001it is now 6 30 so i will go ahead and get started my name is trisha waddell i am the new interim principal here at the tucson campus and i'm very excited to be here i'm looking forward to meeting some more of our families as we go into the school year i want to start by introducing myself and actually first i want to say thank you to those families that are here i see you i look forward to meeting you and talking to you about my vision um and um what's gonna happen this school year as well as answering any questions that you may have so i'll talk at my vision about my vision and my plan for the school year and then at the very end i'll take questions i'll start by describing my
002background i graduated from gallaudet universities with two bachelor's degrees in english and in theater arts i went to mcdaniel college for my master's in deaf ed and secondary ed i taught at the virginia school for the deaf and blind as a long-term sub while i was completing my master's degree and then i went to washington dc to work at the model secondary school for the deaf as an english teacher and the lead for the english department after a few years there i moved to the colorado school for the deaf where i was a preschool teacher and an asl english bilingual instructional coach a new opportunity arose here in arizona initially in phoenix last year i became the assistant principal at phoenix day school for the deaf and i absolutely loved it and now i have
003this other new opportunity here in tucson and i am very much looking forward to starting my new chapter as principal here in tucson i have a few sections that i want to touch on i'll talk about the focus of this year and some things that i want to improve on this year i will focus primarily on a few things with families students community and staff the first thing is building strong relationships with all of the stakeholders i want to see you i want to hear you i want to know your concerns do everything that we can in the school environment to create a positive culture that is both friendly and valuable or values deaf culture as well as accessible for those who are um blind and visually impaired as we know covid is still around
004and the numbers are fluctuating we've had some some uh peaks right recently and we do have some plans for covid mitigation but they may change depending on how bad the numbers get in arizona and pima county we do encourage masks they are not currently required um but we do want to keep everyone safe particularly when school starts and and when we start to notice those numbers rise we will be having sports this year um i know that there's been a lot of discussion about fans wanting to come and watch the games and support our students um so i am working with our athletic director brandon decker we're having a lot of conversation about that and we are creating a system where fans can rsvp so that they can get a ticket and be able to
005attend the game in person we will still limit the number of fans in attendance but we want to make sure that our families our staff our students all have the opportunity to come to games um and have equal opportunity to participate so for those who have rsvp'd or they will be able to come and then we will also create a waiting list for those who didn't quite make it we will also in that process of reopening we will be opening the sentinel zone again for our dorm students we don't know exactly when but it will be happening sometime this school year another area of focus will be on increased parent participation there are a lot of events and opportunities um that will and i'm going to share a few right now but it won't be
006limited to these for the duration of the school year i'm going to be continuing to be open to ideas one of the things that we would like to see is a parent staff organization or pso if you're interested in being a part of that um i will share my contact information later tonight please reach out there will also be some workshops and activities for students who don't play sports or who aren't playing a sport in the given season so that they can have opportunities um for growth and development and we want that to be available for both dorm and day students we will also be hosting more events like science fairs and other fairs related to academics um some may be related to career exploration and things like that we will do a few different
007type of fundraisers primarily with the focus of community engagement we're considering bringing back plays and we are offering asl classes if you're interested in that please reach out and we will get you in touch with the right department to sign up because that is something ongoing that we're offering we are also trying to increase the number of live streamed events such as sports um i'm going to try my absolute best to have our games live streamed so that you can watch from the comfort of your home if you're not able to attend in person another area of focus for me is increased community partnerships for example tucson has a lot of wonderful local businesses some that are owned by deaf individuals or blind or visually impaired individuals so we want to partner with them we
008also want to work with programs that have degrees in deaf and visual and vi education so we want to bring in a lot of different people from different programs so our students have a variety of role models that they can relate to so that's a general overview of my ideas and now i'll talk about some improvements that i feel are necessary based on my short time being on campus and talking with staff and this really applies to school-wide um none of these are specific to the deaf campus or the blind campus only this is applicable to the entire school so we want to address students independent living skills some of our students have gotten into some codependency some of those habits and we want them to break from that we want them to be able
009to be comfortable um getting around independently and functioning independently in the real world we also want to provide clear and transparent communication with parents of our students here we want to improve our students academic skills in all core areas including english math science and social studies that includes their comprehension we don't just want good test scores but we want them to truly fully understand content and if folks could please meet their microphones that would be helpful thank you we also want to expand our career and technical education program we want to offer a variety of options and opportunities we have partnered with jted and that has been helpful for our students but we're hoping to offer additional opportunities including some on campus we would love to bring back the yearbook i know that we have
010not had a yearbook for a few years now and we are hopeful to bring that back this year we also would like to expand our social media engagement and improve what we post and how often we post so that we're sharing pertinent information about our students and what's going on on campus so that's an overview of what i plan to do but now i would like to turn the time over to those who are participating what questions do you have what do you want to keep what do you want to change is there anything about my vision or my plan that you would like me to clarify for you please feel free to turn your camera and or your microphone on and we will interpret for for you either way i have a question i'm
011a parent for one of the for a preschool student he's four years old and what is your plan for preschool because he's not he's not fully deaf he's just he speaks and signs but is there any chance in the near future or maybe next year um instead of mainstreaming him that he would be able to continue on to the tucson campus for kindergarten and uh is that something we're seeing or because i know i'm not the only parent who's wondering about that in preschool yes thank you for that question um i'm glad you brought up preschool i'm the principal actually just for kindergarten through 12th grade but i am working closely with our preschool department they're under um our early learning program eop michelle ahern is the leader for that program and we are working
012to make sure that our kids have a very smooth transition from preschool to kinder um and that our programs align with each other so your question as far as your child being able to stay at asdb in kindergarten the answer is absolutely yes we would work with your school district to develop their iep and make a plan and determine whether it's appropriate for them to stay here or if it would be he'd be better served in his school district but it is definitely an option for him i'm i have a question i'm a parent of two students one in junior high and one in elementary right now in the in the vi department but that is something that is brought up a lot that's concerning to me is mainstreaming the children like it seems like
013i don't know if it's the state or asdb as a whole now um but it seems like they want to give them the tools and then send them away whereas it's not necessarily a good thing to send these kids mainstream some of them are better off at asdb because they have staff members that understand they have peers that are like them whereas if they go back mainstream they're not going to have that and so that's a concern of mine and again i'm glad you brought that up yes um the leadership team at asdb the agency as a whole plus the campus um has been talking about that and and this discussion will absolutely continue but the discussion comes back to the least restrictive environment and the interpretation of what that means the general interpretation under
014the law is for a student in special ed they can go to a special school with the goal of transitioning them back into a mainstream program but i share your perspective as a deaf person i strongly believe that a deaf school is the best place for our deaf students and i believe that's generally often the case with our blind and bi students as well they have a safe space here they have a fully accessible environment with staff who understands their needs and peers so we do have to look at those laws and work with our school districts to make sure that we can share the same interpretation but i also want to say and emphasize that as a parent you have the final say in the placement of your child i wish we could change
015that law i think it should be totally up to the parents and we shouldn't have to use a school district to bring them into asdb we need to change that as a former student as a former staff member and now as a parent i really think that any of these parents should be able to get the diagnosis medical diagnosis and bring them in and skip these these other school districts and because my school district is a large one and they want the children back i don't want them to go back i do completely understand your concerns um we will continue to fight and advocate for what is best for our students um we will continue to talk about this with the legislature we can propose different bills to make sure that our students get what
016they need um and remove some of those existing barriers i'm happy to talk with you more about this in detail and we can figure out how to try to improve that relationship with your district how you and i can work together and to make those your district specifically and others as well more willing to send their kids here okay um i came in kind of late and i was wondering about the sports so if we don't buy tickets we can't come and watch the sports um games so um we are still monitoring the covid numbers to see where we're at and we are developing a system where you will be able to rsvp there will be still a limited number of people allowed in but once the rsvps are full we will create a waiting
017list and you would get priority for the next game and of course if someone um gives up their seat you would um get bumped up from the waiting list and you'll hear from either myself or brandon decker shortly about our plan for that okay thank you with that being said as for the ieps because like i said my son has been in the preschool at asb since he was two and a half and the fact that i have to we might have to mainstream him next year my scare is and i think other parents would agree with me too is you mainstream these kids who have ieps or 504 plans they fall through those cracks and they don't get the help that they're needed i've worked with kids for 15 years and worked with the
018districts and i've seen it happen and that's what i'm really scared for for my kid and that's my main main concern about not mainstreaming my child next year and if i'm able to keep him at astp and he can go to kindergarten all the way up to high school there i'll be completely happy but i've been told for a couple years now that he's not able to be not able to stay at isdb because he's not he's not fully 100 deaf ah so um we can definitely have a meeting to discuss that but first um i would like to contact kendra benedict and michelle ahern and then the three of us can have them or i will connect with the three of us and keep you and have you in the loop so that all
019four of us can have a meeting together um because i do want to make sure that this is a safe space and a home for all deaf and va children who would like to be here i i would really appreciate that and michelle has been awesome she's always kept me in the loop she um has always been 100 with me always updated me and i've respected her a lot through these years so that and she's always updating me with everything so and i know if this could happen for my child i know it would make her extremely excited for the other parents and the other students at the asap who are just like my son and they don't have to about worry about mainstreaming or anything if they want a mainstream that's great but for
020us parents who don't really want that this would be great if that's an option yes absolutely we will continue working with our iep team and our preschool department our elp department to have a clear plan in hand to share with the school district before that iep meeting and before that open discussion and again i want to re-emphasize you as the parent have the final decision in placement thank you i see some families might have arrived late um you might have missed my focus for this this year and the areas of improvement um so would you mind if i restate that again is that okay with everyone if i go ahead and reshare my mission and and all of that information or if anybody has any more questions i'd be happy to take those before i
021restate my introduction yeah i have a question um my son goes to the preschool right now but i got told by megan that my daughter because she's in the early learning part um that she doesn't qualify because of the vision um because of low vision i'm sorry can you clarify for the interview um she is um huh she was born with cataracts so she was blind when she was born [Music] and so um megan had said that you don't do not qualify is that correct that she doesn't qualify because she's not deaf that it has to be false not um and one are the others okay um this is trisha speaking would you mind clarifying which uh department does megan work with i mean not megan the michelle that works there oh i see okay
022yeah i go ahead and discuss that with her unfortunately um i just started in this position so i haven't had a time to meet with uh the preschool program to learn more about their offerings here but i'm definitely gonna bring that up with her and i'm gonna make a note to clarify with that so that i can get back to you um and if you guys contact me and email me that would be great yeah because her team told me that just like you guys said that it's up to us where we put our kids but [Music] why is she saying that she doesn't qualify when she doesn't truly knower okay yes so can you please email me um your name your child's name and then that way i can start working with the preschool
023team and i i'm doing and would you need my email information because i can give that to you as well okay are you ready to write it down just let me know when you're ready and i'll go ahead and give you that email address so after this session i am going to go ahead and send out a parent square message with my contact information that might be easier for everyone all the parents here to get it so but i will also be sharing it okay i do see some more families have been joining so i'm gonna back it up just a little bit to the beginning of my presentation where i was um discussing on my focus for this year and what areas improvement i see that need and then if there are any more
024questions after that we'll open it up again for q and a's all right so i'm going to go back and explain my focus for this year so the primary focus is developing relationships between families students and the community and staff and making sure that our school environment is healthy positive and uplifting now we all know that covet is still going on and the numbers are fluctuating so we have a few different things we are doing so first we are encouraging masks of course they are not required um and if you know there is a rise in cases that might be readdressed but at this point it is optional if there is a large crease we might as i mentioned before we might have to revisit this issue if there's a large increase in case numbers
025however we are focusing on the current mitigation strategies we have in terms of sports we are going to be developing an rsvp system for fans who are interested in attending games so this system will be run by our athletic director brandon decker and so he will send out that invitation you can sign up in rsvp for a list for the list if you do miss out you'll be placed on a wait list and have an opportunity to go ahead and join the next sporting season or the next game excuse me we are also discussing reopening the sentinel zone for dorm students as an area where they can socialize and another area of focus for this year is increasing parent participation student participation and having more events and opportunities on campus so for example and if
026you have any more ideas uh please feel free to share but um we might develop a parent and staff organization if there's interest please contact me and we can talk about setting that up i want to develop different kinds of activities and workshops for students who don't play sports so that they can be involved in those after school activities and clubs too another thing that we're looking to be involved in is science fairs and other different kinds of fairs going on i hope to get our students involved in that hopefully we can also bring back plays this year fingers crossed we're going to have different kinds of fundraising events in order to help our schools you know sports organizations and various things like that we have asl classes if you are interested in taking an
027asl class please contact me and i can help you um refer you to the right department in order to sign up and happy to do that we're also going to have different events going on including sports if uh it's a very far location we hope to have more opportunities for parents to be involved via live stream so that you can watch the games from the comfort of your home and also if you sign up for the rsvp to attend in person but you would end up on the wait list you still have an option to watch the game another area i want to make sure that i'm working on is involving the community and you know improving their involvement i really want to support small businesses there are lots of deaf and vi owned businesses
028as well that i would like to partner with you know there and there are other programs educational programs graduate programs that specialize in deaf education and bi education and i would love to partner with those to get more training and practicum or internship experiences it'll also provide great role models for our students here on campus so those are some of my goals and areas for improvements this year i also have more observations that i've made from my you know myself personally and also from staff informing me of areas of improvement and of course these areas of improvement are addressing both the deaf side of the school and the blind side not just one but first we want to work on our students independent skills we've seen a lot of co-dependence within our student population and
029we want them to be fully independent and ready to go out into the real world so we want to focus on improving those skills another area we want to improve communication with parents we want to make sure that you all feel included you know that you can come ask us questions talk with your teachers talk with the dorm staff we want to make sure that you know that your child is doing well and they are safe here on campus improving students academic skills is another area you know all core math science english um you know we are not just focusing on the data and the numbers of test scores which that is great information but we want to make sure that our students are comprehending they're able to re-explain and understand the big picture of
030what they're learning and why they're learning it um next i'm also working with the tech the cte director program we are partnered with jted and we want to expand that more here on campus for our students so they have the opportunity to take cte classes directly from a deaf teacher who's signing or from a vi teacher who knows what the need the accessibility needs are and everything is ready and provided equipment everything necessary for both populations so that's um a goal of mine i would also like to bring back the yearbook i know that in years past we had one but for the last few years it's not happened so i would like to reinstate that if possible and also i'm hoping to improve our social media involvement you know having more posts sharing information
031for parents and families in the community um and if you have any ideas or recommendations please share with me at the end so um that was my big you know my introduction at the beginning so i wanted to restate it for some parents who are some families who just joined us um so if you all have anything that there that is happening here that on campus that you would like to keep or anything you'd like to change please let me know um if you have any questions to understand my vision or plan please go ahead and ask me and if you have any recommendations or ideas send them my way i am taking notes so now is your opportunity go ahead and turn your camera or mic on if you would like to share any
032ideas or ask any questions i have um a statement about the sports last year it was really disappointing because i have to uber it there and we win a couple times and we weren't allowed in there was parents from other schools that didn't understand our rules and so i'm curious for the other parents because i saw one parent that was very distressed and i don't know who the staff member was but she was very gruff with this parent who was trying to figure out where her child was for the rsvps are we going to let the other schools know so that these parents don't show up and have to sit in their cars or you know what what all is going to that entail for those parents that don't know the system and show up
033and it was really pretty rough to watch that that woman panicked and didn't know she couldn't come in i am really sorry that you had to witness that happening and i hope we can prevent that from happening in the future um and that is a good point so i'm going to be working with brandon decker and uh brandon should be working with that the other school's athletic director to inform them that we are limiting the number of uh parents or fans allowed and we are going to split it half asdb fans half visiting team fans and then we're gonna try and leave you know trying to keep it fair is that and then we are also going to have reserve seating but yes we are definitely going to be communicating with the other schools athletic
034directors so that they can disburse that information to their parents to avoid a situation like that again let me make a note of that yeah it was just you know and and it's it wouldn't be fair for the other school not to know that they'd have to make an rsvp um and then the other thing is is you said something about a pto how are who are we going to get to start that because i'm very interested oh awesome let me make a note um so i am you know as principal it would be my role to be sure to facilitate between the parents and the staff in order to establish and then um you know once that once that is established we will elect presidents uh vice president secretary treasurer et cetera in order
035to continue to run the meetings but i will be there to support that process so that is great i have made a note that you're interested but also if anybody else is interested please email me and if you know of any other families let them know because we want to make sure that we do have a good number and the meetings will be virtual because it will be statewide and we want to make sure that parents all over the state of arizona would be involved so these would be a virtual parent-teacher organization all right i do have another question due to recent events around around the us lately with the school shootings and the just the terrorizing of the schools and everything what is your plan of keeping our kids safe on campus yes it's
036a gated community yes we are able to enter and we have to check in at the front desk and all that but nowadays that doesn't seem to be enough and i know these kids get you know the fire drills the the um lockdown drills and this and but that's still now is still not enough so what is your plan for that jonas camp is our facilities operations director and he has established a partnership with tucson tucson police department and they're going to be providing an active shooter training to all of our staff um so all of our staff will be trained in those procedures and we will establish a campus-wide plan and once we've done that then we will drill that with our students and it will be very similar to a lockdown procedure where
037we practice that with our kids occasionally and almost all of our buildings have a proxy card system meaning they are all locked from the outside and anytime that the campus is open you always would have to use a proxy card in order to get into those buildings which definitely helps with the safety of our students but we also have a safety committee under our risk management department and they are working with us on those plans as well and they will send that plan out to parents as soon as it's finalized that is a huge concern of mine as well and it is something um that has been brought up um and we are working on addressing it proactively before we have any kind of incident on campus i'm all for the proxy cards but the
038windows the doors to those elementary and middle school buildings they're all glass so that's not gonna stop somebody coming in that's an active shooter that's my concern as a parent and then also the doors to the classroom they all swing out how do you lock that if you can't if it swings out not in you can't block it or anything like that can you repeat that last part regarding the door for me please just so to make sure i'm understanding the question clearly so the classroom doors all swing out into the hallway instead of in towards the classroom and there's huge windows next to the doors of the classroom how do you what is the plan if somebody gets in that far because they could with glass doors on the outside and then seriously don't
039slam the door sorry um but the doors all swing out into the hallway how are you supposed to stop somebody from getting in do you guys have a plan for that that is absolutely part of the plan um we first of all have an alarm system um so the doors um are locked at all times um they cannot be unlocked so once that door is closed um it is already locked and so that's the first part of the plan as far as that glass panel we are aware that that is a concern and we are hoping to set up um you know to set a system where on the other side of that glass we have a barrier um so that our students can be out of that range and then we also have on
040campus security that are here 24 7. um so that helps so if there's any kind of odd behavior any kind of incident um the second that someone comes into campus we would expect to apprehend them or impede them before they ever make it to one of our buildings and again i do want to reiterate that um we are actively working on that plan and we are revisiting the plans that we already have making sure that what we have aligns with the recommendations and the training provided by tucson police department and all of that will be shared to all of our families we want you to feel that your child is safe here and our student safety is my top priority so i will be sharing all of those updated plans with you as soon as
041we have them and i know that it is a scary time for our students in schools are there any other questions comments recommendations i want to make sure that i address any concerns or anything that you're just curious about because i want you to feel comfortable and feel safe having your kids on this campus i'm just gonna give it maybe three to five more minutes um see if any other folks join or if any folks come up with additional comments questions or recommendations and if not then we'll go ahead and wrap up early i have one more question um i i heard you mentioned the asl classes for us um last year i signed up for those classes and i never heard anything from anyone so is there a new person who's in charge of
042that because i am really interested in taking those yes there is um last year we did have a few different departments that were responsible for asl classes um that is all now under one department so it's all run agency-wide much more streamlined so we're offering asl classes for all of our families i am going to send out my contact information via parent square and so if you want to shoot me an email i will connect you with the person who is now running our asl classes the asl classes are open to families not just parents if there are other family members friends service providers people who are close to your child it would benefit them to know sign language to communicate with your child please feel free to share with them too it's not just
043for parents i'm wondering how many families on the call now have children in preschool versus k-12 just wondering about those numbers if you want to just chime in and let me know which program your child is in uh my son is preschool elp and he also has an iep okay i have two in the vi department one in elementary and one in middle school okay i have one in preschool and one in the early learning program are those are your children if you don't mind me asking are your children in the deaf program or the vi program my son is in the deaf program okay thanks thank you okay well if there are no additional questions comments or concerns i'll go ahead and wrap up but please do know that you are welcome to contact
044me anytime i'm very happy to work with you however i can thank you it was so nice to meet you thank you thank you been talking to you and good luck thank you i appreciate it okay well i think we'll go ahead and close thank you so much for joining me tonight it was nice to meet and chat with all of you all right