SEPAC Business Meeting – September 2022
Call to Order
Introductions: Alison Elmer, Inae Hwang, Sarah Barton, Jessica Dombrosky, Lauren Bellon, Kristin Burke, Joyce Schlenger, Joan Brinckerhoff (DESE), Dee Wyatt (DESE), Epp Brecht, Jamie Gallo, Kelly Hamilton, Rachel Ostrow, Alison Babeu, Cheryl, Rabbi Talya Weisbard Shalem, Jess Chloros, Krasimira Petkov, Sarah Thompson, and Gina Filosa attended.
APS Staff Reports:
– This is cycle A of Tiered Focused Monitoring, and we are hosting an orientation session tonight on what will be happening during this cycle.
Parent Orientation Presentation on Tiered Focused Monitoring:
Parents and other individuals may call Joan Brinckerhoff, Public School Monitoring Chairperson, at 781-338-3715 to request a telephone interview. If you require translation services to participate in the interview, the Department will arrange for that to happen.
Parent Resources – Office of Public School Monitoring (PSM) (mass.edu)
https://www.doe.mass.edu/psm/parents/default.html
- Parent Survey anticipated to be emailed to parents around October 21st. If your child has an IEP, the primary parent who is indicated as such in Powerschool should be receiving a survey. You may need to check your spam or promotions folder.
If you have more than one student on an IEP, please reach out to Joan Brinckerhoff (Joan.L.Brinckerhoff@mass.gov) for a second survey.
Surveys are anonymous, and we would not reveal any identifying information of your case to folks in the district.
There are 37 questions in all, both multiple choice and open-ended/short answer questions. We encourage you to elaborate on your answers.
DESE looks at district-wide issues, so they are more likely to take notice if a number of parents flag the same issue.
We currently don’t have a survey for general education students or students who are in the IEP eligibility process and don’t have an IEP at this time.
Student records pulled and reviewed by the Office of PSM are different from the ones the School District pulls during their self-assessment.
During the week of November 14, 2022, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Office of Public School Monitoring (PSM) will conduct the Tiered Focused Monitoring Review of Arlington Public Schools:
Planning Workshops for the Coming Year:
- Dispute Resolution 201
- We are working through the survey responses from last year, to see what suggestions folks had for workshops.
- Last year we focused on dyslexia/reading. The feedback we got is that folks are still wondering what is being done to help secondary students who have reading difficulties.
- Families would like to learn a bit more about the different placements available at the middle school level and beyond, and what they mean
- We are working with Somerville SEPAC to pair with them on workshops. They have already scheduled their Basic Rights: Evaluation and Eligibility for October, and we are invited to attend. We are going to plan a different Basic Rights workshop (either Understanding your IEP or Transition Planning for turning age 22 and beyond)
- Judge Baker Center/Camp Baker – Fantastic organization, son has attended the camp, Jess has attended the parent night
- McLean is hosting a webinar for Arlington Parents:
First webinar:
September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. Our first parent webinar will take place this Sunday, September 18th 7:00-8:00pm “Understanding Self-Harm for Parents” presented by Michael Hollander, Ph.D. Description and Zoom link can be found on the website.
All information for the parent webinars, including dates/times, Zoom links, presenter information and learning objectives can be found here on this website:
https://healthcare.partners.org/streaming/Live/McLean/McLean_SCS.html
Public Participation / New Business / Open Discussion:
–
Announcements:
- We changed the date for the Meet and Greet, to Wednesday, September 28th. The Meet and Greet will be held in the Discourse Lab at the High School, at 9am.
- Next month’s meeting is on October 11th, the Tuesday after Indigenous People’s Day, at 9am. The Zoom link for the meeting is the same as the one used tonight.
Adjourn
