Over the next few months, that will provide additional information to
you about the Ese department and how we
serve our schools and our community. So
I want to welcome you. Today's session is entitled
Ese Open House.
So before we get started with our meeting this afternoon, I do
have a couple of what I call meeting norms to
keep us a little organized and structured so that you would get the
maximum benefit from our session today. So the first
one is parents, we want to hear from you.
I'm going to ask that before you comment that you
use the chat or the raise hand feature
on your computer to ask questions or to
let us know that you may have um some
concerns that you like to bring up in our session. And the
second meeting norm is very important. Please
note we do not want you to ask your
student specific questions in this forum, but
we will allow for you because I will be sharing with you
a parent communications form that you can indicate
anything that you need regarding your students specifically,
this form will be entered into our chat as well.
So just to practice. If you are able to see the
meeting norms and agree to them, please use
your uh reaction icon
and let me know that you can hear me and you agree.
Wonderful. We are so excited about
these sessions and I'm equally excited to see you online with us
today. So let's move forward for a second,
take a look at this slide and this link will also be
available in the chat. But this is a parent
survey that we're going to ask you to complete because
you are going to provide feedback to us. Now, when you
take a look at this survey, it's really quickly, very quick.
There are only five questions like the first one is gonna ask you
about, you know the grade of your child. Then there's a question
that will ask you what topics what taught you like us to
address during these sessions. Very important. Then we
will ask you about your need to know
regarding information for community resources. And
then there's a question that you can give us any feedback that you
like. We welcome your feedback. So I'm gonna ask you
to please take a few minutes. I'm at the end of this
session to complete your survey and don't fear because we're
gonna put it in the chat and I will also show this slide again.
All right. So take a look at our agenda for today. We just wanted to
have a little structure with you so that we wouldn't forget vital
information that we think you will find a benefit. So in a
few moments, um I've sort of spoken to you about that parent
communication form, but you will see it again. Um M
Diane Gan, our executive director is here with us today and she
will welcome you. Then following her presentation,
we're gonna talk about just the need for parent driven meetings. We
think it's ultimately important that you have a venue to communicate
with us. Um We're gonna talk about how we are organized at the
district level for exceptional student education,
how we provide those direct services to schools and supports to
schools. And then, yes, parents, we know that you want to be
in the know. So I will be sharing with you later in this
session opportunities for learning. There are a
series of webinars that have been created by our fiddler's team
and we want to make sure that you're able to um
provide some input and support to those as well.
Um Later today, we're gonna talk about cross departmental
collaboration, things you can do at home to ensure that
your child is being very successful. We're gonna talk about
providing additional support to our students with IEPs
and then that community piece um Today, we're very, very
pleased that we're gonna be talk, you will have a presentation
from Special Olympics, Florida. And then of course, we
talked about the parents survey and then there will be time for questions and
answers. It sounds like a lot, but please know that we're
here for you. We want to hear from you and we certainly will have, you
will have an opportunity to share out. So having said
that we're gonna move on into the meat of our agenda so that we can get
started. And um just as you're looking at your screen
here is the parent communication form. This is
the form that you're going to use. If you have
student specific concerns that you would like to
share with us. This will be also in the chat, you
can complete it. We will definitely take a look at it and get back with you.
So at this time, I'd like to introduce MS Diane
Egan, our executive director. Good afternoon,
Diane. Good afternoon,
everyone. So excited to bring forth our
first in a series of meetings that is really all
about you, our, our parents, our families, our
guardians and our community members that support students with
disabilities. We want you to know that for Broward County public
schools, we are the ESC division. We are a support
division and we support families, we support
students, we support um our schools to make sure that
our students get the very best services that they can get. So we're here as that
liaison to work alongside you in support of what you
need both internally and externally. So I
wanna um talk about a few things first. And
we are going to be really driving these meetings based on
your needs because you are the audience and you're important to
us. We were inspired to do this when we were receiving um
information from parents and feedback that they wanted to talk about
specific topics. They wanna learn more about how best to support their
Children and their student. They wanna make sure that we are
able to provide you some topics that you are interested in and we
want to bridge that gap because not only do we have
to um provide you information about what supports we can
provide in school through Broward County public schools. But also how do we
bridge that gap for our students as they transition out into
the workforce and the community when they age out of school? We know that's a
really important part to families because your students will be
with you forever more and you want to do the best you can to plan for them for the
future. So those are some of the things that we're gonna be
focusing on. Next slide.
I want to talk a little bit about what is the exceptional student
education de de division. It's made up of
three departments. Our first department is school support.
Sabrina Shib is our director of curriculum and
school support. So she provides that um
that uh support directly to the schools and collaborates
with schools, families and principals. And that's her primary role and
responsibility and she covers pre K through,
um through our 22 year olds. Of course, I didn't go and order on the
page. I'm sorry about that. Our next division department
within our division is support and compliance and support and
compliance is facilitated by Stephanie Acosta
Castro and Stephanie is the director who
um supports a few different parts of our uh, of our
division. One is the compliance department
and our uh conflict resolution office, our due process office. So if
there's a situation where you need help with a resolution, that is the office, she
facilitates, she also works with our school cos our school
coun our ese counselors, our school psychologist, our pre K
assessment center, our um Medicaid office,
as well as our um
sorry, as well as our management system. And this year, as you know,
we've adopted focus as a district and the ese portion of that is,
is uh managed by Stephanie and her team. Um
Next, we also have our specialized instruction
and that is facilitated by the director of specialized instruction, which is
Andrea Sciati. And Andrea Sciati has
several departments under her, including private schools, charter
schools, um hospital, homebound and related
services such as our speech and language, pathologist, OTs and
PTS. And I may have missed something along the way, but we um we
work very close together to make sure that we
have um a comprehensive offering of supports
to schools and to families and to students. We also this year added an
assistant director, um Kelly Fisher who's done an amazing
job of supporting and um bridging that gap between our
schools and our um divisions.
So I'm gonna go ahead and pass this on to
um our next speaker. Thank you so much for being here.
Thank, thank you so much for being here today. We're excited to bring this offering to
you. Good afternoon parents. Just to kind of give you an
overview of all the different areas that Miss Gan shared. When
our three directors come together, everything that you see on the
screen are the various supports and services that are provided through
our office. So the exceptional Student education department works to
provide direct services to students and support services to
schools. It is our goal to work along district departments and
families to provide students and schools, the tools and resources they
need to be successful. If there's something that you're not seeing on the
screen that you think we can help you with, feel free to fill out that parent
communication form and we will have somebody reach you
when I hand it over to Sabrina.
Hello. Um Welcome again. My name is Sabrina Shive and I'm the
director for that ESC school support or we really refer to
as director of curriculum. And we really, our
team really provides direct service and support to
schools um by actually going in and
helping to coach and mentor school based teams. So we
have school based support, professional development and all of
that type of training that schools need to be successful in working with your
Children. Hello,
everyone. Good afternoon. My name is Andrea Sciati. I'm the director for
specialized instruction and my team has the great privilege
of providing many direct services um to your
students in our schools. We provide services for
hospital, homebound um in homes as well as through Tel
Alas and we provide speech therapy to our students that are receiving
hospital home bound services. Um I'm also responsible
for coordinating all speech programs in our traditional
schools. So all the S LP S that provide service on your students
campuses as well as OT and PT
services. Um We, our department also provides
teachers for the deaf and hard of hearing as well as your
visual impairment. Students who receive instruction, direct
instruction and braille and orientation and mobility. We have teachers
that are um located at the district ESC office who come
around to schools and work with your students um each and every
week. So we're really happy to provide that service. Um We take
pride in everything that we're able to do and work with your students.
Um Another direct service that our department or our ese
department provides our assessments to our pre K
learners. So when you need an assessment for a student, um we
have a pre K evaluation team that conducts um all of those
formal assessments as well as our entire school psychology
department at the district ese office.
So how do schools get support? And this probably should have came straight
before, but just um when schools receive
support in many different ways, but just so that, you know, every
single school has an assigned support staff team who visit that
school regularly. So that team is made up of um
people who focus on behavioral support, curriculum
support, um assistive technology support,
compliance support, um devices
support. So we have members of the team who
have all areas of expertise who come out to assist the
school. And we also have a staff member, a supervisor that also
assists with the administration of the school to assist them to
make sure that we can work collaboratively and cooperatively with the school.
Schools. And staff can reach out directly to our office also for
training or support needs that are individual. So
if a if a school is asking for, for example, help with
scheduling, we can coordinate with the Florida Inclusion network to come
out and work with them for scheduling or someone from our team. If they would like
assistance with utilizing a curriculum support, we can send someone from
curriculum to work with them on that. So we offer very school and
staff specific training in addition to the
the trainings that we offer through our department. So um
I know that um Gwen MS Lips is sharing some of
the trainings for parents. She also is in charge of professional
development across all of our schools that are district
level trainings where they can all come and participate. And each of our
supervisors also have professional learning community
meetings with all ese teachers. So if you're an sve teacher, you have
one specific to you. If you're an autism teacher, you have one
specific to you a support facilitator. So we have those also
available for schools. So there's just many opportunities for them to
receive support in their classrooms. We also do something called instructional
reviews where our team walks with many
other departments in the district into schools and goes through
classrooms and looks at school data and
identifies areas of need. And then what we do is we go in and offer
assistance based on things that we've identified when we've done those walkthroughs.
We also work, work with reviewing vacancies to
help schools recruit and retain teachers
or pair professionals or any other support staff.
And we reach out directly to new teachers to be able to offer them different
levels of support. And we also work with communicating
with our parents and with some of our outreach like through some of our
community partners to ensure that we have services for
parents and just communication with parents to help when they're trying to
uh navigate working with their schools. And sometimes we can help them navigate
that more effectively.
All right, so good afternoon Gwen Lips come again. Um So
parents, I really wanted you to take a look at this slide because this is an
opportunity for you to enhance your learning.
Um The Fiddler's team has developed a
series of webinars that we think you will find
extremely useful. Um We
have one that was previously scheduled last week, but, you know, because of
hurricane Helene, we had to um pivot
and reschedule because the school district was
closed. But look at the opportunities you have here, you have a
session, there's a session on accommodations, how to assist your child with an
IEP that's coming up pretty soon later this month. On the
24th. Also in November, we
have a session on the components of a
an IEP. So developing an IEP for
parents, here's where you can get your questions answered and get a better
understanding of how to write a quality p and how
to contribute to that process. That is November 5th.
Then in terms of assisting you to assist your
child at home, there is a session in December
on math. All about math for those students who are struggling in
that area are those students who need additional support.
Moving back into January, we know that that
developing an IEP is much sought out the very
critical. So we're gonna repeat that webinar for you
and then we will move into the month of February where
we will be able to help you help your child with the organizational
skills, with those process, assessing skills that are essential for
him or her to be successful. Executive functioning will be
offered. And then we will end our series in
April talking again about behavior
strategies. We are extremely happy to bring
these webinars to you. They are typical one
hour long. So we try to honor your time as you will note,
most are in the evening hours. However, we do offer some during the, the
morning as well and you can provide feedback and let us know what
other sessions would be useful to you. I will make sure that this
information is also dropped into the chat.
So there's more coming. So stay tuned.
Sabrina Shib again, I just wanted to talk about our cross department
collaboration so that you're aware of this aspect of our role as
well. So myself and my team also work in
collaboration with many other departments throughout the district to
ensure that students with disabilities have a, a
voice in each of those departments. So for example, office of
Academics, we work really closely with um elementary learning
and secondary learning so that when they're doing their trainings, we're
part of that, we can give input on how to ensure that our students are
able to access their curriculum. And our team members
do go to a lot of those reading coach trainings, math coach
trainings. So that we're always at the table with other departments to be able to
ensure that we're meeting the needs of ese students
throughout our district. We also um do ongoing
collaboration with what we call the teaching and learning department, which some people refer to
as the regional offices where we work with the regional
leadership teams to review our students with disabilities
subgroup data. And then based on that to be able to
target training and instructional
strategies that would be most effective in those schools based
on that subgroup data. So we're able to dive deep in those
conversations and assist the regional superintendents
and their teams to be able to better support their schools in
ensuring that we're continuing to review that data and improve our
outcomes for our students. And then we're also part of the
progress monitoring that occurs at that level so that we can continue to
see that we're heading in the right direction in regards to student
outcomes
as we go through these series. One of the things that we want to do
each month is do it beyond the Bell and we really want to highlight a
strategy or a support that can be used with your Children in the
home to assist them. So today we have with us,
Miss Lauren Dirickson who works on our fiddler's team and she's going to be talking
about maximizing and minimizing behaviors.
Welcome, Miss Lauren Dirickson. Thank you, Stephanie.
I, I am glad to be here with you all today. Um I
love talking about behavior and I was asked to do one slide on behavior,
which is very, very difficult for me. So I had to kind of pick what was
most important. Um And Gwen, I did try to take control.
So I hope this works. Oh, perfect. Um
So I chose uh something that has to do with
reinforcement because ultimately, the only way to change behaviors and um
strengthen the behaviors we wanna see and minimize the behaviors we
don't wanna see is by using reinforcement in
such a way that uh we can help the situation. So, um
there's this belief that, you know,
parents, uh staff members and
classrooms that across the board in our society, we
tend to put about 80% of our attention reinforcement
on behaviors we don't want to see on undesirable behaviors.
Um And we have to, for various reasons, we have to keep people safe. We
have to redirect. Um But unfortunately, with that 80%
we tend to reinforce behaviors, we really don't want to see
um where we're only focusing 20% on the positive
behaviors. Um And that's very common across the board if you
think about it. I'm a parent of three. And I've been doing this, I've worked
privately with parents and homes. I've been doing this for over 20 years and I see it all the time and
I'm guilty of it that think about in your own home. If your child
is, say, doing something independently, they're following
directions. Uh, many times we get comfortable and we just kind of
sit back and think, oh, maybe I should wash the dishes, maybe I should do some laundry
here. But actually that's the time that we really should be engaged the
most with our kids and reinforcing those behaviors and those on
task behaviors, those compliance behaviors, if they're, you know, doing
their homework, when asked if they're doing any kind of direction we asked, that's when we
need to maximize our reinforcement. So I have for you a
real quick slide and there's a lot of information but it's very
valuable. Um, this comes from Doctor Tim
Volmer who is a very well
respected, uh, widely published behavior analyst out of the
University of Florida. And um I had the pleasure of meeting
him in 2015. He came down here to Broward County
Schools and consulted on a case and he was, you know, wonderful
experience and this was the advice that he gave that,
you know, we are not perfect. We are not going to reinforce every single
behavior that we see, but we want to do our best, our very best
to maximize those opportunities. And again,
we're not going to ignore or do everything
perfectly when our Children engage in the behaviors we don't want to
see. But if we do our very best and minimize the attention
reinforcement, we give to those behaviors we're going to see success.
So here are some examples that you might see in your home.
So when your child is engaged in some expected behaviors, again,
following directions, doing their homework, completing some chores,
anything that you're asking them to do you wanna
maximize? Well, let's hope this works the
attention, the time that you literally are spending with your child.
So maximize that as much as you possibly can and then
we're, they're engaged in some behaviors you don't want to see, not listening to, not
following directions, not completing their homework, not engaging in the
chores. Um Any other various behaviors they might engage in,
give as little attention as possible. And again, I'm a parent of
three, I've messed up many, many times over the years, but
try to remain calm, use brief verbal
redirection or even visuals. Visuals are helpful for
anyone. It doesn't matter if your child's verbal, nonverbal
doesn't matter. Visuals are great for us too as parents because
we limit what we're saying and we take the emotion
out of it, we can just point to a visual and then be done with it.
Um So maximize, again, we're going back to
maximizing the reinforcement um when Children are engaged in
expected behaviors, give that specific verbal
praise. So, wow, you did your math homework. I know that
was hard. Um But I think you did a great job on that or thank
you so much for cleaning. Um you know, picking up those
toys, you know, be very specific about what you're happy
about. And then again, on the flip side, if they're
engaged in behaviors that you don't wanna see, minimize, minimize
the discussion. Um, I think parents were really good at lecturing
and going on and on about why did you do that? I don't know, blah, blah, blah.
Just let it be, let it go move on. Have a
fresh start, the more we talk about the behavior we don't want to see, the
more the child is thinking about it, right? So we want to focus so much
more on the behavior we do want to see. So again, going
back to the maximized side. So if your child is engaged in
behaviors and you know, they want access to preferred items, they
wanna go outside, they want to be on the computer, they wanna do whatever it is.
Reinforce that give them that access, this is the time where they
should be able to do the things that they wanna do. Um And especially if
they request them if you have a child that has difficulty with communication,
especially strengthen that communication. And when your child uses
their mode of commu communication and requests effectively
give access. But on the flip side, we wanna
minimize, if your child is engaging in behaviors, you don't wanna
see, try, try to not give them access to
those preferred items until the behavior has ceased. And until they request
appropriately. Um, I know it's difficult if we have a classic
example of child having a fit in the checkout line there. The
publics and all the stores are really wonderful how they put all the
fancy items in the candy right there when you're standing there waiting to check
out and, you know, our kids want those items and some of our kids
tantrum and, you know, really want that and I've been guilty of giving my
child something, but that's not the right thing to do. We want to minimize
that limit access to preferred items. Um So
back to the maximized side. So we wanna maximize when your child is engaged
in appropriate behaviors, the ability for them to make choices,
especially with non preferred activities. So I'm talking about chores,
homework things that they don't wanna do, give them the
opportunity to make choices about when they wanna do
things which order they wanna do things in. Maybe you have two chores
that they have to do and they only have to pick one. Um maybe delay the
onset, maybe just say, hey, listen, do you want five more minutes to relax and
then you can get started or have them request breaks during that
time. But if they're engaging in behavior, you don't wanna
see, limit your flexibility. That is not the time to say, OK,
forget it, just do whatever you want. That's the time that you s you, you
really force choices. Ok. I see you're having a hard time but we
need to get one of these done. Which one do you wanna do first? And let me help you do it?
Ok. And then last, but not least maximize your
enthusiasm, maximize when your child is engaged. Let them know that
you think it's amazing and wonderful. And I don't care if it's a 17 year
old, a 22 year old, you can be just as enthusiastic with them
as you are with little kids. Um, it goes a long way, you know how good it
feels when people tell you that you're doing a great job. Um, so goes a long
way and then again, when they're engaged in behaviors, you
don't want to see, minimize your stress level. And again,
I, I tell everybody I'm guilty of it. It's very difficult,
especially as a parent to deal with challenging behaviors. So try as
best you can to minimize your stress level, maybe move away, take a deep
breath and remain calm. So that's what I have for you today. I'm also gonna
put um a couple of resources in the chat for websites
that have um some great like quick tip behavior information
for parents. And um, I wish you all well, thank you for having
me.
Thank you so much Lauren. That was a lot of information, but great
information and definitely some great tips for our
families. So now let's talk a
little bit about how can families of students with disabilities connect with
support? This just so you know that this PDF will be placed in the
chat for easier reference because the text is kind of small as are the phone numbers
on the screen. But we wanted to really walk you through. What is that process?
So once an issue is identified, your very, very first
line of support is always your school team, whether that be your
ESC specialist, a classroom teacher, an assistant principal,
you always want to start with that school based support
after you've gone through that school based support. If the concern
is regarding something outside of ese, so maybe
attendance processes, grading processes, things that are
outside of, of the ese realm, you might, you can reach out to your region
support and we've listed the phone number for each region office
if you have a concern or you need support with ese services,
accommodations, um scheduling a meeting,
things that are really specific to the students plan and the supports that you're
trying to obtain in regard to ese services. And
you would go ahead and you would reach out to our ese department. And again, when that's
dropped in the chat, the numbers will be larger for you. Once you've
gone through each of those sessions or I should say, as you're going through each of those
sessions, our office, the region office and the schools we
collaborate closely to make sure that those concerns or
those areas are addressed. So it is not uncommon for you to
reach our office or reach a region office or reach even the school office.
And we're already working collaboratively behind the scenes to
address whatever the concern, the issue or the connection to support
is um a lot of times when parents reach our office, you know, they'll say
things like, oh, I love my school. I don't want to have a negative
impact on my school and we really understand that. So what we're really
looking for is to be able to bridge that gap between what you
feel is maybe missing or um what concern or
what you're looking for with the right support staff at the school to make sure that
those needs are met and addressed. And then finally,
if none of those options seem like a viable option or you still feel like
there's some areas that need to be addressed. Um Our due process
office does offer, offer a local conflict resolution
and this is through an official request through our office and then we kind of come
in and we either um assist with a more formalized
meeting or attending a more formalized meeting to really help
for. We're not serving as an advocate of the parent or the
school. We're a neutral party that's coming in to kind of help guide
and facilitate conversation. And then um
next, we're gonna transition into our community connection.
So as you go through the parent survey, one of the things that we've
asked you to identify are what are some connections that you may know of in the
community or that you may have heard of. But you're like, I'd really love some extra
information on that. And each month, our goal is to highlight a
different community connection. Today, we want to introduce and welcome
Mr Mark Thompson from the Special Olympics Mark has been working with
Brown County public schools for many, many years. Um And over the last
few years, we've seen schools increase their
enrollment. We've been offering professional development and training. He was a
guest at our professional development that took place for ese
specialist at the beginning of the school year. And today, he's really going to
come in and talk to you about what are the community connections that Special Olympics
has within your, within your neighborhoods and your communities. So let us
welcome Mr Mark Thompson. Thank you,
Stephanie. I appreciate the introduction. Um Good afternoon, everyone
I want to start by um just saying the relationship that Special
Olympics has and I have personally with the se department is extraordinary,
um very supportive, um aggressively helping the
programs grow. Um We've increased by 20% each for the
last three years. And oftentimes, it's simply a school
doesn't know that this program is available or families on where our
program is available. Um And it's just getting the word out So we're gonna
talk about sports programs. We do more than just sports, but we're gonna focus
on uh, sports that we provide at the school during school
hours as well as our um training and competition program that
happens outside of schools as well as we go through these
slides. Um, there's a program that your child is at the age
four. we start with pre K and move all the way up through
adults. So one of the things you can do is to
um let me know, let your, let the se department know
which school you're at. And do they have a program? Oftentimes we do or
navy schools currently, but sometimes we don't, it just takes someone to
um raise the the question about um why that
school um is not doing the program who would like to do the
program. So let's start with the first slide.
Our young athletes program is ideal for pre K uh Children. We had
43 schools do doing this program last year. And it's an
extraordinary program that uh specials identified about
14 years ago that as we move into our training competition programs at
age eight. A lot of Children reaching that age just weren't
ready those with disabilities. And by introducing a
motor skills development program in pre K, um often that took
place that, that made that
opportunity available to Children where pre K gymnastics for
by soccer leagues, that sort of thing is just not working uh because of
therapy or because of not being comfortable and so on. But 24 lesson
plan program, we provide all the materials, we provide
equipment um and provide a, a final event as we do for all the
programs to celebrate um their accomplishments. There's
absolutely no cost to any of the programs that you'll uh see here to families
or schools. Next slide,
the extension of little at least are young athletes program. Again, an in school
program, um recess, recess time, pe time, free
time. I I generally suggest it happen at least twice a week,
three times a week. Max, we know that free uh free play
is so important for brain brain development. But for the teachers
and the students to participate in a uh functional
and um planned activity period two or three days a week um can
help them to in the case of little elites, learn a sport,
appreciate a sport. Often say at the very least a child is
gonna appreciate a basketball game on T VA little bit more than they did before.
But this is um an opportunity for your child to uh develop sports
skills and potentially um stay with those sports skills for life.
Next rise and stars is our middle school high school
program and an extension of the Little Elites program. You can see the sports we
offer, most of those sports are offered with little Elites program as Well, the
school chooses a sport. We provide the equipment, we find an activity guide.
We provide enormous amount of resources on online um to
support that effort, often times the classroom teacher is
taking these programs on and we provide the the skills and
opportunities for them to learn how to provide these programs. So middle
schools and high schools um I wanna mention too that we, we
do um multiple school events for middle school. So we have an event at Forest Glen
Middle School on December 5th. Um with 10 schools currently enrolled
uh for that event planning in high school hosts a little elites program
that elementary age sports program. And last year we
introduced a um a small but growing event at Piper High
School and Sunrise multiple school event. Next,
our motor activity program um is designed for those with more severe
disabilities, um cognitive and or physically, they're not
capable of being a part of the um the little leads to the R and
Stars programs or they are and this um can be a complementary
program. We provide a coaches guide that um
provides ways that sports can be introduced as part of the physical activity,
physical therapy um and becomes a
motivation like all the programs we do, we provide
the metals and the shirts and the ribbons and that sort of thing at the end of the
year for uh for these, these guys and the other programs I mentioned
to celebrate and be noticed for, uh, their accomplishments.
Next, our training competition program, I
it's the best I can come up with. But what it, what it shows here are different seasons,
different sports. We provide over 21 sports throughout the
year and the training competition program is different and that, um, it can
be a training program at the school, but it becomes a competition program
outside of the school. And we use several, several row county
parks, um, Nova Southeastern University and other facilities to
host these events. Um, Broward County has a, a
county event. We have a regional event which includes Broward
County, Palm Beach County and Miami Dade County. And then those
athletes, uh, based on their accomplishments within the sport that they did
have an opportunity to move on to state competition. Uh, that happens this year
on November at Wide world of Sports and Disney at Disney.
And um, it's an overnight trip. Um, bus transportation is
provided two days of competition, um dancing,
um recognition and so on. Um Just an amazing event
again, no cost for the Children to be Children and adults to be
involved. And if there's interest in that, you'll see my contact information in a
moment. Next,
same slide came up again, a little bit larger. Next, please.
So that's my contact information. And while you, I'm gonna give you time to write
that down because I want to talk about an umbrella program. That we have, which is called Unified
Champion schools. And Unified Champion Schools is Special Olympics
part of the inclusion um process. And um
I acknowledge that Broward County public Schools is doing
inclusion about it as well as any uh district I've worked with and I've
been working with as many as eight districts over the past several
years. Um An inclusion champion uh quarterly meeting
that's hosted by district staff member. But we can we
provide a program that enhances the inclusion that Broward County is
already doing by including the sports component, whole school engagement,
um ideas and youth leadership ideas as well. And one of the
amazing um uh combinations of this
program can be that a school becomes a unified champion banner
school. Um The program exists throughout the
country. It's ESPN supported and each year in May,
all the um all of the Unified Champion Schools have an opportunity
to apply for it as a unified champion banner school um
perspective. There are over 500 Unified Champion schools
existing in the state of Florida, especially among Unified Champion schools. We
have over 35 in Broward County and Broward County has been at
the forefront of as recipients of the check and
Bannon schools with um past recipients being Bennett
Bennett Bennett Elementary School, Manatee Bay Elementary School,
Hollywood Park Elementary School JP Taravella High School.
And I'm proud to announce um that we and we just heard the
announcement last week ourselves. That Boulevard Heights Elementary School was
chosen as a Unified Banner school this year. Um That's three years
running for Broward County and more perspective, only 10
schools in the state of Florida. Um We're provided with this um
amazing um banner and um we'll
be celebrating that later. And once again, with 500 schools in the state of
Florida, it's pretty distinct uh recognition.
So that's um that's what I have again, I went through all the age
groups. You've got a child in that age group, let me know um that
you're interested in. Uh ask, ask me if um that
school is participating in the program, your school and just reach out to
me for any reasons. Uh Special Olympics, florida.org,
Special Olympics, florida.org is where you find everything we
do and uh thank you ESC department. Thank you, parents.
Um It's a pleasure working with you now and tomorrow.
Thank you so much, Mark. That was a lot of information and you are
correct. Um We have had a long standing relationship with
Special Olympics, Florida and we look forward to continuing that effort.
So parents, listen, you've gotten a lot of information in
this open house session. So now is the time
for you um just based on some of the information you heard our
structure, our support, the professional learning
opportunities. This is the time where you can now ask
questions related to the information that you've heard today. We do have
chat monitors available. And I want to say thank you to
my team, MS Barry Aronson and also Miss Yolanda
Francis for taking care of that piece for us in this session.
So please, again, remember, you can use your raise hand
feature to ask a question and we will recognize you and