2018-05-08 Caseload Management This video is posted online with the following chapter markers: Chapter 1. Introduction & LiveBinder Resources Chapter 2. Service Delivery Calculation Description of graphical content is included between Description Start and Description End. Transcript Start [Music] Fade up from black. Animation: Text for TSBVI transform into braille cells for TSBVI. [Music face out] Fade to black. Chapter 1. Introduction & LiveBinder Resources Chris Tabb: Hello, everyone. And welcome to the webinar today. Just in case this is your first... webinar with TSBVI, to let you know, on the screen that you are viewing at the moment, you have several of the pods that go around the outside of the screen, and for those that are looking for files, the bottom right‑hand side is the pod that has the files to be able to download them. There's a collection of files there. And we'll also be talking about the... LiveBinder that contains some of those. The web links is just to the left of that and by clicking on that web link, you can then request that it would open another tab or another window outside of the program so that you could launch that-- through the PowerPoint as we go through the presentation that is also that as well. The Q&A pod is available so if you have questions it would be really great to make this... an interactive session. If you have questions or things that you would like to share to be able to put that in there so we can talk about them. And if I miss that on the screen, then we've got a whole crew in the control room that's going to remind me to look at those questions. It would be more beneficial to everyone to have this interactive, rather than having me yap the whole time. Please remember to sign in, in the pod on the top on the left‑hand side, also a chat area to use to converse amongst those participants that would like to. Which is a little bit different than the Q&A. Again, the Q&A is on the top left. Our poll questions, I'm hoping we can pull up one here to start with. That will hopefully get some interaction going. The first question is going up on the screen now. Do you feel that you have enough time in your regular hours to meet your expected workload? As you put in your answers yes and no, you will be able to see the results for that. For those that have called in, hopefully people that are running a minute or two behind will be able to do that as well. Again, we have three questions. Looks like at the moment we have a significant proportion that do not feel they presently have enough time in their expected workload. Thank you for participating with the answers. That's very helpful. We have about 68 to 70% do not feel that they do, about 30% that do feel they have enough time. We will jump to our next poll question if we can. To get a sense of what you all are feeling out there. [Reading poll]. So far, we've got 100% no. We've got a little bit-- a little bit that does, that's good. But it's certainly-- gives an indication that there's a reason to have some discussion about the caseloads. Numbers are still going up there. Okay. We have about 92% that again do not feel that they have time for their direct service and so on and so forth. Go ahead and jump to the next poll question. Thank you very much in the control room. [Reading poll]. This is a tough question, but it's anonymous. [Reading poll]. In other words, if you know you only have a little bit of room, do you give them what you have left or are you able to really give them what they really do need based on a full evaluation? At the moment we look like we're about 50/50 neck and neck for whether you are giving them all that they need or if you have to just squeeze them in where you have space on your caseload. Thank you again for those that are responding. It's very helpful. So we'll go ahead and we'll start talking about some of these resources that are available. We've got the PowerPoint and we'll go ahead and start with the PowerPoint with some basic assumptions here. In order to have an effective system it must begin with a thorough evaluation of all students. So as we go through talking about the caseload point system, it's all based on the understanding that what we are really doing, we want an accurate picture of our students in order to give them the appropriate amount of time so that it's represented correctly. If for those 50% that are basically just squeezing students in, if we start with that, then when we go to advocate, we'll say, for a new person to come on board so that we can provide additional service, it won't be representing the true demand of the students. So it's important that when we're beginning with this process, that we have to have an accurate picture through the evaluations for all of the students. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Content: Description End: The second bullet point, all student service levels should be assigned on the basis of actual need and not the amount of time available. The idea of an administrator looking at your caseload, we'll say, and whether they would deem that to require an additional FTE or a full‑time equivalent to be added or a portion thereof. [ Slide end: ] If it looks like you are covering everything already, there won't be a need for them to do anything. It can be a little bit of cognitive dissonance knowing that we are writing something that we are not able to provide that's the point of the caseload analysis is to be able to truly determine do we have enough in our typical work week to be able to provide all of the services that are needed for the students in our area or on our caseload? The next bullet point here, caseload does not equal workload. The caseload is just that basically the students and the service delivery, we've got our direct service, hopefully there's at least some consult time for every student because typically you are providing the consultation, you are talking with the parents, you are meeting with the other teachers, you are doing some of those things even sometimes for the administrators that are part of consult without the direct contact with the student, although if it's not written into the IEP or the ARD document, then you are not really getting credit for that. And I'm going to apologize in advance, I know in some areas of the country it's an IEP, some areas it's an ARD, some areas it's a PPT. I will try to use IEP to meet everybody in the middle there. Your workload is made up of much more than just student time. It's the time that it takes you to get to and from students if you are itinerant, the paperwork time, preparation time for instance with COMS if you are pre-approving a route, TVI preparing materials, COMS as well. There's lots of different activities that go into compiling your workload. So your workload is a larger umbrella that encompasses your caseload. A workload should be able to fit into your natural work week, so some people are working, let's say, a 35 hour week, some people 40 hour week. When we add it all up together, the amount of direct service time, the amount of consultation time, along with all of the other components of your workload, it shouldn't be more than your typical work week. There are occasions when, let's say, a colleague is out sick or someone is on medical leave something like that, where-- where we have to for a very brief period of time exceed our typical work week. If that's meant to be the standard, then we have a process where we are just whittling away with someone's ability to perform their job and certainly at what we are able to provide for effective service for the students that we work with. Again, looking at-- as we go through this process, the big picture is that we want to have a close correlation between our work week and the level of need of our students and our workload. The next bullet point here, if workload exceeds the amount of time in the weekly, monthly contract or scheduled hours, there is justification for additional staff. Either contracting to bridge the gap because sometimes one individual or one full person is not required, but maybe we need a half time person or a quarter time person that could be there on contract. For those that aren't familiar with the term FTE, when you go to advocate, request a position, as it goes up the chain of administrators to the board and sometimes to the legislature to be able to request funding, instead of thinking in terms of actual people, they are thinking in terms of FTEs. It's a way of categorizing how much it's going to cost to put another input of a new teacher or contract person into that slot. So we'll go ahead on to our next slide. Then come the questions. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Content: Description End: How do we again? How do we calculate the appropriate workload, where do we find objective service level resources? And won't my administrators/supervisors just know or just get it. [ Slide end: ] I'm going to work backwards here. There's often the hope that whoever your supervisor is would just understand your needs and be alto be basically looking out for you so that you could go about doing the job that you are trained to do. You are the expert in the visual impairment and blindness and there's the expert in administering or managing the program so you would hope that that would occur. But again, often, your administrator isn't someone who is familiar with visual impairment and blindness. They might be wondering why it is that you get to work with a student one at a time where other teachers are working with, you know, classroom of 30 and they are wondering why it is that you feel that your caseload is overflowing. So helping them to understand the unique learning needs of students who are blind and visually impaired is very important. Some of the tools that we're going to look at can be considered or are considered objective resources. So when we look at something like a severity scale, intensity of need scales, it gives us an objective measure of what amount of service is recommended for that student. Not to say that it's an exact prescription for what that student needs, but it gives you a range to be able to choose from. That objective tool can help an administrator to understand that it's not just your opinion. It's something that-- whether a student were, on your caseload or another person's caseload, they would be receiving the same amount of service. Something equitable so that instead of again it just being your opinion, it's based on a tool. So we're going to be jumping over, I think that's our last slide. Although we might have a QR code after that. I'm going to see if I can switch over to my computer at the moment. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Content: Description End: So the QR code that's on the screen at the moment, along with the URL that's underneath that, the URL is http:bit.ly/Caseloads, with a capital C. [ Slide end: ] You can use the link in the bottom pod titled web links too or use the QR code, take a picture of that with the camera a your smart phone and it should launch that. Also type in or cut and paste the text for the URL. And that will be able to bring you to the LiveBinder that has some of the resources that are in the files pod to the right, but also has additional resources that we're going to be talking about here. I'm going to jump my screen on my computer over to that LiveBinder real quick. Oops we've got lots of documents there. We had-- let's see. There we go. [Screen start:] So this is what the-- I'm going to open that one particular LiveBinder. The other LiveBinders are under different categories. And you can search for that through LiveBinder using the author name with my last name, within the caseload point systems, we have basically three tabs that are on the left. The first one is service delivery calculation. So that's how we're determining how much service to provide. And, again, I know that we have both mobility specialists and TVIs represented. These are meant to be tools that some of them are specifically for COMS, some are specifically for TVIs. There are going to be features throughout that will apply to only one area or another, but generally speaking you will be able to generalize between the two. To whatever your needs are and certainly if you are dual certified, dually certified, then you have that option of using either as most appropriate. Chapter 2. Service Delivery Calculation Again the first tab, service delivery calculation. The Michigan severity scales is one option. And if you choose that option from the LiveBinder, it will actually take you to the-- to the website for the Michigan Department of Low Incidence, by using that website you can download directly from there, whether you are a TVI or a COMS, the form that you would need, the plus form is for students with additional disabilities, the one without the plus is for students who do not have additional disabilities. The mobility scale is on the bottom and the vision services is at the top. I'm not going to say which are better severity scales, this or for instance the next one we're going to talk about is the visit. They are all here just to be options for you and you can choose which works best. Or use them both. Basically, if you use a tool, and you work your students on your caseload through this tool, once you start with the first one or two, it becomes much easier. You move much more quickly. You can use that to demonstrate with your caseload how much service they should be getting based on this, which is again generally aligning with what you are providing already. [Screen end:] And then you can fill out a spreadsheet, which we'll get to, which can help to show whether you are-- whether you are functioning within your traditional work week or you are functioning beyond that. Okay? [Screen start:] So I'm going to jump back to the LiveBinder real quick. The next one is the VISSIT. Control Room: Chris you've got a question. Tabb: Oh, okay. James-- so we will use Michigan instead of the VISSIT. I'm not recommending one over the other, just sharing options. [Screen end:] They are both good, just different. The VISSIT is a newer tool. The Michigan has been out for many years and has gone through some revisions. The VISSIT that's on the screen that will be-- I'm not sure which screen we're on, sorry. [Screen start:] The VISSIT tool is available, thank you, on the TSBVI website. There is one VISSIT tool that is for TVIs to use. There's another one that is for orientation and mobility. So the tabs on the left of the screen, if you are downloading from the LiveBinder, again, one is for the O&M and one is for the TVIs, unless you're dual. Beautiful this is just another way of looking at it. It is not based as much on the visual impairment itself, although you can use that as an accommodating factor. To have some points attributed in that way. Both scales are good. Again, they are just different. Let's see ... the actual page that it takes you to from the LiveBinder has the document that you can download with the instructions, it has examples, it has frequently asked questions, there are also webinars that are available on the TSBVI website that will walk you through how to complete the visit form. And those things can be very helpful, especially if you're new to using a service intensity scale. The next tab that we have is for state and regional caseload resources. There are a collection here, not of every state in the union, or province in Canada for that matter, but there's a collection here that can be helpful. Again, you don't have to use your states unless it's required by your district. These are just here for comparison. So just as an example, I'm going to start with the California because it's the top of the list there. The-- this particular document is an entire guidelines of programs and services for-- for students with visual impairments and blindness. It includes much, much more than-- excuse me, than just caseloads. This is a large document. On Page 127, it gets into-- I'm going to go ahead and just open this real quick. I apologize, I'm going to scroll rather quickly. It gets into the caseload suggestions, gives you two options on Page 127. That you can use to establish caseloads or if you are seeking to be able to educate an administrator on what caseloads should look like, the class sizes and caseloads, it gives you some information about how to do that. We have Option 1 and Option 2 again. Option 1 on the screen at the moment is to establish a process for establishing and monitoring the class size. It won't be a do it once and you are done forever. Because the demands of our caseloads are constantly changing. If you are itinerant, the places that you travel to sometimes are close, sometimes are far, sometimes you have all of your students at one school, sometimes they are spread apart across the district and the dynamics of your caseload as well as your workload will change and reevaluation needs to be an ongoing process. So, again, this is giving you some idea of providing instruction based on the severity or intensity of needs. I won't read through this all right now, but again just knowing that this option is here. But it does include some things to consider in terms of your workload, such as ongoing communication, providing comprehensive assessment, securing and preparing needed specialized materials, training teachers, to do that in‑service training, ensuring your travel time between schools, consulting with members of the team, the family, the medical community, this does give the example of the Michigan scale. When this is prepared, this particular revision for California is 2014, some of the VISSIT products were not available yet, so certainly they wouldn't have been able to list that because that was still in development. The Michigan scale is represented here. Connecticut, which we'll talk about, QPVI, an entire process for quality programs for students with visual impairments. That Option 1 is something that you may want to look over at some point. Option 2 basically gives you recommended numbers. These numbers, well, are-- are just one State's opinion as we go through you will see other states have different opinions or different numbers that they are citing. This says, again, I'm going to scroll down a little bit, so an itinerant teacher of students of students with visual impairments, 8 to 12 students is the recommended caseload size. For TVIs as well as for COMS. I don't know very many of either that has very small caseloads. Again, we weren't looking into the details that we're going to be discussing, things, for instance, with the TVI, whether it's a Braille student or a non‑braille student, these are just very general suggestions. So we have to take that into-- those considerations in light of the fact that these are generalizations, we won't have that level of detail. So I'm going to jump back to our LiveBinder for another example. The next one we're going to jump to is the British Columbia, the Provincial resource center for the visually impaired. And again, this is just an example of a tool. This is based on other tools as well. Each one goes about this in a different process. And these are, again, just meant to be examples that you can use, find one that matches with how you like to conceptualize your caseload and your workload, one that you feel that you can utilize to effectively communicate with your administrators how you go about developing your caseload. There are some areas like in the State of Texas we have 10,000 students, over 10,000 students. In the state of Connecticut, it's a tenth of that. Yet in Connecticut all services are basically delivered through one agency. Where in Texas the delivery happens more at the district level rather than at a state agency level. Okay? I'm going to scroll a little bit to the chart here. We have different categories of student need. Based on visual acuity, visual field, degeneration, and for CVI at the bottom there, what phase of CVI they are in. Obviously the-- the greater level of severity, the greater would be the need for service. So as we scroll down the page a little bit more, we get into our recommended hours of service. So contact and non‑contact or direct or indirect service. Where we have Level 4 with significantly more service time than we do for Level 1. And it starts with preschool and then into elementary and secondary. I'm going to jump to Colorado now. Colorado, this particular document, again, is different than the California document. This particular document is based all on caseloads rather than being an overall general education guide for-- excuse me, guide for visual impairment and blindness. And, as we work our way down, it's going to give you some introduction to caseload management guidelines, just some background. It could be that you give this entire document to an administrator. It could be that you select certain points. Some of you will be working in teams where you have a-- let's say eight to 10 TVIs or COMS that are working with a large number of students and some people will be working solo. So the idea of a caseload isn't so much about who gets what, it's about how am I going to be able to manage this size of caseload, this many students and do we need to look to hire someone else? So again this is including direct and indirect services, travel time and related professional responsibilities. You want to make sure that when you are preparing your workload-- preparing your workload, you are identifying each of those areas that is part of your workload. Some places you may have other duties that are assigned that aren't represented here and you will want to make sure that those are coded in such a way that you are getting credit for the time that you are being required to put in. So we have basically a triangle here representing what that caseload is going to be made up of, not using the term workload here, but the same idea. We are looking at more than just the actual direct or consult service that's being provided to students. And it gives you a step‑by‑step direction that beginning by determining the individual rating for each child who is identified, with the visual impairment based on the severity of needs, so on, so forth, again there's two-- two tools that we have already talked about for severity of needs. The Michigan scale and the VISSIT. And then taking the total number of hours of direct and indirect service to all students, adding this number for your travel time and then considering the additional duties. There's a list here, two columns, of additional duties. These are just samples. You can certainly add to this. you don't have to use them all. It's really again taking an inventory of what you do during your day, during your work week, that-- that takes time from what you would be providing directly to students. As we get into the further steps here, you are combining those hours. Comparing it with your contracted hours. So the example that's below that we've added up 30 and a half hours of direct and indirect service, excuse me, five hours of professional duties, and seven and a half of travel time for 43 hours. In this particular scenario, 37 and a half hours is a contracted work week. We have gone beyond that, so there's some reason why that would not be able to be covered in a traditional work week. This particular severity rating scale five point scale here, on the medical, the literacy media another five point scale and instructional needs for compensatory skills. Again looking at it in a different format than the Michigan scale or the VISSIT. Environmental and educational ... affective and independence ... the O&M ... Colorado is a little bit different where you are also required to be dual. And then we get into the recommendations for the point totals. With consultation, light service, moderate, heavy service. I'm going to jump to Connecticut. [Coughing]. Excuse me. Connecticut system is a little bit different. The many states that I have been to, Connecticut again primarily is-- there's one state agency, BESB, the board of education and services for the blind, which is providing the vast majority of all services for students who are blind and visually impaired in the state. This is their policy manual and this is a public document. Basically it sets out in statute how many points anyone is supposed to have in a given here. I'm going to scroll to Page 4, if you are following along. Okay. So-- so this Section 3 specifies that the commissioner within available appropriations will employ certified teachers-- by the way, at least in Connecticut this does not exist for the mobility specialists, but it's a model that could be utilized to develop guidelines for orientation and mobility as well as for Teachers of Visually Impaired. Will employ certified teachers who instruct students who are visually impaired in sufficient numbers to meet the requests for services received from the school districts. In responding to these requests, the commissioner shall utilize a formula for determining the number of teachers needed to serve the school districts, crediting six points for each child learning Braille and one point for each other child. So, again, if we have a student who is a non‑braille reader, a low‑vision student using large print, they are going to be one point. For our Braille readers we've got six points. Then it goes on to say that one full‑time certified teacher who instructs student who are visually impaired assigned for every 25 points created. So each teacher then would receive no more than 25 points. For some people that could be 25 low‑vision students or a combination of throwing in the six point Braille students. There are some other resources that we're going to be talking about as we go through some of these state guidelines that will show how Connecticut, for instance, using spreadsheets and a database to help them to identify balances within the system to make sure that all of the teachers of the visually impaired are having an equitable caseload and student that are being served by them also have equitable services. Minnesota. Minnesota's example here, again, this particular document is just about determining the workload for teachers of students who are blind and the certified orientation and mobility specialists. I'm going to scroll down the page. We have a ratings scale. Again, we're going to have different names. Sometimes it's severity scale, sometimes it's rating scale. Depending on what we're using, the-- the words might mean the same thing, just different vernacular. So our medical area, again, looking at the eye conditions, and the amount of visual acuity that's there in the field, our primary reading medium, just as in Connecticut if we were a Braille reader or a print reader, compensatory needs with adaptive or developmental skills instruction, different-- different places have a different focus on the Expanded Core Curriculum. Hopefully everyone is aware of that, so you may need to certainly educate your administrators on what the EEC is to help them understand how these services are provided, why it is that you have to work beyond the general curriculum, why those materials in special settings might be necessary to provide the Expanded Core Curriculum. In Texas, it's required by law for students who are visually impaired and blind, so we have the-- the code of education in order to use as a-- advocacy tool in communicating with administrators. Scrolling down again, the O&M with different points for how often or level of-- four levels of need. The travel time. Moving our way into the spreadsheet here. Again, this is the workload rating sheet where the columns represented we have our student medical primary reading medium, compensatory skill, adaptive instruction and all the way across getting to our totals. Okay. I'm going to jump to the Texas guidelines. This is again like California a large document. The particular page on caseloads is on Page 36. I'm going to apologize. I'm going to scroll quickly to get to Page 36. Okay. So this is a written caseload guidelines used to evaluation caseloads of vision professionals. This is again an ongoing process where we're going to be looking at this on a regular basis, whether it's annually, which would be helpful, especially when we're determining at the beginning of a new school year how big a caseload should be. Hopefully it would be also occurring, at least at some cursory level throughout the school year, so if we had an area that was growing in demographics, approximate if we had a large population of students that were moving into our area, we would be able to set up in advance the idea that we would need to be making hiring decisions for the following school year. Because if we wait until the fall to do that, we're already behind in being able to provide services to students. Okay. Again, this section is going to talk a little bit about caseloads based on their assessment needs. Hopefully again providing you with information that you can share with your administrators. The section that's on the screen at the moment, I'm going to read through some of this real quick. Basically it's saying written caseload guidelines and professional literature advocate for an average of eight to 12 students. For instance as we saw in the California plan. A little bit further along in that paragraph toward the end of it, it says the 10 year average caseload for TVIs has been 15 students for a full‑time TVI. Went, we are exceeding that. Looking at averages, the 10 year average caseload for COMS has been 16 per full‑time equivalent. These again are just averages, but gives an idea of the numbers that are seen over an average across the state. Certainly there are those that have much larger caseloads and some that have smaller caseloads. Okay. Washington state. Hopefully you are beginning to see that there's a good variety of ways that different states, different areas address caseload decisions. The idea of a point system, in some places, will trigger a hire. So, for instance, in Connecticut where we have something in statute that indicates how many points any individual providers should have, sometimes it's just meant to be how are we going to divvy up the student that we have, they are all different in how they address the issues of-- of caseload and workload. So the Washington state school for the blind, again, is giving you some information about how we're categorizing our students. We have an academic Braille student, we have a Braille to functional Braille, high needs, low vision, Cortical Visual Impairment and visually impaired with multiple disabilities. In Washington state, we're using quarter hour increments. It includes your direct time, your consult time, your prep time. And office time. Again, they might not be using the phrase workload. Same idea as we have talked about in the other examples. Excuse me. Braille students here again, if we have the highly academic student, that's going to be a larger percentage of time. I'm going to jump to our other tools and resources. This is just to show you a little bit before we jump into some spreadsheets to talk about what it would look like. The administrator's toolbox, from TSBVI, these are examples of-- this is just showing you the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired's website. This is just one section of the administrator's toolbox. The quick links that are on the right‑hand side, the quick links are for the different chapters or areas within the administrator's toolbox and all of the things that are in the LiveBinder as well as that we are viewing on the web are freely available for you to use yourself, but certainly to share with administrators, members of the team, family members, whomever you feel could benefit from this. This particular area of the administrator's toolbox goes into how we're developing caseloads, work caseloads, gives the idea of caseload analysis for those that are new to this process. Again, some of your administrators may never have done this. They are used to it being assigned we'll say at the school board level of how many students are going to fit into a class. Obviously special education is individualized and we're not going to have the same makeup of students and this will be much more of a detailed process for you than just having a blanket ruling about how many would be on your caseload. So, again, these tools are there all the time living on the internet. This-- the LiveBinder is just hopefully a place to have them collected to make it a little bit easier to get to. We have a question. Thank you, thank you. Let's see ... will this PowerPoint be available? It looks like it is. Sorry. Is there a national [indiscernible] Ah thank you very much. There is not a national caseload standard in development that I'm aware of. It's a good suggestion, April, thank you. One of the challenges is that we have different laws in every state. So just as an example, we have some places where it's required that any student who has a visual impairment begin with Braille. [Screen end:] Then you basically have to prove your way out of why you would not need Braille or to begin with orientation and mobility and/or prove your way out of why you would not need orientation and mobility. We have other states where you have to prove your way into the services. At the moment, there's such diversity across state guidelines, state legislation, about the provision of special education services-- although we do have IDEA, we do not have any standardized caseload standards. Maybe some day we'll get there, but to the best of my knowledge, we do not have anything that is a standard yet. These tools that are provided are just different ways of going about that. The tools like the VISSIT and Michigan scale are meant to be a facilitator in helping to develop the amount of service, so they're not meant to be caseload tools, per se. But they can be used when you are helping to define your caseload, your workload and what's included in it. Those would be the closest that we have at the moment to standardized tools to help address the needs of our caseloads. But very good question, thank you. [Screen start:] Jumping along a little bit here, the-- the next document isn't actually the Texas document, but it's some other guidelines that have been used to create some states' guidelines. There's the Connecticut-- spreadsheet itself you can download and look at. Again, just to look at the columns that are represented to think about what areas come together. In fact, I will see if I can open this here just to give you an example. It will take just a moment to open our Excel. This one was not uploaded as a PDF. If you wanted to use it to manipulate the spreadsheet you could. It has some things that are automatic drop‑down lists and may-- my thanks to Katherine at BESB for sharing resources so that we would have this as a way for you to consider creating your own caseload resources. The drop‑down list would provide all of the towns within connect the just to facilitate, you could enter the teacher name, you could enter the student names, first and last, the student's grade. Again, we're going to have some students that are in our first, second, third grade. Some students that are senior or senior plus going up to age 22. In Connecticut, they use the acronym PPT, instead of an ARD or an IEP. So again that's all that that's showing when it says PPTed, that's the amount of service that is in the actual federal document. The next column is Braille yes or no. And that's going to give you a choice of yes or no. And we'll assign a value. And then the score would be there. So basically any particular provider's score would be shown and could be compared amongst the other providers so that we could hopefully have, if everyone had-- let's say 20 points and one person had 15 points, we could make some adjustments so that everybody could be at an equitable level. Okay. Just as another resource or tool, this is from Minnesota. This is a report to the legislature. Which basically again sometimes to make special appropriations for-- for additional resources or FTEs, this gives us some information about-- about the demographics, the state data, helping administrators, legislators, our elected officials to know what the needs are. Again, they aren't typically going to know what a student with a visual impairment would need, how their education would be unique or different from students in our general education curriculum. And so helping to spell out what those unique needs are, what the unique workload and caseload demands are, is very important. Typically, we need to basically prove why those things are needed and just your saying so wouldn't typically be enough to convince them that there was, in fact, the need. So sometimes we have to go to great lengths to help them understand. I'm going to jump to the TSBVI spreadsheet now and open this particular spreadsheet. This is just an example of something that was used a few years ago. Oops. Let's see. All right. So this spreadsheet doesn't have the drop‑downs and the-- the macro features that the BESB spreadsheet did. This one is basically again just going, we're trying to represent what we have in terms of needs. I'm going to try to make it so the screen is a little bit bigger so we can see some of those columns a little bit easier. Although I seem to have frozen my screen. So this particular spreadsheet is based on a mobility specialist. We have the COMS' name, the student's name, the current O&M ARD amount. Again, ARD is like PPT or IEP service level amount. We have the total severity score from the Michigan Scale. When this document was produced, to demonstrate need, the VISSIT didn't exist. The severity rating, again the Michigan Scale was used on each student. The severity rating was added here. Then a comparison between what the current amount of assigned time was compared to what the Michigan Scale suggested it should be. I'm going to work my way across here. Basically what we're looking at is how much time needed to be increased in order to make it correlate with what was recommended. All of these spreadsheets, again, are just trying to take what you may intuitively know already-- in other words, if you feel that you are running everywhere and you haven't really had a chance to give the students what they need, it's probably the case that maybe you're functioning beyond what your current contract amount has in place. [Screen end:] But in order to be able to make a sufficient case to present to an administrator, you have to go through the process of documenting it. That can be very difficult when you are so busy. One of the challenges of demonstrating a need in caseload or workload is that you're already usually maxed out before those needs come up. The way of using a caseload system, such as in Connecticut where it can be based with an automatic trigger that after a certain number of points something should occur, like the hiring of a full‑time unit or full‑time equivalent, that would be very helpful so that you don't have to‑‑ while you're working with an overflowing caseload, find time to be able to educate your administrators on the need. Having the system in place. So it takes a lot to develop it initially, it's again a way of providing for the student's needs without having to pause in a break in the action for them because their classmates in the general education setting won't have that pause. Okay. [Screen start:] I'm going to jump back again to our LiveBinder. We're going to go over a few workload considerations. Again, this is from 2008, so some of these things have changed over time. We have different needs. Just as an example, in 2008 we didn't have technology needs that we have in 2018 that we do 10 years later. We didn't have all of the apps, we didn't have passwords. Well, I guess we had passwords but not as many that were needed and in such variety. Things have changed in terms of how we provide service. [Screen end:] We have things like our webinars that didn't exist before. So occasionally going back to look at what we've based our workload on can be very helpful. [Screen start:] So some of these assumptions again, thinking about how much time is actually in transportation or taking time to arrange transportation, we have some individuals with caseloads where they are given a school vehicle, other places where they have to find a bus company or the school bus company and work with the transportation representatives in order to schedule the bus to take the student and provider and in this case the mobility specialist to the actual training site. Those things take time. Time which wouldn't be available to provide direct service to a new student. So having a way to document that, that an administrator can understand, is the rationale for using these tools to be able to put it into a comprehensive format that can be shared with those that are able to make the decision and provide the funding for another hire. Okay. It's important to think in terms of best practice. In Texas, we have some very specific rules and laws about-- about how evaluations occur, about when the mobility specialist should be included in decision making, so on and so forth. That evaluations should occur in school, home and community with different levels of lighting. Not every state has some of the specificity that Texas has in its laws or other states have in their laws, so there won't be one absolute answer. It will have to be based on your district specific, state specific, region specific requirements are. But making sure that you are addressing all of those minimal standards are important so that you can thoroughly explain to an administrator why it is that you need the time that you are asking for. Okay? I'm going to go ahead and jump to a couple of things, files to share real quick. Let's see ... One of the other things, I'm not going to show the actual database, I'm just going to show a screen shot of it. Let me make this a little bit larger. This is again from board of education and services for the blind. They have been able to take their data to look at not only the numbers, the basic numbers of-- of a 6 and a 1 for a Braille reader and a non‑braille reader, but also looking at specific dynamics of students, that take into account the transportation time to get to those students so that it can be an equitable format. Also those numbers need to be matching for statute. But this gives a way for them to compare different amounts of-- of needs of the students in a particular caseload. So this database again will plug in all of the numbers that are entered into the spreadsheets that we looked at before, providing some scores to be able to look at how an individual's resources are being allocated, whether they are under allocated or over allocated. The idea of preparing a database might be a ‑‑ something that is feasible for you. You might have some experts that work with you at your school district or agency. It may be something that you have to do yourself or it might be something that you choose not to do at this time. It's not required. But if you're dealing with hundreds and hundreds of students, it might make things much, much easier to deal with than just having a traditional Excel spreadsheet. Okay? Okay, right? Jump back to the LiveBinder. We're going to take a closer look at some of the tools. I'm going to start with the VISSIT. Just so we can compare how they are different. Again, this-- this particular image that's shown in the LiveBinder is just the image that you are seeing from the Texas School for the Blind website. If you wanted to actually download it, you would click on the links to the right. So, for example, if I click on the link on the right, it will bring up the actual document that could be downloaded. Within the visit, we have-- we have different areas, I'm sorry I'm trying not to scroll too quickly. These are our service times, all of the instructions at the top here. Again, once you start using some of these tools, they get easier as you-- as you begin to-- apply them for each student. This is the TVI tool. We have EEC skills, the Expanded Core Curriculum skills that are on the left‑hand side and we are point skills represented by a 1, a 4, a 7 or a 10 or a zero. The zero no need at this time. This is under the direct instruction. The 1, low need, occasional support. And maintain of skills. 4 is a medium need. Need skills. But low priority generalization, fluency development. 7 high need priority, complete mastery of introduced skills. 10 is up to intense needs. There's a little bit different description when we look over at the education team support and collaboration. Again, it's very helpful to have both of those represented when you are completing your IEP. So that under your service delivery times, you will have both a-- an amount for your direct service delivery as well as your consultation time. It's typically happening for every student that you have. Whether it's documented or not. And when you go to do your caseload analysis, if it's represented in an IEP, it carries much more weight as a federal document than just your opinion or just you saying, well, this is what I really do anyway. When it's coded on to the actual IEP, it-- it is able to then be represented as something real. And something that you can demonstrate easily, data that we can share with people who just look at data rather than being in an actual situation. When we enter the numbers, they will be totaled up into the page totals. Again, we are looking at each area of the EEC, access to the core curriculum, conceptual development, the assistive technology, electronic devices, we have the computer skills, so on and so forth, social interaction skills. So we are really trying to again take a very-- a very thorough view of the student. Basically the Expanded Core Curriculum is what we do. That's what we are providing. Recreation and leisure skills. The O&M support from the TVI again because this is the TVI document. We're not looking at all of the details that we will be reviewing from the O&M document. But it does look at some of the things, such as basic skills because those will be reinforced from the TVI as well as from the classroom. And as we total our way down, we have contributing factors explained in more detail in the instructions above. We have-- student making a transition of some kind, moving into the area, excuse me, possibly moving from a middle school to a high school, if there are medical status conditions, medical status or conditions that-- that have-- bear some significant weight on this student's program as well as additional areas of family support. There's a separate table coming up next for the family support. Again, we have the same scale of a zero, a 1, 4, 7 and 10 to represent the different levels of need. So looking at if there's area of need in the home for consistency connecting family members to outside agencies, again these are things that are not necessarily going to happen in the school day. But are certainly part of that student's program and the full IEP. And then we get into some of the direct service times. Using our totals and we have a range of minutes. Both of these scales, the Michigan scales as well as the VISSIT scales, I don't know if I'm using the right word but I'm going to say validated with reviewers across the country to demonstrate that the numbers are representative of what you would be assigning to those students anyway. So they-- they were expert reviewers who-- who reviewed and practiced using these forms to determine if they were showing valid results for what the service level came out to be, was that matching what they would typically be providing or recommending for a student with that general makeup. Okay? So again it isn't telling you, so I'm just going to choose for the moment the point range of 45 to 59 points, we've got between two hours and three hours a week. There's a lot of area there for-- for someone to be able to make a determination of what's most appropriate for that student at that specific time. Okay. I'm going to jump to the O&M scale quickly, so we can view how that one is different and then we will look at the Michigan Scales. Again, there are webinars that are in the-- that are in the online learning section of the TSBVI website that you can review to learn a little bit more, in more detail how to use these tools if you haven't used a VISSIT before. So we've got the blue that was for the TVIs and the red for the mobility. This document is a little bit longer. I'm going to-- excuse me, scroll past the instructions. So we can get down to the actual entry form. So here we have again the same 1, 4, 7, 10, 0. We have our purposeful movement area. Starting at the very basic level, motor skills, cane skills, working our way into communication, it gives specific examples again of receptive communication with gestures, sign language, tactile sign, so on, so forth, so that we are trying to represent all students. The VISSIT is based on any one tool for any age of student. As well as it's also representing students with vision as their only condition as well as multiple disabilities. In the Michigan Scale there are two different tools, one for students without multiple disabilities and one for students with multiple disabilities and it also is not representing the youngest students, that birth to five group, but the visit is representing across the age span. Moving into conceptual development ... with-- with environmental maps, tactile graphics, so on, so forth, again some of these areas are not going to be necessary for some students, so if we've got optical devices, that's going to be very appropriate for our low‑vision students but not for students who are non‑visual. Some of the tactile might be appropriate for students who are non‑visual and not for those who are low‑vision. The route planning, all of the different areas needed for them to access their environment, street crossings, sensory efficiency, transportation, health and safety, related EEC areas, and-- and working our way along here, again covering-- some overlap between the two tools, within the areas of the Expanded Core Curriculum and then we have our-- again our contributing factors looking at this again-- is there family need for training and how we're going to support a child in the community or with public transportation that is different than we would support through the school, if it's something how the family will support that student that might be a significant indication of need for consultation time outside of the regular school day. Okay. Again, we have areas of family need chart to do that separately. And then we're totaling-- to get down to a place I'm going to try to get to where we have our service times listed and, again, we have a range based on the number of points, how much we would recommend. So when we looked at those spreadsheets, this is again we're comparing the actual time that's represented on the student's IEP with what would be recommended with this tool. Hopefully as you begin to implement this on a regular basis, you would already have that in place so it wouldn't be as time consuming as the initial representation. These, again, are very helpful ways to demonstrate to someone who doesn't know about orientation and mobility or who doesn't know about the services that a TVI provides, why it is that the numbers add up the way they do. If you are just trying to explain it, we have to get into very personal stories about our students where they are often just looking for show me the numbers. This is the way to show them the numbers so that they can understand what your caseload is in a data driven way. In order to have the data this is a process that we have to go through to translate your unique student stories, for lack of a better way to put that, into a number. A number that represents their level of need. Combined with your other additional duties, making your workload. And then comparing that to the number of hours that you have in your contract. I'm going to jump over to the Michigan scales, thank you for your patience-- okay. So again we have two tools for each area. We have the one with the plus sign indicates for additional needs and the one without the plus sign is indicative of-- of not having additional needs. So-- so scroll all the way down here. Sorry. This setup is a bit different than the VISSIT. As I scroll down past the instructions we're going to get to a grid. This is an example of the point size. So here's our grid. With our rows and our columns and our score over on the right‑hand side. Across the top, we have none, mild, moderate, severe and profound with a point rating of 0 through 4. Along the left‑hand side, we have our severity of need and we are looking at categories that begin with the level of vision, distant acuity, this is one of the main differences between the Michigan Scale and the VISSIT. The VISSIT is not based primarily on the vision, although there is an area where we can make an adjusting score for that. Where the Michigan Scale begins with the visual level of acuity and the field as the primary factors when we are looking at the student and how much service to deliver. Again, I'm not going to say which one is the preferred tool. It really comes down to what you feel most comfortable using. These are just meant to be options that you have to be able to transition or correlate through a number what it is that your students' needs are. A number that can be given to someone who is just used to looking at numbers, just like when we do our taxes. So, again, we're looking at our things like our reading medium where we have our-- our Braille readers are going to have a much greater need than our print readers. So our regular print reader would be 0 for reading medium and on our profound level we have a new Braille reader. As we work our way toward the second page, we have areas of contributing factors where we can make adjustments, increasing or decreasing by specific need. So just as an example, I'm going to try to zoom in on one column if I can here so you can see that a little bit better. Well, I can't do that, sorry. So I'll read these off to you, we have the age of the student, attendance, availability of materials, is this a progressive condition, so on, so forth. So each of these categories would allow us to increase or decrease by a half a point to make an adjustment, which would eventually then lead us to our severity of needs score matched with the frequency of service. So just as we had our points relating to a level of service per week, in the VISSIT scale, the same is true here where 24 to 32 points, for instance, we have two or more times a week for 30 to 60 minutes each. I'm going to jump over to the orientation and mobility side real quick. Scrolling down to our grid, as a comparison to orientation and mobility, these are just ways to categorize our students into a number. That that is matched with the service level, this won't capture all of the needs of the student, which is just capturing their direct service time, the visit tool does give you the option to have one column for the direct service as well as one column for the-- for the consult service. Again, the Michigan tools all began with the level of vision in the peripheral field, moving into how they are utilizing their vision, how they are utilizing their mobility skills, their conceptual development, so on and so forth. The same type of system as we have seen for the TVI scale, where we have some accommodations that can be made for things like posture and gait and the nature of the eye disease, is this a recent vision loss, age of onset of the visual impairment. So any of these changes would increase or decrease by a half a point and that would be tallied with the score that was originating on the top chart. Bringing us over to our severity of needs score. So that-- so that the 25 to 36 range we've got two or more times a week for 30 to 60 minutes. These scales are not meant to tell you, for instance, if it's let's say 120 minutes, whether that's delivered in one, two, three, four, how many visits that you are doing. [Screen end:] It's really just meant to give you a broad category. But those number of minutes translate to add up to the number of hours that you have in your contract per week and the number of hours that you are providing your direct service, your consultation service, along with your other duties. Again, should be equal to or less than the amount of hours in your contract. If it exceeds the amount of hours in your contract, then we're demonstrating that there is a need for additional support in that area. If you have let's say a large area, I'm just going to-- Los Angeles, another large city where we have many, many mobility specialists in one place, having everyone with-- with let's say five hours beyond their traditional contract, adding five hours across eight people, we now have a whole new full‑time equivalent because we now have 40 hours of service that-- that go above and beyond our traditional contracts. That would initiate-- hopefully initiate a rationale for hiring another teacher of the visually impaired, orientation and mobility specialist, whatever the case might be. So again these are not meant to be complete answers. They are just meant to be tools for you to begin to develop your own process. Thank you very much for your time today. And-- and I-- I look forward to answering any questions that you might have. The email is up on the screen. The email address tabbc@TSBVI.edu. Thank you again for being here today on the webinar and I hope that you have much success with your caseload. Thank you. [Silence] Fade up from black. Animation: Text for TSBVI transform into braille cells for TSBVI. Fade to black.