Exceptional Student Education Parent Advisory Council
(ESE-PAC)2/27/14
Parent Recommendations (District Feedback in blue):
What are ways that the St Johns County School District can improve our support of students with disabilities?
- SJCSD Communication:
a.)Communication from school to parents is lacking. The PAC meeting provided lots of great information; too few parents to hear it.
- ALL schools should be held accountable for providing information to parents.
- Schools are not consistently communicating ESE information.
- ALL schools should post the flyer advertising PAC and also put the information in their school newsletters.
- Provide positive feedback/kudos to the schools that promoted PAC meeting.
- Can there be more awareness of the ESE information on the website; possibly at IEP meetings provide website information to parents; brochure or guidelines that provide an overview of how to access information at very first ESE/IEP/504 meetings.
b.) Accommodate communications for non-internet families. Provide an ESE resource library for
parents; consider parents with no internet access. Each Media Center have access for
parents to hard copies and or to the internet for ESE access/use.
Feedback:
The ESE Director, Lisa Bell met with Assistant Principals (also referred to as
the LEA-Local Education Agency) responsible for supervising ESE at their schools on
March 13,2014.
Schools were asked to support ESE communication efforts via the school newsletter;
posting flyers when available and considering an ESE resource center intheirschools for parents
without internet access.The director also thanked schools who supported these efforts.
These requests were included in the LEAmeeting notes and a copy of the ESE- PAC notes will also be
sent to both the Principals and Assistant Principals at each school.
- SJCSD Website:
a.)ALL schools should have a LINK on their website that takes them directly to the
ESE Website.
b.)The website is difficult to navigate, especially getting to the ESE department –too much clicking to access information.
c.)The district home page is confusing because the information under “What’s New” has dates listed on the left side. The dates indicate when the information was added. Parents are confusing the date on the left as the date of the event some assumed they had missed the PAC meeting.
d.)ESE homepage should provide the following:
- calendar with upcoming events, meetings
- opt in /opt out for e-mails/ text
- paperless notifications of newsletter, meetings
- meeting agendas on ESE webpages
- provide steps or pathways from staff/parents for NEW parents to follow
- highlight success stories
- please be conscientious of acronyms
- Add Florida Network on Disabilities for parent webinar training
- Include a section that provides ESE PAC meeting notes, follow-up and upcoming meeting dates.
- Post the ESE PAC flyer on the website
- Provide information to the website regarding Florida Standards facts for ESE.
- Add a link on the ESE webpage that list the school’s IEP contacts and 504 contact for New Parents
Feedback:
Assistant Principals were asked to have their school’s IT representative add a direct link from the school website to the district’s ESE pages.
The ESE department will collaborate with the district IT department to review changes in navigating the system.One recommendation is to add ESE to the Featured Links.In addition, we will ask the district IT department to review the “What’s New” feature on the website as the dates preceding the information is confusing.
The ESE department plans to review the ESE homepage considering recommendations from the Parent Advisory Council as noted in this section.
A list of school ESE contacts and 504 school representatives will be added.
- ESE Parent meetings/workshops/ trainings/support
a.)Provideparent training/workshop on ESE issues and assistance.
b.)Have an ESE 101 at the beginning of each year prior to the 1st PAC meeting
c.)Add more than 2 ESE PAC meetings a year.
d.)Have the Central Florida Parent Center do a workshop for ESE parents
(TheCentral Florida Parent Center provides parents of children with disabilities with information, training, assistance, and support)
e.)Create a contact group of ESE parent buddies/mentors to assist with new parents coming into the district. It could be divided up by elementary, middle and high school
f.)Provide a note taker/scribe at the PAC meeting to provide accurate notes.
Feedback:
The ESE department will review the possibility of adding several workshops, providing guidance for parents new to ESE and utilizing state supported agencies such as FDLRS (Florida Diagnostic & Learning Resources System and the Central Florida Parent Center
- ESE Student Curriculum
a.)Core curriculum one size fits all does not capture those children that struggle with reading/ writing. Can St. Johns ESEexplore GRASP curriculum; successful with Auditory Processing and Dyslexic students. Duval has piloted the program in 4 schools and is planning to expand it the program to all schools.
b.)Need Orton/Gillingham Method in the ESE program
c.)TouchMath is a multisensory program that uses its signature TouchPoints to engage students of all abilities and learning styles; please review.
Feedback:
Our schools utilize a wide-variety of interventions with our struggling readers including programs from Lindamood-Bell such as LiPS and Visualizing and Verbalizing. While Florida does not provide teacher certification for specific methodologies, we are certainly aware that the publishers of particular programs provide training for educators using their programs and many of our teachers have participated in those trainings. Regarding the GRASP program (Guiding, Remediating and Accelerating Student Performance), we are aware that Duval County has piloted GRASP academies focusing on students with dyslexia this school year but details of the curriculum used and results of those programs haven’t been shared with us. We will be contacting them for more information. While we are always exploring teaching methods and strategies that will help our struggling learners, we are mandated by state board rules to teach the standards that have been adopted by Florida. We will continue to expect all of our students, including our students with disabilities, to master the Florida Standards. However, the methods used to help them master these standards will vary depending on need of the individual students as required under IDEA.