for all math teachers, including special education teachers! These grade-band meetings will include opportunities for networking, problem solving, and sharing different implementation models. Office hours are one hour long with an additional 30 minutes at the end for a Q & A session. Participants can earn one hour of professional development credit for each session attended.
Program Area: Special Education
At their annual state conference, the Arizona Association of School Psychologists (AASP) recognizes an outstanding school psychologist and administrator (principal or director) of the year, and they encourage your district or charter to nominate someone who provides excellent support and advocacy for students with disabilities in our state. Nomination forms can be located on the AASP website and should be submitted to Jamie Timmerman and Cathy Herring at AASP. Additional information is included in the attached flyer. It is recommended to submit at least three letters of support with each nomination. Nominations open on September 1, 2021 and close on September 30, 2021 at 11:59 p.m. The awards ceremony will be held Friday, November 5, 2021 in the morning at Desert Willow Conference Center.
Program Area: Special Education
This notice serves as a reminder that the most accurate disability representation should be reported for all students with disabilities throughout the school year.When reporting needs (disability categories) to AzEDS for students, all eligible needs listed on a student’s IEP should be reported for all special education placements in Arizona. If a student has only one need, that need is reported as the primary need. For students with multiple needs, only one can be reported as the primary need and the other need(s) would be reported as secondary. The primary need is defined as the one that most adversely affects the student’s ability to access the general curriculum.
Program Area: Special Education
What does it mean to be fluent in mathematics? In this webinar, we will examine the key components of fluency and make connections across mathematics standards that specify fluency as the intended end-of-year outcome in each grade level from K–6. Additionally, we will explore instructional routines, strategies, and games that will help all students develop flexibility to solve contextual and mathematical problems involving whole numbers.
Program Area: Special Education
Assistive Technology (AT) National Presenter Series The ADE/ESS Assistive Technology team is kicking off our 2021 AT National Presenter Series with Chris Bugaj. Chris is offering 3 separate presentations, attend one or attend all!Christopher R. Bugaj, MA, CCC‐SLP, is a founding member of the Assistive Technology Team for Loudoun County Public Schools. Chris co-hosts the Talking with Tech podcast, and has hosted The A.T. TIPSCAST, a multi‐award winning podcast featuring strategies to design educational experiences.
Program Area: Special Education
A new Data Quality Validation integrity rule -51002 will be introduced into the integrity process on FY22 Enrollment data shortly. This update is a continuation of our effort to ensure clean data for the state. A new one-sheet Integrity Tool is now available on our AzEDS SPED Reporting webpage for troubleshooting tips for Integrity Rule -51002.
Program Area: Special Education
The Exceptional Student Services Data Management team will be hosting our next Special Education Data Updates live webinar on Wednesday, October 20th from 2pm – 3pm.
Program Area: Special Education
November Math Office HoursThe ADE Math Team has scheduled office hours to allow educators to meet together to network, problem-solve, and develop solutions to allow all Arizona teachers and students to continue to feel supported and to be successful.Grade-band meetings are provided for all math teachers, including special education teachers! These grade-band meetings will include opportunities for networking, problem solving, and sharing different implementation models. Office hours are one hour long with an additional 30 minutes at the end for a Q & A session. Participants can earn one hour of professional development credit for each session attended.
Program Area: Special Education
The ADE/ESS Secondary Transition team would like to thank those who participated in the 2021 PSO data collection season. The PSO Survey helps PEAs collect and report information to meet Indicator 14 requirements. Between June 1 and September 30 of this year, PEAs statewide worked hard to reconnect with former students who had IEPs when they exited high school during the 2019–2020 school year. Through their efforts, 6,245 former students responded to the survey, for a 78.7% participation rate with 71.8% of respondents engaged in postsecondary education/training or employment. A more detailed view of this year's PSO Survey results will be posted on the PSO Website by October 31, 2021.
Program Area: Special Education
The ESS Program Management team has announced the FY22 webinar series of topics related to IDEA federal funding. Please visit the ESS Program Management website to register for each Zoom session and read session descriptions. The webinar series will take place on Tuesdays at 11:00 a.m.
