She's also going to be training our staff in charting the life course so that we can have those meetings um with students that are e even in middle school or in high school talking about what's next for them and mapping out what's going to what they're going to need and how it's going to happen for them as they move through their adult life. Systems and structures, I say it every time, but increased communication not only with me, but aligned conversations across all three buildings. there are more collaborative meetings and that might not be a necessarily a hot topic but it's certainly something that um we needed more of to be able to talk about students moving from elementary to middle and middle to high sharing resources sharing ideas um and those aligned conversations are taking place um at Wiskiner we have Molly Garcia and Ryan Pasarelli our school psychologists who are spearheading the flowchart and guidelines for teachers and related services staff based on feedback.
But this is also going for 504s as we're updating our 504 um handbook just to make it easier for both parents and also teachers and community members within our our schools to look and see how we do what we do and the steps that we take. Ongoing conversations, um meetings in buildings, faculty meetings, insights on our inclusive practices, how can we do better? Um, it's easy for me to come up here and speak about how proud I am, but there's always areas of growth and when we talk about inclusion, it's never something that we rest our our laurels on. We want to do better and we want to do more of it. How else can we do that in all areas and identifying those areas of improvement um intervention systems. So one of the areas that we're working on is uh and currently implementing is a a social emotional intervention system which again we talk about tiered interventions oftentimes you think of academics but social emotional is also uh a key piece of providing students with what they need at where they are.
And it may not always lead to a special education referral, but our related services staff are addressing that uh assessment and monitoring data and also working with our teachers to understand what an intervention referral looks like and what tier 2 and tier three social emotional looks like. So that is currently also happening. Uh enhancing our review process. This goes to our IEP compliance process. making sure that we have vertical alignment so that the elementary, the middle, and the high school are aligned with what those present levels look like. So that it's not on one hand repeating the present levels every year, but that they're growing so that when you look at a student from elementary to middle to high school, their present levels are changing and growing with their development from grade level to grade level. student learning. Um, continuing our clarity and calibration on specific programming, not just our specialized programs, but how we approach resource, how we approach co-eing, uh, continuing to look at training for more co-eing through at Advance.
um addressing what the precise needs of students are. And this also includes comments and feedback during PPT meetings, uh parent feedback about maybe making our goals and objectives more uh precise and understandable and reachable and and talking about data collection or progress monitoring, designated resources. I spoke about ELC at the middle school before, but all of our specialized programs have created their own resource lists for what they need and what they might need coming up uh during the year, which has been built into our budget. Guidelines for the program, not necessarily entrance criteria and not necessarily exit criteria, but what um accommodations, service hours, and delivery across all three schools. Again, calibration never stops. Um examining these never stops. Um, and again, general and special education enhancing student learning. I've said it before, I'll say it again. General education teachers are as much a session section of implementation as the special education teachers are.
So, we want to provide them more uh time together, more collaboration time to be able to implement IEPs. I want to close with the dream or reimagining our specialized programming. What could this look like? And again, this is not something that is going to happen overnight. This is not something that we thought about last week or even in the last uh meeting that I shared information with you. The dream is to create more in district programs. In one area that we can talk about which is transition 18 to 22. I've spoken to to all of you about how the ages have changed where it used to be 21 the day before they turned 21. the whole year they are 21 and now it's the entire year they turn 22. It might not have seemed feasible a couple years ago because the age group was smaller.
As the laws changed and the ages have expanded, it's time to look at what we can do in district for our students from 18 to 22, giving them opportunities to work in the community and to be based out of the community rather than work with outside programs or other districts. and through that deepen our partnership with ed advance to facilitate this dream. They have been incredible partners on uh the IP quality training on the paratraining the teacher training now in speaking with uh some of the directors at at ED advance and through concis to be able to be partners with on how to implement this. It'll be a slow process, but a deliberate process and a thoughtful process. And I will ask and engage um everyone tonight that's able to help be part of that solution. Um to continue the the the professional development and I'm stealing from Dr.
Burrell. I hope he's laughing. I'm not looking right now. But um it's complete theft. His speaks um council. I'd like to turn that into in conjunction with SEPTO, but as a separate entity, the special education districtwide advisory council. This is where we will map out. This is where the strategic plan committee turns into something more um workable and maybe more committee- based. Um similar to speaks, parents, staff, and community members providing perspective and ongoing feedback. We have many different areas of conversation going on. Dr. Burl speaks group has been able to bring people together to have those conversations in a context that uh I think is also relevant for special education. So we're going to work on that and I'm eager to speak with everyone about that. Let's talk about deliverables. What does the dream look like? What can I bring back to you? What do we want to do?
So in addition to transition, start thinking about an alternative high school or an alternative program. Um for our students with challenging behavior or students who are just not um being successful as successful in school as they could be. They started out in an alternative program and really an alternative program is where you can reach kids who may be considered hard to reach in the classroom as it currently stands. we want to talk about in these specific proposals, budget, staffing, a mission and a vision, logistics, and implementation plan. So, the specifics that I present to you will will include cost, staffing, things like that. So, this is not just a hey, it'd be great to have a transition program. What's it going to look like? What's it going to cost? Who do we who do we need to employ in order to make this workable? Um, bringing more professional development structures to my presentations.
I want this to be inclusive of all staff. Uh, general education teachers are eager to be part of some of the topics that we talk about in our special ed professional development. Differentiation, challenging behavior, compliance, what does that look like from a general education perspective, parent workshops, um, you know, we've talked about parent university, maybe parent university for special education. It's time for that. Surveys to calibrate effectiveness. not only survey questions on our other pieces, but also surveys specific to special education for parents, teachers, uh, and students. Communication, continuing our collaboration among stakeholders, making sure our protocols are aligned, regular updates to our web page, um, including links to current presentations, past presentations, and updating our manual so that it is accessible to everyone. And I really appreciate the opportunity. I hope I didn't go too fast. Um, but I want to make sure that I covered everything in a reasonable amount of time.
I've also linked on this the special ed department web page. Um, always looking for feedback. If you feel that there's things that we should add or areas that we should uh include or more detail, please let us know and we're happy to do that. And now I'm happy to entertain questions. Thank you, Mr. Roller. I have a quick question. Sure. um how soon do you plan to take like a a first solid step towards some of your dream items? So, we have been having some of our teachers and staff visit some area alternative programs. Um I don't want to I don't want to necessarily name names, but there are some that are so creative and so wonderful. I I think we want to look at that as a as a quick teaser or spoiler. You know, we want to look at what the space would look like.
You know, having worked in alternative programs and have seen transition programs, we don't want this to be a room off of a room. It needs to be a program that kids want to go to, not that they feel like, wait a minute, for transition, I'm still in high school. Mhm. So, I would anticipate working on some of these things over the summer to pre present in the fall sort of a proposal of what this could look like in terms of staffing and in terms of budget. Now, that's great. That that would be very preliminary, but I think it then becomes okay, that's what it looks like on paper. What does it look like in reality? So, that's where I think there's a longer, you know, I I don't know that it would necessarily be next year. I'd like to think the year after this upcoming school year would be feasible.
Um, and I think in speaking with members on the board of finance and members of the board, we want to be very deliberate. We want to be very thoughtful. And we don't want to just, for one of a better term, slap a name on a program and find a room and say, "Okay, you're the teacher, you're the social worker. That's where I need feedback." and and and from everyone who's an out of district parents too who um are as much of our part of our community as our parents and students in district and they have valuable um pieces of information to say as well. Great. That's great. Thank you. Thank you. I just wanted to say great job for you and your team with the 99%. I know it's hard to get to 100 all the time and we go through the process and but you can't get to 100 throughout the year, right?
At least. No, you know why? Because because it's always it's always an ongoing process. So there's always somebody in a referral or there's always somebody who's in a meeting coming out of a meeting. The finalization of 5 days. All those things make it seem like there's more of a at 1% doesn't look like it should. Um and you still knocked it out of the park at the last one. So I can't Great job. Appreciate it. Why is the the students that are in the referral process considered non-compliant? I'm sorry. Say that. Do they include? So the 1% 36 students, you said most of those students are in the referral are currently in the referral process. Well, it's it's a it's a bunch of different factors. So it could be the referral process. It could be we just had the meeting and we're we we're finalizing the IEP.
Okay. It and it's also 504. So the 504 meeting's been scheduled. It hasn't necessarily been updated yet. It's in it's in motion. So that's so Joy is the system that just names it. Okay. that's that that's not in compliance versus in process which would and Joy that's misleading because it is and I and I would be more I would be more concerned if we hadn't gotten the desk audit back in November that said we were in good shape on that because they did look at all of these factors. Um I wish they called it something different than than 1% if they broke it down some more. Um CT saids is a work in progress for better or for worse. So, I just wanted to say it's been a pleasure working on this with you, but you know, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for dreaming because I think that we really have to start thinking outside the box what we can do.
It is time um in this district to keep our kids in the community, in their community where they belong. So, thank you for, you know, having a vision and trying to bring it to life because I think it really is important. The vision isn't mine. division is all of ours because we've all seen transition programs in other districts. Why can't we do that? Well, there was a point where it was almost there there weren't as many kids in transition as there are now because of the new law. So, now's the time we can say, well, there's more kids. Now's the time to say, why aren't we doing having job coaching and why aren't we having um partnerships with area businesses and keeping it in in districts? So, I I I thank everyone for All super important information and you know the more questions we ask and the more feedback.
Absolutely. And and again you know this is probably my sixth or seventh so we're on the last Jedi. I'm not sure where we are in the Star Wars universe but yeah I I I appreciate the opportunity to come and speak to you all regularly. I know it's real early but are there grants and stuff to help with Funny you should mention that. So um the IDEIDA grant which is annually just opened up the other day but there's also other monies that are that are in there. We also received another $7,000 for paraprofessional training because there was a grant we got last year which helped fund some of the paraprofessional training. It was not just for us. It was so successful that the state said, "Hey, here have another batch of money to do more of that because the feedback from Paris and the feedback with the state was so effective." So, but there are there are competitive grants.
There are also some entitlements that we're looking at. So, Bill, one of the things I wanted to mention was what you've and I talked about before is that some parents don't realize when they ask about um accelerated programs, alternative paths to education. You know, uh the program that Dr. Brell had brought us earlier in the year that Connecticut State is considering where you can um you know get your associates degree at the same time that you're you know getting your um dual enrollment. Dual enrollment. Thank you. So, a lot of people don't realize that also falls under the special ed program. Correct. Stephanie, thank you for the dream for reminding. So, the other piece of this that came up in a conversation that we were having at the other day, we ran into each other was um talented and gifted. What people might not realize is talented and gifted does fall under special education.
And one piece of it is that you can identify talented and gifted students, but you don't necessarily are mandated to provide a program for them. I think it's time that we start looking at what that could look like too because there is enrichment and there are things that come under the special education umbrella that is specialized instruction in a different way. So we also want to look at that. We also want to look at um partner with ed advance about creating some opportunities for seniors um to take college classes as part of a transition process. But that's something that's that Jody Manat and I have been talking about piloting next year. So, but yeah, thank you Stephanie. I I totally no slide for that one. Sorry. Just one last thing. I don't know if you can answer this right now, but you don't have to answer it right now, but if you can provide us with what you mean by um calibration, like how does that look?
Sure. Absolutely. Give documentation of that to us. So in in terms of calibration, if I if I think about it through in IEP terms, it's not just are all the elements there, and again, this is an ongoing I'm I'm not I'm not preaching perfection here, but data collection, progress monitoring, um calibrating what present levels look like because there was a time when I was teaching when present levels would look like. Bill is eager to read and really enjoys, you know, books uh at grade level. It's like well that if we calibrate that there's no there's nothing quantitative about that. So we want to make sure that in the present levels they're specific targeted what does that look like? So when we talk about calibration for IEPs we're talking about how do we know and again there can be disagreements on what that looks like but in terms of actually saying what the present level is and why we're constructing goals around that present level it can't just be anecdotal.