001all right Miss Johnson can you please begin the recording the time is now 6:10 p.m. good evening and welcome to the March 18th 2025 disability issues Advisory board meeting I am Teresa Smith Advisory Board chair or vice chair excuse me and thank you all for joining today for those who are unable to observe now the meeting is being recorded and can be accessed on the PGCPS YouTube channel for later viewing Miss Johnson please call the role certainly good evening everyone Sylvia Maya Stephanie Blackwell trenell Bowman Trisha dorsy Pres Rachel Doyle Jamal Jango Irma catrell Janie Payne present Britney Patrick present Teresa Smith present Sherice vicory present and Erica winggate Robinson present there are seven in total we have quum oh sorry with the qun present the disability issues Advisory board meeting will come to order
002adoption of the meeting agenda if there are no objections the committee shall adopt the March 18th 2025 meeting agenda there being no objections the March 18th 20125 meeting agenda is adopted approval of the commit meeting minutes if there are no Corrections the committee shall approve the February 18th 2025 meeting minutes as distributed there being no Corrections the February 18 2025 meeting minutes are approved report of the vice chair the the vice chair would like to announce that the new email address for the disability Advisory Board disability issues Advisory board that just did not sound right to me guys I'm sorry the vice chair announces the new email address for the disability issues Advisory Board The Advisory board can be contacted at D IAB at pgcps.org for inquiries we also will have a Google Drive live
003associated with this email account so that we can share any resources um for the entire committee to view the board has submitted a memo to be sent to All PGCPS principles announcing the reestablishment of diaab then um I have two other items um and I may need to defer to our board Lea Z Miss Brown um I went and looked at the minutes from November and December but I didn't see anything documented there but I believe in one of those meetings we had a discussion about when we would need to present to the board and if I'm not mistaken the October time frame is what was discussed but I was recently viewing the policy document and the policy document says that diaab shall report annually to the board providing information on the following issues and
004I I won't read all of that but the word annually um is is what I really want to bring to everyone's attention so um Miss Brown do you have any any feedback there is annually based on the calendar for the Board of Education or is it based on when this this particular board was reestablished that's a good question just give me one moment I I did have an answer for that okay and then um for the team here the reason why I also want to have Clarity here is because we only have three more meetings left um for this school year so essentially two meetings to try to get organized and get this presentation prepared by June um if we need to report by then Vice chair Smith can you um can we Circle back
005I just have to find the information you all know when I'm ready okay then um this is just part of who I am um I wanted to recognize that March is the developmental disabilities awareness month and I looked up a fact um and it says that individuals who have a developmental disability only show M symptoms and with the right support they can greatly improve learn and develop and I believe that concludes my report is there any discussion on any of the items that was presented hearing none we will now have the election for recording secretary the vice chair now recognizes candidates for the recording secretary position we will allow for two nominees member Sharice vicer has self-nominated are there any additional nominees all right hearing none Sharice vicory is now the recording secretary congratulations on
006your new role are you ready to take some notes tonight I guess so I was actually like oh if we didn't have anybody I'll do it but seeing as you guys decided y'all wasn't going to say nothing clearly here we go yes yes so we did not need to take a vote because it was only only one individual and I didn't hear any objections so it's all yours and I think that you would do quite well in it all right um Vice chair Smith I could just interject I just want to tell Sharice that um you and I can maybe if you want have schedule a meeting and we can meet offline so I can just do an overview for you okay I'll reach out to you after the meeting okay I appreciate that to
007you you're welcome awesome thank you guys for coordinating that the next agenda item is subcommittee reports we will now hear an update from each sub committee the vice chair recognizes the subcommittee for board policy 1700 and since we um met at our last meeting Britney Patrick has steep to be the lead for the subcommittee um and there was no objections for the folks that is part of this subcommittee so miss Britney Patrick do you have um any updates to report out tonight yes ma'am um it is a very limited update we have not had a chance to convene however I did send a second round of communication out to committee members inquiring about availability for two dates one of which is tomorrow and I have two folks who um have confirmed their AB availability so
008I'm going to go ahead and send that calendar invite um to hold tomorrow despite not having heard from the remainder of the committee yet okay great thank you the chair the vice chair recognizes Miss trell Bowman from the subcommittee for new school constru construction and accessibility of buildings and facilities for their report thank you so much um so we did have um a meeting scheduled but all committee members weren't a weren't able to attend so we're going to do a reschedule so I'll get an email out to the subcommittee this week to reschedule um in the meantime I did ask the uh committee members to provide me with questions that they had related to new Construction and building accessibility um so thank you so much committee members we have about 17 questions um in our
009Google doc and what I was trying to do by gathering those questions is because some of the questions require responses from other departments beyond the department of special education so working with our support programs and services Building Services um as well as our student services team um I'll be working with those um different Divi divisions and offices to respond um and preparation for our next um our uh Committee Member meeting and then that is something that I'll bring back to the full group um based on the responses that we get but we um definitely will have to have other offices respond to some of the questions that we've gathered great thank you for that report and actually guys it looks like I supposed to ask is there any discussion after each one my apologies so
010let me just back up a little bit although um the board policy 1700 subcommittee has not met does anyone here have any questions for Miss Patrick here in none are there any questions for Miss Bowman for new school construction and accessibility of buildings and Facilities all right here and none the vice chair recognizes Miss Janie Payne from the subcommittee for employment and hiring for their report thank you um our uh subcommittee met on March 8th um the attendees Miss Doyle Miss Blackwell Miss winggate Robinson and myself um Miss uh Patrick is also on our committee but was unable to attend um we defined expectations um and the following issues to address and submit recommendations to the diaab were expanding the opportunity for parents to volunteer improving staff education on the rules addressing an adequate compensation
011and benefits for one-on-one AIDS and creating training opportunities for one-on-one AIDS and Specialty teachers we also um went through and defined what what data information we need um to achieve those outcomes and there's um a long list of of those I'll just things like our turnover rate for AIDS uh wages for all levels uh total number of AIDS number of vacancies um consistent training that's being received um we also would like to have a meeting with PGCPS chro to understand from his or her perspective challenges actions and plans and um there was a suggestion to meet with some local school resources to understand best practices um we um agreed on how we would accomplish our work we'll meet um twice per month and our deadlines which might be impacted by um the um information about
012how the DI AB will meet is that March and April we'll gather and review our data April and May prepare recommendations with May submitting our recommendations to the diaab and our next uh meeting is scheduled for Saturday thank you and that concludes my report sorry for cutting you off thank you for that Miss Payne are there any is there any discussion so I actually have a couple of things myself um there was an acronym that you called out um specifically when you talked about trying to schedule a meeting with PGCPS I don't know if I captured it correctly but I wanted to know what it stand for did you say C chro is the chief human resource officer okay um then um you talked about the turnover rate for AIDS is that the only discipline
013that you guys are interested in and if so why just that one well one we wanted to um make sure that the scope of our work was doable given the time frame um so that's why the attention is on the one on one8 uh so that that was really the driver behind that may I ask you a follow-up question there sure um and and this is me trying to conceptualize this underboard policy um 1700s so is the context of the AIDS like dealing with someone who needs assistance for Mobility purposes I think it's just the idea of the one-on-one Aid role and the perception that that's an area um that really needs to be enhanced when we think about uh from a human resource perspective and hiring and making sure they're trained and making sure
014that there's adequate resources there okay and then um you you talked about understanding best practices who who would we need to engage would that still be the the chief that would be the chief um to help us understand whatever strategies um Prince George's County has in place also miss Blackwell um has some insight and um volunteered to collect data to the extent that she could and it was available to her so that was I thinking about that okay and that that probably is the next followup I had um Is How We Do followup officially through the board because I do realize um um because of Miss Blackwell or any other person that's on this committee that that works for the school system um I just want to make sure that we're following any type of
015protocol that we would need to do um as it relates to followup so with these two items H scheduling the meeting or trying to get a meeting arranged and then um I guess in that meeting you guys can ask about best practices so are you guys at the point right now if we put put the inquiry in to request the meeting should we do that right now yes okay that would be great all right because to be honest with you we really weren't sure um how to U make that request and wanted to uh bring that for um proper understanding yeah gotcha um Miss Johnson and Miss Brown do you guys have any feedback here because the other thing that I also was thinking if we need any type of presentations um as it relate
016to any subject that we're doing what is what's the process there do we do we just send an email over to you Miss sh yeah you certainly can and um we will reach out to Administration on your behalf and see um if we could have um someone from Administration attend the the meeting the D meeting that you all um are requesting for their presence and could they should that meeting be held with the entire diaab or can that subcommittee just have the meeting with whoever the staff member is oh as far as a subcommittee I'm not let me defer to uh I I see my um uh Cindy is in here Cindy are you on the call let me ask her just for clarity okay maybe she stepped away we can follow up about that
017question um cuz the way I've understood it as long as there isn't a quum you don't have to obviously um you don't have to go live um public but if there's someone from Administration I'm not really 100% sure if it you know needs to involve all of the all of the app or just those in the subcommittee but we can certainly I can mark that as a followup and get back to you about that okay great thank you and then how far in advance does an inquiry need to be be made I would say at least allow them two to three weeks notice okay simply because they're so busy you want to get them be considered R of of their time yeah okay thank you and then this will be my last question Miss pay
018you talked about data have you guys already identified your data points and do you want to make that request today as well um yeah Miss pay you went on mute yes we did um um decide what data we wanted um should I list that now um okay yeah so that if if there if there are any questions that give us an opportunity to ask and then um then you can probably follow up with an email so that we can submit it to so that you guys could get the data good okay so um we asked for the turnover rate for AIDS the wages for all levels within PGCPS the total number of AIDS and where they are positioned the number of Aid vacancies the types of training that aids receive um and the the bus
019driver salary levels the volunteer policy and where is the current policy being implemented that's the list that I have is the volunteer policy not publicly available information already well if it is then just um direct us to where we can find it yeah and we can pull it ourselves and bring it to our meeting that's fine okay so I got one two three four five six I think you called out seven with um the other one was the um that was just the general meeting which we addressed earlier with the chro okay I'm sorry I know we miss Miss Smith before we move on I I miss the the bus driver you you wanted the number of bus drivers or can you just the wages the wages the bus driver salary levels I I mean
020one could say it's going to be included in the overall request for salary but there was a specific request for bus driver salary levels okay I know that there are some hands and I see you guys but just I wanted to ask quickly are there is there any discussion around the data points that this sub committee the employment and hiring subcommittee is requesting today I don't have a any discussion chair Vice chair Smith but I do have an additional data point that I collected I don't know if now is the time to share or if I should hold that until our next committee meeting is it related to employment and highering uh it is okay sure let's you can share it okay thank you uh Committee Member pay for your update I apologize for missing
021the previous committee meeting but I do expect to make the next one um so I did take advantage of foering some information from PGCPS related to administrative procedure 4172 um and and this procedure states that a report must be made to the CEO by the equity Assurance office officer related to annually related to the number of employee accommodations requested including approvals and denials the associated cost of employees requested accommodations that are fulfilled uh the details of related training programs to employee accommodations and the timelines for completion of fulfilling these accommodations and Etc and so uh I I did foyer that information from the district they provided it to me within 30 days and I'd be happy to uh I don't know if I would send that to the diaab email address or if that would
022be information I could share with the committee and also I do expect to be able to share more context around why I chose to foyer that information at the next committee meeting Miss Payne I if there are no objections here I think that this is information that can be put in our Google Drive and then everyone can have access to it to review it so I could I'll send out a link to or chair Blackwell um can send out a link to the entire committee with the location of the the folder yes and then miss Patrick I'd like to um I haven't done the agenda for Saturday as of yet but to have specific a specific agenda item for you to um um talk with the subcommittee about it in in more detail I think
023would be great thank you thank you the chair recognizes Miss Miss Bowman so we do have an administrative procedure for volunteer Ser volunteer services which is 40 42166 um it is on the public website um and then the other piece for AIDS Miss pay can you CL clarify what type of AIDS I think that's going to be important because we have different buckets for example par professionals are considered support positions or are you talking about the temporary AIDS when you say AIDS I think clarifying clarifying that with the group and um um I don't maybe you could help me because we we didn't distinguish um when we were having the convers so I don't want to misrepresent the group so I'd like to clarify that on uh Saturday when we meet sure and our staffing
024plan our special ed Staffing plan is publicly available on our special education landing page so I'll send that to you which denotes every single special position that's under the specialist Staffing plan so that may help um you when you meet on Saturday so I'll that' be great it's right on the PGCPS yep landing page thank you speci you're welcome great is there I don't see any more hands is there any additional discussion here in none the next agenda item is um exploring ways to advise and to put this in context um we had an agenda item basically for us to discuss could we have a coordinated effort when we do engagement um whether that be directly with um schools or any other stakeholder so I'll open up the floor for any discussion here I will
025jump in and share that um thank you Vice chair Smith for providing some context as well um earlier on Miss vicory put this on the the table on one of our early meetings um because the question was can we reach out directly to schools within our district to let them know um who we are and what we're doing however I think since we've had that meeting our understanding of our Collective purpose has evolved and so I'm wondering how relevant or necessary it might be to engage constituents within our uh respective districts about the work we're doing here thank you for that any other um commentary here guys yeah I think um in regards to that you know as I I know that I missed the last committee me meeting but you know I've been able
026to watch the video and catch up um I think in regards to that I think it would be best if we had our respective District Representatives you know reach out to us and provide us with the feedback that they're getting from the schools in our district um especially you know I know some of us are connected to schools as we're parents and we might have kids across multiple schools in one District or might have kids across multiple schools throughout the district throughout the whole County um and then also with kind of some of the other like Civic and other organizations that we're part of but I think it's best if we had maybe um an opportunity for for our representatives to come and kind of give us some feedback um we do have representative brown
027but then we would also want to know from all the other districts like what's going on you know we might we might be gathering this data and providing feedback but we also might need to know specific things um so yeah I I agree we might not need to go the path of introducing ourselves to schools and things like that but I definitely um encourage um representative Brown and her colleagues to kind of reach out to um the representatives from each one of their district and provide feedback for this um for this for this Advisory board thank you Miss Brown I see your hand yeah thank you so much um vice vice chair Smith so you all rais an excellent point uh a lot of board members do host their monthly like meetings with with their
028constituents and with the community and um I have my coffee and conversations every single month um except for May because of graduations and things like that but um this P the past one that I did have I did have some parents who um did come and speak to me about opportunities to be more involved within um special education advocacy and I did mention to them diab and so I wanted to make sure that they were aware of it but it also gives an opportunity and we can we will definitely connect offline um it does give an opportunity for you to connect with your board member and maybe even give a small space where you're you as a constituent can talk about and even um being a part of this committee can say hey can you
029give me 10 minutes where I can talk about diab and what we do um during your next coffee and conversation or Community chats they all have different names with it and so uh I definitely encourage you all to reach out of course you could always CC me on there always ask me to kind of do some and I definitely will connect um individuals together if if you haven't heard from your spe specific um person if your representative I could definitely be the the person that can Bridge you two together and see if we could partner up um and and kind of promote this opportunity but I also want to bring up um I'm going to let um tranell speak because I know there's opportunities possibly on Saturday when you guys have their workshops if if
030parents can talk I don't want to take away from what the work that you guys are doing on Saturdays U but maybe this is another opportunity and maybe she could explain a little bit more over I didn't mean to put you on blast the chair recognizes Miss Bowman thank you so we do um have we're getting ready to kick off our um annual our four 14th or 15th annual parent empowerment conference that will start um this month in March and go all the way through the end of May with a variety of workshops that will be held I know that we have sent that communication out to our Communications team um and it should be posted out on our website I can definitely share that with Miss Johnson to sent out to the entire uh
031dib committee um we also are having our third annual autism Summit that will be taking place on March 29th um as well we will have a variety of workshops and then those of you who may not know we do host a series of evening and Saturday workshops uh for parents to support them on a variety of topics um and we can make sure that as those new workshops are coming out that we uh share that with this group as well so there's a lot of parent Outreach that our parent um Center does with families um that are very well received so we can make sure that we are communicating to this group as we send out that information throughout our district to include you all thank you is there any additional discussion so I would
032agree with what Miss Patrick and Miss vicory stated about whether or not it's our purview to directly go out and um seek information I will say um this past Saturday for my district we we ours is called Chat and Chew we had our chat and chew and one of the community um there was a parent and there was a community stakeholder present and there was confusion around what's the difference between diaab and cak um I mean I was there so I was able to explain the difference but it did make me wonder could there be confusion from other constituents so um there may be an opportunity for our board members to we know that the letter is going out to the different um schools but there may be an opportunity for our board members um
033to engage with their constituents as well about what what's the purview of this group um I did have a question and I'm not sure who to direct this question to but I was wondering is there a policy or procedure around doing a survey if this group wanted to collect um data from different individuals um Vice chair Smith if I may um interject or I could defer to board member brown but I think that the collection of data I'm not sure about a survey but we have um in place um an internal communication system and that's pretty much the best way to retrieve data uh specifically uh not really sure about sending out a survey we could look into that the board office could look into that but generally the collection of data is reaching out
034to Administration understood and and you know I'm just thinking off the fly right now if I think about accommodations um with some of the information that Miss Patrick just um um relay oh wait I'm sorry B Smith can I just interject I'm sorry it's possible that a survey could be done I was just thinking just now I have seen surveys uh from other organizations within PGCPS so it's something I could certainly I'll put it down as a follow-up item okay that'll be all about that yes yeah because there may be in my mind and now I don't have to be specific considering what you just said but um there may be opportunities to collect additional information from what the current data is not telling us so I'll say it like that so thank you for
035um taking that down as a followup Miss pay uh thank you V Sher Smith um I assume the letter that's going out to principles would be we we would be able to access it on our you talked about our our Google site or the site that we have for diaab the reason I asked is there if might be helpful to have some coordinated message right so if we're each going to be meeting with our districts what are the messages that we want to send what what's important for all of us to uh communicate and having some guidelines around that might be very helpful so I think that that's a really good idea and perhaps um I could work with chair Blackwell and we can draft something up I will say that the letter that if
036it if wasn't changed maybe Miss Johnson you can give some commentary here but the letter that was drafted is very generic um it's you know it's just really a learn the schools that this board has been reestablished what's the purview of this board um who the representatives are so it's very generic but what what I think I hear from you um we may want to get a little bit more specific so perhaps we can um create a secondary letter that we're using for our messaging so thank you for sharing that all right any additional discussion guys all right I am not hearing any um Vice chair Smith um board member Brown has her hand raised thank you Miss Brown you recognized yes so there there is a board policy um board policy one excuse me
0375125 do4 inform consent student student data Gathering I did kind of um go through it just a little bit uh so I will get with the PNG chair um Dr Felton Moss um to really get into more granular details regarding it but we want to make sure that um there's no pii that's involved when it comes to personal identifiable information so that we protect parents and students um of that sort and how we designed that survey moving forward but I just wanted to make sure that you all know there is a a board policy that is online currently great thank you so we pretty much have covered all of our agenda items so Miss Brown if you had anything to add related to um the annual report the FL yes thank you so much um
038Vice chair Smith and thank you so much to all the committee members I really appreciate you all taking the time and being here um to um Miss Bowman for being here as well representing um ptcps um it's super important to know that um the work that you all do is amazing and whatever I can do to assist I'm definitely here to help what I can say is that I did reach out to the board director um prior to him being on leave asking about the question regarding um is it an annual report is it written is it what exactly is it um the information that he did he did not give me the actual information um as far as when it would be due however he did say uh it does not have to be
039a written report so this is good um in my opinion right um we can kind of just say it out loud and and how we feel about kind of what we're doing now but what I can do is that he did say that he wanted to forward it to the next board meeting which is going to be next Thursday um so I'll be waiting on board dos to see if it's available if it's not available that's when I'll contact the uh the board chair to see where we go from here as far as when that report would be due so if you guys can just wait till next week for me to get um more clarification on what it would actually be due I can give you that information but that is the followup that
040I did receive from him thank you thank you thank you for that information so this as far as discussion behind this although it was stated we don't need a written report I would caution us um in that regard because we have not been able to find any past information um as far as it relates to you make a good point yeah actions that was done in the past so Vice chair Smith I'm sorry if I may just um may I be recognized I'm sorry um there is a I believe a report from 2018 it appears to have been the at the time the the the's um annual report I can provide that uh I'll send it to leadership to you and um and Stephanie the review first um and look through that and um that's
041pretty much all I had to add for for that part but yeah it looked like they did do a annual report after there before the I guess before the The Advisory Board was um deactivated decommissioned okay well that'll be great so yeah it cu considering um the type of work that we're doing we want to try to make sure we have a record know what actions are um moving forward what actions are being tabled I think that that's good information um for us to have a record for so I saw a couple of hands Miss Cindy oh Cindy I don't know if that was a mistake when her hand was up um Miss vicory would it be possible U Miss Johnson if we could at least if the whole um Advisory Board could at least
042see the action items maybe not the whole report but at least the action items because we may have some subcommittees that are going to meet soon sure actually I'll just send it to the to the um I can send it to youall everyone y take a look at it if you take a look at it beforehand and you see that there's some things that maybe the whole Advisory Board shouldn't see I'm just asking specifically for the action items right now for the subcommittees and then a decision can be made about the rest of the report later okay what I'll do is I'll just send it to leadership first and then um I'll allow Stephanie and Teresa to make the decision what pieces they would want sent to the rest of you if that's fair enough
043or yeah that's that's kind of my request and um chair and vice chair if we could get the action items because I know that there's a subcommittee that plans to meet this Saturday um and if you see any or at least if you see any action items from that 2018 report that would um impact the hiring I believe it's the hiring an employment subcommittee that's meeting on Saturday that would impact them if they could get that before that meeting I think that would be like truly helpful absolutely you were cutting out but I I got the gist of what the request is thank you Miss dorsy yes I apologize um can I be added to because I I realized I was not added to any of the commit because I didn't get anything um can
044I be added to the the building one with Miss um fman I think sure you want to be added to the subcommittee I I just realized that I wasn't added to any of them and I want to be able to participate him Vice chair Smith if I can just um follow up with Miss dorsy I believe you were added to a subcommittee I want to say was an employment and hiring I didn't make sure I remember at the last meeting I believe you were added to a subcommittee it would be in in the notes that's posted on board docs but I believe you were added and I also wanted to step in because we have to make sure that it's not going to be seven members which would be a quorum which would mean that
045subcommittee would have to hold their meetings um as an open session so we have to be mindful that we keep the number um less than seven Miss Johnson you want to meet yes I have the uh minutes open okay um Miss dorsy is on the employment and hiring um subcomittee um and by her being there already it's it's at six members it's at six okay yes okay so that's not a quorum so what if if Miss dorsy is interested in the other one and she has capacity I mean I if we if it I don't think that we will be at corn but even if we were we just need to coordinate to get the meeting as a open meeting I just don't want any member to um feel like if it's a if it's
046a area of interest that the limitation will be due to the um Opa um Opa yeah Opa requirements okay no sure I mean that's totally up to you to you all um which one was she asking to be added to and how many members new school new school construction and accessibility and she could be added we would not hit quum okay all right sure are you okay with that Miss dorsy I am perfectly I can help with both if they need that um I don't mind at all great great thank you awesome awesome may I ask that the you know there was a um a list of who's on what committee could we up just update that so it's um current thank you all right guys is there anything else um that we needed to
047address related to the agenda items today all right hearing none the vice chair informs the public that the next virtual disability issues Advisory board meeting will be on April 8th 2025 please continue to check the Prince George's County Board of Education website for meeting information and updates thank you all for the great discussion as well as your attendance to our viewers thank you for watching there being no further business the town the time is now 6:55 p.m. and the March 18th 2025 disability issues Advisory board meeting is adjourned good night guys