Updates

At their annual state conference, the Arizona Association of School Psychologists (AASP) recognizes an outstanding school psychologist and administrator (principal or director) of the year, and they encourage your district or charter to nominate someone who provides excellent support and advocacy for students with disabilities in our state. Nomination forms can be located on the AASP website and should be submitted to Jamie Timmerman and Cathy Herring at AASP. Additional information is included in the attached flyer. It is recommended to submit at least three letters of support with each nomination. Nominations open on September 1, 2021 and close on September 30, 2021 at 11:59 p.m. The awards ceremony will be held Friday, November 5, 2021 in the morning at Desert Willow Conference Center. 

The ADE Math Team has scheduled office hours to allow educators to meet together to network, problem-solve, and develop solutions to allow all Arizona teachers and students to continue to feel supported and to be successful.

Grade-band meetings are provided for all math teachers, including special education teachers! These grade-band meetings will include opportunities for networking, problem solving, and sharing different implementation models. Office hours are one hour long with an additional 30 minutes at the end for a Q & A session.  Participants can earn one hour of professional development credit for each session attended.

ADE/ESS is excited to share updated information for our  3-day virtual event which will feature over 75 professional learning opportunities addressing legal issues, special education compliance, preschool and secondary transition, social/emotional learning, and new this year, a content strand for school-based OTs, PTs, and SLPs featuring Michelle Bradshaw, Chris Bugaj, Michelle Curcio, Lisa DeWitt, Irma Gomez, Jessica Hartrich, Amy Hill, Rebecca Lopez, Mike Marotta, Jeff Meeks, Fe Murray, Beth Poss, Linda Rudd, Judith Schoonover, Sarah Ward and Elisa Wern.

The ESS ODC application will open on Wednesday, October 6, 2021. PEAs must login to the application to submit the October 1 verification and personnel counts. All technical assistance documents and FAQs will be available by accessing the “Help tab” on the home page of the ESS ODC application.

The ESS Data Management team is pleased to announce that a new report is now available in the AzEDS Portal, SPED50 – SPED Concurrency Report. This report will help PEAs find concurrent SPED data in AzEDS along with the concurrent PEA, Site, and dates reported to aid in determining the accurate reporting for the student. This report will only show Primary SPED LRE data reported by your PEA that overlaps with Primary SPED LRE data reported by another PEA (Concurrency).

Special Education Directors,

The ADE/ESS Secondary Transition Team is excited to announce a virtual professional learning opportunity on Wednesday, September 29, 2021 from 2:30–3:30 p.m. for school administrators, school counselors, Career and Technical Education (CTE) staff, and special education staff. Please share with any other stakeholder who is interested in this topic.

CTE Recruitment for Inclusion of Students with Disabilities: Innovative Strategies from a Panel of Your Peers

A new series of LRE decision tree documents have been made available on the ESS Data Management website. These documents will provide a roadmap and assist in determining the correct LRE code for students with disabilities. Each LRE decision tree has been separated into 5 categories:

• Preschool No Early Childhood Program
• Preschool with Early Childhood Program
• Public School
• RTC
• Secure Care

ADE/ESS is updating our contact lists of designated Lead Speech-Language Pathologists, Lead Occupational Therapists, Lead Physical Therapists, Lead Assistive Technology Specialists, and Lead School Psychologists. We intend to use the contact lists to:

• Keep related service providers informed of relevant PD
• Facilitate opportunities for developing discipline-specific professional learning networks or communities of practice
• Develop a pool of expert, experienced, school-based practitioners we may call upon for such things as surveying the need for particular topics in PD and providing content expertise to inform or review guidelines and policies developed by ADE/ESS

The ADE/ESS Secondary Transition (ST) Team is excited to launch a variety of webinar sessions for the upcoming 2021-22 fall semester.

• Transition Tuesdays
• Transition 101 Series
• Getting Centered on Out-of-the-Box Thinking: Person-Centered Planning for Transition-Aged Students

Are you looking for Occupational Therapists and/or Occupational Therapy Assistants?

In October 2021, ADE/ESS will be recruiting for OT personnel on behalf of all public education agencies (PEAs) at the Arizona Occupational Therapy Association’s annual fall conference. ESS will operate a booth in the exhibit hall to promote the advantages of working in a school setting and distribute flyers listing all current and anticipated OT vacancies in Arizona public schools. We will also run a banner ad on the conference website directing OTs to the Arizona Education Employment Board.