Leadership Team Meeting Minutes
September 19, 2013
Those Present:
Patrick Clancy, Superintendent of Iowa School for the Deaf & Director of Iowa Educational Services for Blind and Visually Impaired (IESBVI)
John Cool, Iowa School for the Deaf – Assistant Administrator
Mark Draper, Green Hills AEA – Special Education Director – by WebEx
Polly Fullbright, Des Moines Public Schools - Dean of Deaf Education in Des Moines
Marsha Gunderson, Iowa Department of Education – Consultant, Deaf and Hard of Hearing
Kenda Jochimsen, Iowa Vocational Rehabilitation Services – Bureau Chief
Chares Levine, Iowa Vocational Rehabilitation Services – Administrative Consultant
Tammy O’Hollearn, Iowa Dept. of Health – Coordinator, Early Hearing Detection Identification Program
Doug Penno, Grant Wood AEA 10 – Associate Administrator
Susan Rolinger, EHDI Family Support Coordinator & parent of child who is hard of hearing
Pam Rubel, IESBVI - Regional Director, Eastern Iowa
LauraBelle Sherman-Proehl, Iowa Dept. of Education - Bureau of Learner & Support Services, birth – 3 yrs
Gwen Woodward, IESBVI - Regional Director, Western Iowa
Cynthia Angeroth, Iowa School for the Deaf – Outreach Coordinator
Julia Matson – Interpreter
Jeff Reese – Interpreter
Minutes from August 1, 2013 / Strike last sentence from minutes. / Motion to approve Tammy
Seconded by LauraBelle
Planning for Regional Programs / For funded programs like the Iowa Juvenile Home, the funds come off the top before allocation to local districts. Meeting with Department of Education deputy directors and financial people to discuss regional concepts and financing. No decisions were made.
Looking at weighted dollars, appropriations, and contributions from AEAs. Some concerns that multiple sources would be hard to manage. Recommendation made to put together 2 or 3 requests to take to legislature.
No next meeting scheduled. Sue McCurdy will be invited as ad hoc member. Patrick will meet with legislature liason and Board of Regents regarding moving forward.
Patrick did not take anything to BOR in September because we are not prepared at this point.
We appreciate Barb, LauraBelle and Marsha (from the Department of Education) for their input on this committee. Are we engaging the people who will be affected by regional programs? This group is enthusiastic, but others may not be as excited. We need external enthusiasm before we go to the legislature for funding. IBS and ISD were established long ago as leaders in the state and what we establish now is needed for students.
Legislators need their constituents to be supportive. We need public awareness.
Do we need parent input? We should be talking to parents whose students are not getting what they need. The needs assessment part of this study is lacking. If we could show the skills and academics needed for jobs, and then show here are the kids, but with our current program we can’t prepare these kids for the jobs needed. Present this model and it ties in with the initiatives of the governor and legislature.
We need to be able to show superintendents that if they have or will have a deaf and/or blind student, it will cost more money with the old system as opposed to the regional sites. Talk to junior colleges about using their sites to prepare students. Our end goal should be productive students who have jobs and are self-sufficient.
Will a new regional program take money from the itinerant system for blind and visually impaired that we now use? If we promote something new will we have to do more with the same amount of funds? IBS got a reduction of 29% when our residential program was closed. Do we want a new system at the cost of the itinerant program already in place?
Having deaf student in special education classes with an itinerant teacher for the deaf is not a good system. Do we have data from ISD on outcomes vs. public schools? How do we show that the regional model will produce better students? How do we people with expertise with the students? A perfect world would be regional sites and an itinerant system.
Patrick’s focus is: What are the actions we take with other to move forward or continue to advance this work? What is it about a regional system that will make the education of blind and deaf better?
Patrick, Pam and Doug met with Keystone AEA staff serving deaf and blind. They had concerns about location, access and jobs.
Pam and Patrick met with Great Prairie AEA staff serving deaf and blind.
They had concerns about location. Expressed most need for deaf and hard of hearing services in their area. Vision staff had concerns about taking away services from the existing system.
Activities since August meeting
Additional data for consideration
Planning tool for Regional Programs / Changes were discussed and made to the document during the meeting.
Marketing piece needs to be created for each audience using points from this document.
Link or attach documents used to achieve this planning tool.
Add cost benefit statement?
Financial planning for Regional Programs
Other items for discussion
Recommendation for consideration by the Board of Regents and Legislature
Site(s) – 2 sites
Legislative request – Base and commitment to five centers – base to supplemental
Financial need
Population to be served
Operations of the program
Interagency agreements
Other
Other items of discussion / Next steps:
Kendra stated she could get projections for jobs/skill levels necessary for jobs.
We need to show that we can get a return on investment from students being employed after graduation.
Do we need more info from families? Family service providers? Create a statewide database that where data could be pulled by select areas i.e. congressional districts, statewide, regional centers.
Pam and Gwen work on getting information from families of blind and visually impaired. Susan anc Cindie will get information from families of deaf and hard of hearing.
Outcome data of transition students: ISD tracks info during homecoming weekend. That is only ISD students and doesn’t reflect the entire state. Can’t pull state data by disability. Can we get data from teachers of the deaf and Iowa Department for the Blind?
John will help Patrick look for outcomes data for deaf by category.
Can we get Social Security disability data? Many are under employed because they can get SSI up to a certain amount of income.
Patrick will meet with Barb and Sue McCurdy regarding action steps around finance.
We will wait to present to legislature until we have financial support.
October 17th – Patrick, Gwen and Pam out of state. Cancel meeting and room.
Survey draft should be ready for Nov. Meeting.
Next meeting will be Thursday, November 14th at the Iowa Department for the Blind
Executive Team Meeting at 9 am
Leadership Team Meeting at 10 am
Management Team Meeting at 1 pm
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