001before we get fully started and we just want to test out our chat so if you have any upcoming spring break plans that you're excited for this month we would love to live vicariously through you and see all the cool things that you are doing um we have a really amazing webinar for you today we are super excited um as you can see on the screen uh we've got many panelists here with us today and I think it's just going to make for a really good last mckin vinto webinar Orlando Houston stock show I think that's awesome guys that's amazing is that is that it okay here we go I was like my chat is not I'm like people have got to be going places heading to the mountains and no emails and at least
002take me with you no emails yes please okay skiing in Colorado Vegas wedding dress shopping with your daughter Leslie who's getting married you or your daughter that's awesome Virginia traveling to pad Del Carmen oh my goodness there's lots of rodeo in Here RV camping Houston Colleen your brother Colleen says spring break what is that Colleen I feel your pain I understand that loving on the grandbabies resting there's a lot of folks going to Houston and what's going on in Houston Houston Rodeo oh oh my good goodness I knew this guys I'm so sorry all right we are going to kick it off um so it is 11 o'clock and you guys are here for the tchi which is our Texas education for homeless children and youth program webinar this is mckin vento 401 the special
003topic is going to be a deep dive into discipline this is Thursday March 13 2025 11:1 we so appreciate if you are joining us on the recording um let us know how helpful it was for you guys keep the chat going as we go through this presentation I am so excited to introduce who we have with us today um if I can if I can find a button in all the buttons okay here we go so I am Dr desire verantis I'm the mckin vento state coordinator um please call me des and I'll be referred to like that the rest of the webinar and then I'm going to let the panelists introduce themselves hi I'm Dr Ann Le I am the highly mobile at risk uh student programs specialist and you can just refer to
004me as an good morning I'm John dolins I'm also an hmar program specialist and we're glad to have you here good morning I am Mary Scott I'm the student discipline program specialist and you can refer to me whatever you want I don't care good morning everyone my name's Dr you're right I am the director of the self-reported data unit uh in the office of governance at TBA and you all can just uh refer to me as hi my name is Stephanie Reese and I am a compliance analyst in the self-reported data unit at tea welcome welcome to all of our panelists I saw one lonely heart there if any of you guys know any of our special guest stars that are on here or you're excited to talk about discipline like we are we would
005love to see um some emojis coming through o Applause and love I'll take it thank you guys so much celebrations um love seeing everything going on in the chat and we are ready to get started guys we're going to Dive Right In so we are os PSS which is the office of special populations and student supports and together we are committed to high expectations and strong systems that provide support to achieve Equitable out outcomes for students with diverse learning needs all right and our agenda for today we are going to do a discipline overview we are also going to in that discipline overview we're going to take a deep dive with Mary into the student code of conduct in chapter 375 um and chapter 37 in general is going to be the whole webinar you'll
006see us refer to that chapter throughout it um so so if you are not familiar with it I would definitely say that is some excellent policy reading then we're going to dive in with the self-reported data unit srdu that's going to be Brittney and Stephanie are going to give us a great overview of local audit requests and compliance reviews um Ann is going to get us into mckin vento and discipline with a high level overview John's going to talk to us about the decision team meeting tools and strategies to support disciplinary decision making and then this is our exciting part we're very excited to go through this with you guys the disciplinary scenarios we're going to walk through and how to use um the develop tools and resources that are in our discipline toolkit we
007are also going to do um discussions aligned to the student code of conduct and some considerations for you and then we're going to wrap it up with some additional resources and key actions and next steps for school leaders and I think that I forgot to ask everybody to do our survey so Ann will you uh will you let them know and that's like right before we do housekeeping so I think that'll work yeah um so uh if you haven't noticed uh I've been dropping the link uh sporadically within the chat um if you can just uh click on the link um or scan the QR code it goes over to a qual trick survey it'll only take one minute and um it allows us to see who's here and your role and what you anticipate
008to uh for us to cover um during this webinar today if you guys can throw us in the like just give us an emoji or put it in the chat um we love love love feedback but we also like to know who our audience is and so if you guys appreciate that and you've noticed that throughout our webinars we develop we develop stronger content for you we get you exactly what you need and what you want um so we really appreciate having that so we take our feedback and our surveys to heart and so if you guys can take like a brief um I think it was like 30 seconds when I tried it out so if you can just 30 seconds to one minute let us know who who and what you are um
009so we can capture that information I know you guys love to throw that in the chat when we first get started I also want to let an just like really go through um how we do our webinars I know a lot of you have joined us before but if anybody is new exactly how we do it so go ahead all right some few uh housekeeping items um for our Zoom we inar today both the chat and the Q&A are enabled we do ask that you submit comments and feedbacks through the chat function and any questions um we'll go into the Q&A function um that way we can sort out the question if you put a question in the chat it may get lost with all the feedback that's coming in also we love seeing um
010everyone putting who they are and where they're uh coming from in the chat but please know that the attendance is being kept um on a Zoom uh attendance roster so we do have captured who's here um and where you're where you're uh coming from um our presenters will try to answer as many questions as uh they come in into the Q&A but due to the rich content that has been prepared um for us to share today we may not be able to get to all the questions however our homeless student discipline and srdu inboxes are always a great Avenue to submit questions and um like all our webinars they are being recorded right now and um the recording and a copy of the presentation deck today will be made available on our tchi web portal
011by next week and unfortunately we weren't able to make this presentation deck available to our audience ahead of time um but I promise you it's going to be there um shortly after the webinar we have heard you we love your feedback and we try to get everything to you as time as we possibly can so we appreciate that um also I always say this copy the chat if you see a really great idea or you see a really great response that you really feel like is just going to help your program or to explain it to somebody um that if you're as you're working through discipline we highly encourage you to use the chat feature it is for everyone um so copy the chat all right we're going to hand it over to Mary and
012she's going to take us through discipline all right good morning everybody I was looking at the chat and seeing everybody that was on there and I I recognized several of your names um Jim from coas Cove I recognize you there's like a bunch of you guys that I know so welcome um first off I want to thank Desiree and this group for allowing us to to be a part of this um collaboration across our agency um is becoming such a a wonderful thing um in our group and we just really appreciate having the the opportunity to to pull all of our departments together and share so the first thing that um I want to talk to you about is um what is what is required in the student code of conduct there are six things
013that is required to be put in your code of conduct that an administrator or a campus Behavior coordinator will consider before any disciplinary action is taken and guys this is discretionary or mandatory it does not matter um they must consider uh self-defense was this behavior in self-defense was the student trying to protect themselves then the second thing that they have to consider is the intent was there an intent to cause harm to to cause trouble Etc or was there a lack of intent did they even know that they were doing something wrong um and then the students disciplinary history what is the students disciplinary history um you know we've got those that are frequent flyers they know where your snack drawer is they know the protocol they know exact they could almost give their own
014punishment if we let them um or is this the person that you have to look up on your assist to find out who they are because they're never in trouble um what is that history and then is there a disability does this student have a disability that might be a mitigating factor for this Behavior whether it is receiving special education services or whether it is a Section 504 plan they both need to be considered um and then the last two things are one are they foster kid and I I think this is very important for the Foster Community because we don't know what they're going through y'all and and some of these kids um you know they've been bounced from house to house to house to house building to building building to building and the
015last thing we want to do is to bounce them somewhere else again if if it's not necessary and so and the same with our homeless students if we have students experiencing homelessness which is the last thing that they have to consider we need to take that into consideration for the most part for foster students and for homeless kids we're their safe place school is their safety place it is their guaranteed two hot meals for the day it is their guaranteed somebody loves them somebody cares for them somebody is going to protect them um and and they have somebody advocating for them so those are the things that we want to consider um so we really want to focus on of course the ones that are experiencing homelessness all right Desiree all right um let's talk
016about the disciplinary actions um in the disciplinary world we have suspensions which include in school suspension ISS and out of school suspension OSS okay your in school suspension is exactly what it sounds like it's in school and honestly there are no rules for in school suspension except for it can only last 3 days a maximum of three days and they have to have their work that they are missing while they are sitting in in school suspension and not in the classroom okay there's no age limit your prek through 12th grade can go to in school suspension okay they don't have to be separated it's it's it's the most lenient thing we have okay other than three days max um then out of school suspension and if you notice when you get the webinar um when
017you get the slide deck you'll see that I have the um the tech the Texas Education Code that goes along with what I'm saying so it it'll be referenced there and the penal codes and things like that so that you have that that um those references okay so out of school suspension is a little bit different as a lot of you know um we are not authorized to assign a student that is homeless or below the grade of three out of school suspension unless they engage in certain behaviors okay if they engage in anything that has to do with weapons um or prohibited weapons if they engage in any of the violent offenes and this is specific to the penal code 2201 22011 2202 22021 this is your assault aggravated assault sexual assault and aggravated
018sexual assault those specific conducts are what we're talking about when it says a violent offense um and then anything to do with um drugs dangerous drugs marijuana THC or alcohol okay so these are the only things that if a student behave engages in that for a homeless student you can assign out of school suspension okay all right um so once again here and I love this slide because it kind of lays it out for you um Desiree did a great job on this because it kind of It kind of puts it out there for you and it's a it's a great visual I highly recommend um that you print this up when you get this because it's a great wall piece um s h just to remind you these are the specific things that it
019has to be and I want to remind you that um in your coding your your pams coding and and I realize we're not focused on pams coding but it's so so much an important part um you know we had as you all know we had a lot of of let warning letters go out compliance letters about out of school suspension and homeless kids and a lot of them just had to deal with coding and miscoding um when you assign an out of school suspension to a student experiencing homelessness it must reflect one of these behaviors it's got to reflect weapons it's got to reflect the assault aggravated assault sexual assault aggravated sexual assault or anything to do with drugs or alcohol um if it doesn't if the reason Behavior doesn't reflect that it's going to
020get triggered you're going to get a trigger um so you have to be able to to match that so we're not saying that you can't do it you can do it but it must go with one of these behaviors okay all right okay which brings me to if you haven't already um if you have already I would love to hear in the chat how many of you have already gone through through this um this is our my student discipline chapter 37 uh training that I used to offer with esc's um and then I started after you know postco we started doing them virtually and now it has become um online on tea learn and anybody can register for it it takes you through chapter 37 it takes you through the pams codes it takes you
021through um some scenarios the most recent Trends Etc and um then once you once you complete the training you get a certificate of completion which if you're an administrator or campus Behavior coordinator or anybody that deals with behavior on your campus you're required to have a training once every three years um and I know a lot of the esc's keep the certificates a lot of your Administration are starting to keep the certificates um this will be updated and changed every year according to to session and um we will just I will just keep it going um once you've completed it we also have office hours and um the office hours are on the student discipline web page and you can register for them I have several now between now and June that you can sign
022up for and it is really just that you come onto these office hours and you ask your questions about student student discipline we go through scenarios we talk about resources we talk about what other schools are doing and all of those things um and they have really been some great conversations so I highly recommend that um you you look at the course and and consider going through it um here is my student discipline um information this is um um student discipline support is my email it comes um even though it says student discipline support I do have a personal tea email but this one is my contact information where all discipline questions go to it comes directly to me it just keeps my discipline questions separated from all my other tea stuff um and so
023please feel free to email me any questions you have have um any comments any ideas thoughts whatever um I would be more than happy to answer it okay and we're seeing some great questions um in the chat but we want to remind you guys that if you have a question that you want one of the panelists to answer please go ahead and put it in the Q&A um has anybody taken that chapter 37 course if you can throw an emoji for it um I know that it's excellent content Sean said that him and all the APS and administrative staff take it in their District um if you haven't done that look at that yes I thought so um it is amazing it is Rich content and um we are in the legislative session so do
024know that Mary will definitely be updating that and then I'm gonna invite um John and Anne back on and see if we have any questions for Mary from her discipline section um there is one question I just saw it does qualify um as long as your your district has um District policy doesn't qualify you to do anything else it does qualify for that every threeyear training um and you will get a certificate of completion after you finish it and then you will get a hard copy of the presentation so you have all that content after you complete the little quiz at the end so it does qualify for that and I'm seeing that question from annaise for CBC can you just let everybody know what that is oh CBC is campus Behavior coordinators and so
025every three years um they need to take a course and Mary's chapter 37 course would be great um as you're coordinating with your behavior coordinator um also taking the chapter 37 course will get you up to date on all the policy information that you need to know for discipline and then I'm going to hand it over to um an and John to see if there's any other questions that they have for you we'll take about two to three questions okay we have two questions here very similar um there asking if violent behaviors against a teacher have to be reported to a police or can we deem it as a violent u based on student behavior um any behavior that happens on campus or or with the campus Behavior coordinator is aware of after their inves
026investigation they know that it h it has happened you do not have to wait on the courts um chapter 37 does not uh mandate that now you want to check your District policy because your local policy may may make you do that but as far as chapter 37 you do not have to wait on the courts um if we did that some of these kids would never be out of our classroom and we would have some really violent kids in our classroom so you do not have to wait on the local uh law enforcement or paperwork to go through before you can can act on it as long as you've done your part you've investigated you know that the kid that it happened you know that the behavior took you can go with it and
027you can can go on and and take do the disciplinary conference we have another question uh Mary is the training uh required training applicable to Charter Schools also absolutely um as you know charter schools are um not held to all of the standards of chapter 37 but the one the the parts that are um held to chapter 37 for Charter Schools it is mentioned and noted in the training um so I even have a little section on charter schools and what exactly what subsections actually do apply to you guys thank you we have time for one more question if there is one or if you want to give a helpful reminder Mary for folks okay um I noticed there's one in there that says can you please discuss terroristic threat well just so you know
028great question marvelous question if you can and I'm not avoiding you but if you can hold on one of our scenarios is a homeless student who makes a terroristic threat off campus and what your options are so if you could hold on to that um we were G to take you right through that scenario and um tell you what to do that was a perfect segue not to our scenarios but that is a perfect segue into um our next guest panelist which is going to be Miss Stephanie ree from the self-reported data unit also known as srdu we are so excited to have you and we're going to hand it off to you um if you guys have heard anything that's going on with that or you have any of those questions um Britney is
029going to come on at the end of this um to let you guys know and I just want to remind you please please please put it in the question and answer section that's the part that an and John are going to pull from as we go through the webinar all right handing it over to you Stephanie thank you hello everyone I'm so happy to be here today again my name is Stephanie Ree and I'm a compliance Analyst at tea self-reported data unit better known as srdu my director is Britney Wright um she's also here today but she she will be popping out a little bit early but she will be in that chat trying to answer some of your questions before she has to leave so we have a lot of information to cover today
030so let's just get right into it starting with this slide to provide a little context srdu is a part of the office of governance at tea in the office of governance our mission is to proactively support school systems keep students safe and uphold Texas Education law with Integrity objectivity and Excellence today I wanted to discuss some of the work our team has been conducting over the the past several months related to unallowable out of school suspensions assigned to students experiencing homelessness which was discussed a few slides back as a reminder students experiencing homelessness should only be assigned out of school suspensions for a few specific reasons okay next slide please okay so in January local audit request letters were sent to over 400 leas that potentially unallowable assigned an out of school suspension to one
031or more students experiencing homelessness in the 2023 24 school year and if you look at the right hand side of this slide you will see a snippet of the local audit request letter we issued I do want to note here before I move on because we get this question a ton SRD recognizes in some cases students may have been identified as experiencing homelessness after a disciplinary action has been taken homeless identification dates are currently not reflected in the pe's data we have available at the agency this is one of the reasons that we try to be intentional about the word potentially when talking about suspending students if it is determined that a student was identified as experiencing homelessness after an OSS assignment that would not be considered an unallowable suspension okay so going back to
032this local audit letter so these letters strongly encouraged leas to locally review agency guidance evaluate their policies and procedures and ensure compliance with all statutory requirements related to disciplinary decisions for students experiencing homelessness so essentially we are asking leas to ensure they are in compliance with state and federal laws and are implementing best practices many of which we're actually going to go over today uh next slide please okay so we also asked leas to review their pe's data reporting validating and procedures to ensure accurate data are reported to the agency so an Lea May conduct a local audit and determine that a student experiencing homelessness was actually assigned to in ISS in in school suspension and thus they're peem there was a pams reporting issue here another example of pams reporting issues is reporting the
033incorrect disciplinary action reason code now known as Behavior code which we will discuss in a bit in a few slides so essentially as an Lea uh an Lea May determine that their students fall into a combination of the following categories after conducting their local audit review one being the student was assign assigned an unallowable OSS two a student was identified as experiencing homelessness after the OSS assignment and is therefore allowable or the Lea misreported their pe's data to the agency which in some cases May mean the OSS was allowable that the student was not actually assigned to OSS or that the student was not actually experiencing homelessness now in the local audit letter we also included helpful guidance information and resources leas can utilize to help conduct their local Audits and reviews these trainings provide
034more information about requirements and expectations for leas so the first one is called the Texas Education of homeless children and youths tchi discipline toolkit which will actually be discussed by the tchi team later in this presentation this is a great resource that provides comprehensive overview of how to support and respond to students experiencing homelessness related to discipline we also linked the Texas Education Code chapter 37 student discipline training which is a phenomenal training to learn about discipline related sta state laws Mary actually spoke about this earlier in her presentation we also linked the mckin vento webinars which uh one of y'all right now by y'all being here and attending um you're already completing that which is awesome there are three additional webinars though that we highly encourage you to go watch if you haven't already
035and then finally srdu linked a to the administrator address or TAA letter uh We've released this in August of 2024 that provides basic overview of the concerns related to assigning OSS to students experiencing homelessness and srdu compliance reviews finally and perhaps most importantly once Lea are done completing their local audits they are strongly encouraged to immediately Implement corrective actions or improvements to current policies and procedures if issues are identified next slide please okay so now that we know all about the local audits that went out we can dive into the compliance reviews compliance reviews are a bit different than local audit requests because these actually require leas to provide a response back to the agency over the past few months the agency has issued compliance reviews to a select number of leas related to these
036concerns please note these reviews are ongoing and protected from the public uh from public release superintendant are notified via email if they are issued a compliance review these reviews include requests for information and documentation related to mckin vento identification student discipline and pe's Reporting policies and procedures reviews also request student level documentation related to mckin vento and disciplinary incidents once SRD has all this information we will review it to determine whether the ELA is in compliance with all related state and federal statutes rules and regulations if an Lea is out of compliance SRD will work with the leas to help bring them into compliance if necessary uh next slide please okay so one of the things I wanted to do was share with you today uh some of the most common findings from our reviews
037we do hope that this information is helpful when considering your own policies and procedures around disciplinary actions for students experiencing homelessness our first and perhaps most important finding is that we are seeing that ell a are unallowable assigning students experiencing homelessness to OSS however the thing that is important to note here is we are seeing reasons for these suspensions occurring has varied so here are a few examples one being some leas noted issues with their student information system CIS warnings not working so either the Lea did not have their cyst set up to give these alerts for students experiencing homelessness or the alert was not working properly another example um some leas explain there was a lack of District oversight so for example the district had policies in place but they were not um ensuring
038those were being followed on a campus level we also saw we also saw some leas stating there was inadequate training for district um Andor campus staff and this was especially common if there were new staff members um on campus last example we saw quite a bit too was a lack of communication between staff members so for example the discipline coordinator wasn't communicating with the mckin vento liaison and thus best practices were not followed for students experiencing homelessness so um we also have noticed a failure to maintain detailed documentation so as an example disciplinary referrals to support disciplinary actions and disciplinary action reasons reported through pems this is an issue because we have had Lea's report a behavior code 21 which is a student code of conduct violation and then tell us this is actually a
039this should have been a 28 which is assault and makes the OSS an allowable suspension but then when we review the disciplinary referral we find that the description either does not fit the definition of assault or there was not enough details to support the report according of this reason code so for example an Lea may say student through Sho at another student in their uh disciplinary referral but this doesn't tell us whether the shoe actually hit someone whether there was bodily injury Etc and I do believe that Mary Scott will provide more guidance on this later on when she reviews some scenarios um that she'll be presenting next and although this doesn't happen too often sometimes pe's disciplinary actions now known as discipline on Tweeds and disciplinary action reasons now known as behavior on Tweeds
040these codes were misreported so for an ex um as an example an Lea would show us a student was actually assigned to ISS in school suspension not OSS and that they reported the incorrect action code we have also been seeing that leas are not providing students an alternative means of receiving any coursework Miss during the suspension also not all leas are providing at least one option of receiving cours work that does not requir the use of internet for example providing paper copies of any assignments sometimes here we saw Le's procedures indicate they wait until the student returns to school to provide the student their Missour workk however according to state law the Le is required to provide the coursework During the period of the student suspension finally we have also noted that the student residency
041questionnaire forms and disciplinary decision practices do not reflect agency best practices sometimes um we have noticed that some student residency questionnaire forms include questions and or response options that may be a little personal and spefic specific more than what the agency's example form shows so asking about domestic abuse issues is the parent being incarcerated drug issues in the home whether the home has electricity or running water Etc so it's the agency's perspective that SRQ forms should only indic should only include basic residency questions to safeguard the comfort of the person filling out the form ensure their private details are protected given so many hands can touch this form and ensure that the person is not having to replicate other enrollment forms these more detailed questions are the type of things that can be reviewed later
042on with the mckin vent toas on also we have seen some leas fail to maintain completed SRQ forms to validate that the student was experiencing homelessness and the date the student was first identified next slide please okay so we recognize that some leas may need assistance or support in reviewing their current policies and procedures and ensuring that they are taking the appropriate corrective actions to come into compliance if not already I know there some there are some ESC staff members here today so we did want to note that we encourage leas to reach out to their esc's if they need assistance with their local audits so if you are an ESC and an Lea asks for help these are a few things you can do or suggest ensure leas are aware of the relevant guidance
043documents and trainings offered by tea some of which are new share the common findings from Tea's compliance reviews that we just discussed on the previous slide and assist leas in identifying similar issues when reviewing their data and related policies and procedures um we definitely recommend Le submit Tims tickets if there are questions about pe's reporting or of discipline or homeless codes and we encourage leas to regularly check their ased to ensure information for All District staff is up to date and finally share this presentation it's a great resource next slide please I just want to pause really quick and just like underline what you're saying so an ESC is not going to reach out to you for this you would have to reach out to your ES mckin to Liaison um to get this assistance
044and we we love that they're able to do that but we wanted to let you guys know that and if you could also show an emoji for our es mckin vent to Liaisons they work tirelessly to help you guys with all of your technical assistance and professional development there it is thank you guys we really appreciate that um and thank you Stephanie we're so excited to hear how they can get additional assistance from y'all wonderful yes we love our esc's Okay so so leas are always welcome to reach out to the agency directly for assistance as well please always feel free to reach out to our unit and if you if we don't have the answer for you we will find the right folks here that do for any questions related to local audit requests
045or compliance reviews please email our unit at datac complaints tea. texas.gov you can also visit our self-reported data Unit web page which has a lot of great information especially under the frequently asked questions section next slide okay so that was a lot of information so we're going to pause and process here and I know that we have a lot more content to review today but um maybe we can get some answers questioned my wonderful director Dr Britney Wright is here um so I'm going to pass it along to her I think I actually only saw one question come through through thus far um I will stick around for a little bit longer though so if youall do have more questions please put them in the Q&A and I'll try to respond before I have to
046pop out one question we did receive uh was related to uh consequences or ramification that might be a strong word wording of um misreporting if someone's determined to have misreported uh homeless data or discipline data and so I just wanted to touch on um generally what the um actions srdu may take after a compliance review first um a compliance riew may just result in a closure and so this happens whenever an Lea is found to be in compliant or largely in compliance with state requirements and that would also be in um Al in compliance with reporting accurate P state of agency um sometimes we do find leas are mostly there and what we will do is we may still close a case but we'll provide recommendations for improvement a lot of times too even if
047an Lea is in compliance but maybe they're not implementing some best practices we'll take that opportunity just to make sure leas are aware like hey there's some wonderful best practices that y'all may want to consider if there's some guidance kind of like Stephanie talked about with the local audits there's guidance we can point leas to we'll do that in our closure letters as well um if an Lea is determined to be out of compliance and need some additional support uh we may issue a corrective action plan to work with that laa to bring them into compliance so this would be if an Lea really has systemic issues related to anything that we're talking about today or maybe the pain reporting processes are just really you know out of whack and they need that extra support
048um we do have a wonderful um specialist at the agency that we work with who monitors the caps and he meets with the leas and really um you know asks questions and digs in to help them find out where you know things may not be working quite as well as they should be and then like helps to fix that and then finally um this happens not very often but it is something that can happen from a one of our reviews is we may refer a case to the special investigations unit again this is relatively rare um but that is something that could happen as a result of SRD compliance um let me double check that nothing else has come in um who receives the letter so we issue our compliance reviews to uh the superintendent
049of an Lea and then we usually try to find one or two maybe three additional uh District staff that uh you know may be relevant to the issue at hand so normally it's the superintendent if they have an administrative assistant will include that person just to make sure the superintendent sees the compliance review letter uh we may include a deputy or an assistant superintendent sometimes we include a Pam's coordinator uh but I'll say person number one uh who are trying to get the letter to is the superintendent of the Lea and we had one come through the chat and we know the Q&A is not working for a few of you guys so we'll do our best to try to capture those but if you are able to put the question in the Q&A we
050would really appreciate it um so Britney there's a question of how do we know if we have corrective action to complete yeah so if you're actually issued a corrective action plan from the agency or corrective action plan agreement from the agency that will also go to your superintendent and so there will be a letter that companies the corrective action plan so it'll explain why your Lea is receiving this corrective action plan what the expectations are and then the corrective action plan will outline the individual sort of items that the Lea needs to um what is the word I'm looking for undergo complete um to become to come into compliance and so um you will know if you're issued a corrective action plan other than that um you know Stephanie also talked about all the local
051audits so in those cases we're leaving we're really asking the leas to review their own policies and procedures their own data reporting identify if they need to implement locally corre corrective action so in those cases it's largely up to Bas again you can work with your esc's for help with that um but if you're issued a compliance review and then issued a corrective action plan again we'll communicate that to the superintendent and we do recognize that you may not want to put your questions in the chat or in the Q&A um for this for compliance review or the the letter um so do want to just share one more time that you can reach out directly to srdu Personnel um Britney and Stephanie you can do that to data complaints at tea. texas.gov and you
052can also find that information on the self-reported data unit thank you guys so much for joining us we really appreciate it all right we're going to do a bit of an overview um going into our next section before we do our scenarios and so really really want to share with you guys that you're going to want to have the discipline toolkit pulled up we have the page numbers um and Anna is going to walk us through a little bit of the background and context as well as some of some of those resources all right take it away all right so if you don't have the toolkit pulled up I just dropped the link for you into the chat and um there's a QR code it's kind of small but uh it's at the top you
053can scan the QR code and bring it uh onto your computer so this tety discipline toolkit was released out in October of 2024 we did a slight uh adjustment on uh in January so there are a couple pages that have been updated since then so if you downloaded an earlier version we uh recommend going to the resource now and redownloading that so you have the most updated and current version this toolkit provides a comprehensive overview of how to support and respond to students experiencing homelessness as they relate to dis disciplinary um issues it's a robust resource it's 43 Pages it includes practices procedures and tools that leas can use to strengthen services and supports as well as it being a orientation manual and ready reference resource for new and experienced Lea leaders um when we
054go into the next slide um the reason why discipline and mckin vental matters and this references page three of the discipline toolkit students experiencing homelessness do experience compounded challenges including facing educational barriers due to the disruption and Trauma of not having a fixed regular and adequate place to live um schools then can provide um they become a safe haven for for students experiencing homelessness it provides stability safety and support where they may not have that outside of the educational setting so some of the factors such as chronic absenteeism treny behaviors they do lead to disciplinary challenges at times and so they are common occurrences for students experiencing homelessness on the next slide U this references uh P's data um in mckin vento page eight of the toolkit discipline data for pams is reported at the
055end of each school year in which the data becomes a part of the pams summer submission for this toolkit we used the most available date that we had uh data that we had at that time which is the 2 2 23 school year data and so let's talk briefly about the data did you know that youths experiencing homelessness are most referred to ISS OSS and dap for Vi violating student code of conduct this is the lowest level of disciplinary violations furthermore students experiencing homelessness are 2.5 times more likely to be suspended from the school despite not having a stable home to which to return to two times more likely to receive ISS and five times more likely to receive D placement now I'm going to hand it over to Desiree to kind of go over
056the federal and state laws and policies thank you Ann appreciate it um all right so you're like where are all these laws located how does it come together for both discipline as well as mck evento um so we have all of this for you in the tety discipline toolkit on page seven um first and foremost our federal laws of mckin vinto act um and that's going to be 42 of the US Federal code and then we jump into the Texas laws that help support and underg guard um all of the discipline considerations insury considerations that you should have the first part of it for the Texas Education Code is going to be the treny prevention measures that are in chapter 25915 as well as the Texas administrative code or the TAC um for the commissioner's
057rules concerning truancy and then we have the Texas Education student code of conduct chapter 37 that we've been referring to um throughout this presentation and we'll continue to do that um it goes over the student code of conduct as well as suspension that Mary took a deep dive into so we are going to drop the federal and state laws and policies as they relate to mcken to eligible students and we'll also be referencing the laws and policies throughout the presentation so once you stop like you and you want to download the presentation or the copy um copy it from the chat for you to has a ready reference for mckin vento and discipline considerations in Texas um I always have it bookmarked um when I am working through the um anything with mckin vento or
058students experiencing homelessness bus please make sure that you have the mckin vento ACT pulled up it has um anything and everything related to students experiencing homelessness and it can help you as you're navigating considerations for discipline specifically within the student code of conduct in chapter 37 the Lea student code of conduct must specify these four things um so you need to have a circumstance in which a student may be removed from classroom campus D or a vehicle owned or operated by the district um conditions that authorize or require principal or administrator to transfer a student to daap conditions under which a student may be suspended or expelled and then also a consideration needs to be given to the student status as homeless as a factor in each decision concerning suspension removal to daap expulsion or
059placement in JJ program regardless of whether decision concerns a mandatory or discretion action and so this is straight from the policy and what the toolkit does is it really helps you see this policy in action so you're like what are those actions what are those those steps or those things that we need to have as considerations um when we're looking at it so this is what I would have above my desk or inside of like a binder or a notebook or tabbed electronically if you're looking at that you really need to understand the pems coding that is related um to homelessness as well as to discipline plan and I I feel like Mary you should start to pop in here with me on this part of it because I've got your your codes up there
060too so when you have the texus student data system or tsds for pams this is going to be on pages eight and 10 and everything on the right in that purple chart is exactly what I would print out because if you're wondering like what is it what are those Behavior descriptors if you're looking at the pams or you have a pams report that is that is re um printed out for you you're like what does that mean what does a five mean what does a 20 eight mean and so I would say that's a great reference um for you to have and look at now in homeless we've got two it's very it's very standardized ASA can even to Liaison um if you can pop in the chat how many of you guys know what
061a two stands for when we're talking about c189 homeless descriptors what does that mean that the student experiencing homelessness is is going through what type of living situation are they if they are a two I don't know our audience doesn't know what a two is okay thank you Misty I appreciate it that does it means doubled up awesome there we go oh my chat just needed to catch up thank you guys um and what does it mean if it's a three if we throw in a code of a three for the homeless indicator what's the living situation look at this very very good three is unsheltered um and then what code I'm gonna change it up what code would you put in there if they are living in a motel or hotel what pe's code
062would you you know what all your PS coordinators should be very proud to have you guys across the state look at that everybody knows that it's a four um and so part of this webinar and having these guest stars in here Mary included is we want you guys to become just as familiar as you're navigating the space for students experiencing homelessness and how you can best assist um administrators in looking at that disciplinary information and that first step is to be informed right uh Mary no you popped off so like when you're looking at C1 6 4 for your discipline descriptors rc1 165 um these are required in OSS under chapter 37 and Mary do you have any helpful hints as they're navigating the PS for discipline because there's a lot more codes in there
063than there is for homeless um basically um honestly if you can if you want to email me I can give you the specific links to all of the different charts and tables that apply to discipline um I'm going to be honest with y'all I I have them printed up and have them on my wall and I literally look at them every that's practice okay I mean you you would think I would have it memorized by now and and sometimes I think I do but then I don't but I literally print them up and just have them as a cheat sheet so um I that's I highly recommend that um and I am I will tell you I am working on a um um kind of a cheat sheet a a checklist for um the offenes
064for suspensions and all of that and I can um that just gave me another idea about doing a checklist for um students that are experiencing homelessness as far as when you're going to put in the report and put in the codes and stuff you know what goes with what and what can't go with with that um and so I am working on on that as we speak and um as soon as I can get that approved and get it going um that will be out there on the on my web page and I'll desire I'll send that to y'all too to put in the toolkit and I guys we will definitely share any and all of those information um as we do the 25 26 school year um I would put an emoji out there
065to really highly encourage Mary to prioritize that checklist for students experiencing homelessness as a relates to discipline um because everybody loves to see that the field um wants and needs these resources or if you have any feedback or suggestions I would totally take her up on sending an email um if you have a specific question about one of the discipline or behavior descriptors we know that it can be a little overwhelming which is why we give you a good overview a starting space within the discipline toolkit and I would say you're very well informed if you know um this entire purple page or at least know where to find it I think that's a lot of the times it's like where do I find this information and so we do have it linked when you
066get this PowerPoint and I would really really recommend looking at chapter 37 um and the mckin vento ACT those are going to be your two great policies as you guys are doing that um we are going to hop into looking at the discipline meeting for decision making um and what does that look like Yay Anna is here and John is here great they're going to lead us through this next section guys good morning again uh uh to ensure effective disciplined decision making for students experience in homelessness it is encouraged that all disciplinary decisions be conducted through a collaborative team approach and not be made by a single individual whenever possible the committee members should include the behavior coordinator and administrator the bini vento liazon and other pertinent Personnel when possible as a reminder alternative means
067of receiving classwork must be provided and must have at least one option that does not require internet additionally if a student of origin sorry if additionally if School of origin transportation is being provided it must continue if the student is placed in Dap and just to reiterate um Stephanie from srdu did surface this a little bit earlier but we just wanted to provide a reminder if you notice on the screen the far right column with the green green blue and purple just a reminder that you will need to discuss alternatives to OSS for a student experiencing homelessness also administrator um must consider the students homelessness and Rec U recommend assignment of a s sorry um if the student recom uh if the administrator um recommends the assignment of O um of a suspension then they
068must consider all other Alternatives before doing so and then in terms of alternative means of cours workk um District must provide at least one option for receiving the coursework that does not require the use of Internet often times cours work will be provided after the student comes back for a suspension that is not the case and we have to assume that there is not um access to electronic version so paper copy hard copy any other form should be provided um to the student thank you on this slide we uh discussed the campus Behavior coordinator in the mckenny vento liazon work together to coordinate the dis discipline decision making meeting the primary responsible the behavior coordinator is to maintain student discipline and behavior management on campus and one of the key duties of the mcken vento
069liaison is ensuring students experience in homelessness have access to Educational Services which they're eligible for the key personnel uh on the next Slide the key personnel that should be included in the team meeting are a campus administrator the mcken vento mcken vento liazon the behavior coordinator and one Poss include additional staff who work closely with the students such as instructional staff counselors and others during the meeting the role of the behavior coordinator in mckin vento liaison is to identify and remove barriers the student is experiencing an expulsion discipline rubric and team meeting worksheet is included in the toolkit we will be reviewing two scenarios later in this presentation on how the decision uh discipline meeting and decision making plays a role in addressing student behavior and now we have Desiree to talk about Transportation considerations
070awesome um this is a question that we get all the time and I I think John and an and Mary's popping on so I know that she agrees um so we really just wanted to let you guys know if a you're probably like how how is it that if a student is experiencing homelessness how can their living situation affect a discipline consideration and I would say that is a great question I love that you're asking that like as I can feel the vibes from the webinar so that's great so when you're looking at it if a student experiencing homelessness is receiving School of origin Transportation then they need to also receive that school of origin Transportation if the school district decides to place them in da that school of orage and transportation must continue so
071that is really the consideration when you're looking at that um and you should have that under the mckin vento assistance act it requires school district to adopt policies and practices to ensure that transportation is provided to and from the school of origin at the request of the parent guardian or unaccompanied youth leas must provide company um comparable services for students experiencing homelessness remove barriers a lot of those considerations that we we constantly are talking about throughout our webinars um need to be considered and looked at when you're doing this now I know a school of Transportation if it is being provided by just one school district it still needs to be provided to DAP if it is being provided in a circumstance where you're working with another school district and you're splitting that Transportation um
072hit me with a like or an emoji if you work with a lot of your neighboring school districts to do your school of origin Transportation because I know that is a that was a huge thing that we did um as a mckin vent liaison it can eat up a lot of time um so yep I'm seeing that so when you have that da placement you do need to put in that new Transportation request continue that school of origin Transportation um and let that other school district know as well as your transportation router that that is what you guys need to do and we are going to do an awesome pause to process and I think that um it would be great Stephanie if you want to join us on camera I know there was a
073question that came up when you're looking at your SRQ and what you should have on there and what you shouldn't have on there um and so I do want to say that we have a sample SRQ on our tchy web portal um and John or an is going to drop that in the chat for you guys it is an amazing resource and you really want to stick to those very basic questions you want to make sure that um you're letting the family or the student be very comfortable in responding to a student residency questionnaire so under the federal law with mckin vento it simply asks if the if there's been a loss of Housing and if there's economic hard sh or financial difficulties and really you want to keep it at those very basic questions
074um the further you get involved in more questions on an SRQ um you don't want to include more than that um you want to give the student or the family an opportunity to self-identify and receiving mckin vento Services um as you develop that relationship and that trust and that Rapport then through the intake process once you receive the SRQ is really when you you dive into a little a little bit more of those deeper questions and asking how you can assist um after they've self-identified on the student residency questionnaire we also have a sample intake form on our tchy web portal I I'm almost going to just say you guys should just drop in the chat the tchy web portal and I want to see how many folks find this SRQ um I already dropped
075the resource to mckin vent 101 where all those very good um and that's also just so that you guys know that the touy web portal is very userfriendly it has a resource section and tab you can look through there it has a nice search feature and so we highly encourage you guys to use that and then as you're using the web portal um let us know if there's a way that we can make it better and make it work for you and then I know Stephanie you guys have seen um through srdu some different kinds of student residency questionnaires because we've talked about that um and so we just wanted to itate that for you guys that if you wanted an Exemplar um for what to use we have that on our web portal and
076then we are all in agreement at tea um to use those exemplars as you are adapting and making your own um student residency questionnaires and also one to think um Ann was surfacing for us that you guys mentioned that we needed to have a Spanish version of the student residency questionnaire as an Exemplar so like Mary is making notes of the thing like her next projects and what she wants to work on we're making notes and we're we're definitely going to put that um as a as something that we want to put and provide for you guys and so just want to thank you guys so much we always we say this all the time but we appreciate the feedback um and we are constantly collaborating together at tea with srdu um with marry and
077discipline to make sure that you guys have as comprehensive and robust of resources as possible as you are navigating doing one of the most important jobs there is educating our youth so thank you guys so much um really appreciate that you do that we are going to yeah while we're on Transportation there's a couple of things in here that um if you can address the first thing is um does this apply to Charter Schools transportation and homeless kids yes so in the state of Texas charter schools are under all the same Federal mandates as it pertains to um students experiencing homelessness mckenny vento eligible in the state of Texas so yes they do also need to provide transportation Mary I love this you're jumping in and doing our Q&A this is great what else you
078got girl you know I can't I have to talk the second thing the second thing is so what if what if a kid lives you know like right close to the school and so they walk to school so transportation is not having to be provided but then once they're placed in da transportation is needed is the school required to do that Transportation so I'm going to say it'll depend I know everybody is like it depends on the circumstances and it's always Case by case um give me an emoji and I'm sure it's going to be the es mckin evental L on if you've ever heard me say it is Case by case as you're making the determinations and looking at the scenarios okay I see a little bit of love I appreciate that I thought
079I was just going to get some thumbs up for it so really when you're looking at that Transportation consideration and you're looking at comparable Services now when we take when we're looking at mckin vento and we're looking at comparable Services you're going to say um Desiree they live in the netzone because I know net zone is very popular amongst our school districts like they're in walking distance of their campus you are totally correct um but when you're looking at removing barriers which is also under the mckin vento ACT and you're also looking at that they now live outside of the attendance area for their school of origin campus um which an alternative campus like dap is still connected to their school of origin for that placement so you would need to provide transportation to daap
080for student experiencing homelessness to remove educational barriers um as well as recognizing if that campus is not in the walk area um and that dap campus is now out of the attendance area for where that student has been identified as mcken vento eligible so great question um we have highly mobile students that are that are moving across like all different areas and the same thing happens if you have identified them as mckin vinto eligible and they were in the net Zone but then now they are living with um a Thea or they're living with like they're at the motel or they're in a shelter and so you do a new Transportation request to provide that school of origin transportation we know that our students do not stay at the same um living situation and we
081also recognize that as you're navigating discipline there may be consequences for um their actions and one of those may be when it is um something that they need to do for da uh that they're going to need those barriers removed that's why I say it's Case by case because if it was just like one thing I could give you the route like this is exactly how you would follow that um so that's some very general information if you have a very specific question in regards to discipline like a discipline that came up for you as well as mckin vento it's for it's a student experiencing homelessness um I would really encourage you to First reach out to your ESC mckin vent to Liaison to to let them help you navigate that for technical assistance um
082you're also welcome to reach out if you reach out to the homeless education inbox or you reach out to student discipline I would say copy both and like you're going to save us time because we're going to share with each other as it comes up do we have any other questions before we go into anything else we have time for just about one more question do you want a transportation related question we can have any kind well let's do something different let's pick we have a oh I was gonna do Transportation I I want to get to one of the earlier questions so that you know we okay so uh okay there's one from there's one um how can we maintain consistency and consequences for code of conduct violations while addressing the unique needs of
083mckin vental students and effectively communicate these differences to families without breaching confidentiality that is an excellent question and I would say um that our next process of looking at it and doing the meeting as you are doing that space you're really going to need to build a network of support as you are addressing those unique needs and that's going to really come into play with the administrator the behavior specialist as well as the mckin vento liaison um that actually is a great segue into um our scenarios and when we we dig into this part of it um but I do want to say that when you're looking at that and you're doing the code of conduct factors to consider and you're doing these questions um to use the tools and strategies to support discipline um
084disciplinary decision making and really listening to in a case-by casee basis what is their mckin vento context you know how does that play into it um just like you would do if you were doing a special education consideration an EB consideration um gifted and talented CTE or like different programmatic requirements that you have you want to do that same due Dil um which is why in our toolkit we say to meet with pertinent personnel as you are making these decisions um and I think to actually make it easier for everybody in the meeting to Norm on it and to really look at it um is uh Anna is going to go through like some of the questions as well as the rubric and I think that makes it a little bit easier as you are
085um making it fair for all students I do want to say you have to recognize that um our students come with a lot of different cons itations and so however you're approaching discipline um when we get into the terroristic threat it's going to be the same thing it's how do you build that network of support who are the committee members that need to be a part of that meeting to make sure that you are making um supportive decisions for all students including students experiencing homelessness as well as any other programs um or things that they're participating with at the school all right I'm going to let um Dr Lei I'm gonna let Ann take it away and we'll go over these tools and strategies to support disciplinary decision- making they are excellent um when you
086sit down and you're working with them I wish when I was a ment liaison on this tool and the law had come out Mary saying yes when the LW come out if I had had this as we were navigating that space it would have been so so helpful so would really like the feedback and when you guys when I say feedback like it can be in our feedback surveys but it can also be like as we're presenting if there's something that you know that you like that is very helpful to your practice um it can help others like be like oh they're liking that I need to you know I need to look at what that is and see see how we can use that all right um go ahead Ian okay so I'm dropping
087a link to the discipline toolkit walkthrough webinar we held in November because unfortunately we can't spend all that time to be able to go through each individual um component of this toolkit right now so this this portion of this toolkit is um just so unique because not only did we give out a resource that says facts and what the federal law says what the Texas law says and what teems and all that Jazzy stuff right this toolkit actually provides tools and strategies to guide you and help to support you as you're working with our students who are experiencing homelessness so on page 20 of the discipline toolkit we talk about the um code of conduct factors to consider this reiterates everything that that all the presenters have talked about early on in this webinar before
088deciding whether to place a student in D there must be consideration of mitigating factors regardless of whether the action is mandatory or discretionary and um so when we talk about Tec 371 those five consideration factors was it self-defense was there intent or lack of intent at the time um what is the students disciplinary history how does the student's age developmentally impact their understanding was there an identified disability is there a student status of homelessness the last two that you see here are not tied to a a Tec um but it is best practices and good consideration as the disciplinary decision-making team are discussing um the Alternatives and the data and collecting all the information as they're making those decisions and that is was the student afforded an opportunity for Behavioral interventions to be implemented and
089is there a safety and or risk factor due um with the inappropriate behavior so going into the next slide using the developed tool um that was provided in the toolkit we're talking about the exclusionary rubric and then the accompanying um team meeting uh worksheet the purpose of these um are to offer campuses and District leaders a thoughtful and comprehensive approach that targets the whole child while taking into consideration the unique educational and functional needs of a student experiencing homelessness additionally these tools and strategies provide an added layer of protection for both the student experiencing homelessness as well as the campus by giving the collaborative team that is engaged in a disciplinary meeting the time and opportunity to thoroughly review the incident and behaviors while considering all mitigating factors as they relate to the students's homeless
090status so here on the screen you see um a screenshot of what that exclusionary rubric is and then you notice on on specific pages of the toolkit and then um there is a QR code at the top again to lead you to that the page 20 are those key considerations that we just reference in the last screen page 21 which you don't see here is a stepbystep instruction on how to use the rubric and the worksheets that are provided for you um page 22 is the rubric that you see here page 23 to 26 is the accompanying worksheet for team meeting and then additionally appendix a of the toolkit has an Exemplar of a completed exclusionary rubric and worksheet based on a fictional scenario so on the next slide we reference that page 23 and
09126 the accompanying uh team meeting worksheet using this worksheet the team will consider and document any supporting data or information action considered or tried action needed or next steps and any addition additional notes that the team deems relevant for each of the eight considering factors that you see on the left side that is again self-defense intent disciplinary history and so forth the more documentation the more informed the decision can be this informal tool can be included in as documentation for any investigation or disciplinary hearings that may occur so I'm going to go ahead and hand it off um the next portion of it is we're going to talk about the long awaited scenarios so we're going to walk through several scenarios and so I'm going to hand it over to John to go over the
092first scenario all right guys so you have the toolkit open and you can follow along and I'm just curious like as you're filling in your rubric if you come up with some of the same conclusions and also um what would you do in this scenario so I invite you guys to make sure that you have um your worksheet ready um as you are doing this with us and it just in case you wanted to take um if you wanted to grab that QR code just one more time from the discipline toolkit it's also in your chat um so here we go we're going to jump into our first scenario go ahead John and John was a former administrator so he really um really said that this happens a lot in the campuses so I'm just
093kind of curious if you guys want to throw in the chat if you've ever had um any experience with this discipline scenario in particular um with Jamie our fictional character thanks say okay so we have Jamie Jam is a 15-year-old high school student has been experiencing homelessness for the past four months living in a shelter after the family lost her home despite these challenges Jamie has been attending school regularly and trying to keep up with her studies a bathroom detector in the school restroom indicated the students were very upon reviewing the SEC security camera footage jimie was seen leaving the restroom at the same time when Jam's backpack was searched by an administrator a nicotine ecigarette was located according to the school student code of conduct and Tec 37.006 chapter 37 um possession of a
094nicotine product is prohibited in requires P placement in alternative school environment and so we're going to review what steps we would take the administrator under the code of conduct the student needs to be assigned in school suspension jamy will be able to access education stability Mill services and counseling services uh sssp would kick in uh under chapter we can't hear you Mary um and just to just let you guys know so this is um us each doing our role that we do at the state so John is a a former administrator but I feel like administrator forever um and then Mary is our Behavior specialist and then um I'm playing the mcken vento liaison of what you guys would see happening um within this committee meeting over the scenario of Jamie with an ecigarette all
095right go ahead Mary hopefully I gave you time to get off mute my husband wishes he can mute me just that easy happen Okay so as as the behavior person you know what actions can can I give well this student has given a you know it's a mandatory placement in da so under the code of conduct under the local policy they need to be assigned da for this in incident um we know that in this situation um the ecigarette has nicotine in it now not all situations do we know what's in the the ecigarette and um so I do want to bring that out um whether it is just an ecigarette and you don't know what what's in it the ecigarette whether it's nicotine or whether it is THC or marijuana um um they all
096have different codes however they're all the same mandatory da placement under chapter 37 so if you don't know what's in the device itself it's still going to be a mandatory dap placement for this ecigarette that is found and then M as the mckin vent liaison is going to come in and say that the family has been living in a variety of living situations and the parent Sam has been known to use an ecigarette when coming up to the campus there is a question if the ecigarette is actually the parents or Jamie's also jimie has never been in trouble before um so is there any consideration for a firsttime offense um yeah that that's what I would say in going into this and then as you guys are following along um and you're completing your rubric
097this is what the the committee ended up with so Ann's going to take us through this part of it so we're GNA Fast Track and pretend that you know we had this thorough review and we talked about all of the uh facts the information we answered all the questions that the committee had so utilizing the exclusionary discipline rubric and the worksheets the discipline decision-making team would walk through and discuss each of those a consideration factors with all available data that was gathered uh completed rubric is shown here for the provided fictional scenario for the student with a nicotine ecigarette and so in consideration we look at those eight so the team um for this fictional scenario decided that one for self-defense this was not a direct result of self-defense for intent scored a three there
098was no intent to harm disciplinary history of three because this is a firsttime offense the students's age at 15 clearly understands the impact a disability one because there was not an identified disability student status two uh we determined that it was a two and not a three because although she is identified as a student experiencing homelessness do not believe that it was uh linked to a possible trauma due to her status but it is somewhat Associated um Behavior interventions we scored it at as three interventions have not been tried this is her first time offense and then safety risk factors three it's not a continued safety risk and so in consideration of the scoring that was determined for this fictional scenario cumulative scoring came out to be 17 total this indicates that majority of the
099scoring was in the three category which is that right side so when we go into the next slide here we talk about the provided fictional uh student scenario this offers educational leaders the opportunity to understand the value of using an exclusionary discipline rubric in the worksheet when considering discipline factors for students experiencing homelessness so cumulatively the campus has some opportunities for addressing the behavioral incident with Alternatives or additional efforts in lie of suspension these Alternatives could include lunch detention where Jamie is given curriculum online courses videos Etc on the hazards of vaping and smoking or in school suspension with the same curriculum considerations included above what we do have to remember is that when behaviors are related to a student status of homelessness considerations must be made to guarantee schools do not miss a vital
100opportunity to support students needs and put students on the path toward success one of the caveat that we do want to uh remind you is this is just a guiding tool this rubric um this chart that you see here it's a way for open discussion and honest discussion about all the factors within um the students uh situation but also the the behavior that is involved it is not a a tool that says okay if you get this score then yes you have to suspend if you get this score no you cannot suspend it's not as black and white it's Case by case it is um different for every single scenario that that's why it is important to have a team to discuss all the factors and have those discussions um to um make the most
101informed decision because it affects moving forward for that student and educational access um desire I'm gonna stop we do have a question that needs to be answered right in this this I knew you going to say that hold it no I'm gonna make you hold it because we need to wait till the pause to process um is it about THC and then it would be OS okay okay so Mary we're gonna see if the audience knows if it's THC would it be OSS instead of ISS let's see oh only one response no I'm just kidding they're going to put it in there Mary all right can you weally chose nicotine for this reason yes Mary and John um really wanted you guys to I knew it was gonna come up and they knew it was
102gonna come up and so absolutely that's why I already guessed the question before Mary even said it I don't even know where she found it in there um but we do also want you guys to recognize that this is just tools and resources like Ann was saying as you're navigating doing your you know students experiencing homelessness with discipline considerations and so that's also why when we're looking at this determination we didn't give one determination there are three possible options according to your local policy and so this is where we really invite you to participate and let us know um what would you decide if you were part of the committee um so at the disciplinary conference the behavior codes included in the options below can be assigned to the incident and a mandatory D placement
103is required according to Texas laws local policy and Mary let us know that and then there is also a safe and supportive school program team notification that needs to be made to your ssst team make sure that you let them know um so I'm just curious like go ahead and pop into the chat um which one of these three options would you do according to your local policy um recognizing this is a local decision that you federal and state laws making your decision um but there is some options in how you approach that so one would be to assign the student ISS for up to three days um and have the student complete an online course on the hazards of vaping nicotine and healthy choices reportable with discipline 27 Mandatory Action not taken and a
104second discipline of six ISS I hear John saying like you could just do one day of ISS I hear Mary saying that too because they said that when we walk through it um it can be up to three days but that is really you guys's decision the second one would be to assign the student attention and have the student complete the online course described above not a reportable incident um option number three would be to assign the student ISS schedule a disciplinary conference and assign the mandatory daap reportable with discipline 6 ISS and second discipline 7 placement and da um so I've been saying I'm going to go off the chat but I'm I'm going to go into the chat or um an can you let us know what what are folks saying what would
105they choose in this scenario I like it darl you're just putting a three oh a few threes everybody's with three yeah we have one person okay there you go Desiree thank you desire you're going with the one all right we got okay one day ISS with okay there was a two as well yeah there was a two okay there was a two okay majority is three we're seeing that lot of ones ones and threes are the most common all right okay and I just wanted you guys to see in like putting it in the chat and going through the rubric and going through the ex exercise with the scenario um that some norming does need to happen in your school district with the behavior specialist the mckin vento liaison and the administration um oh Kyle
106he would say three but we got approved through our DOI plan to start doing number one soon what is a DOI plan District of innovation inovation oh got it okay awesome thank you guys um we really appreciate that John as an administrator um which which of these options would you land on if you were in a school district it's really going to depend on the school district and the size of of the situation I a lot of smaller school districts had daps overwhelmed with uh students with ecigarettes so a lot of those school districts started taking an option or it is it is in uh chapter 37 that they can be in ISS when there's no room in Dap so it's really going to be a case-by casee basis and and depending on what the
107campus and the district's currently facing uh I was fortunate for several years where uh e cigarettes weren't a large problem but then my last year as a principal became a very large problem so we had to start looking at off options the the big key there is to make sure they're going to do participate in the anti vaping program so that you're doing some remediation of the behavior instead of just punishing Behavior I would agree with John um in local policy will dictate what available services are available to support any student uh with vaping and ecigarette um infractions uh so work with your uh District counseling services to see if you can have M um that are tied to um services for anti anti-vaping um treatment um the Texas Safety Center has got some great
108anti- vaping and um things like that resources on their um their website I I don't have them right off bat but I will try to find them and place them in the chat thank you that that was one of our questions from the chat if if there are resources yes the the Texas Safety Center has quite a few um I will try to find that while y'all continue okay and we are on a postive process so um uh Colby said can you please clarify this question from Freddy Martinez transportation and attendance question so this is going to depend on your school district um and how you guys do this can you clck verify if the absence period due to a lack of transportation is classified as present which generates funding or if it can be
109as an excused absence I'm going to say that it's going to be a caseby casee basis in how your school district does this um in particular for transportation and attendance if transportation is due to the arrangement of school of origin Transportation like there's three to five days um in an instance like that I would say that doing an excused absence because the school district is routing and doing the transportation that that would be something that you could use as an excused absence because routing timelines for students experiencing homelessness um can be much longer um can be three to five days can be two weeks um yeah so if you guys have experienced that if you want to throw out an emoji if it's taken you longer than same day of arranging transportation for school of
110origin um definitely feel free to do that I know that with a lot of liaison that's definitely a challenge a lot of um students and families as well as um School District Personnel are very used to the day that a student gets there they're they're transported by their parent and then by the afternoon they're on a bus that is not the case for school of origin Transportation um it does take some time to get set up um Sonia is saying it's taking up to four to five weeks within her within her context and we do go over school of origin transportation and we talk about it um and our mckin vento 301 is all about transportation and so i' would highly encourage you to take a look at that and also reach out to your
111ESC mckin vento liaison for technical assistance as it relates to Transportation um it can take a while so I would make that an excused absence if you are routing um and doing um School of origin Transportation but I highly encourage you not only to take a look at the transportation webinar um but for students not being in attendance right now please work with your ESC mckin vento liaison to see if there are other ways that you can get um quicker turnaround times and they have that Regional context and they're working with the school districts that you're working with um setting up a transportation meeting can be really really helpful um Angela I love seeing that you're trying to set up within 48 hours and that's great um three days that's awesome generally you want to
112stick in that 3 to five um day timeline and if you're having difficulties with that reach out to your ESC mckin Bento liaison and now for the moment that we've all been waiting for and I invite all panelists because they brought it in here so Stephanie if you want to join us on this next one um please do and watch me be wrong about the slide no I'm not okay so here we are in chapter 37 but we are in chapter 3715 if there is harmful threatening or violent behavior and this includes behaviors such as verbal threats threats of self harm bullying cyber bullying specific interventions including mental health or behavioral supports in school suspension out of school suspension or the students expulsion or removal to a disciplinary alternative education program or a juvenile justice
113alternative education program so what do you do in an instance like this what do school districts do as their navigating a terroristic threat so in this scenario we're going to walk you through it so in scenario 2 off-campus social media terroristic threat Terry a fictional 16-year-old high school student has been experiencing homelessness for the past 5 months living at the home of a family friend after their family lost their home since becoming homeless the student School attendance has declined he has become withdrawn from his friend group and his grades have dropped dramatically over the weekend he posted graphic pictures of his plan with threatening messages on social media stating that he was going to physically assault another student who attends the same campus and anyone else who tries to stop him so at this point
114this would go straight to the administrator the administration of that campus that principal the threats that were reported to the school administration and upon investigation it was confirmed that the student was responsible for the posts and fully intended to carry out his plan the threatened student and other students now fear returning to campus according to the school student code of conduct and relevant Texas laws making threats is a serious offense that requires review from the safe and supportive school program team also known as ssst um if you guys know or have heard of your safe and supportive school program team um if you can put that in the chat or give us an emoji if you're aware of this special um committee that resides with every single School District okay great I I love to
115see that there are other folks in the in the webinar that know who their safe and supportive school program team is in this scenario It Go from the administration straight to the safe and supportive school program team and the safe and supportive school program team the threat assessment and safe and supportive school team the ssst would be required to conduct a behavioral threat assessment utilizing Sentinel the Texas K through2 behavioral threat assessment and management manual also known as btam and the Texas K through2 btam Field Guide this is going to be under Texas administrative code chapter 1031 1213 e1a through b and in January 2025 um the Texas Education Agency launched Sentinel for the data reporting um requirements as it relates to the safe and supportive school teams for all school districts across the state
116of Texas our school program team wanted to make sure to reiterate this for you guys with a confirmed threat as outlined completing the assessment process would lead to other interventions aside from discipline so there is more than just discipline considerations when you are looking um when they are considering a threat assessment so in this scenario the off-campus social media terroristic threat determination still a committee it's just a different committee it's going to be your sssst team that is going to be doing this um and conducting that threat assessment so just keep in mind and know that that is what is going on um at the ssst disciplinary conference Behavior 26 terroristic threat is assigned to the incident and a discretionary expulsion is ordered according to local policy according to the districts safe and supportive school
117program team the school student code of conduct and relevant Texas laws making threats is a serious offense that requires interventions determined by the ssss team and mandatory discipline action of removal to Da discretionary expulsion and so I'm going to have Mary invite Mary to go over this part of it um with us and for us yeah thanks Des so um with this um first off before I get into this just just put a thumbs up or what send me an emoji if you've had a situation like this happen already on your campus have you had a situation like this already and just a thumbs up just as like a pulse check if this is happened okay John was terrifying me the other day that this happens all the time right John how often does this
118happen I don't I don't know if our our whole audience is even aware of how prevalent of an issue this is it it's it's an ex extremely prevalent and it happens quite often uh any administrator shows up on a Monday morning they're most likely handling something of this sort from over the weekend yes unfortunately that is where our our discipline levels have have become um and so therefore um it's it's so important that we understand it so in chapter 37 um under 37006 if they make a terrorist istic threat it is a mandatory da removal um if that threat is done on campus within 300 feet of Campus or at a school activity okay um then in 37007 B it also authorizes um a discretionary expulsion for a terroristic threat anywhere um it doesn't matter
119and so therefore your school has an option of the mandatory placement or a discretionary expulsion now most of the time when you have a situation like this and most of the time any situation with a discipline thing we understand that you know schools can't as a campus Behavior coordinator you can't just drop everything and take care of that discipline conference right then um that is not even reasonable that can't happen so a lot of times if your local policy allows it the student either goes into ISS until you can visit with the student and get that conference set up or whatever or you may send them home for OSS um for a terroristic threat because that's kind of serious and if you think you know we don't want that kid on our campus however with
120our students that are experiencing homelessness under 375d um a student a terroristic threat is not one of the authorized behaviors that can be um determined an OSS for a student experiencing homelessness so you get this call you you have this threat you know the kid the kid's history the kid is very capable of doing whatever the kids sent out on social media on Sunday night or on Saturday night or whatever and so do we want this kid coming back on our campus that we know is very capable of assaulting aggravate you know aggravated assault or destroying anybody that steps in their way is this yes he is or she is so do we want them on our campus until we figure out what's going on probably not but we can't we can't give them out
121of school suspension because of the statute so what do we do um in this situation um because you don't want to assign the student ISS and bring that student back on campus um you can assign an emergency removal which is under 37.0 one9 and 37.0 one9 says that the administrator um is able to assign a verbal um D placement or a verbal expulsion and then once you have that emergency placement it goes into effect so you assign a verbal expulsion or a verbal D if you assign that verbal dap realizing that that student will be on a campus with some kids unless you don't have anybody in your camp in your dap um wouldn't that be Heaven um however um you assigned the expulsion to the streets to JJ or whatever so now then you've
122got if you use the emergency expulsion e emergency removal you statute says that you have 10 days to take care of the disciplinary conference or removal so now you verbally have told that kid you are verbally you are expelled you are not coming back on my campus because of the offense that you that you have done so you've got 10 days I highly recommend that you don't take all those 10 days um this kid is especially a kid experiencing homelessness this kid is out there and without a home and those hot meals and that safe that safety net of people who do care about these kids um but you also want to consider your other students and the safety of your faculty and your other students so um once once once you do that you
123have that removal hearing and then you can assign your emergency removal is um is behavior code 23 and that is the only Behavior code when you are assigning it in PS that allows you to have a second Behavior code so you'll have a second Behavior code after you have that disciplinary conference you'll have the second Behavior code terroristic threat and then you will determine what the punishment is going to be further so if it is da um if you determine that you know the kid is very sorry and it really is not going to happen you may assign that student three days of ISS um or whatever however you have that option of the emergency removal if a situation like this is in your district and you just don't need that student at home I
124mean don't need that student at school okay appreciate that questions and and I do want to say that um our safe and supportive school team um at tea did look and provide guidance on this there is a lot of changes um within the Texas administrative code and the Texas Education Code um that went into effect for January 2025 um so definitely you want to be aware of this but every single School District does have an sssst team and they do um have to follow these requirements and I believe that acronym changed so just so in case you were wondering um that is the that's the new um and how you're looking at that [Music] and let's see we will go into the pause to process yeah there is some on here about does this include
125um special education students and homeless students as far as the emergency expulsion or the emergency placement um chapter 37 does say that it's for all students even your special education students um this does apply to them if it's an emergency situation where you have to have that child off the campus and not back on the camp campus um in this situation your special education students are treated just like a student without special aded um your homeless kids are treated the exact same way that's an excellent point Mary so we did want to bring this to you guys' attention we do know that it's very prevalent um in our schools and they're navigating these spaces so that's why we chose scenarios where you are able to use the discipline toolkit where you have the mckin vento
126liaz on the behavior specialist the administration um but also recognizing that there are um the terroristic threat that is also under chapter 37 that you would need to inform and notify the sssst team and follow their lead based off of how it's going to be handled and that again is going to be with the administration and that school district team to make those determinations um and it is for all students we are not able to answer um any more than what Mary or answered if you have questions we're going to refer you um to your safe and supportive school team your safe and supportive school program team at your school district um as well as that um Department within tea for any further questions as it relates to terroristic threat um we did want to
127bring it in there as you guys are navigating that space so that you have knowledge and awareness of what happens in those situations and we are going to wrap it up it's the last 10 minutes of the webinar and we're going to hand it um over so that we can go through um additional resources and appendixes that you guys can see um so want to make sure and Ann's going to pop on here and help me out here and looking at these appendixes so in appendix a you're going to see an Exemplar of the completed exclusionary rubric and worksheet case study um that she walked you through earlier um an is there any other considerations I know there's an excellent scenario that completely walks you through step by step um that's included here here yes
128so the appendix a the fictional scenario there is specifically a student experiencing homelessness but also identified as a student receiving special education services and so um it is a good uh fictional scenario that you can review to kind of see how it was broken down see the discussion the worksheets are completely filled out with um examples of what to ask and what kind of data uh that the discussion the decision-making team should be noting on those worksheets so if you haven't seen it already I do recommend um going into there and really looking at it and then also the appendix B extends the understanding of trauma the impacts of adverse child experiences and how they can impact students experiencing homelessness they're excellent resources um we are so so proud that how many folks across the
129agency if you're curious of how many folks participated in making that discipline toolkit um you're going to see names like Stephanie Reese and Mary Scott um an and myself as well as many folks across the agency um who helped build such an incredible resource um I think that there is some more information sharing and looking at it when you're understanding trauma as it relates to students experiencing homelessness and if you're also looking at some resources to provide for professional development with your administrators um or any of the PD that you give as a mckin vento liaison or you see a mckin vent liaison um it would be very helpful to use that and then I want to just like ground us in our purpose um as we're looking at these key actions and next steps
130for school leaders on page 27 uh this is probably no this is definitely my favorite characters in the entire discipline toolkit it is our students experiencing homelessness graduating from high school getting ready for their next steps looking at the different colleges that they're going to be going into and the way they're going to completely change um our world and what they're doing and it's the impact that you guys have every single day as you're helping our students experiencing homelessness all of our students and navigating um all of the different spaces that they need to go into even even discipline you know even discipline Transportation all those things so consider homelessness and disciplinary policies and discuss alternative methods to address misbehavior within the mckin vento act it is always asking you to review and revise your
131local policies and make make sure that they are in alignment um with chapter 37 with um the mckin vento act with anything that you're learning that your disciplinary policies your board policy everything should be something where you are constantly working in and advocating um to make sure that it is staying up to date and it is as current as possible um I don't want to throw this out there but I do want to make you aware that we are currently in a legislative session and so things can change during the legislative session uh Mary has got me on TLO looking at all those different things so like we should probably if you're curious of what's going to happen but of course nothing changes until it goes into effect and when it does um Mary is
132excellent about updating those resources and we will update our resources as well to let you know that always leverage your grant funding to train um specific individuals that's really important to do look at your title one part a look at um oh I'm going to forget it there's guys pop in the chat all the different resources that are not just mckin vento funding or tchy funds um State comp Ed is very good in this space as you are navigating like doing that um title four is great for post-secondary um success um so pop in the chat of all those different things that you know about um Community donations for scholarships are also um very instrumental and key also make sure that you're ensuring schools and districts do not have policies that create barriers to full
133School engagement for students experiencing homelessness so back to that Transportation you want to make sure that you're staying in a very short timeline to arrange that Transportation as well as removing that barrier to um if they do get a Dap placement they are still able to carry out that da placement with as little Interruption to their schooling as possible you want to track and analyze data you want to make really good friends with your pe's coordinator um she can help you and accessing different forms of data if you um are at a school district where you have data Specialists like working with them as well as other people who do programs like Hey how do you set up different reports and ways to look at um and analyze your data your ESC mckin vent Toons
134are also a great place to go to and saying like hey what kind of what kind of um data should I be tracking and analyzing um as it relates to mckin vento students I would say doing progress monitoring um as you're looking at their six weeks grades we are in the star EOC season and I know you don't want to put any emojis for Star o EOC but that's totally your your preference to me it's an opportunity for our students to show all the different things that they have learned and how much knowledge they have gained um I got a laughing emoji okay that's awesome uh I've been in education for a lot of years so I I enjoy um what can happen with testing and preparing our students but more importantly just how much
135knowledge they have gained in a year so really supporting your kids when you're looking at their six weeks grades um our students do amazing work every single day and every six weeks reflects that um I always loved sending some kind of freebie or a little gift card to their favorite spot $5 to McDonald's um I remember when I was a kid this is going to date me an I don't know like and Ann and I are very close to the same age did anybody ever get like any kind of free something from a school like for me it was to go to Pizza Hut or like if you read a lot so working with your Librarians to see like are there any incentives like like I don't know if you guys know this but I
136love to drop a tip and trick and Ann knows this about me like your Librarians are constantly weeding out their Library they are constantly taking books and I always ask them like oh I want a free library for my classroom when I was a teacher and also as a mavent to Liaison um you can also do lending libraries right in front of your classroom talk to your principal say that Des said no I'm just kidding um but you can do like lending libraries like right inside of there in your Resource Centers like and get them from the Librarians it's a great way um to to help and do that everybody has all these great networks of support to really help our students um and the data can really show that now you can also raise
137awareness in schools about supports that are available incorporating training on school discipline trauma and homelessness um as well as making sure you're meeting all of those Maslow's hierarchy of needs for our students experiencing homelessness tea chat counseling mental health supports um I don't I don't want to say the social emotional kits anymore I want to say like you know the busy bags doing things like um as kids are navigating wanting to have like crayons um make sure you get Crayola not the wax ones like as you're navigating like coloring and use those for your adults too I know that secondary trauma is a really big thing and so like as you're incorporating those trainings and using those resources U make sure that you're using them them for yourself as well as your co-workers um to
138engage in that I don't panel does anybody color I do adult coloring anybody else in the audience do you color okay I mean do you use fidget toys I feel like I should just like I feel like my popsocket is like probably my biggest fidget toy as well as like fidgets on my desk um I also have those things are also really important for our students um as well as those academic supports and so really offering robust holistic view to help our students my favorite thing was to send out the easiest survey that you will ever send out is what do you want from Amazon and you would you wouldn't believe the incredible spreadsheet of ideas of what is the newest and greatest thing I always say that the moment that you step out of
139the classroom is the moment that um you don't know you don't know anything that you don't know and kids are constantly having new um Trends going on all right an two minutes you can do it recap all right well John's gonna take the first one go ahead John all right uh so we covered a lot today we covered mckenny vento discipline overview we also looked at self-reported data unit local review audit and compliance letters we reviewed the mcken vento uh and discipline committee resources and finally we explored two mckin vento discipline scenarios take it all right and then just a reminder of resources and tools drop the link there you've got your webinar the recording a standalone exclusionary rubric with the worksheet your tool kit your one pager chapter 37 tea learn course and please
140do not leave just yet I see the numbers dropping if you have time please fill out the survey we we need the survey guys please stay on please please please grab and give us feedback this we use this feedback all the time it really drives the content that we're going to be doing in 2526 it is the reason that Mary and Britney and Stephanie joined us on this um we heard so much technical assistance around compliance reviews and the letters and and and everybody wanted to know how to navigate that and so we brought that in and 401 was really all based on your feedback every section every part of the scenarios everything that we went over today is based off of feedback I see some people staying thank you so please please please like
141do that Ann has already dropped it in the chat I don't even have to check I know she's already dropped it in the chat for you to fill it out um if you do anything whenever you participate in our webinars we strongly encourage you to always provide us feedback um you can also reach out to us at the homeless education inbox and then I just feel like all of our panelists need some emojis this is the least talking I've done all year and I love it I cannot tell you like how much I love it please please please like share an emoji of of your appreciation um for Mary and discipline our srdu unit walking you through you know the letters and also the compliance reviews um and if you really if you felt like
142this was helpful information in any way we will we'll even take it if you don't want to do the survey we want you to do the survey but if you don't want to do the survey but you want to drop in the chat like I really enjoyed whatever it was um please let us know if it was the scenarios so we can incorporate that in our future trainings um you can do Emojis we can do it that way so how many of you guys enjoyed the scenarios I always have to give it a pause it's like that you got to do that like teacher pause okay great and then how many of you guys appreciate the robust resources and us like walking you through like the exclusionary rubric showing you how to use it with
143the committee members okay great thank you guys it is one o'clock or 101 and we know you um are super busy helping all of our students across the state of Texas um a deep and powerful thing