Snoqualmie Valley School District issued the following announcement.
Dear Families,
I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce myself and share some updates for fall regarding special education services. I joined the Snoqualmie Valley School District this summer upon Nancy Meek’s retirement, and I’ve appreciated the warm welcome you’ve provided me amidst this uncertain time. Prior to joining SVSD, I was a special education director in Seattle, and a high school principal in the Highline School District. I care deeply about our most vulnerable students, look forward meeting your family, and can’t wait for the day I can walk into classrooms and meet our students in person
Since the decision was made to begin school on the Distance Learning 2.0 model this fall, we have been hard at work designing a program to effectively serve the needs of all students. The following is an update on some of the steps we’ll be taking to support students receiving special services.
Our goal in special education is to implement your child’s Individualized Education Program (IEP) services so s/he/they make meaningful progress considering his/her/their unique circumstances. Specially Designed Instruction will be provided remotely at the start of school. IEP teams will hold annual IEP meetings via Zoom conference calls, and we will honor all requests for IEP team meetings. Should your student need a change in services, the team will provide an IEP amendment to reflect those changes. Expect to be contacted for an IEP team meeting if your student’s IEP was delayed in the spring due to the school closure. Per state guidance, we will not be implementing Continuous Learning Plans this fall during remote learning. We will only implement a Continuous Learning Plan if we reopen schools, then have an emergency closure during the school year.
The District will be holding special education evaluations remotely when school starts as well. If you student’s evaluation was delayed due to the closure, we will contact you about completing the evaluation. Our team of school psychologists are currently learning about standardized, online assessments for implementation this fall.
We have received many thoughtful questions about in-person services. Your student’s teacher will contact you the first week of school to check in and ask if your student would like to be considered for in-person services. We have a team of 40 educators and building leaders working on a decision-making matrix with the goal of bringing in our most vulnerable students for Specially Designed Instruction. We are also considering in-person testing site for evaluations, as well as a site for therapies (occupational/speech/physical). More information will be available soon about when those services will be available. Again, it may not be possible to serve all students in-person, given the pandemic restrictions, but we will do our best to provide this level of support for our most vulnerable students, for whom remote learning is a significant challenge.
Next week, on August 26 from 5-6 p.m., I hope you will tune into a webinar regarding SVSD Student Services. To participate, please fill out this survey link below and we will send you a zoom invitation link. We will also ask a few questions to help me get to know you and your student. If you have additional questions, that have not been answered here, please submit those questions in the survey, and I’ll do my best to address them in the webinar. To begin, click here: https://tinyurl.com/MGNFAugust2020. We’ll keep this survey open through August 25.
I have a deep appreciation for our educators and support staff who have been engaging in professional learning so they can provide a more robust learning experience for our students. Please do not hesitate to contact your teacher, the principal, or me if you have additional questions about the start of school.
Original source can be found here.
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