>> Glover: [Slide start] What we are doing when we go out and see a student for a reevaluation. Meagan did this this year and did a wonderful job with it. So this is what I’ll share. What we decided to do is we would go out and see that student and just look. We’re not taking these kiddos off campus, we’re just going out and eyeballing them to see has the situation changed?  Maybe we’ll look at the paperwork. We’ll talk to teachers. We’ll talk to staff. We’ll talk to the parents and say, you know, Johnny was given an orientation and mobility evaluation three years ago. He didn’t need orientation at that time- orientation and mobility at that time, but we just wanted to check back and make sure that nothing had changed to see if they would benefit from one at this time. So what we’re going to do when we go out there and look at that student again is just write up a little paragraph, it’s not a full evaluation, just a little paragraph that says this is the situation, this is when they had an orientation and mobility evaluation before, this is the situation that child is in now, and this is why we are or are not recommending an additional orientation and mobility evaluation at this time. We really had to talk this out and discuss this. We have a VI in our district that’s also a diagnostician. And one of the concerns that she had was, I know that the law says that you have to be a part of the multidisciplinary team, but you don’t have permission to test. You don’t have permission to be out there. And we were really concerned about that, and we weren’t really sure how we were going to handle that. We knew it was best for students if we got back out there and saw that student  again. [Slide end] [Slide start] So this is one way we have decided to try and make people informed that we will be out there again. So we have decided that we are going to say in the evaluation something like this, ‘At this time, student A does not qualify for O and M services. Student abilities, environments, travel expectations and needs change over time; therefore, a Certified Orientation and Mobility Specialist may need to observe the student, communicate with parents and school staff, and or review the student’s records as part of the multidisciplinary team that determines the appropriate scope of reevaluation on a student with visual impairment.’ So we are going to start putting this in our recommendation section of our evaluations and we’re going to start telling parents, ‘Okay, Johnny didn’t qualify this time, but you know what, we know that situations change. We know that travel expectations change. So we will come back and look at Johnny again just to make sure over time periodically.' And we’re going to say that at the IEP meeting and let everyone know that that is our plan so that we're really informing people that we’re not just going to do a one time evaluation and never see that student again.  The law is asking us to remain involved and so this is just one way we’re going to try and keep people informed of what our intentions are. [Slide end] [Slide start] How are you going to make this work? How are you going to sell this to your district? Well you know you’ve got the administrators [Slide end] [Slide start] We used to say you could go and talk with your administrators into letting you do this procedure, now you’ve got the law on your side. At this point you can go to administrators and say, this is the law we have to do something. And then you have your parents. [Slide end] [Slide start] We have found that the parents are very appreciative. That you’re not just going to see their student one time and that’s it. You know, we had some VIs express concern that, ‘You know, you don’t want to put those kids through reevaluations. You don’t want to keep going out there and seeing that kid and telling that mom that they still don’t qualify and that’s going to hurt their feelings.’ That’s not what we’re finding. We’re finding that if you frame it correctly with the parents, and if you tell the parents, you know we realize your student may progress that things change we will come out and check again. We’re finding that they’re appreciative of that if they understand it. And then we’re lucky to have nine VIs [Slide end] [Slide start] when we added our fifth O and M this year, we also added another VI on the basis of growth in our district because our district is huge and it’s important for the VIs to be informed about what you're going to do. We have found though that the more we can just take the process and not bother them the better off we become. So we are informing diagnosticians, informing parents. We are keeping lists that say when does this student come up for another reevaluation. We are really just trying to not ask so much that the VI be responsible for telling us when we need to do something. And we're really trying to take that responsibility from them. [Slide end] [Slide start] You may be lone wolf out there. I know that we are a rare breed that has five O and Ms I recognize that, that you may be serving multiple districts. You may be the only person out there. If you’re working in a team, it is critical that you get with your team and you all agree. We really, really had to talk things out over years. It’s been a process. You’ve got to be on the same page. Otherwise you have a school- one diagnostician saying, ‘Well Donna does this for my kids, but you know what, Amy never does that.’ It’s important that you’ve got one procedure that you’re sticking to and you can keep each other accountable. If you’re the lone wolf out there I really recommend that you try to get with some other O and Ms and just talk this through. We had to read that law and read that law over and over and over again. And it is so helpful to have other people to bounce ideas off of and to say, 'Okay am I reading this correctly? Am I getting it right?' Which really is what we’re just trying to do- talk through it and figure it out. [Slide end] [Slide start] This is a diagnostician and for us that really is the point person that can make sure that we are there, that we’re invited, that we’re included. It’s so important for us to communicate with this diagnostician. It may be in your district the case manager whoever find that point person in your district and communicate with them. [Slide end] [Slide start] So one way that we communicated with our diagnosticians is we developed a file. We sat down with the annual registration that list. We took that list and we made a file on every single VI student in our district. Names we never heard before and in that file we put- well we developed a file for every student and in addition we developed a file for every diagnostician. What we did was made a little file folder and wrote O and M on it. And Amy went to the diagnostician meeting and does that every year, if there’s ever a time when your diagnosticians or that point person in your district meet, I highly suggest that you go on a regular basis and be a presence that they see that you can inform them and be there to ask questions. So every year Amy goes and presents to our diagnosticians.  We made a file folder for every diagnostician and in it we put this O and M information form. This is what we're asking the parent to sign before we go out and do a full orientation and mobility evaluation. So the diagnostician needed that paperwork. We have it on NCR. We are not asking that they sign this before we go out and gather data to be part of the multidisciplinary team that looks at the scope of the reevaluation for those three year reevaluation so we separate those two things. But this is just a form we developed, goodness, back in probably 1999 because we felt a little unsure about taking students off campus without their parents’ having informed consent. You should develop your own if that’s something you want in your district. Where we got the wording for this was the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. That has been updated and we should probably go through and look at this form and update our form so that it goes with current language. We have not done that yet. [Slide end] [Slide start] It’s just what we use in our district and we put that in the file folder for the diagnostician. We also have this ‘Benefits of O and M’ so that if somebody asked them about O and M that  that diagnostician can go to the file and read about it and feel a little more informed about what O and M is. [Slide end] [Slide start] You can get that ‘Benefits of Orientation and Mobility’ form from TSBVI. There is the website if you’re interested in getting that for your district it’s very easy. [Slide end] [Slide start] We also have in our file folder for the diagnosticians this little [Slide end] [Slide start] pamphlet. And you can get that from TSB as well. When we got them, you had to buy them. I think now that they’re free. So that’s wonderful and it's a great way to get orientation and mobility information out onto campuses. [Slide end]