November 15, 2016 at 3:00 PM - Special Population Committee Meeting

Discussion: 

Call to order at 3:04 PM

Staff:  David Ludwig, Wade Fruhling, Deb Hericks

Discussion:  The committee has not met recently.  Working on putting together a summit for this summer to try and get all stakeholders aligned down the same path.  Two to three locations with a simulcast. 

Discussion:  ESU 16 Administrators reviewed discussion regrading shortage of Speech/Language Pathologists.  Begin discussing the development of a retention/recruitment model.  Try to keep within state of NE.  Use global therapy/telepathy options as a last resort.  NRSA is promoting a company from South Carolina.  Can we create our own telehealth model within the state.  Possible models in order of preference:  Face to face with facilitators, face to face with educated para professionals, telehealth.  NISLA is also studying the shortage of SPs/LPs.  Larianne will discuss with ESPD Affiliate. 

Discussion:  Discussion regarding other possibility of other people to present at our meetings. 

Discussion:  They had a good ESPD meeting with KSB joining them for a portion of their meeting. 

Discussion:  Executive Director discussed the process staff used to create project procedure manuals.  First reading will be in January with second/final in February. 

Discussion:  Bus driver certification is inconsistent across the state.  Is there a shortage, why is there a shortage? 

Discussion:  Director discussed his report. 

They are working Student Team Page, they added functionality that will allow districts to assign staff to students much faster and easier than before.  They are working through the remaining priority list. We will be applying for a new $25,000 grant this week

Discussion: 

Para Conference was held on October 26^th in Kearney.  They had 325 in attendance, 31 sessions + Keynote.  Most popular sessions were anti-Bullying and Behavior Management sessions.  Carol McClain is going through evaluations and looking for ways to improve for next year. Their focus now returns to Project Para App: Working on Instructor pages and following up on registration requests and user questions.

Discussion: 

SRS will stop contracting with Tom Harvill at the end of December.  Zend Framework conversion is still highest priority, should wrap up the process in the next few weeks.  they are currently working on Student Log page and New Student page.  Working on fixing some challenging bugs in the system.  They have set up a staging server which will allow us to combine the work into one server for testing. Staff are working on SRS knowledge base website.

Discussion: 

The staff continue to maintain the ILCD Staff Survey site.  They email the data (along with a summary) to school districts upon request.