FULL TRANSCRIPT (with timecode)
Voices E9 Jerry Miller
File Name: Voices E9 Jerry Miller.mp3
File Length: 00:09:01
SPEAKERS
Int - Introduction
JK - Jeff Krakoff
JM - Jerry Miller
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Introduction: Welcome to Voices, a podcast brought to you by the Seneca Valley School District.
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Jeff Krakoff: I'm Jeff Krakoff with Jerry Miller, Special Education Director at Seneca Valley School District. Jerry thanks for joining us today. I
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Jeff Krakoff: I know you've been with the District for about 12 years now in your current role.
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Jeff Krakoff: So let's just jump right into it. Right now
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Jeff Krakoff: we're in the yellow phase. So kind of walk us through how the district is going to provide special education services and to support to students while we're in the yellow phase
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Jerry Miller: Yes.
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Jerry Miller: So as everyone hopefully knows by now the yellow phase has two cohorts Cohort A and Cohort B. During Cohort A students, in Cohort A would have in-person instruction on Monday and Wednesday and remote instruction on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Cohort B would have in-person instruction on Tuesday and Thursday and remote instruction on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
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Jerry Miller: So for our schools for special needs who receive small group instruction and support, that instruction support will be provided in-person and/or remotely depending on student around teacher schedules and building schedules. So you know for for instance for example if a student requires some type of support five days per week obviously we couldn't provide that support for five in-person days so we'll have to do some of that remotely.
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Jerry Miller: So again small group instruction will be done either in person or remotely depending on scheduling.
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Jerry Miller: During this time teachers are expected to have daily contact with students during remote instruction. So you know unlike I shouldn't say unlike but in the spring we were faced with a basically an emergency situation where we we had a plan in place to provide instruction to students. It's going to look different in the fall because we have had time to prepare and the expectation for teachers is to have daily contact with students just making sure they're
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Jerry Miller: moving forward and progressing the way we expect.
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Jerry Miller: All teachers of students that receive hearing support will have either a clear face shield and/or a clear face mask so that those students would be able to be able to use their lip reading capabilities to be able to
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Jerry Miller: understand what they're saying in case they're not able to hear clearly.
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Jeff Krakoff: Got it.
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Jerry Miller: And then finally para support. We do offer para support to our students with special needs and that support will be available according to each student's Individualized Education Plan (IEP).
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Jeff Krakoff: OK. So I take it things are flexible if we were to switch from yellow to red or green as well?
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Jerry Miller: Yes.
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Jerry Miller: So we have a plan. So no matter what phase where we have a plan for that and obviously our green phase that's means that things are going really well. And you know we're getting to the point where we want to be where we have all our students back. During green phase, some of the supports would continue. We would continue with the cohort model just because for example our students that receive perhaps speech and language services, they may be on a particular schedule than yellow phase.
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Jerry Miller: We're not going to disrupt that schedule. We're going to continue the same schedule. They're getting the exact support they need. It would just continue on that schedule.
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Jerry Miller: And then of course you know if we would happen that need to go into red phase then of course all instruction would be provided remotely.
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Jeff Krakoff: OK. Well speaking of remote, what are the district's plans to provide services and support for special education students who are currently full-time cyber students?
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Jerry Miller: So cyber education is typically not conducive for our students with special needs.
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Jerry Miller: But in this environment and due to health concerns, we need to make this option available to our students who require that. So for our students with special needs who have requested full-time cyber we will conduct IEP meetings during the first 30 days of school to ensure we're providing the support that is necessary for them.
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Jerry Miller: In the interim will implement the IEP to the best of our ability. Until that IEP meeting is held. And again for the majority of our students with special needs an IEP meeting will be held within 30 days of school starting. For our students who attend our supplemental support classroom. That's a small number of students that have high needs. For those students, they will have an IEP meeting prior to the first day of school. We want to have. We want to make sure that we have a plan in place for our students with high needs prior to the first day of school.
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Jeff Krakoff: All right.
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Jeff Krakoff: What role will school psychologists play as we get back to school for special education students?
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Jerry Miller: So typically school psychologists, their primary role is to evaluate students that are thought to be in need of special education services. In our district we currently have six school psychologists, one of them is a part-time psychologist, and there as I said their primary role is to evaluate students who are thought to be in need of special education services.
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Jerry Miller: When this pandemic hit back in March, we were not able to conduct face-to-face evaluations. So that created an immense backlog for our school psychologists. And
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Jerry Miller: And it wasn't until the board approved our back-to-school health and safety plan during our one of our July meeting that they were then able to begin in-person evaluations again.
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Jerry Miller: But again I say they have a pretty big backlog, but you know as they're working through that backlog, we still want to reserve time for them for parents if they have questions about their child's executive functioning like their working memory, thinking skills, self-control, those kind of things that they have any questions regarding that they can reach out to our school psychologist and our school psychologist can talk them through that give them some tips, some ideas, or send them to someone that said they could provide support.
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Jeff Krakoff: OK so if I'm a parent I do have questions, who should they contact and how should they contact them?
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Jerry Miller: So if you could our school district web page along the top there there's a banner and you click on departments and you click on a special education department and then once you get our site, the Special Education Department site, on the left hand side there are options. And there's a contact us option when you contact when you click that option it lists all of our contact information. It'll be myself the director, the assistant director, our our supervisor of gifted education, all of our psychologists, all of our secretaries.
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Jerry Miller: So
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Jerry Miller: So all the all the phone numbers, email, contact information you need. You can find it on that website.
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Jeff Krakoff: Got it. Got it. Well, thanks. Thanks so much for spending time.
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Jeff Krakoff: For any parents out there what should their main takeaway be when it comes to special education services as we get back to school?
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Jerry Miller: So, we, I especially understand how difficult it is for our parents with students with special needs to to you know navigate the system in this trying time. So you know my takeaway would be that you know if you have any questions, if you're not sure of something, if you if you need some help, if you need some guidance, go to that special education page on our website go to the contact information and any of those names including myself, you can send us an e-mail,
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Jerry Miller: call us, whatever you need we're here to provide answers to your questions and we'll provide. We'll try to provide support to the best of our ability.
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Jeff Krakoff: All All right. Jerry Miller once again thank you. Keep up the good work and hope you have a great back to school season there.
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Jerry Miller: Thank you.
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Jeff Krakoff: Take care.