The Special Education Committee of the Whole meeting took place on Tuesday, May 3, 2023 at 5 p.m. You can find the meeting’s materials here and the video in English here and in Spanish here.
AGENDA
- Transition services
- Extended School Year (ESY)
The first item on the Agenda was the Transition Services (materials)
- The Department of Rehabilitation goes beyond disabilities that are found on paper. Interviews between mental health professionals and individuals with disabilities are conducted as a better way to monitor the specific needs of that individual. This ensures that students with special needs have a greater chance at accessing these resources.
- The meticulous work of the South Central Los Angeles Regional Center (SCLARC) (presentation here) to help individuals with disabilities transition into the workforce while protecting their benefits such as social security and Medi-Cal.
- Working with undocumented immigrants and protecting their privacy as well. Language interpreters are available but they also use Google Translate to speak to individuals if an interpreter is not available for that language.
Department of Rehabilitation
- Some disabilities may not be on paper. Department t working more on interviews.
- Plans would help with school supplies, uniforms, laptop, clothes for interviews – depending on career goal including clothes for a job interview
- Organization stays with the individual until retirement – Cases close after 90 days of employment for an individual. If the individual wants to go back to school afterwards despite employment, a new case will be opened by Dept of Rehabilitation.
South Central Los Angeles Regional Center (SCLARC)
- Looks into benefits received (such as Social Security/medi-cal). Ensuring those benefits are not taken away.
- Paid internship program – 1,040 hours per year. Paid. Integrated employment where payment is the same for workers with disabilities as it is for workers without disabilities.
- Partnerships with Disneyland, Starbucks, Knotts, Universal, more…
The second item was Extended School Year (ESY) (materials here)
- New students have to enroll for Parent Confirmation Letter (PCL)
- Get told what Extended School Year (ESY) site they will be attending.
ACTION ITEMS:
- Marc Bowman (SCLARC) – Do deaf/hard of hearing students have interpretation or captions in videos? What does direct access look like?
- Lisa Bennett (ESY) – There were numerical errors on slide 10 during the Extended School Year presentation. The row for “current enrollment” has the exact same numbers for both the “Elementary” and “Secondary Schools (Middle and High Schools)” columns. Presenter will fix it with the actual numbers and get back to us.
- Dr. Smith (SCLARC) – Dr. Smith requested to see a breakdown of services received and how often they are received by ethnicity/racial makeup of students.