001for okay have there we're we're live so I know it's early but whenever you want to start you're live to the world thank you thank you Mr Mountain for all your help for e e I'm just checking social media see what our updated link looks like I just got the email head so word is out there thank you I was just texting you I was just checking the I was just checking the website and the social media so oh thanks Lindsay so do you thank you Eric do you mind emailing that link to me or so I can send it to the board Danny wanted me to send it and forward it to the board surea I just forwarded you the email okay I just got it too thanks e [Music] we have 21 people
002watching right now yeah e people e e e look this is Ringwood or clion Clifton work you ready I water why don't you take a greenade you e e okay the time is now 7 o'clock so I will start first of all I'd like to thank everyone for coming thank you so much for everyone who gave up their night to spend their night with us that shows how dedicated you are to all the staff that's here I'm grateful for your time um with that I will start I am Heather Roo I'm the coordinating supervisor of special ed which means I'm like the director of Clifton special ed department and with me I have three of our four supervisor so they will introduce themselves one supervisor is doing a nurtured heart training right now for School
00317 parents so she cannot be here um I'll let the three supervisors introduce themselves right um Kelly O'Brien special ed supervisor at the high school I'm Dr aen I'm the supervisor of the autism program and preschool special ed programs I'm Francisco Rosen okay this is what happens when we live stream and we record I don't know if that was Mrs Rosa or myself that froze but I'm hoping it was not me okay so that that's Mrs Rosa she is the Middle School supervisor of special ed so with us today we have a bunch of Staff members so first I'd like the child study team people to introduce themselves if you don't mind stating your name and where you work and what kind of uh you know what's your profession anybody you want to start want
004to start with preschool okay thank you hi I'm Kristen Chang I'm a school psychologist I work on the preschool team and I also work at the elementary level thank you hi I'm Laura massini I'm a preschool speech and language pathologist and I work on the preschool child study team hi everybody I'm Jen Santos I'm the social worker that's on the preschool child study team that it for preschool no hi hi I'm Valerie Gates and uh I am on the preschool team as well I'm the learning consultant this is Joe holes told you earlier about an appointment is that it for preschool we definitely be okay so we can go to elementary elementary child study team one hi Emily dunbabin I'm on child study team wi I'm a school psychologist thank you hi I'm Julian podowski
005I'm the school social worker on child study Team 1 um and our home schools are 135 and nine perfect that's great thank you okay Anita you're muted Mrs colad you're muted hi I'm Anita colad I'm the educational consultant on team one thank you thanks team two hi everyone I'm Dr Bon I'm a bing waler school psychologist Elementary School level thank you thank you hi I'm Bonnie blowstein I'm the learning consultant on team two um our homebased schools are schools 2 12 12 Annex and school 16 hi I'm Kristen Perry I'm the social worker on on team two team three hi I'm Lauren armenti on uh Team three my home schools are 17 uh school 11 and School 4 and I am the school social worker thank you hi I'm Jen sorry go ahead I'm Jen
006coff I'm the school psychologist on team three thank you and I can't see everyone at once so I don't know if people are stopping so if I'm interrupting just yell at me is that it for team three yeah Team Four no one team uh Middle School I saw some Middle School people on here hi I'm Roberta Holmes I'm the school social worker at Columbus Middle School [Music] hi I'm waran I'm the learning consultant at Christopher Columbus Middle School good evening I'm Sabrina CA I'm the social yeah I saw okay there we go I knew there were I'm having a hard time with zoom uh I don't know if you guys can hear me I had a hard time hearing you at first my name is Jason FS I'm the school psychologist over at Christopher Columbus
007thank you Maran cedor I'm the speech therapist at Christopher Columbus Middle School we're gonna do a speech after Maran that's okay but oh I'm sorry that's okay you heard middle school so I I'm just trying to keep it a little because I can't see everyone all at once so okay is that it um that's it right for Middle hi I'm agie alasco WRA Wilson school psychologist I knew you were here uh Tara mcgar learning consulted at wro Wilson hi Tara okay I think that's it for middle school high school um want to do South wi First South hi I'm sush shley I'm the school psychologist in the South Wing at CHS hi I'm yulen Vayner I'm the learning consultant at in the South Wing the high school hi I'm Lisa Orlando and I'm a school
008psychologist at clipton high school hi I'm Nicole hail and I'm the social worker at Clifton High School I I'm the learning consultant in the central Wing hi my name is branti chapali I'm a school psychologist at Clifton High School awesome those are our teams right did I leave anyone out a child study team I'm trying to keep track here thank you all okay next we'll go to speech do you want to start with uh preschool although preschool speech overlaps there are preschool teams of you know people on the teams we have other people in speech you want to just start with preschool and go from there there's a lot of people on here so hi my name is theal Solomon I'm in CA B speech language specialist thank you hi my name is Amy fante
009I'm speech language specialist at CA B and also at school 17 okay Elementary G to start I don't I don't even know how to divide this up I guess whoever is in school one we can start from there and just piggy back from there since there's so many of you that travel near and far every day school one no B two three hi I'm Sarah mundri I'm the speech language specialist at school too nice to see everyone good evening I'm Anna zuluaga and I'm the speech language specialist at schools 313 as well as 4 thank you Anna keep going from there hi good evening I'm Laura Lazar and I'm the speech and language specialist at school number nine let me scroll through the amount of people that are on here after Laura hi hi I'm
010Heather pul I'm a speech language specialist at school number five and at school number 17 I'm Kristen Chey I'm a speech language specialist at School 14 hi I'm Jacob and I'm the speech linguist specialist at school 5 hi everybody I'm Erica lra I'm the Bing speech this of school 14 thank you Erica I see a couple more right hi I'm Natalie King I'm a speech language specialist at School 16 hi I'm Lauren Lawson I'm also a speech language specialist at school 16 hi I'm Brienne sakano I'm a speech language specialist at school 168 And1 that it for elementary middle Maran you want to go again sure um Mar cedor I'm the speech language specialist at Christopher Columbus Middle School thank you and hi I'm Jill gang carella I'm speech language specialist at Clifton High School
011thank you guys big department thank you all for showing up OT I just want to introduce myself hi I'm Lyn too I'm the transition coordinator for the Clifton school district oh you jumped you jumped ahead of my list oh did I yes I'm on OT oh I'm sorry that's okay because that's all right that's okay I'm on OT hi I'm Christine Roland Christine oh sorry I'm an occupational therapist I work uh with the preschool Elementary and the middle school I'm not going to name all my schools nice to see everybody thanks for coming hi and I'm Marie mlin I'm the OT at 169 and the high school thanks Marie good evening I'm Hamil B Valia the occupational therapist at Buro school 11 and 14 thank you hi I'm Sharon I'm the occupational therapist at CA
012b 17 CA a 8 12 Annex Big 12 and school five nice to see everybody thank you you're welcome PT physical therapist hi hi I'm Donna waja I'm the physical therapist at school number two nine the high school and I serve as s with the cila be and 16 students as well thanks D hi I'm yina Rosenberg I'm at uh 16 177 and five okay I think that's it for and hi I'm Kim janick I'm the physical therapist at School 14 and CA a and Sila B thank you all right how about behaviorist next hello everyone my name is Karen Bon I'm one of the district behaviorists hi I'm Caitlyn labarbara I'm one of the district behaviorists as well hi I'm Jamie Bel Jetta District behaviorist thank you I think that's it for behaviorists I
013didn't see anybody else I'm try I'm trying to scroll through so I don't miss anyone and when I start talking people don't talk so um technology integration coach good evening everyone my name is dening gedi and I am the special education technology integration coach for Clifton thank you uh District school Psych olist hi good evening everyone I'm Dr Steven Roth and I travel through the district providing counseling services and social skills service thank you okay we have two transition coordinators so you're up again hi again poro I'm based at the high school and I'm the transition coordinator one of them for the district hi everybody my name is Bill Colligan I am the other transition coordinator at clipton high school thank you thanks for coming all right we have a teacher of the deaf and
014heart of hearing hi am Lori lesler I am stationed at the high school and I am the teacher of the death nice to see everybody and you travel a lot too yes do you want me to name all the schools no that's okay but you travel throughout the district so I do you might be housed at the high school but you're a traveler too I am and I I know there were a couple special ed teachers that said they were going to log on to the live feed and then some were going to log on to here so I don't oh I okay I see one of them right in the top of my corner right now do you want to introduce yourself Scott idek resource room teacher school three thank you Mr IDC for
015coming I see Diane up there hi everyone I'm Diane Jacki I am the selfcontained teacher at school to I have the language learning disabled severe class thanks for coming and I think did I leave anyone out there hi everyone good evening sorry it's I'm on the preschool team you already introduced my team I'm a school psychologist I was on another Zoom so I logged on as soon as I could thank you thanks for logging on beia I I think that's it for for all our honored guests besides our parents being honored guests but thank you all for coming I I really appreciate your time and effort and now I'm going to do a presentation so it's up to you if you want to stay on this or if you want to go on the the
016actual live stream it's up to you guys so we're going to start a presentation called special ed 101 and I have a little Vana White with me Kelly O'Brien is going to present while I talk I thank you all for coming and um I hope you learn a lot from the presentation okay thank you Kelly okay during the presentation I'll be checking my email and I have gotten some questions already but on the first page of the presentation there's a an email address on on the bottom if you'd like to email any questions during the presentation we'll be monitoring that email address it's special education at Clifton schools.net and we have 130 people watching us right now which is really awesome so I have the live stream on my other computer so I could see
017how many people are logging on so to the 135 people watching we're grateful to have you here and um thanks for coming all right go ahead Kelly next slide okay so we went through and introduced the supervisors this is the page of our supervisors and their names and where they service and Linda Chavez is the one doing the nurtured heart training right now at school 17 so she is not with us right now some of you may know some of us and some of you may not here's a list of the staff members that we already introduced and now oh thank you so these are some of the people that attended and you you heard them introduce themselves sometimes you meet them at back to school night sometimes you don't because they might be in
018a different School than the school that your child is being serviced in so that's just a list of people okay Kelly next slide please so what is special education special education is specifically designed instruction delivered to meet the unique needs of a student with a disability so we'll go on in this presentation talking about what what makes a student be eligible for special ed and what kind of services what kind of Eligibility a referral timeline and all kinds of good things all right next slide okay so idea is a regulation that we all follow there's two parts of Ida the individuals with disabilities of An Education Act and sex 504 regulations and that's kind of like our guide to tell us what we have to do and each state has different guidelines New Jersey actually
019has more stringent guidelines and better services so lots of people move to New Jersey because of our our federal and New Jersey laws so Ida is about a CH it it does help us determine what's going on with the child and the disability and if they need special education and Rel Rel ated services and based upon that we determine as a team and you'll hear about IEPs and things later a free and appropriate public education which we refer to as faith we have a lot of acronyms and special ads so fape is one of them idea is one of them you'll hear lots of things like that I IEP and all kinds of acronyms like that okay next slide please okay in New Jersey we follow the New Jersey Administrative Code it's title 6A chapter
02014 and it's a very long legal book of what we have to do to make sure that we're complying with the law set forth if you want to click on this link right here it will take you to the New Jersey state can you get click on that yeah right there so it's 153 page book manual however you print it it's 153 Pages if you want to just scroll down a little bit it's all the things that we have to follow in order to meet all the guidelines given to us through New Jersey so it's 153 Pages which is a lot of reading to do basically you could read this a million times and still need some help interpreting some things but we have we read this often and we refer to it a lot
021lot so I will put this presentation up on our website later on and we do have a new special ed website which we did show earlier on there was a link on one of the slides and all this information is on there so this is our governing rules this is like our guideline of what we have to do in New Jersey to make sure that we meet all the standards and rules and laws of special ad okay Kelly you could go back to the slides thank you all right next slide there we go so what exactly is a child study team a child study team another Acron acronym CST consist of a school psychologist a learning disabilities teacher consultant and a school social worker and we've had a bunch of them already introduced themselves so
022each of them make up a team a child study team is those three people we have 10 child study teams in the district that service our children from Age 3 to 21 there's a directory on our website and if on this presentation if you click the directory link there's a directory of all the people on the child study team in alphabetical order not by school because the schools overlap so we just we just did it in alphabetical order thank you okay so we're going to talk about the special education referral process so starting from the beginning you can enter into a you have a question about your child and you want to refer your child to special education so if can you click on the the flowchart Kelly and make it a little bit bigger
023thank you okay so even today every day this special ed department at school 6 at 7:45 Clifton Avenue gets referrals we process a lot of referrals when we get a referral usually it's a letter from a parent saying please help us my child needs help I see this is wrong I see I need help with this so that is a referral letter sometimes schools can refer a child or other people we do have other processes in the district to help children but I'm only speaking to the special ed timelines okay so a parent would send a referral in to our office it gets processed it gets assigned to a child study team and within 20 days within 20 days right there on that second box you have to have an ID meeting thank you uh
024within 20 days you would have an i an ID meeting and during that ID meeting certain people will be present and you will discuss why you wrote that letter and what kind of things do you think are going on with your child now during that meeting they will determine or within 15 days they will determine if the child study team will evaluate usually it's determined at that meeting however there are 15 days in case somebody wants to produce some other paperwork or we're not sure and then from there there's the legal process that we have to follow then and if we decide to evaluate the child then we determine what kind of testing is going to be done what kind of people are going to be involved in this and when I say we I
025mean the the team and and some of the other slides will talk about that and it's the IEP team not necessarily the child study theme it's everyone at that meeting determines what what kind of disability is there suspected what kind of testing do we need and from there we we go on our merry way and everyone deter everyone that's assigned a test will test that child then after all the testing if you want to go down in the middle after all the testing then you have an eligibility meeting and the testing from the day of the I the day of the ID meeting once consent is signed to test we have 90 days to do this testing so the process does take a long time and it does seem to um for parents who are
026anxious it does seem to drag out but we're not dragging our feet we're working really hard we're Gathering all the necessary information we're talking to all the teachers we're getting surveys and responses from last year's teachers and this year's teachers all taking all that stuff into consideration for our next meeting once we have all those those meeting and reports the reports are mailed to parents 10 days prior to a meeting so you get your reports 10 days in advance so you can look at them and you can read them and some of them are very difficult to read so you can read them again and again some of the we Tred to make them parent friendly but some of the jargon is a little professional so you have some time to read it to digest
027it to understand them and then you go to your meeting and then you can talk about them and the people who have tested your child or who are knowledgeable about that test will come speak to that test or that report and during that meeting it is determined if your child would be eligible for special ed and related Services let's see and this chart it says the IEP is developed by the IEP team which is developed at that time when your child is considered eligible and we'll go and we'll talk about eligibility categories and things like that next so um after that and I p is done and then I can't read the bottom but what it's saying is that every year you have to have an IEP meeting after that and then every three years
028you could you'll have a trianal evaluation or re-evaluation okay next slide thank you okay so here's some additional information on timelines I already talked about this a little bit but here it is in writing copies of the eval valuation and Report anything that will be used to determine if your child is elig eligible would be given to the parents not later than 10 calendar days prior to the IEP meeting or eligibility meeting so sometimes the mail slow down you don't have that time you could certainly call us and tell us you didn't receive them in the 10 days but we make every effort to get those reports out 10 days in advance for sure um and then here's another timeline to be um considering that the IEP team meeting or the IEP meeting must occur
029within 30 calendar days of the day that the child is deemed eligible but most eligibility meetings are held after most IEP meetings are held right after the eligibility so usually we have those two meetings in at one time because most people don't want to wait 30 more days to have their child get the service services that they need but that is an option and that's where parents have the right to we um here's a list of the 14 categories in New Jersey Administrative Code 6814 there are 14 eligibility categories so after your child is tested we determine what category that child fits into of these 14 and if you read them all they're very different so we take all the information that we've gathered and determine if your child is eligible and under which eligibility
030category this eligibility category is listed on the front of your child's IEP and in the eligibility statement there is an eligibility for speech and language also so you could be eligible only for speech or you can be eligible for special ed and related Services thank you this is what I was talking about before who is on the IEP team the child study team is different than the IEP team so on the IEP team one you're meeting there's the parent or parents the student if appropriate we try to involve the middle school children if they're able to and definitely the high school kids are definitely involved the case manager one of the children's general education teacher and a special education teacher and anyone else that's deemed necessary or appropriate parents sometimes invite someone else parents can
031invite whomever they choose to um and we would invite other people if if your child um needed occupational therapy or physical therapy or some kind of assistive Tech that person might be in attendance as well okay so what is an IEP and what should be included in it once a child is is found eligible for special ed and related Services an IEP is developed for that student and in an IEP probably about 35 40 pages sometimes um sometimes there's a lot of information and it takes a little while to read through it but we definitely have to have the present levels of the students achievement and academic performance so we get we get information from the children's teachers anybody who's dealing with that child goes into their IEP as their present levels it's called a
032pla present levels of academic achievement and functioning performance so we write all kinds of current kind of like a current Ed status in there we add measurable goals short-term objectives or benchmarks there are teaching activities and other services designated or designed for the student meeting their goals and objectives any special and related Services provided and any accommodations and modifications to ensure that the child receives Fai Fai that's in the the other acronym free and appropriate public education so all these things go into one document and from that document that document is saying that this is what your child needs to receive a free and appropriate public education all right thank you what is that LR some people ask this question all the time and ask if it's a place can you put my kid in
033an LR what does an L look like LR is really not a specific place it's more of an idea and the LR and Ida is determined to be that a child should be with other students in General Ed classes to the maximum extent possible so depending on your child an LR could be an add a district placement versus an in school placement your child could be in a general Ed classroom your child could be in a resource room or Resource Center your child could be in an class support environment your child could be in a self-contained class in District your child could be just in a Jed class with some kind of modification so depending on your child and what your child needs to get fa the free and appropriate public education you the LR
034is considered from there what is the most extent possible that your child could be in a general Ed setting and we want children to be in the general setting as much as possible so that's what the LR is it's hard to talk about it so specifically because each child is different and someone asked me one time if there was an LR in the building and I said every building has an LR but it's not a room it's it's just an idea what does your child need in the least restrictive environment thank you go ahead Co thank you okay so we have that guide the guide the New Jersey Administrative Code 6A that I talked about before and we have idea that tells us what to do now parents rights and special education helps parents and
035it's a guide for parents and it's passed out many times it's on the bottom of many of our email addresses links to this this is called prize this is another acronym parent rights and special education prize you can find it on the department of Ed's website um and it's available in many different languages this is kind of like our law book but broken down and there are different steps in there in different ways you can do things it's a very handy book I know everyone says I don't need another copy because I have a copy but make sure you have a copy handy and if you don't you can go would you click on that link Kelly on the new J Jersey Department of Ed and there are a bunch of different ones there see
036there's a revised parents and special ed the prize and then it's in English Spanish Chinese and Portuguese so you can find it there that's a link to the prize and we do hand it out often and we have more in our office if anybody wants a copy please reach out use that special education at Clifton schools.net email address and we will take care of that if you think you need one and you do not have a copy okay so here are a bunch of different things that the special educ ation department is offering right now we were lucky to have one of our supervisors trained as a certified trainer in nurtured heart so we have um we're offering right now School 17 has a three-day training we're offering many of our staff members who I
037think we're up to 50 staff members that will be taking the training at the end of this month and Linda Chavez is offering another parent Training Kelly do you want to click on that first link yeah so we will be offering uh oh this worked before it it's a flyer with the date and uh oh did Linda throw it away Linda made the brochure and I'm not quite sure what happened to but it was here so I will make sure that get publicized sent out through our new peach jar that we've been using to send out things and I know that as of yesterday I think Linda sent it out yesterday we already had 50 parents called today wanting to sign up for it so we'll have to offer some more trainings although Miss shavez
038says she can handle an audience of 200 I don't know if if she wants to do 200 parents in the parent training um Heather you might be able to try clicking it again again okay thank you Lindsay hopefully it works there you go perfect you guys are the best thank you okay so Monday Tuesday and Wednesday November 30th December 1st and 2nd from 6:30 to 8:30 you can get trained in this wonderful nurtured heart approach for parents and caregivers and I know that yesterday when Miss Chavez was doing her presentation for School 17 there were only a couple parents in it but one of the parents during the break came back and said I just used that on my daughter and she went and did what I wanted her to do so it does work
039and it's just another technique and another way to help our kids cope right now so we're going to show Heather we can't hear you Mr O'Brien yeah sorry Heather we just couldn't hear you before uh oh how long you should have stopped me I've been talking away uh you just went up to the peach jar we've been sending out the notifications through there oh okay that was that was far back I okay so um we advertised another this parent training from this flyer and we already had 50 people already signed up just today alone 50 parents wanting to have this nurtured heart training so I think that's great um did you hear me say that Linda said one of the parents yes okay he I don't repeat myself okay so it works and it's just
040another method for teach for parents to help and we're actually training teachers too and child study team members so hopefully we'll all be nurtured heart trained and that will help us all right can you click on the video so here's a short video about nurtured heart and while you're watching this if you want to any questions CLI to specialed Clifton schools.net please do so I'm going to check the email right now to see if we got any more questions and Kelly you're going to play this can you make it bigger the full screen thank you and I really struggle with therapies that will fix that the nurtured heart approach for me is a way of giving tools to not only myself but parents teachers um youth workers anybody that's at that cold face with these
041kids to help them really see what's great about them and really start to look to life of hope um and a bit more [Music] purpose this work evolved out of my work as a family therapist working with some of the most difficult kids and it's moved into how to help kids build inner wealth and by doing that helping them to flourish the approach which has evolved from being used primarily with parents to now being used in larger scale ways in education in thousands of classrooms around the world in many different kinds of therapeutic applications in group homes Foster by child Advocates I've tried all kinds of different models for approaching kids and and helping them to improve um and I have not run across anything that feels more intuitive more natural more um accessible for
042kids I am the approach I don't have to learn something again I don't have to remember I don't go into my head because I'm trying to think of what did it say on page 327 because when you're coming from your heart when you are the approaching there's your heart approach there's no mistakes you talk to people energize them about their greatness and you see it growing not at all giving energy to anything negative the nurtured heart approach is so powerful because it gets at the core of their uh opinion of themselves and no one has ever said you're awesome because of their negative behaviors challenging behaviors really intense behaviors they've elicited negative attention from all of the people that have worked with them without ever really noticing and bringing out and blooming uh in their
043own minds uh that there's a level of Awesomeness to them that no one has ever taken the time to to share with them in the lives just to tell them what to do yeah tell them no to judge them to tell them where they going around to points out all the bad points nothing will change but the approach changes that the approach looks as I'm going to recognize your qualities I've been through kind of the therapeutic life since I was around eight um I was kind of a little monster child and hard to handle a lot and I ended up getting myself into self harm which is a really scary experience then you know continuing with this strong attitude I had against everything um the only thing that everyone thought to do was just punish
044me it took you know attempted suicide for things to really get I mean it just threw us off the cliff when we started doing the NT it completely changed everything I started noticing a difference like within the first week with my family which meant a lot to me so now being able to have so much trust into my family and you know really knowing that I am not going to be put down you know if I'm on the top of the stairs not going to be thrown down if from this if I make a mistake there's always a [Music] reset the biggest thing for me really was the amazing difference this approach made with my son who I my husband and I had given up hope on and thinking I'm not the mom for this
045kid I don't know what to do so the nurture heart approach turned all of that around they told me I am the right mom for this kid actually it's even better than I ever thought it was going to be I could be a better mom than I ever thought I could be because of this once we knew how to have beautiful intentional relationships and once our eyes were turned on what was right about them instead of focusing on all the diagnosis all the things that were wrong all the things that the predictions would be like oh this is gloom and doom once we knew how to go no we're just G to stay in this moment right here and in this moment we see greatness in this moment we see what's right in this moment
046you are magnificent and we knew how to do that it changed our hearts and then we could parent them the tools that the approach provides just provide so much support for okay what do I do when she's upset or what do I do when I'm upset it's it just okay um and your Clarity and your boundaries to trust when I can handle it is doesn't feel like abandonment it feels empowering and so it just kind of really good for adult child like parent adult child relationship yeah there's not an age limit on it and I keep saying if the whole world can just get it if the world can just get it if the world can just get it I can say that over and over it would be such a much more beautiful world
047a wonderful place to live if we remember to see the greatness in others [Music] need some help J can you help him out turkey Goble Jeremiah thank you Christina a dog run [Music] a dog and you know what Jord I don't know if you paid attention but right here we have turkey Gobles and a dog does what so you just show me the difference between these two you compare in contrast right there two school years ago we had 45 students that were ineligible to return because their pattern of disruptive behavior did not improve over the course of the year last year there were only five that really were problematic and were unable to return so that's a big drop for us from 45 to actually five in in that year's time um with the population
048that I serve with special education students those students who may be cognitively delayed you're able to recognize anything about them they're showing up for school they're sitting in their seats they're able to use a utens taking food you know what I noticed Steve is that you're not hitting that window hard and that shows really great self-control I know you're a little upset I love how you're calming yourself and I really love the way you're taking care of yourself right now Steve do you know that do you know you're taking good care of yourself children need to know how special they are they need to know how great they are they need to know that they are gift to the world it doesn't matter where they come from and if we can really convey that to
049them I mean if we can pour into them and help them internalize that fact that's the antidote for poverty it makes your individual life better your relationships better it makes you happier it makes you um uh feel like you're contributing to the world and uh it's synonymous with making the world a better place so what I can absolutely guarantee is exquisite moments of recognizing who you are and the gift that you are and the joy of playing with the gift you are it will happen it will happen it will happen [Music] thank you okay so that's an overview of nurtured heart and we are offering that to parents on that flyer is the date that we're offering it it's um definitely another tool that we can use to get the results that we want and
050I know that times are very difficult for parents right now with all that's going on so this approach might help you it would defin it definitely the training we only did a couple hours already but um it definitely helped me get my child to do something that I wanted them to do in a way that they felt like they were doing it so as you saw from that short video it's just another technique a parent can use a teacher can use a team member can use to get some positive results we have off we offer additional parent trainings our autism program has parent trainings um and we've been doing them virtually this year because of covid but we usually have them in person for the children the parents of children with autism and they have
051a different lineup every month of the of the topics and the behaviorist present during that we have offered parent support groups during covid we had um we ran our first parent support group and we had a bunch of parents on and we had um a social worker and uh Dr Roth come in and talk to them and and facilitate the group which we thought was very helpful so we'll be running those again this year there are videos on our website and our website is new Clifton's website is new and the special ed page is new and we put some new videos on there on masks on wearing masks and a practice guide for wearing masks so you can find those videos there and there was a bunch of agencies in Pay County and in New
052Jersey so we added a couple links to their books their books are very long and they have lots of support so we added those links here which will be in the presentation on the website we also have our parent advisory groups special ed parent advisory group cpag and they have a social media website a social media if you'd like to follow them these are all just additional resources and trainings for our parents so we have a couple questions that came in today that we wrote about I have a couple that just came in while the video was on so um some parents emailed us the questions can you go yeah there you go thank you um some parents emailed us questions when the flyer came out so these are a couple of the questions that
053came out then who do I contact about an issue with my child of course we'd like you to try to contact the teacher first and then the case manager and that if that does not help resolve the issue you may contact any of the special education supervisors and we will assist you but there is a chain of command and especially if it's a problem in the classroom that may be solved with the teacher you can start there another question was does my child have to wear a mask yes yes all children have to wear masks right now and we have training videos on our website for you and teachers will be reinforcing tolerating and wearing the math um there teachers were showing the videos that we made starting last year so they some children have
054seen them over and over again we showed them during some of our summer programs and the teachers have been talking and reinforcing that during during the actual virtual part of school from September to October 12th teachers were reinforcing that so children who are coming in definitely have to wear a mask and we've been providing support if you have issues with your child wearing uh wearing the mask please let us know and those two videos are really helpful too um we got a question what are some of the covid protocols so um teachers are wearing masks just like your children we have hand sanitizer available we have wipes available um and face Shields are offered to staff so we are doing that to keep everyone safe um how often do I meet with the child study
055team to discuss my child's IEP well we're we are required to meet once a year to go over the IEP which is called the annual review but if there's a reason that you would like to request an additional meeting um you can determine that as appropriate as needed but once a year at minimum you have to meet to discuss your child's IEP and then you would go over all the components of the IEP that we talked about before how's your child doing what are their present levels goals and objectives what kind of services they need what kind of accommodations they need so that's all discussed at an annual review which is one time a year and if there's an IEP meeting if something has to be changed you need to have an IEP meeting all
056those things are discussed again um another question we got from a parent what do I do if I have a transportation issue please call the transportation department that's the number if the problem includes issues that the case manager requires knowledge of please reach out to your case manager we definitely need to know if there are Transportation issues besides actual busing please let us know um one of the parents asked why are there two teachers in my child's class um probably I don't know the the parent but probably that child is in an in-class support environment where there's a certified special education teacher and a general education teacher in there or I could imagine that it might be a teacher and a par professional but the child came home and said there are two teachers so
057depending on on who that is the question could be it's either two teachers one general education teacher and one special education teacher or maybe a teacher and a par professional to help and Par professionals are in classrooms based on student enrollment class size so in that big law book that New Jersey Law book there's numbers that we have to follow when we hit a certain number we have to put a power professional in a classroom so could be that instance too uh a parent asked what do I do if I disagree with the child study team's recommendations well as a part of the IEP team we want you to talk about that at the at the meetings please discuss it with your child study team at the meeting and unfortunately if a consensus can't be
058reached then you you have the right to file for due process and due process and the procedures can be found in that book called prize and in the back of that book called prize there are forms that you have to fill out for due process we do try really hard to find a general consensus and agree on things sometimes we as a team cannot agree on things and then we we need someone to come help us decide so that's when we would file for due process or a parent would file for due process so you can refer to your parent rights and special education book um I do have another question that somebody emailed me before we go to that and it's kind of specific but um it's about assignments in elementary school so I'm
059not sure if that parent is on here but I I think it's a little more specific in terms of how much homework should my child have how much modification of work should my child have so just in general your IEP should determine if there are appropriate modifications for assignments for homework um without knowing the actual class and the Heather we I can't hear you I question in here um Heather you cut off when you were answering that question Dr Asen did you hear Heather or was it just my end no no she cut out yeah I'm sorry no and I have no children in my house I I made sure that my children had somewhere else to go so nobody was gaming nobody's on their phones nobody's on anything so I apologize about the internet
060obviously these problems happen so some of the questions that came in what I was saying was some of the questions that came in are more specific to their own children so I I will reach out or the case manager or another supervisor will reach out to those parents I think because some of them were very specific this one in general about homework and things like that anything that needs to be modified or accommodated or made changes in should be in an IEP so if if you feel like your child's getting too much homework reach out to the teacher and find out how long do you expect my child to do homework and then if it seems like it's it's not a reasonable a reasonable amount of time then we can certainly address that but to
061ask a very general question or a very specific question in general Forum it's not easy to answer some of these questions you know how much homework should my child be doing by grade level by subject matter by teacher by school by what they accomplish during the day um you know an upcoming test so all those things vary so I think some of the questions are very specific um let me just check and see if there are any more questions no I only have one more question and and that par and I already responded to and said we will reach out um I thank you all for your time I appreciate it we had a great very large audience in the live stream it was up to 150 people at one point it's down to 114
062now but I appreciate everyone coming I'm sorry about my little technical glitches I appreciate everybody's time all the staff members that took time out of their busy night so thank you and as usual reach out with any questions uh special education at Clifton schools.net will be open for anybody who has any questions that they did not ask now I think that's it right that was the end of our presentation and thank you and have a great night thanks every jumped on thank you for listening thank you