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so the first thing on our list is introductions um so i'm janelle turner i work for the office of vocational rehabilitation and i am the board chair um caroline you want to go next sure hi i'm caroline morrison and i'm the director of the division of state schools peggy hey there peggy sinclair morris i'm the principal at ksb um we'll go with gary okay sorry uh scarymud recently retired from aph brandy you're next on my grid there hi brandie hitzelberger um ksb parent and mike hey everybody i'm mike flynn and i am a uh parent of a graduated child from ksp all right so it looks like our next item is the approval of our minutes from our last meeting in october i believe brandi you sent those out right i i don't think i did okay i don't think any um no i did not um okay this is one of those places where i get stuck do we need to can we postpone them to the next meeting or how does that work we need to do them now um i think you could probably carol will have to um just let me know for sure but usually we would postpone them to the next meeting um but that's something that probably needs to be discussed in the duties of like secretary and chair who's going to send those out because you know kind of before we had an official secretary um paula used to kind of just do everything um so it's never been like official who does what so um it just kind of needs to be clearly defined um and like before i would just send the notes to kevin um and kevin just kind of did everything so it might be good to just clearly define who's doing what does that make sense yes so let me ask a question we have the minutes from the last meeting right like they were completed i think i saw a copy of those but they just weren't sent out to all the board members to review before today is that the is that where we're at yeah i mean you can share them if you can want to share them i'm sure everybody can read them over real quick and approve them sure how did brandy how did you all handle that in the past or do you have suggestions for how to handle that um well jerry and mike can jump in here but we had paula and paula never made any mistakes so so uh you know i dropped the ball so you know so that's um we never had to deal with this so because we had paula and she was awesome i won't be able to read them and be in the meeting at the same time but i can read them and send in my response i suppose later i don't i don't think it's an issue if we approve them at the next meeting i don't oh i don't either yeah okay so um do we just want to postpone that until our next meeting um and then vote on them then and we'll make sure that today's meeting notes get distributed yeah it makes sense to me okay right is there any way we could since everything seems to be virtual nowadays we could get them and then uh send send our approval to somebody or corrections or just an email approval i mean rather than delay it for several months i've done that in other meetings so okay it just depends on what we want to do i don't know if our bylaws address anything with that um probably not i was gonna guess most bylaws do not so it seems like we have done an email approval before i think you're right i think we have mike can you remember i think we've done an email approval when it when we were kind of going over the bylaws i think we kind of emailed back and forth yeah i remember that came up one of our meetings gary's exactly it's been a while but we talked about that like can we just do this over email and i want to say at the time there was maybe a complicated thing but there's maybe a reason why we couldn't do that we had to be in person to do it but i would agree like in this new virtual environment that should be something we should be able to do um it's been a while since we talked about it though that's that's my recollection i would say then if there is nothing to prevent that um i'm okay with that it may be something we need to add to our bylaws since i'm sure it'll come up again it's definitely wrong agreement uh when i propose we just do that now it may be on the agenda next time lead to bylaws make sure it accommodates kind of a virtual approval but it went too hard to adjust the bylaws last time we went down this path right well we've got the review of bylaws and a little bit so that's something that um we can maybe talk about there so all right so it looks like our next item of business is the discussion of long-term goals and work program for the school i know this was something that brandy had brought up as a possible task for us and i believe carol ann said that we could get a list together after our discussion and then that would go on to greta so i'm sorry can i just say i'm writing in the notes um are we we're going to see if we can do the approval of the minutes by email is that correct yes okay sorry and janelle you dropped out whenever you read the the next gender item well thank you for letting me know that next on our agenda is recommendations that the board may have regarding the school and the work program um i know brandy had brought that up to see if as a board we could and caroline said that we can um and we could get a list together and she could present it to greta um and some things that might be appropriate areas for improvement or um just different different things maybe we might want to see the school do so i don't know who wants to go first kind of start the conversation mike did daniel work a lot through the program not a lot some things got cancelled so i'm probably a bad example to call on is we've been trying to find stuff for daniel to do but not not this yeah i'm probably most familiar with the work program um because vote rehab is part of planning that and assisting with paying the students and getting job coaches if they need those to to be successful um and we started talking about some possible changes i wanted to say maybe about this time last year um just some things that i was seeing and i know some of the counselors from vote rehab had mentioned um and so i can't remember all the specifics at that time that kevin was still in the position so um i mean i kind of have some things that that i've noted i think one of the the biggest things and it's something that i hear parents talk about is how can we expand the types of jobs that may be available to those students um and i know some of that has to do with transportation and how much time they have to do the work program in the community but it seems like a lot of the jobs are food service which isn't a bad place to start if you've never worked for sure but then how do we kind of take that to the next level maybe the next year to get them maybe something that may align more with their interest um so i think as far as what rehab is concerned that's maybe one of the big things just trying to get them more exposure and i i mean i did talk with janelle a little bit and i think that both of us are in agreement that you know we realize these things are not going to be done overnight you know these are long-term goals that you know we realize that kde and peggy and the staff is going to have to work on and it's going to take time um because change takes time and you know sometimes people are resistant to change so you know it it takes a while to get everybody to buy in um you know to what you're trying to do but um i mean i we've had very little experience um in it you know we started last year and just from what the little bit that we saw i i feel like it it really it kind of needs a complete overhaul um it needs to be updated um you know the way that kids interview the way that we do resumes um you know things have changed much more than what they're reading um in a book that's being presented to them having more students come in and talk about the jobs that they do having more mentors come in and talk about you know jobs that they do um and really i think really giving our teachers more education i guess or more experience i don't know what the word is on the iop um because to me it's just like a second thought that iop is um you know to me it's done like the day before the the arc meeting and it's kind of what do you want to do okay you want to go to college okay you want to do this you want to do that it's no big deal it's kind of a joke and i don't think it's really um a serious conversation that they're having with the kids i feel like it's a second thought i mean it may be because a lot of our teachers don't understand what it is and i mean as a parent really i don't know that i know that much about it because i've never really been educated on it that much and i kind of think with students who are blind visually impaired especially that if they don't have those concepts of maybe what some of those questions are and i've not actually seen the interest part of that program but are they really able to give the answers that would fit them better because they've not had that experience of those concepts um and i i think that's an issue with a career interest test in general is that there's a lot of other kids too if you're not exposed to it you don't know um so i know that's that's uh more than just a ksb thing but well and i don't know sorry janelle no go ahead but and i don't know if this is kind of on the same track but i i feel like we kind of lag behind on even be getting our kids transition ready you know all of our kids not just our um you know work program or whatever kids i feel like um we're sending all of our kids out a lot of them that are 18 19 years old that can benefit from another year um you know stretching out their diploma i don't know how but stretching it out and you know helping them with some more ecc skills because i i feel like that we have over the years and we've had so much transition we've had so much turmoil that i feel like we've kind of gotten away from our mission um and we've lost sight of really educating our blind children or blind students with those basic kind of skills that they need and that's those everyday kind of life skills um and really i think i said it in that email 50 of our population is i think multiply disabled so we really need to push those everyday life skills like you know vacuuming laundry and you really don't get that unless you live in the dorm and i really want to stress that i i i don't think the school is a bad place i really don't i think we do wonderful things but i i want us to be the best and i think these are just some small tweaks that we can implement because i think we do have a wonderful staff and wonderful new administration that if we start to just tweak a few small things over the years that you know we'll just be serving all of our students properly that makes sense so don't i don't want to be like negative nelly danielle may i jump in there real quick absolutely okay i really appreciate this conversation and thank you all for talking through this um transition readiness is actually an area that we are looking at to see ways that we can improve so i really appreciate the conversation and the thoughts around that um i have been working closely with jane painter our director of special education to start to look into this area we um she has noticed in just her observations at the school that that's an area that we could focus on a little bit as well as a parent survey that we sent out um last year you know annually we do a parent survey and we we did not have many responses we had minimal responses but of those transition readiness was an area of concern and so that was something that we definitely wanted want to address so i know last time i spoke to jane she was working on um touching base with peggy to see some staff members that she thought would be interested in coming together as a group to kind of start just like a just start a work group to start talking about transition readiness and some areas for improvement so i definitely will share all of this information with her and let her know that you all have an interest in this as well if she wants some feedback from the field from parent perspective all of that so i just really appreciate the conversation and um i think you're absolutely accurate in what you said brandi that you know it's a great school but any place that we can improve or make it better we want to do that and so i really appreciate you all talking about this today and i can say from the voc rehab perspective i mean this is a great time to kind of pursue this because of our pre-employment transition services and working with students earlier to get them ready to you know transition so i know that plays intellect to work but you know there's a lot of resources out there some of them are fairly new um that are free that may be able to assist with some of that and you know i think how can we leverage partnerships in the community um to help with some of that you know here's what's available maybe doing some job shadowing or you can do that virtually maybe some things like that to just kind of help the expansion of their knowledge because that's what i see when they transition from ksb a lot of times they don't have a real good concept of what what they can do um and it seems like a lot of schools have co-ops and that kind of thing where maybe they might go half-day to a job and i don't know that's a possibility i mean i know that comes into scheduling and that can be difficult but is that something that we could maybe take a look at we have any more comments or discussion so this is peggy i know coming into the position that was definitely one of the things in areas that i was thinking about um i think in addition you know brandi said that over 50 of our kids have additional disabilities and um some of those fall into the complex you know two or more areas and so i think it's also a matter of working with the staff here on the changing population um you know we don't get as many kids who are just visually impaired anymore i mean it's just kind of the reality of the situation and the way the population is is changing um so i think you know it's providing support to the staff here on you know working with kids with more complex needs and additional disabilities so that's definitely been something on my radar and also that kind of fifth year senior sort of we have had a couple kids that have come back for a fifth year unfortunately they did it during coven and so it hasn't worked well um we had a student go back to his home district because they were in person and we we have not been so it's been difficult to find jobs that would work virtually so you know just mulling around in my head and talking to the rest of the admin team about a program you know a fifth year program for kids around the state who graduate and they you know they could come here for that fifth year to do a deep dive into working and into the um expanded core curriculum because i agree there needs to be more focus on that so anyways that's just sort of in the beginning stages kind of mulling in my head and having some conversations about that and i i'm the same with caroline i really appreciate you guys bringing this up and having the conversation and i will have to say we're gonna try some virtual jobs for the work program this year um i'm excited to see how it goes it you know it's hard with some of the students that might need more hands-on but we can see what's going to work so i'm really excited about the possibilities there um peggy's been very supportive of that and my supervisor with vote rehab has been very supportive of that because you don't want to punish them per se because of the situation that we're in so we'll see where that goes this is gary i'd i'd love to see an opportunity for kids to come back for a gap year whatever you want to call it to do a lot of work on ecc and and preparing for jobs because i think that's sorely needed so peggy and or carol ann i don't know if you can answer this i'm just i'm just wondering actually it probably has nothing to do with anything because if they come back for a fifth year like do they have to take an academic class or can they just come back and maybe work and do ecc skills do you have to stretch out that academic piece into a five-year plan or like is that something they have to kind of plan for do you understand what i'm saying yes no that's a great question and one thing that i've talked to jane about is how we want to work on some training for staff around transition to talk about planning for it earlier so we don't want to wait until that senior year to say hey we think we need another year and here's what it looks like we want to start early on 8th grade ninth grade planning for that student and what does high school really need to look like um before we're at a place where they have all their credits and they're ready to graduate and we have to move forward and then we go oh wait we really should have done some of this we want to plan that well in advance that makes sense that's the goal is to really start looking at when did we start making those plans and what does that look like okay so really they would kind of have to take some kind of academic piece to stay that fifth year so really it does take some planning yes it does take planning because if you have all your required you know if you have all your requirements for graduation then we could run into some problems there that we would have to work through you know we really want to plan out how does this look and and we don't to me what's best for a student is to help prepare them years along the way rather than waiting until that last year and saying we're going to give everything to you that we possibly can and hope you get it let's plan and let's give little bits and work on transition all throughout your high school career i really think that would be best for the students as well i like that i think you'll have a lot of parents that probably would would see this as a real uh help for them good yeah and this is peggy and so i agree with carol anne and you know when thinking of like a fifth year program what about kids around the state um because there are so many students you know academic students all kinds of students with visual impairment around the state who they get all their credits or but in public school it's much different working on ecc skills and doing that sort of intensive working on all those compensatory things that our kids need so for me you know it would be great to be able to offer this program like the one young man who went back to his home district he had one credit left i think and so um our counselor did a really a pretty creative schedule for him but again it just didn't work out because of the you know being virtual um but i believe he plans he plans to come back when we're in person so i think you know so many kids out in the state they go off to college but they don't necessarily have the skills that they need they may have the academic skills but not you know some of the compensatory things that that they may that they may benefit from um but again you know looking at a program like this kind of what i'm thinking again you have to have additional staff to be able to support this you know and and that that is the crux of that is the issue in my head of getting that additional staff and funding for that staff so we need more funding are you serious someone needs to go and buy a powerball ticket at night no too late the big one anyway um i don't i think well for academic students perkins has a program that i have seen for college prep because what we're finding out nationwide is that we're graduating a lot of kids who aren't prepared to go to college and they think they are but that that's not part of this discussion i suppose but there used to be a career day and i know we can't do that anymore with virtual and all that stuff but uh it it doesn't address what brandy is asking about i suppose and that's that we have multiple disabled kids and we need to adjust for that and offer them something and that doesn't seem to be happening is that what i'm hearing yeah i think so i mean i i i just feel like we're you know we're definitely not the same school that we were 20 years ago um or even probably 10 years ago and i i really don't see that probably getting any better um you know with the technology and stuff and preemies um you know surviving sure so i i feel like you know we just need to look long-term at you know the direction that we're going uh and our population and how do we best provide for that population and even talk to you know our staff what do you think you need um where do you see the school going and the student population and what do you think we need to do how do you need to be better prepared to teach these kids so um i just think you know some some long-range planning and you know in three years sit back and if i re-evaluate and you know just like a business does so it's sort of an fyi um so you know our insight post secondary prep program so perkins school for the blind actually contacted us about that program because they wanted to kind of know what we were doing and i don't know if they wanted to model after it and again carol ann that's a week-long summer program at moorhead for kids all around the state to go and kind of get a taste of what it's like to be at college and they take some college courses during that week not for credit but you know work on orientation and mobility yeah yep learn how to register learn how to access disability services offices office but you know again that's that's for kids who are college bound or community college bound it's really it's really a great a great program yeah it is really neat even like use the cafeteria right yeah yeah yeah yep we eat in the cafeteria at least the cafeteria is better now yes yes that's pressure but you know i do think there's a lot of potential at the school um i think we've got some administration now it's uh very excited about things that can happen and not that that was not the case before but i really see more energy at that level um and so yeah i think now is the time to kind of look at those more long-range things and where we can get some quick wins um to make things better i mean my goodness you think about how you apply for jobs now it's all online like you hardly ever see a paper application anymore um the types of interviews are very different so and it's just hard to keep up with if that's not your main focus but i think that's where we could leverage some of those partnerships but really it's when it comes down to anything it's going to take additional funding like peggy was talking about staff and you know the charitable foundation recently had a discussion about making an organized effort in frankfurt we haven't gone into that too much but i i just i think that's important because the folks who do the budgeting in frankfurt need to know more about the needs and the only way they're going to do that is for somebody to put that out there in front of them and gary feel free to get with me on that i um would love to to go to frankfort and um i have a list of you know the budget committee and and um caught in contact with yeah you're right okay i have been told this year is probably a wash because nobody has been in school and they kind of feel like there's no need to increase any funding well i know that's that's what i was told i think they've felt that way for about ten years now okay okay we'll see we can still educate them in what we do though sure there any final comments or discussion on this if not the next item on the agenda is the review and adoption of bylaws um carol ann i don't know if you want to lead that discussion oh i wasn't planning to i was going to let you all have that as a board sorry i don't answer any questions that you might have or find any out any information for you but really that's for you all as the board to decide what you want in your bylaws i do feel like maybe we need to have something in there about uh electronic voting or something like that i don't remember seeing that in there um that seems to be the way things are going now especially the past year just to have another way to approve something if needed i would i believe that our legal office at kde has looked over the draft and was fine with that if you were going to make any substantial changes like that would be fine if you want to do that but i would maybe want to ask them to review that before you actually voted to finalize it just to make sure that that's allowable under all of the regulations that are in place currently but that's fine if you want to discuss it and consider adding it and then i could send it through our office to review and just so it's not in there i would add the role i think it had something about the chair but i would add the secretary and what they do and who's responsible for what just so we don't like i said before we've never really had an official secretary paula always took care of that so just to you know say get the notes out to you know the chair and kde rep within five days or however long so that sounds like that might be something we need to work on the language before we send that on up through legal um i would be willing to help on that you're gonna help or do it well i would probably need some input on the secretary's role because i was going to say if you want to just kind of organize that with the group and get their input of any changes or additions that need to be made and then if you wanted to send it to me i'm happy to have our legal office review it or provide any feedback that's needed okay any i did just pull them up and look at the um most recent draft we have and there is information in there about the chair and the secretary and the roles but you might want to take a look and see if it's what you want it to say or if you think it needs to be something different i don't think i got that that one last one i had didn't have anything in it so i'm sure that this can't be the first time that legals had to deal with coveted virtual can we just ask that question and and see if it's gonna be okay before we even come up with the language because it's gonna be temporary uh i i don't know i just sure i can ask them their thoughts on that part but i think that um if there were some other questions about roles and responsibilities that i just want you all to review and make sure it says it how you want it to or if there's any changes we need and then i can have them look at everything but yes i can ask that question and ask for what that wording would look like so what you'd really like to know is if if instead of voting in the meeting to approve something can you do that by email after the meeting is that the question that i need to ask yes i believe so okay i'll go ahead and send that and i'll let janelle know what answer i get and then i'll let her communicate with you all and work on those um bylaws and will you resend the bylaws somebody whoever has them because i apparently don't have the updated sure i can send you all a copy of what i have now what was given to me as a draft okay appreciate that carol ann it looks like you're up next with the uh facilities update since t couldn't be with us sure and t sent his update to me so i'm just gonna read and share that with you and then if you have any questions i can take them and get them to t and get responses back to you if i don't know the answers richie hall is in the final design review with the architects and deca and so once that is finished it'll be ready to be sent out for bid the project is going to be to do some work around the edge of the roof to stop water from getting behind the brick and also getting into the building and he said this is a 500 000 project uh he has been working with john aaron to utilize some old capital funds that we have to help make needed repairs on campus so these are some funds that we need to spend so they've been trying to look at ways that those can be spent for capital projects and um they've been able to do about twenty thousand dollars and needed repairs and so by utilizing the capital funds that helps free up some funds in the maintenance budget for ksb uh t is working on getting uh a cost to do a roof repair and replacement for evans hall there's roof damage that is allowing water into the building the gem bleacher an electrical upgrade is completed hauser hall security camera project is complete they're looking to do a second campus-wide camera project as soon as a t has some final budget numbers and this project will be connected to the new system in hauser which will be a cost savings to the next phase of the project um he's getting some updated costs to finish security doors and lock upgrades in mcdaniel scoggin buildings and working with deca and kde to submit projects for possible funding in the governor's 2021 budget they're requesting an increase in current capital project funds currently we have two pools of funds that we that we're able to use uh one to do roof repairs and the sec the second is to do hvac upgrades um they're also putting together a list of projects for our six-year capital projects proposal so we're working on those proposals now and then he said that he thinks the donation from charitable foundation has been given to ksb to ksb so hopefully they can get the playground project started this spring and have it ready for students as soon as possible and those are all the specific updates he had for you brandi if you want me to send those to you i can if that helps for the minutes i'll do that and do it as soon as we meet so you're not trying to capture all that um i'll send that i know the from the charitable foundation about the playground that money has been set aside to be used so perfect i knew it had been like i knew that they were sending it it just they we had to wait until it was received and deposited in the account before they could actually start the playground project even though they knew it was coming but it sounds like from t that it has been received he thinks questions or concerns about the facilities update carolyn and i don't know if you want to go ahead and do your kde update since you just spoke sure well it's up to you if you want to let peggy go first and she may talk about some things and i don't want to jump in front of her if she has things she wants to discuss for the school and i'll just add to it if i have anything extra that works peggy okay so reopening update um so right now excuse me the um the plan is to have students back on campus march 1st and that's all kids dorm and day students we are going to send out a survey to parents this week on whether or not they want their student to continue virtual or to come in person it's just a very basic survey kind of like the one that we sent out last time um maybe with a little bit different language about if the student remains virtual do they have to remain virtual the rest of the year that the language will be a little bit different on that so just to let you all know the campus as far as ppe plastic shields we've been ready you know john has the facilities ready they've been ready probably since the fall i mean we have masks we have gowns we have little booties we have little hats i mean you know we have everything we do have a reopening plan i don't know if it's completely 100 final um that will be sent to to parents to all staff and it kind of it lays out you know how kids will move around the buildings how kids you know like an elementary they're not going to be going from room to room they're going to stay in their classrooms you know they'll go to specials together but they'll socially distance that kind of thing that kind of thing in the cafeteria we have enough tables the way we eat lunch it's elementary and middle together and then high school except at a separate time um all kids will be able to eat at their own table and again the cafeteria is all set up and and ready to go um you know but we know in elementary i mean realistically some of our kids are not going to be able to socially distance it will be very very difficult um especially we have a big a group of it doesn't sound like a lot but we have five kindergartners and they're all um i think four of the five are braille readers or potential braille readers um so you know they won't be there will be adults assisting them because they're gonna need help um but kids won't go through the cafeteria line that the if they choose to get something from the cafeteria their meal will be plated and brought to their table so that's that's to avoid kind of you get you know a line and people back into each other and to kind of you know be able to maintain that social distance um you know again in the plan that talks about a student gets sick you know we have we have isolation areas where the student would go would go until they can be picked up by the parents or the district um you know if the district or parents are unable to transport them then we have a plan for that um you know we would have to transport the kids home in a state car so um yeah i don't know if anybody has any questions on that or you want to wait till i go through all my updates you know some of the scenarios we've tried to plan for different scenarios but i feel like some of the things we just won't know until kids are here and to see how it works i mean i know most of our kids can wear masks some of our kids it's very difficult for them to wear masks and we understand that you know um our kindergarten teacher is working with parents with the parents of kindergartners on starting to to practice wearing masks i know kindergarteners will kind of weigh um in the national guidance they're waived for having to wear masks but again i'm sure you guys have been out and about i've seen like three and four-year-olds wear masks so we're just encouraging parents to practice okay yes i i know that we have to go back to school i get that and i know we're gonna try our best to get everybody back if the positivity rate continues to be up and um the county is still in red will we still start back that's the plan yeah because we we have a pre i feel like we have a pretty robust mitigation setup you know mitigation strategies are in place um so that that is that is the plan and that kind of takes me into the next the vaccine update so um i meet weekly with martin monson our outreach director as well we meet weekly with the louisville metro health department and we provided to them a roster of staff who wanted to get the vaccine and i think it was 70 percent of our staff signed up to get the vaccine so we we were told you know maybe beginning of february but um two weeks ago we all people who signed up started to get emails saying hey go ahead and sign up so i think most of the folks who signed up were vaccinated last week with the first dose there were a few folks that incorrect emails so we added them to the list we also were able to add our subs and then there were some people that changed their minds um so i don't know you know again i've gotten like three emails from the health department to say go ahead and sign up for your first dose so i think there's some glitch you know there's some email glitches but i mean if you think about the process and all the people they're dealing with i think you know the actual process was pretty amazing like i was there on the first day and it took me an hour and a half to get through and then i took a staff member the next day it took us 30 minutes so i mean they have tons of volunteers they direct you to where you go you stay in your car you you the only thing i did bring up to them you do have to fill out some paperwork and it's not accessible i'm the individual that was with me he reads large print but even with his um magnifier with his phone he couldn't read it and so i did bring that to the attention of the health department that you know hey this needs to be an accessible format you know for people that are blind and visually impaired but for other folks too that may use um text-to-speech or you know use like a program like dragon dictate so i think people with disabilities have not been on their radar but i'm hoping that they are more so now so um as far as a second dose we have not heard um they said that we'll get an email to sign up but to consider but to keep in mind there could be delays and i'm sure we've all seen the news you know i i don't i think kentucky from what i've heard we're in the top 10 as far as the states where vaccinations are going well so i i think you know i think they've done and i think the louisville metro health department has done an amazing job just you know what we found different health departments around this you know because we have kids around the state we found that different health departments are everybody's doing something differently i feel like it's very much very much local control so anyway so that's kind of where we are with the vaccines and the vaccine didn't hurt so i mean i know some people had really sore arms i did not um this vaccine was a piece of cake compared to the shingles one if anybody's gotten that one okay do you all have any questions about that okay so new staff we have um offered uh and the position's been accepted by um her name's christy stanley she will start as our a new o m specialist in the fall she's relocating from north carolina um brand spankin new out of the program out of north carolina central university under bill dr bill weiner and i met with him online and the intern supervisor right before christmas and they said she's one of the best students they've ever had so very excited yeah so we've also offered a position we have a new position that martin kind of created when we took a position the outreach consultant in the central kentucky area and kind of we took those districts and kind of added them to other consultants areas and then so the new position is an o m and a t outreach consultant and so that position has been offered to an individual um we're still working on the official paperwork so i can't announce the person's name because the other people who applied have not been notified but again incredibly lucky to have this person very very qualified and also has ties to my alma mater so came out of the same program that i did so looking forward to when this person can be official and i think can start is able to relocate very quickly so um the other were interviewing for the you know carol and her last name just flew out of my head dixon carol dixon who was it over food service um we have two more interviews today we've interviewed six people and we have the last two interviews today and have had some pretty phenomenal candidates so we'll we'll make i think we're going to meet today and make a recommendation to hire that um that you know that position and you know we're really pushing to get all these vacant positions filled because we do have to have enough dorm staff in order to open safely so new positions we're working on posting another o m position because we really we really need three full time but i think we've had there have been two full-time for a number of years so there's new certification through the um educational professional null standards board you can get certified as an orientation and mobility specialist so um which is which is beneficial because not all o m specialists have that dual they don't all they're not all certified as teachers of the visually impaired a lot of them come out just with that o m and so if there's not a teacher certification for them that's why we've had so many o m folks on the private service contracts in the years past so so it's a good thing that we have that certification now so um yeah i think that's all the updates that i have um again just getting through reopening and um i will sleep better you know once we get the kids here and things get rolling um because we you know we know we know kids need to be in school you know i'm excited to have them back i'm i love it we have some kids coming from for small group instruction and i absolutely love when they're here it's just it's just really you know refreshing to have the kids here peggy is connie the only one doing o m right now currently yes okay that's what i thought and connie that you know that's not her full job full-time job she's our low vision therapist and she's been able to do it because all the low vision clinics they did one virtually they did one student virtually and i think they're going to look at more of that in the spring but yeah she's been able to do that because the clinics have all been cancelled okay carol ann with the kde uh report thanks janelle um i will share that you know kde as an agency overall has been providing uh multiple resources and guidance documents for school districts for reopening ksb staff have done a great job of developing their reopening plan they based their plan on the healthy at school guidance from kde in the department for public health so they really made sure that their plan aligned to that guidance and that they're following all of those recommendations um in the office of special education and early learning they um one of the focuses has been on increasing supports for parents and families we've known especially during this time virtually we've seen a need for increased supports for families they have been partnering with kentucky spin to help address you know some of the needs and determining supports that fam what what do families need on the kde website there is a parent and family resources page and they've that division within ocl has really been trying to add a lot of resources to that page um and then from the state schools perspective in in our division we've really been focusing on two things on really trying to strengthen our virtual instruction make it the best that it can possibly be and then also our reopening plans and trying to get kids back to school um peggy shared a little bit with you about reopening and so our plan is to start offering in-person instruction march 1st we are going to continue to offer a strong virtual option for students if you know parents and families are not ready to send the students back they can choose the virtual option um we're like peggy said we're getting ready to send parent survey to see how many are planning to come back and how many would like to continue virtual and then we will send communication to parents and families after that but hopefully by the middle of february we'll be able to send communication about our exact plans for reopening make sure that nothing has changed with our staffing or number coming back i will tell you i am you know i'm excited to get reopened i feel good about our possibility to reopen i am concerned about being able to stay open and having the staff we need um just because of the quarantining and isolation restrictions that are in place we are like i have i've met with like peggy said she's met with local health department and then i've also met with representatives from the department for public health and asked questions regarding quarantine for staff members that decide to get the vaccine and they have said that right now we still have to follow all the quarantine and isolation rules so even if somebody has been fully vaccinated with both doses if they are exposed to a positive case of cova they would still have to follow quarantine rules um so that makes us a little bit nervous in that if we have several staffs that have to be out at a certain time um it's it's going to be difficult to make sure that we can operate everything um so we're just going to have to kind of watch that and play that by ear um as we move into this reopening phase so that's an area that we're working on we're working on alternate plans if you know if we can't have all students on campus could we have some at one time and you know rotate so we're just we're looking through all of that um to offer the best options that we can for our students um let's see what else oh i did want to mention to you i heard you talking a little bit about budget and funding and so as you know this has been in uh concern for the state schools that we need increased funding to be able to pay for our our salaries our operational expenses all the things that are needed to run the campuses and kde has requested additional funding for the schools and in the governor's budget proposal that he provided to the general assembly there is an increase um for this year in that request so we're still watching to see you know what is approved by the general assembly and if anything changes but right now there is an increase in funding which would help us to you know fully pay our operational costs and our salaries for staff and things that kde has been helping us along the way to pay some of that as well you know that would really help us to pay for what is needed um those are my main updates do you uh oh i had one more thing sorry um february 3rd the kentucky board of education is meeting for their february meeting and we do have an item on the agenda to um recommend our next ksb advisory board member and i had sent that information to you all so i just wanted you to know that is on the february 3rd agenda i'll be presenting that to the board that's it i think then i'm happy to take any questions or feedback you'd like to provide so i i should have asked peggy this and i didn't sorry peggy uh it's a good question for you too carolyn is there any talk of some extra special education support that's a great question and actually i think i had that in my notes and forgot to mention so we are um having conversations about additional support that we could provide possibly in the summer um or throughout the school year with extra time we are working on that right now um we are working on proposed requests for some easter funds new funds that are available um through federal dollars that we could possibly utilize to help support some of this so we are working on that but we don't have the details finalized to give you you know this is what it would look like but what we'd like to do is to be able to offer some additional um weeks in the summer it would be an optional type thing for families we would like to offer that um of course when we get back in person and we start having annual reviews we'll also discuss progress students made if there was um if there were any services that couldn't be provided while we were virtual how do we make up for those services and we'll have those discussions as well through arcs right i mean as far as long-term planning would it ever be discussed that we could possibly add that special education teacher at each level as a support or like a coach for um the teachers you know having one in elementary middle and high school so that she can you know kind of pull kids for like a resource type room um we have actually in our funding request for the easter two dollars which will i believe those funds are available to us through 2023. we have actually request funds for uh what you were talking about one for each of the state schools so one at ksb for a special education coach um that would you know jane would work very closely with on what the needs are of the school but that person really having boots on the ground to be able to work with teachers and help coach so we have requested that i just haven't heard final numbers or amounts or you know if that's going to work but i'm hopeful that we'll be able to provide that at least for the next few years as we're really trying to transition kids back into the in-person setting okay great thank you you're welcome thanks for the questions are there others any other questions all right okay it looks like the next item uh board recommendations i don't know if anyone has anything other than what we spoke about at the beginning of the meeting so do you want me to write up like i'm not just because we've never really done this part before so uh so what i kind of just in the notes right are what we recommended as far as transition readiness and um you know should we just kind of talk here and say these are our final recommendations janelle do you have like some these are our final thoughts we recommend blah blah why don't um if you want to write that up and i'll i can look at it we can send it out and see if anyone has anything else and then we can send it on to carol anne to present to greta okay gary or mike do you have any like final thoughts or anything you really want kind of to get in there as far as what some things that we've talked about i can't think of anything randy you know edition yeah i came here you know maybe once we look through what you guys write up we could jog our memory but nothing comes in mind right now okay so i'll write um what i've got my notes up and i'll send it to y'all and y'all can if you see something or you don't want me to change some wording or something like that just let me know thank you great sounds good uh the next thing is scheduling our next meeting um i don't know if we want to meet every couple months or quarterly i think we only have to have what three meetings is that some night um so if we go three months that puts us into april which may be good to give in person a chance to get going and see how that is um do mondays work for everyone in general yes for me hi yeah so get the right thing pulled up here so if we look into april looks like the dates if we're looking towards the end of the month would be the 19th or the 26th so i don't know if anyone has any preferences on those dates either one's good for me it's scary yeah me too either sign for me okay brandy are you good with either one of those yeah that's fine okay what what about the 19th then okay are we doing it does 11 or 11 30 work better for everybody anyone have a preference i'll go back to 11. i'm gonna make sure that's that's the right time okay um if nobody else has anything i think we will adjourn all right thank you all thank you peggy i hope everything goes well well in march thank you yeah thank you all for your support i appreciate it and carolyn thank you for your support yes thank you to all of you for coming together today i really appreciate the conversation and the feedback it gives us lots to think about so thank you thank guys you right have a great day bye