Special Education Directors,The ADE/ESS Professional Learning and Sustainability unit is pleased to announce two “grow your own” opportunities for educators in Arizona public schools.The General Education Teacher to Special Education Teacher (GETSET) program provides tuition reimbursement to certified general education teachers who want to pursue a career change to become certified in an area of special education. The Special Education Teacher Tuition Assistance (SETTA) program provides tuition reimbursement to paraprofessionals and educational interpreters that leads to special education teaching certification.

Special Education Directors,All school districts and charter schools are required to annually administer the State Performance Plan Indicator 8 Parent Involvement Survey to parents of students with an Individualized Education Program (IEP). The survey will open on February 2 via ADEConnect ESS Data Surveys.

DATA MANAGEMENT ALERT    ESS October 1 Data Collection (ODC) – SPED73 and SPED07 Reports Accurate - Phase II Due Date 1/25 Thank you for your patience while Exceptional Student Services (ESS) worked with ADE-IT on troubleshooting issues with the reports and functionality for October 1 child count processing. The issues are now resolved, and the October 1 reports are now accurate. For SPED students, the AzEDS Portal SPED73 report and the ESS October 1 Data Collection application SPED07 report both provide accurate feedback for students reported in AzEDS served over October 1.

DATA MANAGEMENT ALERT ESS October 1 Data Collection (ODC) – Phase II Due Date ExtendedExceptional Student Services (ESS) is working with ADE-IT on troubleshooting issues with the reports and functionality for October 1 child count processing.Since public education agencies (PEAs) cannot utilize reports between systems in reconciling their October 1 counts, the October 1 process will now be closing on January 25, 2023 at 5pm.

DATA MANAGEMENT ALERT ESS October 1 Data Collection – SPED73 and SPED07 Report InaccuraciesExceptional Student Services (ESS) Data Management has identified an issue with some students either showing “N” for Oct 1 Eligible on the SPED73 report or missing from the SPED07 report. Our IT team is currently working to resolve this issue. Please continue to monitor your INTEG15 report to ensure student integrity errors are corrected so they may populate your reports once the resolution is in place. The January 18 Phase II deadline remains in effect at this time.

Special Education Directors,Writing better goals and effectively monitoring student progress towards those goals are foundational skills for Related Service Providers. Positive student outcomes can only be achieved when school-based therapists can do both consistently. Good data on good goals leads to effective interventions and allows therapists to write better progress reports in less time. And we know that “time spent on paperwork” is a leading cause of therapist burnout. For these reasons, we are very excited about the next presentation in our series of Related Service Provider Seminars, Creating Goals that Are Easy to Monitor and a Stress-Free Companion Monitoring Tool, with Carlo Vialu, PT, MBA, and Peggy Morris, OTD, OTR/L, BCP. This workshop is designed for Occupational Therapists, Physical Therapists, and Speech-Language Pathologists and will convey ASHA, APTA, and AOTA CEUs. Please share with your staff.

DATA MANAGEMENT ALERT       Special Education Data Updates Webinar Wednesday, January 11th    The Exceptional Student Services Data Management team will be hosting the next Special Education Data Updates live webinar on Wednesday, January 11th from 2pm – 3pm. This session will cover a variety of data topics that will include (subject to change):

Special Education Directors,Please see the following memo regarding preschool outcomes data in AzEDS for fiscal year 2024. In order to streamline the preschool outcome data collection process, the data collection and processing for these submissions will move into one single student accountability system (AzEDS) moving forward. The ESS Early Childhood Special Education and Operations teams will provide targeted technical assistance for this data collection process in March 2023.

Special Education Directors,Please see the following memo regarding the reporting of discipline data. This communication includes a reminder of discipline data submission elements and a new requirement to submit information for children reassigned to an alternative education program as an alternative to suspension or expulsion or placed into an alternative to a suspension program beginning in fiscal year 2024. This additional reporting requirement was developed in response to feedback provided to Arizona from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) and is designed to ensure that all eligible children with disabilities are served appropriately and equitably.

Special Education Directors,The ADE/ESS Assistive Technology (AT) team is excited to announce the next 2022–23 national presenter, Mike Marotta, ATP. Mike’s workshop is designed for special educators and related service providers.“Explore and Identify Google Tools That Can Be Incorporated Into Educational Experiences”Date: Wednesday, January 18, 2023