January 13, 2016 at 2:00 PM - Special Population Committee Meeting

Discussion:  Call to order at 2:05 PM.

Discussion:  Staff: David Ludwig, Deb Hericks, Wade Fruhling.

Discussion:  Steve Milliken was present to discuss RDA Grant (Facilitator Grants.) Working to close the achievement gaps. The funds will be distributed to schools, ESUs though grant proposals. Enrollments of 1000 students or more can have individual proposals and everything smaller would go through ESUs to provide the support. The funds will be distributed per student enrollment ($6.67). These are grants should be collaborative. Some Schools/ESUs can combine to apply for grants.

Discussion:  Behavior Health Committee met to discuss what we have currently available. The charge for the committee is to organize and communicate statewide the current system of support for behavioral health and services provided. From this organized system of support, a needs assessment will be provided for enhanced services and legislative support.

Discussion:  Assistive Technology Grant is done through ESU 10/Voc Rehab and that person will be retiring. Should this grant be facilitated through the ESUCC.

Discussion:  Early Learning Connections Grant person will be retiring. Regional grants should remain with ESUs and statewide grants should possibly go through the ESUCC. ESUCC should come up with criteria on how we decide which grants fund through them.

Discussion:  This is a grant that is held with one ESU so moving to ESUCC.

Discussion:  We have had a series of meetings with ESU#3’s SIMS Development Team and Dean Folkers to discuss how Rule 18 and Special Purposes schools will connect to the NDE Operational Data Store (ODS). The following determinations were made: Special Purpose schools will be given access to the SIMS school information system and Interim Program Schools will use the AAP site. NDE is not yet ready to have AAP and SRS connect to the ODS

Discussion:  Content and Instructor pages: Work is continuing on the editing of forms used to submit work by participants. The goal is to make them interact with the database more efficiently and securely. Administrative and State Admin pages: This includes the pages that we use to administer the site and to view the database information when we answer user questions. Work is also continuing on the pages that the state uses to view and administer the site on a state-wide level. Supervising Paraeducator’s program: This is an area that has been on the to-do list for a long time. The goal has been to add more options to the management of student records and to smooth out the process of viewing each unit, making it more time efficient for the instructor to evaluate. The year ended well for the project. There were 822 new participants registered to 95 individual districts.Since 2004, there have been 6896 participants registered to 250 districts.

Discussion:  Mike has completed the data import/export work for Bennington Public Schools. They met with staff from Beatrice Public Schools to discuss ways to improve the site’s usability and user satisfaction. Developed a formal project management plan: Monthly Project Charter – List of development projects for the month along and detailed specs for each project. Weekly Sprints are Project Charter is broken up into weekly goals and weekly “Scrum Meeting” to go over details of each project and assign duties. SRS Advisory Board meeting was held on December 17. Areas of discussion included: Need for a generic Prior Written Notice form; Problems with current NSSRS system, and proposed solutions; Primary goals are still to focus on Zend Conversion, System Maintenance, and Interoperability with the State’s ODS. New hardware has been purchased which will host the SRS site. SRS database will be the first to be moved over. This upgrade should eliminate the speed problems that we have every May.

Discussion:  We continue to maintain the ILCD Staff Survey site. Our office emails the data (along with a summary) to school districts upon request

Discussion:  Behavioral Health and ILCD