OSEP Quarterly Call with Parent Centers

OSEP Quarterly Call with Parent Centers

December 15, 2016

Please stand by for realtimecaptions.

Jennifer Reed: Good afternoon. Welcome to the quarterly call with parent centers. Right before we get started I wanted to point out acouple things. All participants are in listen only mode. We arerecording this call and it willbe available online later. We wanted to make sure everyoneknew it was being recorded. There isa handouts section where the PowerPointis available for download. If at any time during the presentationyou have anyquestions, feel free to enter thisinto the chat and we will make sureto get those answered. At this time I would like to introduceCarmenSanchez. I'm going to turnthepresentationto Carmen.

Carmen Sanchez: Hi everyone. You will notice in the chat space wehave the link should youneed an audio transcript of whatis going on so please followthe link and you will be connectedto the real-timecaptioning in a separatewindow.

Today is our quarterly call with all of the parentcenters, the training informationcenters andthe community resource centers funded through the Office of Special Education Programs. Todaywe have several topics we want todiscuss. Most of these are programmatictopics. We will bediscussing some small updates interms of your website accessibility. We will talk about the programmeasures collectionfor 2017. In addition I would liketo discuss requirements for annualreports and last we will discuss newresources available through theCPIR we would like you to exploreand take advantageof.

In terms of web accessibility,as many of you know someofyou have been informed that you are being investigated by the Office of Civil Rights for violations ofwebsite accessibility. We are working with the Office of Civil Rights to offer information around whatyou can do to make your websitesaccessible as possible to followthe law and respond should youget any complaints. We are working with the Office of Civil Rights. I wish we had moreinformation right now. We actually don't have a lot ofnewinformation from the officein terms of providing some generalinformation specifically for yourneeds. I did discuss it with mycontact in the Office of Civil Rights and she is going to check to seewhat they can do to provide generalinformation. We have provided information tothe Office of Civil Rights aboutthe parent centers and what kindoforganizations you are and your budget constraintsand the fact you are funded throughother sources and notjust the federal program. They areaware of you as a parent centersand the resources you have and yourconstraints. They are open to having individualconversations with your centerssince they stressed the consentagreement should be personalized with the peopleunderinvestigation and they receiveda complaint about you and the consentagreements are open to negotiation.They would like to have some individualconversations with you. If you need furthersupport you in starting those conversationsdon't hesitate to reach out to yourproject officer and we will makesure we can be of any service toyou in terms of having thoseconversations. In addition you can receive technicalassistance on making your websiteaccessible aspossible before you receive a complaint.Most technical assistance comesfrom your regional parent technicalassistance centers but thereare also some you might ask yourproject officer for but reach outtoyour parent technical assistancecenters and they will give you asmuch information about making yourwebsite accessible. We know thathas been a topic on either themonthly calls and also at the regionalmeetings.Take advantage of the technicalassistance they can provide tomake your website as accessibleas possibleeven if you are not the object ofa complaint.

In terms of theprogram measures collection in 2016,I want to give you an update asto what happened this year in terms of how you did on the 2016 programmeasure collection and I would liketo discuss what we are going tobe doing for this coming year. This coming 2017 datacollection, 31 centershave been chosen randomly to submitservice descriptions for the short-termmeasures collection.The short-term measures, thereare four of them, but the ones youhave to provide information aboutour air quality, relevance and usefulness. 31 centers were chosen randomlyand notified on MondayDecember 12 they were chosen tosubmit the service description forthe short-term measures. I providedthe Study Group which is our contractor withthe contact information for thecenters chosen andI provided the list to the regionalparent technical assistance centers.

I did not provide them with thegeneral email addresses. I provided himwith the project directore-mail so you should have received notification if you were chosen.If you have a question if you werechosen you can reachout to your regional PTAC and askif you are on thelist if you were notifiedbut I'm fairly confident those ofyou who were chosen have receivednotification. Let me clarify if you were chosenfor the collection in 2016, youshould not be chosen thisyear. Parent centers are not chosen twoyears in a row.If you were chosen last year andnotified this year, get in contactwith the Study Group, your project officer or meand we will see what we can do tofix the situation. If this is yourfirst year beingfunded astheCPRCin you were never funded before,you should not be in the pool tobe included this year to bechosen as a center to be chosenfor the program measures collection. If you were a parent trainingand information center that was brand-newand neverserved starting October 1stlast year, you werenot included in the 2016 poolso you were not chosen. However, becauseyou have beenfunctioning as a parent traininginformation Center for a year, youwere included in thepool.Those of you who were brand-newand never served as a parent traininginformationcenter before October1st, 2015, if you were chosen thisyear that is appropriate becauseyou were in the poolfor the 2017 data collection. Ifyou were chosen to be in thepool, let me go over what isexpected. You wereaskedby the Study Group to submit threeservices, your top threeservices you use most often. Onceyou submit those three servicesthey will pick one of those servicesand say you need to submit a fullservice description andmaterials and that mustbe submitted no later than January16. If you were chosen December12, next Monday you will be toldwhich service you have beenasked toprovide, you have until January16 to submit your service description. I will talkabout the technical assistance availablein a littlewhile but I want to stress if youwere asked for service descriptionson Monday and you are oneof the 31 centers chosen, pleaselisten to the webinar werecorded available on the parentcenter hub andtype in the OSEP webinar. Listento that recording which also hasatranscript in this into our advicein terms of how you describe theservices you want included.Do not say one of the services youprovide us telephone consultation. That is not usefulto the Study Group and won't beuseful to you in creating a servicedescription so be very specificabout the kinds ofservices. In thiscase instead of simply saying telephonetechnical assistance, you talk abouttelephone technical assistance toa particular populationoraround transition to post secondaryoptions. You specify what telephoneassistance you are assessing andthat will make it easier for theStudy Group to determine whatservice you are likely to providea description of. For the programmeasures collection,the other short-term measure isan index of cost and thatis based on the October servicecounts submitted to the Center forParent Information and Resources. I think all ofyou submitted your service resourcesto them. Is important those numbersare accurate because it is whatwe used to calculate an index ofcost measure so that isgoing to be used by the Study Group.No further action is required byyou and you have done the work bysubmitting your service counts.

In terms of long-termmeasures, we are collecting themthis year but this will notrequire you as parent centers todo anything than what youare going to bedoing as the normal part of business.We are collecting thelong-term measures this year. We have anew long-term measure, parents servedby the parent training informationCenter program will be ableto work with schools and serviceproviders effectively in meetingthe needs of their children. That long-term measure and the oldlong-term measure which is how informedparents are about their own and their children'srights, that iscalculated from the program measuressurvey results you are providingto the CPIR. The informationyouprovided, you sent anunduplicated list and they set youback the list in order of those parentsthat we should getting in contactwith and do the survey andwhat parents you shouldcontact and administer the surveyand what responses they wanted backfrom you.Thatinformation is going to be usedto determine the long-term measure.You submitted it tothe Center for Parent Informationand Resources and the Study Group willtake that information and determinethe long-term measures for thisyear. Because we have new long-termmeasures they are calculated based on subsequent years.More informationif you are not among the 31 centerschosen for thisyear, more information about thelong-term program measures is availableat the link Deborah justput up and you can hear all aboutthe long-term measures and how theyare done and what the implicationsare for future years.

The results in2016.In 2016 our targets for qualityrelevance and usefulness where 97%. You will see it was 92. 9%. We don't find thisas beingworry some.The reason we did notmeet thatcriteria is because out of the 28centers that submitted descriptionslastyear, two did not meet the criteriafor high-quality, high relevanceand high usefulness and that wasthe same two that did not meet thecriteria for these three measures. That is two outof 28.We recognize as OSEP it is moredifficult to meet these high targetswithout having100%. Subsequent years, certainlynext yearthe target is going to go down to93% and with 31 centers thatmeans wecan still not have all centers meet the target andstill meet our targets for the program. With 31 centersat twoit two do not meet the standardsfor high-quality, relevance andusefulness we will still be ableto be over93%.That is part of what we're doing in terms of lookingat this program performance measures. I have lookedthrough the actual descriptionsand I am familiar with theprojects and the services the projectsprovide and I think in this caseit is aquestion of nothaving descriptions that dojustice and not as complete as theycould be in terms of the actualwork you do. It isn't thequestion if the services are necessarilyhigh-quality, relevance orusefulness but rather the materials youuse to prove the high-quality relevanceandusefulness. I know some if you are chosen virtuallyevery other yearand he gets reallydifficult to keep up I high-qualitydescription but it's important youtake thetime due to a high-quality descriptionthat does justice to the work youare doing.

In terms of the cost, our indexcost is not a dollar amount, simplyan index.We've had the targetof 1.1 for many years and that wouldmean basically the ratio betweenthe number of services you reportedand the overall programbudget, when you calculated thatyou would get 1.1 or lower. We havemet that cost prettyconsistently. This yearwas significantly reduced at .84.I think this has to do with thefact you have a muchmore standard way of counting yourservices and thathas led to reporting more servicesyou areproviding and more accurately.Wehave also seen a real increase inthe website hits that your websitesexperience. These cost measures are used bycalculating website hits, individualassistance calls, trainingnumbers, newslettersbeing put out, all of those figures.Again, there is more informationon the parent center hub interms of this particulartopic in terms of what is used tocalculate the cost. Again, we morethan met the target. This year wedid not collect anynumbers to whether parents are informedabout their rights or how to worktogether with schools and providersto provide services to theirchildren.Nextyear we will be collecting them.

The targets forthe short-termmeasures will be changing to 93%in 2017. 2018 and subsequent years the targetfor the short-term measures willgo down to 90% because we aregetting ourselves into a situationwhere -- it hasn't really beenthere to the program. We are keepingthat target for the costmeasures.It is still an indexof 1.1 and the targets for the long-termmeasures will beestablished after we collectfor 2017 and we will establish whatthose measures should be for 2019,etc.. We will have a sense of what theyare.

Some resources, we establisheda performance measure workgroupinthe CPIR workspaces. If you arein the CPIRspaces, you can join network groupand in the workgroup right now wehave three service descriptionsand I hope to have other ones upsoon and you can download thoseservice descriptions and thekind of materials theyuse in order to demonstrate whatthey have in service descriptions.We have one from a CPRCand twofrom PTIs, so you get a range ofservices available and how to dothose service descriptions.This is another link to get to therecorded webinar from therepository. Take advantage ofyourregional PTAC to provide technicalassistance in terms of the programmeasures and you can reach out toyour project officer also.ThePTACs -- they would be a good resourcefor you. I strongly recommend youuse them all because sometimes itishelpful to get somebody who knowsenough to ask the right questionsthat may not know a lot of theservices you are providing. They might give you some good feedbackon yourdescriptionand -- with the kindof work you are doing to take advantage of the regional PTAC.

I want to clarify anotherissue. If you are an organizationthathas multiple parent traininginformation centers, forexample the three in Florida, thethree in Texas and two inCalifornia, whenwe do the randomization to choosethe projects, we treat thoseas one project as they do thesame work but it is different regionswithin those areas. You shouldnot have Region 1chosen 1 yearin Region two chosen the next year. I don't thinkit happened that if for any reasonyou were chosen lastyear andchosen again this year, please letus know and we will see what wecan do.

Istrongly recommend you join theperformance measuresworkgroup. It's a good place bythe way to ask questions and getquestions answered and find outwhat other people are doing andget that support.

We are going to be doing somework around improving annualreports.Thetimetable for you submitting yourdescription is a little earlierthan in pastyears, about two weeks earlier.In past years you have had untilthe end of January if you were chosento provide a service description,this time we are only giving youto the middle of January. We realize it is ahard time since the requests arecoming out in the middle ofwhen people go on vacation andbreaks, but the reason we're doingthat is because of what we’re goingto ask you to do relative to annualreports. Theregional PTACs were insistent thatwe move up the timeline forperformance measurescollection because that wouldmean you could be finished withthat and what we’re going to askyou in terms of improving the annualreports.I think those of you who will bedoing both will get a bit ofa breather between having todo more for us. One of the things weas project officer noticed is that when we readthe annual reports,they have been inconsistent interms of the quality of the annual report. Sometimesin your annual report there is incorrectinformation. Sometimes we workedwith some of you and as you knowwe have asked used to submit itmultiple times, and I think thathas been somewhat stressful. We are under pressure to approveyour reports in a timelymanner to be able to approve youfor continued funding for next year.We know how stressful it is. We are trying tocome up with a way that might makeiteasier for you to improve your annualreports.

The other thing that made annual reports a little problematic lastyear was last year was the firstyear we gave you new languagerequirements related to how youwere going to support your programmeasures. We are notsure that was clearlyunderstood, and we also recognizeit takes multiple times to get thehang of how to do some of thisreporting. We also saw there wasa high correlation between thoseof you whosubmitted shells. Because of all ofthat, we reallyfelt we needed torethink how you would be submittingthe annual reports this year. I just noticed I think there werequestions related to the programmeasures. I'm going to answerthosequestions before I talk to you moreabout the annual report.

Jennifer Reed: The first question was a clarifyingquestion, the e-mailwe received said we should providethe three services to the Study GroupI December 19 and the Study Groupcontact us again and asked to providemore detailed information on oneservice from the original list.Do we know the date by which theywill tell us which one to dothe in-depth description on?

Carmen Sanchez: Thank you. You have to submitby the 19th, I think I misspokeand suggested they would respondby the 19th, you have to submitthat by thiscoming Monday the 19th.They will probably turnit around in two or threedays.We talked about the needfor you to get that informationprior to going on theholidays. Many people close up theweek between Christmas and New Year's.They are trying to turn itaround in three days and hopefullynolater thanthe 23rd. That is what they areshooting for to get it out toyou all so you can have yourbreak but a sense of what you needto do when you get back.