Management Team for Students Who are Blind or Visually Impaired
Meeting Minutes
May 20, 2013
Members Present:
Patrick Clancy, Superintendent & Director of Iowa Educational Services for Blind/Visually Impaired/Deaf/Hearing Impaired
Barb Guy, Iowa Dept. of Education – Bureau of Learner & Support Services, ages 3-12
Beth Hirst, Iowa Dept. for the Blind – Assistant Library Director
Pam Rubel, IESBVI - Regional Director-Eastern Iowa
Laurabelle Sherman-Proehl, Iowa Dept. of Education – Bureau of Learner & Support Services, birth – 2 yrs.
Richard Sorey – Iowa Department for the Blind - Director
Gwen Woodward, IESBVI - Regional Director-Western Iowa
Minutes from the
April meeting / Page 3, 2nd paragraph – accessible is misspelled.
Move to approve – Barb Guy
Second – Laurabelle Sherman-Proehl
Legislative Update / Board of Regents - 2% increase for special schools voted on house, but not yet by senate.
Early childhood no updates from last month
Barb Guy nothing finalized yet
Richard Sorey - received an additional 350,000 but only for one year and then back to 200,000. This was their first increase in 5 years.
AEA update – no one knows of an update
Smarter Balanced Assessment – students who are blind / Beth Hirst sent out information on accessibility. They will be a meeting next month with vendors of universal screeners.
IESBVI would like to be part of the field testing next year.
Early childhood universal screeners have not considered the accessibility issue. IGD (Individual Growth and Development) is a 4 year old screening tool that looks at things like vocabulary, what doesn’t belong, rhyming etc. This is given 3 times per year. Another tool is GOLD which is also used 3 times per year, but looks at other things like fine motor skills, gross motor skills, etc.
Planning for 2013-14 Personnel
AIM Coordinator
Personnel Items / Department for the Blind is looking at AIM process. Beth Hirst is retiring and they will not be filling this position. They will look at using other workers and designating duties.
IESBVI will look at needed services and who is using them. National reading media assessment also needs to be looked at.
Literacy with Braille needs to be talked about per Barb Guy.
How do we compare nationally?
Will staff, who provide services, be included in information gathering?
Needs to be useful, but not too burdensome.
We need or have paraeducator certification for paras working with blind/visually impaired. Kay Jahnel may be teaching a paraeducator class at Kirkwood this summer.
Patrick also would like paras/intervenors to have some type of specialized training for deafblind. The competencies are already established. We have a national program for intervenors, but nothing taught in Iowa.
There are a number of applicants for the deafblind and they will be interviewing 2 candidates.
There is an open teacher of the visually impaired position in Heartland and they will be interviewing this week. There is also a TVI position open in Greens Hills AEA.
Barb Guy stated that the Transition Coordinator position is still open. / At June meeting will look at what services are needed and who is using these services.
Agreements / Patrick handed out copies of the Intergovernmental Agreement By and Between Board of Regents, State of Iowa (Governing body of Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School) and Department of Education and Intergovernmental Agreement By and Between Board of Regents, State of Iowa (Governing body of Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School) and Iowa Department of Education and Iowa Area Education Agencies and Iowa Department for the Blind.
Patrick is updating this 5 year agreement. The first part (agreement between BOR and IESBVI) mostly deals with the superintendent. Patrick, Barb and Laurabelle will work on this part.
Second part is more of an extension rather than changes.
Management Team will continue, but will have membership changes, such as no AEA chief.
Barb and Laurabelle asked to change the membership for Department of Education from specific titles to Administrative Consultants’ designees. Patrick, Barb and Laurabelle will work on this.
Maybe we should look at asking for a continuation of current agreement between Department of Education and Iowa Braille and then look at making it one agreement? Patrick will bring it back with changes in June and we will then move forward.
Members should think about how general or specific we want to be? Right now it’s general and has served us for the last 5 years. Maybe develop and action plan over the next 5 years that lists out specific duty agreements.
Patrick will bring back Preferred Future in June. Members need to come back and revisit this. Committee members need to look at this document before June meeting. / Barb, Patrick and Laurabelle will work on first part.
Patrick, Barb and Laurabelle will look at wording for Department of Education members on Management Team.
Committee members need to look at the agreement document before June meeting.
Summer Programs 2013-14 / IESBVI has 56 students registered for 11 different programs this summer.
One of the programs is joint program with Iowa Department for the Blind focusing on transition.
Iowa Department for the Blind is also offering a summer program at Iowa State University for students nearing collage age.
There are lots of summer options for students who are blind and visually impaired.
Chris Short has been named Braille Teacher of the Year
Summer Meeting Schedule / We will meet at Iowa Vocational Rehabilitation Services (Knudsen Room) on Thursday, Aug. 1st instead of Monday, July 15th. The Management Team and Executive Team will not meet that day, but the Leadership Team will meet from 9:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m.
Next meeting will be June 17th at Iowa Department for the Blind – Director’s Conference Room
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