Workgroup 3—Delivery Systems
Group meeting minutes from
Breakout Session on 6/28/2007
Group Leader: Rebecca Cort, Deputy Commissioner NYSED
Attendees: Michael Grossfeld, Judy Gerson - Rep. for Susan
Constantino, Linda Rennie - Rep. for Mary Curtis, Donna Noyes - DOH, Harouna
Ba -Rep. from Northeast Regional Education Lab
Facilitator: Donna Meixner
Recorder: Tina Goodwin Segal
Workgroup members introduced themselves with a brief statement about the reason(s)
for their interest in this workgroup. The group leader suggested ground rules
for participation and passed out forms to gather members’ preferences
for meeting times; workgroup members were asked to check “yes” or “no” on
a list of specified dates and times.
The charge to the group was to think about long and short-term solutions to
important delivery system issues. Workgroup members were encouraged to consider
this an opportunity to be part of a process to achieve systemic change and
to get to the hard issues around delivery systems in Preschool Special Education.
Several leading questions were posed to help direct the group’s focus
on important issues such as: Does our system make sense? Are the important
priorities addressed? What role should school district’s play? How should
counties be involved in the process?
From this introduction the workgroup began to look over the issues list that
had been generated from the full task force session just prior. They then identified
6 major themes/categories for grouping the questions to make the list more
manageable for future discussions. Below is the list of categories and issues
that may be addressed by the Delivery Systems workgroup as they progress
through the deliberation process.
- Evaluation
- Inconsistency in interpreting evaluation data
- More frequent re-evaluations, i.e., semi-annually
- What is the school district’s role in evaluation process? What
should it be?
- Funding Authority and Government Structure
-
Look at role of county versus school district
-
Look at 0-5 seamless delivery system
-
How do other states involve other parties, (day care, head start) in
planning, delivery, evaluation?
-
What are the oversight systems, both central and local, and what impact
do they have on quality of service delivery?
-
Understand per child costs in benchmark states
-
Quality Standards and Best Practice
-
How do we support kids in community based agencies,
i.e., day care? (best
practice program model)
- How do early services set the stage for later progress
in general education system?
-
How do other states provide programs for severely medically involved?
-
Can more indirect services be provided to lower direct related services
(e.g., consultation to teachers)
-
Applied behavior analysis (ABA)—who is qualified
to provide ABA?
-
Identify and examine innovations in service delivery, e.g., distance
learning technology
-
Look at child outcomes, consider a uniform methodology to measure,
e.g., as they relate to Learning Standards (example from Utah)
-
Consider the issue of a child fitting into a program versus a program
being developed for the child
- Training/Professional Development; Guidance; Information Dissemination
- Need support for the CPSE in dealing with parents around eligibility
- How do other states and counties train their CPSE chairs?
- Continuum of Service
-
Can more indirect services be provided to lower
direct related services (e.g.,
consultation to teachers)
-
Define what a school day means and around that how service is delivered.
-
What is least restrictive environment (LRE) in today’s
terms?
-
Consider the issue of a child fitting into a program versus a program
being developed for the child
- Program Capacity
- Explore recruitment/retention issues, including the need for bi-lingual
services
Resources and factual information that needs to be gathered:
-
SED Pre-school Longitudinal Study
-
Study from Utah federal grant on outcomes
-
Find out what funding is available for preschool in
other states—federal
and state monies
-
Council for Exceptional Children (CEC)—early childhood
division
-
STAC data on dual service kids; county to county differences; federal OSEP
monitoring
-
NECTAS information
-
PEELS study by SRI
At the conclusion of the 30 minute breakout session, group
members were asked to prepare for the next meeting by …
- Individually prioritizing the issues based on input from their constituents
- Creating a couple of question for each issue (category) that might be asked
to other states as a follow up interview to the comparative state study data
or used in a survey to providers)
- Considering what other resources the workgroup needs, i.e., people with
a particular expertise, factual information from database warehouses, or
research groups or studies that might be relevant
NEXT MEETING: JULY 10TH
TIME: 9:00-12:00
LOCATION: TBD