TRANSCRIPT - Off Campus Orientation and Mobility Ð 4/3/23 >>Chris: So, the Binder we're going to start with is the advocating for off campus O&M lessons. This has materials, resources, information that you can download, that you can view online, that you can share with an administrator, families. I get e-mails and calls from around the country, people asking about how do I get my student off campus or my administrator won't let me leave campus to do lessons. It doesn't happen just in Texas, it happens all across the country and likely around the world. So, these are just ways that you can help to advocate or educate. Hopefully we start with the education and if we have to we get into the advocacy part. But educate those who are decision makers about why we have to be off campus and why the law kind of is focused on that. If you are from another province or country, I'm sorry, this is very U.S.-centric, but hopefully you will be able to use these examples as ways of finding your own policy and legislation. I'm going to start with the first one here. This is from our -- it's the IDEA and we're just going to talk about this 300.1. Because there's some specific language that is in the law that helps to substantiate or justify why we need to be taking students off campus. For many people they feel that a student's supposed to be in school so why would you need to take them anywhere else. This first part in Part A says to ensure that all children with disabilities have available to them a free appropriate public education that emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their unique needs and prepare them -- this is the important part -- for further education, employment, and independent living. In order for us to prepare them for further education, employment, and independent living, we have to address their unique needs, which is what an IEP, that individualized, is all about. And in order to, for instance, prepare them to go to college, they have to be able to cross large campuses that are not familiar to them, at least initially. They have to be able to use public transportation in order to get from their living facility to where the college is. They have to be able to also use public transportation to get to their job, to get to the grocery store. And so, these things that we need to do off campus are required by IDEA. As soon as we put them as a goal, they become something we are legally compelled to carry out. And at that point, if the parent has given their permission or consented to move forward with the IEP, that's also part of what's happening. So, there's lots of things that are in the law. Sometimes they're not very specific. Sometimes what we have to do is we have to look for court cases where they've been fleshed out a little bit from basically an opinion from a judge. So, some of these links will not load right on the screen. We have to, once they load here, there's a URL. If we click on them it opens another page and we can look at some of these other details. When we think about related services, orientation and mobility is specifically listed as a related service. And it defines what orientation and mobility is, but within our IEPs we need to be able to demonstrate that all of these things we are supposed to be doing. And I'm just going to scroll down the screen. I hope I don't make anyone nauseous but I'm going to get to the O&M part. Services provided to blind and visually impaired children by qualified personnel to enable those students to obtain systematic orientation to safe movement within their environments and school, home, and community. Doesn't just say school, doesn't just say home, it says the community. And so sometimes we have administrators who say, no, you can't even visit the student at home. Again, these are federal laws. Different states have different laws but a state law can't become less than a federal law. A state law could say school, home, community, light business, downtown, farm, but they can't say less than the federal law. So, if the federal law says that it needs to be done, that's a standard that everyone in the United States has to comply with. We have to be able to do that minimum standard. So, when we use the phrase school, home, and community, it comes from our legal system, our laws for education that are usually copied also in state statute. So, these are, again, just things to pull out to highlight, to either send electronically or paper copy to an administrator who is not understanding why it should be different for you and your student. Why do you need to go off campus when all the other students are here? Examples sometimes are concerns about liability for insurance. Sometimes it's just people being afraid of how would that student who is blind or Deafblind ever be able to function in the world, it's too scary, don't let them go. Sometimes it's exaggerated fears or concerns. It can be helpful to sometimes introduce someone who is having a challenge with these off-campus lessons to role models. Young people who might be in college or just started working so that they can share their own specific perspective about this is why I need to do these things. This is what I wish I would have had in school to prepare me for my adult -- my young adult life, either post-secondary education or vocationally. And I'm going to pause for just a second. Kaycee, do we have any thoughts or comments, anything in the chat? >>Kaycee: Nothing yet. >>Chris: Okay. Please, everyone, feel free to jump in. Again, you'll probably get pretty bored with me just talking. I'm going to jump back to the LiveBinder. The role of the O&M specialist has been defined in different ways by different people. Just one of the things that can happen is your boss, your supervisors, your teams may not readily accept your perspective. And so sometimes they want proof. They want it not just from you, because that might be not something they're willing to take at the moment. They want to know who is the authority. And so, there are places like CEC, the council for exceptional children. This is the division on visual impairment and DeafBlindness. They don't have any teeth, so to speak. There's no law but they are a group of professionals who specialize in education for children who are in special education. And this is a position paper that talks about what should the O&M be doing. Where should they be doing it. It's different than just your personal opinion. Because if you say I need to do XYZ with a student, they might consider that to be just in your personal benefit. But when they can see it from somewhere else, it helps to relay the point that this is not just me, this is what's best practice in the field. And in all honesty, if a parent were pressing a lawsuit against you or the school in general, they would be bringing a panel of expert O&Ms to basically have testimony from the field, providers, your peers. And what would be best practice. And best practice is to provide instruction in the school, in the home, and in the community. So in this document -- I'm just going to read some of this here, about the middle of the paragraph says furthermore IDEA states that O&M includes teaching students the following is appropriate: Spatial and environmental concepts and use of information received by the senses, such as sound, temperature, vibrations, to establish, maintain, or regain orientation and line of travel, such as using sound at a traffic light to cross the street. Most schools are not going to have a traffic light. So right there we have a very easy example of you need to leave school to have some of these experiences. The next one, to use a long cane to supplement visual travel skills or as a tool for safely negotiating the environment for students with no available travel. It goes on to list, what we basically know, O&M. It talks about the population it serves. It's a wonderful tool. It's a resource to be able to say here's what a bunch of highly-regarded professionals in the field feel O&M should be and where those things should happen. It's just another helpful piece of information that isn't from your opinion, isn't from your perspective. ItÕs an independent objective opinion -- relatively objective because many of these people are orientation and mobility specialists. It's somewhat focused but it's not your personal opinion. So that can be very helpful when you're trying to advocate. There are also things like videos. This is a video from -- oh, my gosh. I'm blanking at the moment. But it's the value of O&M. And you can show people things that help them to understand why do we need to be in the community. So, I'm just going to play this for a moment. [Video] >>I'm at the orientation and mobility department for the Arkansas School for the Blind and visually impaired. We would like you to have a better understanding of travelers who are blind and visually impaired and to show you the importance of an exhaustive O&M program, natural settings. >>Chris: His phrase right there was "natural setting." And natural settings is in the actual environment. We're not trying to blindfold in the gym so that we can get an experience of what it's like to travel at night. Wherever possible, we want to actually be out in that condition to see what it's like. Because it is different when we have headlights with glare. It is different the way sounds travel. It is different how much vehicles can see us, so having those opportunities to teach in the natural setting is necessary for a full development of skills and concepts for our students. Okay. Just some other resources here. This is taken from the -- I've got resources from different states, like this one is Maryland. California, Texas -- I'm blanking on where some of the other ones are at the moment. It's not meant to be just all Texas-centric. This is happening all over the country. There are different places you can get information from. So, this is something that's included from the division of early intervention and special education services. It's a technical assistance bulletin that's all about O&M. There is information about how we do evaluations that includes the school, home, and community, different levels of lighting. But this is permission for transportation for an O&M assessment and instruction. This is a clear indication that one state believes that this should be occurring away from the school, because we have to have the ability to train using public transportation. We have to have the ability to train in environments that are varied. Not everyone will live in a downtown environment. Not everyone will live in a rural environment and sometimes we need to mesh those together to prepare the student for whatever is next. We can come back to some of these but it talks about, again, what is O&M. What might we be looking at such as the last bullet item here, various forms of public transportation. Taxi, Uber, public bus, light rail, subway, paratransit. If in your state, district, or your specific school you don't have the understanding of what needs to happen in the best interest of the students, I encourage you to take some of these tools, even if they're from other states, and make them your own. They've already done the groundwork. You just kind of have to mesh it to be matching what your particular needs are in your area. >>Kaycee: This is Kaycee. You have a question. It says which state is this permission to transport from? >>Chris: This is from the Maryland State Department of Education. It's from the State of Maryland, and we'll get to a couple other states as well. You can download this from the link or you can just do a Google search for it. Just different resources. Some of these I have, just because I have worked in different states or sometimes people share things with me from other states that say, hey, this is what's happening in our neck of the woods. Thank you, Kaycee. This next document comes from Texas. This is the 2020 guidelines and standards for educating students with visual impairments in Texas. Many states have their own guidelines and standards. Sometimes they might look incredibly similar because somebody used one that was developed as their foundation and then adapted it to match their state. So, you don't have to start from scratch, you can use somebody else's or a combination of different states that you like to develop ones that work for where you are. There are different perspectives around the country but you can certainly use those core foundation needs of being able to provide instruction, assessment, or evaluation in the school, home, and the community. Making sure that we are preparing students for what comes next in terms of their employment, their work life, and living independently. That's what we are tasked to do in the federal law. So, lots of resources here within this document. I'm not going to go through them at the moment but we can come back to it. But it does talk about the Expanded Core Curriculum, it talks about the role of the orientation and mobility specialist. It talks about encouraging students to be out in the community, to be able to prepare them for what comes after. Our job is not just to focus on today, it's to help them prepare for what's next. Because we know that they're going to age out of our program or graduate out of our program. We want them to have the skills that will help them to be as independent and successful as they can be in adult life, and that's what we're really working toward. >>Kaycee: Chris, this is Kaycee again. We have a couple of comments. >>Chris: Okay. >>Kaycee: Someone shared that their school district does not allow students to be transported in personal cars. >>Chris: Okay. >>Kaycee: And then someone else shared that their favorite tool to support the need for off-campus travel is the career, college and community readiness standards that clearly shows where the learning and experiences would stop if off-campus travel is not allowed. She believes it's somewhere around first or second grade. >>Chris: Thank you. Very helpful. The college, career, and community readiness standards are going to be published and in a hard copy. At the moment, I don't know where you can obtain the hard copy but you can do a Google search for college -- career, college, and community readiness, or CCC. Paths to literacy. It's in the LiveBinders, and we'll get to that as well. But it's a wonderful tool that shows you -- I think it starts at 24 months all the way up to 21, 22. What do we need to be doing at each age in order to have our young people be successful. This isn't a tool that's for everyone. This is for our future presidents, we'll say. This is for students who are at a traditional academic level with their peers. I'm not going to say that it matches for all of our students who have multiple disabilities and some profound needs, but if we're looking at our typically-developing student who is at -- on level with their age-matched peers, this is an ideal tool to help to advocate for what do they need to have at each age in order to be capable, competent, successful adults. In terms of not allowing students to be transported in personal cars, that's something that happens in lots of places. What's important to know is that we have different options. I can transport a student in my own car if -- and these are just -- some of it is suggestions, some of it is caveats. It's going to depend on your employer or whoever is funding the training. There are some places where they will provide a stipend for me so that I can add on an additional rider on to my personal insurance. Basically, like a realtor takes -- transportation is not a realtor's job but they will transport clients from one house to another to another while they're conducting their real estate business. You are not a transportation provider, like an Uber driver, but you may be bringing student or client from one place to another to another for training. It's not the sole purpose of your job but it's a component of it. There are some people who feel very uncomfortable with that. I don't want to ever put a student in my car because there's a lot of liability there. That's where you have other options such as having the school or the district provide transportation for you. They might give you a district vehicle. They might give you the ability to reach out to their own transportation services. So, some schools have like a fleet of Suburbans so that they can get students to different locations. They might require you to complete a certain driving course. They might say we need to actually drive you and the student. They might say we need to schedule a bus. There are even times when they won't do anything. They won't help you in any way, shape, or form. Those are the times I have to reach out to a parent and say I have done all my best work trying to educate and advocate but we're still meeting some brick walls in being able to move forward. Would you be willing to bring your child to XYZ location so that we can work from there? So, we can collaborate together to find ways to get students to where they need to be, regardless of what the rules are. We just have to work collaboratively. Hopefully the school would be open to the parent providing that transportation. It's not ideal but it's one way to do that. It could also be that you are asking the student's parent, when you guys are going to go to the grocery store, can I meet you there, something like that. There's different ways we can get into the community with students that's beyond walking distance from the school. Okay. And there's a comment here. You can drive the school van or a small bus to transport kiddos. Sometimes it takes lots of preplanning because you have to call the transportation department. They have to make a reservation. Just like if you were planning a trip for the whole football team, but just for one student. It's just the way it is sometimes. I'm going to show you some options of ways that things can happen. I don't have a magic wand. It all takes time and when you have a new administrator come in, you have to start from square one helping them understand what it is that you do, because it's not typical. We are just one grain of sand on a whole big beach of students. And then even more so, we're unique within unique in terms of special education because our needs are very different. I'm going to jump back to sharing. Quite a few things here. Okay. So, this is -- again, we talked about natural environments. This is another group. This is recently revised from Donna and Dr. Zimmerman that advocates for having students in the place that they are actually needing to learn so that they have the real experience of what it's like to travel there. So, this is, again, just if there were a lawsuit from a parent or anyone questioned why you were doing or not doing something, this is the type of information that would be brought up in a court of law. Because this is a professional opinion from a group of experts. And somebody would say, well, why didn't you teach in the natural environment? And this is what would come out. What's important, if you are a COMS, we've got some NOMCs, some COMS, some in states that do not require certification, but if you are a COMS I have to function within a Code of Ethics. That's something else you can use to educate and advocate with your administrators to help them to understand why you make the choices or recommendations that you do, because these umbrellas of rules, for lack of a better way to put it, and guidelines so we are matching or aligning our practice with the Code of Ethics, as well as best practice in the field. And so, we've got reasons or bullet points for why we teach in the natural environment that are talking points for you. And this document basically develops those ideas. It talks about ACVREP and the COMS and why there are some things that we need to be doing in terms of our scope of practice. And if we're not meeting that scope of practice, that's something that we are professionally supposed to do. We can't expect that because my employer told me not to is any reason not to uphold the Code of Ethics. That's something where your certification could be revoked if we're not functioning within the Code of Ethics. If you know you're supposed to be providing something for a student and you're not being allowed to, we have to help the employer, the administrator to understand why we need to be doing those things and what the impact could be. Because if your certification is revoked, your employer can't bring it back. Then we have to change jobs or careers. Sorry. Not trying to scare everybody but that's the reality. Sorry. Opened the wrong one. Code of Ethics is here, if you would like to read it or if you would like to share it. This is the most recent Code of Ethics. It's changed in the last couple of years. We now have things that we didn't have before, like remote instruction. So, they're beginning to be included. There's not much in here on that but things like role release and remote learning, there's going to be issues about that that may come up. And here's some policy guidance from the Department of Education. And this is -- scroll a little bit -- this is about educating blind and visually impaired students. And it talks again about the importance of why we need to be instructing them to prepare them for what comes next. Again, this is the office of special education and rehabilitation services from the U.S. Department of Education. It's not your opinion, it's actually what we're required to do. And so, this is also tied with the Department of Justice. We need to be following these laws. We need to be making sure that we are doing what is asked of us in different places. So just going to read this part here. Including those with other disabilities who need orientation and mobility to receive appropriate instruction in orientation and mobility as early as possible. Providing these children with needed orientation and mobility services at the appropriate time increases the likelihood that they can participate meaningfully in a variety of aspects of their schooling, including academic, non-academic, and extracurricular activities. Once these individuals are no longer in school, their use of acquired orientation and mobility skills should greatly enhance their ability to move around independently in a variety of educational, employment, and community settings. So, we're at that same list being repeated again and again and again. That's why we do school. We prepare young people for what comes next. That's also true of O&M. It just looks different for O&M than many of our typically-developing students or those who do not have visual impairment and blindness. Okay. So sometimes people might say to you, well, do they really need this. Is it affecting their educational performance, which is kind of when we decide what it is that makes a student eligible for special education, eligible for related services, we need to consider what is educational performance. That phrase might sound like academic performance, but it's bigger. Academic performance is just one part of educational performance. Educational performance also includes functional ability, which is where our O&M comes in. We talk about concepts and degrees and geometry of intersections. We're not academic, we're functional. But within the quote, unquote educational performance statement, functional is included. So, we're kind of pulling apart or teasing hairs here. We're splitting the hairs but that's what happens in a court of law. We need people to understand that O&M is necessary in order for things to move forward. It is part of that student's educational performance. It's not their academic performance, but it is part of the larger umbrella of educational performance. There are other ways of understanding what that adversely affecting educational performance means. This one -- I'm just going to open this up for a second. It opens in a separate page. We're getting much more into detail from a legal perspective. And so, we've got some abstracts here from folks who study the law. And what exactly is a child with a disability, how do we define that. When we talk about adversely affects and educational performance, they're not specifically defined in IDEA so it gets fleshed out in a court of law. And that's what all of these documents help is to expand the understanding of what do we mean by adversely affects educational performance. What does that include? >>Kaycee: We have got a question here, Chris. Lindsey asked would you be willing to share a personal example of when you had to convince a decision maker about off-campus O&M for a student? >>Chris: So, I've been very fortunate that when I educate or work with -- I don't have a caseload of students right now. When I work in summer, I work for the School for the Blind, so I don't have to convince everybody. They already believe it. That's easy. When I've been an itinerant teacher, that's when I had to advocate, educate. Because people on the team didn't understand. So, I had to address concerns about liability. In my present role, the specific examples are -- I'm just going to give you some experiences that have happened in Texas. Someone hearing that they couldn't go out with their student when it was hotter than 90 degrees. But it's Texas. The first year I got to Texas, there were over 100 days over 100 degrees. And her response to the administrator was if the football team can practice when it's over 90 degrees, why can my student not go out? There are others that are prevented from being able to go. I'm going to show you an example from the law. But I've been very fortunate when I include people in my planning, it's less that I have to do in terms of helping people to understand why they need to do that. There have been times when they don't want a student to go. It's typically because of liability concerns. I'm going to show you another example that's from California law that was just recently passed. Okay. So, the California law -- I'm just going to read this. Legislative counsel's digest. This was from a group in California who used the Texas model of the O&M law and ECC law to help move things forward because they were having challenges. It says -- I'm just going to read here. Existing law establishes a right of individuals with exceptional needs to receive a free appropriate public education and ensures the right to special instruction and related services needed to meet their unique needs in conformity with the federal law. Existing law provides for individualized educational programs for blind, low vision, and visually impaired pupils as defined. This would address relating to the need for blind or visually impaired pupils to receive instruction in the Expanded Core Curriculum. The bill would authorize school districts and charter schools to consider elements of the Expanded Core Curriculum when developing IEPs for a pupil who is blind or visually impaired. The bill, if an orientation and mobility evaluation is needed for a pupil who is blind or visually impaired would require that these evaluations be conducted by appropriately certified services. Then it says -- let's see. This is about the cost. I'm skipping down to the next part here. In order for pupils who are blind or visually impaired to receive an education that will enable them to maximize their potential, it is essential that these pupils receive instruction in the Expanded Core Curriculum. Sorry. Currently pupils -- I'm on item 3 here. Pupils with vision loss seldom receive evaluation and instruction in the ECC. Skipping a little further. School districts impose restrictions that have impact of precluding adequate instruction from being provided. One of the restrictions that creates serious problems for the provision of ECC instruction is the limitation of instruction to school hours. Often the need for academic instruction as well as the need for extended hours of service, such as Braille, technology, and orientation and mobility precludes providing adequate ECC services during the day. The provision of orientation and mobility services, used to teach individuals with vision loss how to navigate around and travel in their homes, schools, and communities is a prime example of an area in which school district restrictions have led to the preclusion or limitation of the ability to provide services. School districts and county offices of education have, with increasing frequency, been imposing restrictions on the provision of services that often make it difficult, if not impossible, for orientation and mobility specialists to provide these services to pupils. These restrictions include but are not limited to prohibiting services before or after the regular school hours and prohibiting off-campus services or limiting the area in which services can be provided to within a few blocks of the campus. Therefore, it is the intent of the legislature to enact legislation to ensure that pupils with visual impairment receive the services that they need to receive a free and appropriate public education. I don't know if I answered your question or danced around it so let me come back real quick. Lindsey, did that help? Personal experience is that I have to sit down with someone and show them the laws. When an entire state, like California, has to write in their legislation that there is restrictions that they have to make it that obvious, helps to demonstrate we have a big challenge. If the legislature has to mandate and basically -- I'm going to say scold the districts in law, that's pretty significant. But it's not easy to move as far as California did. It takes a lot of coordinated effort from professionals to reach out to people who are willing to write the legislation, introduce the legislation, to support the legislation. It's a multi-year process. Hopefully you don't have to go through all that. Hopefully you can have those conversations early on so that -- I'll give you an example. As an itinerant student in California or Connecticut or different places around the country, I have to jump from school to school to school. I am there for five minutes. I go in, I get the student, I leave. No one really knows me because I'm outside with the student or I'm traveling inside the school building away from the classroom. So, the teacher has very little knowledge of what we're doing, because we're doing it away from her or him. The principal probably is occupied in other things. If I don't help them to understand what O&M is, then when we go to do other things, they're not going to understand how is this not a field trip. How is this different than that? Why are you doing this every day, every week, every whatever. So, I have to include them ahead of time in understanding what we're doing so that they're more willing to allow us to do those activities. As a male, I'm often -- I could be followed by the police following a young lady because I look like I'm a stalker. If I don't wear my badge or a hat that says O&M instructor or something, I have to explain that. I'm glad that people are paying attention and watching but there's lots of things we do in O&M that are outside the norm. Why would a 50-year-old man be following a teenage young lady? It just doesn't seem right. So, we have to help people to understand if the police called the school, I want them to know what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. If they say, no, we have no idea, I've made things really awkward. I'm stretching the examples here. It's so important that ahead of time we begin to have those conversations. We begin to develop relationships. But it can't be a one and done because the administrators of the schools get other positions. You have to start over again. You need to have kind of a toolkit that is your own education and advocacy toolkit that you can pull out whenever somebody questions why do you need to do this or just puts in a hard line that says, no, you can't. And if you say, why? They say, well, we've never done it. You have to help them to make that jump into a place they've never been because they may never have had a student who is blind or low vision at their school. They may never have had a student who have had the ability to go off campus before. This might be a whole new realm for them. I'm going to jump back to sharing. Okay. So that's from -- that happened to be the last item in this tab. The California O&M Law. There's lots and lots of resources that are here. There's a position paper on individual and group lessons. Let me jump to the next tab. This is just some tools that may help you in your advocacy. So, we've got -- this is a walking field trip. I didn't write all these. They're just examples that you might use. Make them your own. So, this is a walking trip permission. Sometimes community-based instruction, AKA field trip, might be what helps people to understand why you need to leave campus. Well, we need to go into the community to learn concepts. That's what community-based instruction is all about. But it's basically who you are, where you're going to go, and getting permission. You have the parent sign off on it. You have the teacher sign off on it. You may also need a separate line for an administrator to sign off on it. Another example, this is from TSBVI. This is a -- what's called a mobility card. Some schools for the blind, because we are functioning in the supervisory capacity of a proxy parent, when the student is staying residentially at the school, we need to make sure that parents are comfortable with students being able to be off campus alone for different periods of time. We need to be able to make sure that that student has demonstrated the ability to do so. There are different levels where green card would be full privileges anywhere in Austin. A white card, the O&M might say, well, they can get to Starbucks and they can get to the Walgreens using these specific routes. Or the red card, they can go but they have to be with another student who has a higher level of independence. So, it's kind of a hybrid. They are being supported being independent in the community. Not all by themselves but by someone who has demonstrated the community. It's like you have permission to go into the deep end of the pool. Before you have demonstrated your skills, you have to stay in the shallow end of the pool. We want them to practice in the real world but we want to make sure they're able to do that, demonstrate safety first. There are certain conditions. It might be only different daylight times, it might only be during reasonable weather. Are they going to be allowed to use public transportation? Must they carry a cane? Lots of different things. Then you can put in their medical conditions, special requirements. There's a letter that goes home to parents, which we'll get to, that describes what that is. This is an example of the parent letter. This isn't on current letter head, I apologize, it's from year ago. But it's basically a letter to parents to say here's what's happening. Here's why we encourage your young person to begin practicing their skills in the community, even when an orientation and mobility specialist is not present. Our job as O&Ms is to work ourselves out of a job. We want that student to be traveling so independently they don't need us. That's the ideal. For short trips, that might be something that they've demonstrated the ability to get to their favorite, I don't know, taco place, fast food restaurant independently. It may require street crossings, it may not. It might be they're just walking around the block. You have to have a student who is willing to follow the rules and there's consequences, which are outlined. So, there's lots of different ways of perceiving this. These are just some samples of ways that it's been done. There's also the letter in Spanish, if that's helpful. This is another way of looking at how to begin this process. There's three different levels here from the Maryland School for the Blind. One is for the highest level of independence. One's for kind of our students in the middle, and one's for those who are beginning. I'm going to read some of these examples to give you an idea what the parent might be considering. You may also want to be working this through your administrators to make sure that they are comfortable with this. Often administrators are very comfortable if the parent is comfortable because it's basically the parent is saying I release you from liability. You've made me aware. I'm in full favor of my child being able to practice their skills in the community, because that's what they're going to need to do when they get to college. Because you're not going with them to college. So, your son or daughter is ready for that phase of O&M instruction, which will assist him or her in becoming a safe independent traveler on campus and in the community. Instruction will be given in crossing residential and traffic light-controlled streets, using public transportation, and experiencing a complete scope of community travel opportunities. Additionally, your child may be working on obtaining a campus pass and/or elevator pass so that he or she can travel independently without supervision. So, this one isn't about off-campus permission, like the TSBVI one. This is about the instruction we're going to do this year will include off-campus activities. But they may also be traveling without supervision on the campus. Lots of different ways of perceiving different things but it talks about the rationale for that. It talks about how much supervision there could be. I'm going to go on to the next one. This one is the same basic concept but the wording is different because we have a different level of student. So, in this one we're going to say during this training, instruction will be provided which exposes your child to indoor and outdoor off-campus community environments. Under the direct supervision of the O&M instructor, all safety precautions will be observed to safeguard your child. At all times during instruction, an O&M instructor will be present. This one we're not talking about the student being independent anywhere. Then there's also a note that by signing this O&M parent permission form you are granting approval for your child to ride in the O&M instructor's car when going off campus. It doesn't have to be there. You could take something like this and make your own permission for whatever you are suggesting that a student do that the administration is also comfortable with. If they say we're not comfortable with you going off campus, that's when we have to go back to the federal guidelines to say right here in IDEA and OSERS it's giving us specific instructions that we are to provide education in the school, the home, and the community to prepare the student for what comes next after school. And then the beginning level, in this particular case, it just says that they primarily are receiving instruction on the campus and that there may be times when he or she may receive instruction off campus in the community or their home area. It says, for example a special holiday lesson or a home visit. Or opening up the window for those things to occur but we're also helping the parent to understand with this child. So, this might be -- let's just say this this is a second-grader. We're not going to send them out in an Uber on their own. They might have the cognitive ability to do that but it's not age appropriate. So, this letter is just basically saying this school year or from this IEP forward until the next one, this is kind of the level of independence we're talking about. And then if you are working with bus drivers, there's another one here that's a bus driver information tool that helps to educate bus drivers so that we are looking for aligning what the students need. I'm sorry that this particular form says sighted guide instead of human guide. I would prefer it say guide technique or human guide, but that's how the form came. You can make your own just taking examples from what's provided. I'm going to stop sharing for a moment and come back and see. Okay. We've got dangerous words, because we have always done it that way. Oh, yes. It's important for us all to be willing to change and to be willing to try new things based on what our students need and that as well goes for our administrators, parents. They're not easy discussions but they're important. We can use other resources, like the book Finding Wheels that helps to give examples of the type of transportation that will be needed by young adults, whether they are vocational, whether they are functioning in just their own community in kind of a day hab program or whether they are going to be going off independently to post-secondary education in whole other state. Those discussions are terrific for families to have. You can do that in a -- during your consultation time with the family. You can do it during an IEP meeting. We can also include some of that with the administrators to help them understand what we are suggesting to the parent so that they can begin to, in their mind, figure out how they're going to make sense of the liability that's included in that. We can also connect one administrator, who is willing, who has moved forward, with another administrator so that they can speak administrator language to one another to understand this is how I came to terms with it. This is the group of resources that I used to address the liability. Because they have things that they deal with that are beyond my comprehension. They have lots of rules and policies and school boards to contend with that I don't. Does anybody have questions, comments, thoughts? Okay. I guess everybody's feeling comfortable. The next question is is there anyone who has specific challenges that you're experiencing in not being able to go off campus? Or not being able to visit the family at home. Or not being able to visit places that have public transportation. Well, I'm guessing you all have got it. I'm so happy. I wish I could work toward the California law. There is a huge difference in Michigan from county to county to what is allowed. So, yes, the state law can be very helpful and there's actually an article in JVIB that describes their process. It shows you the map of what they had to do to get the legislation entered and accepted to be able to make it law. Just because something becomes law doesn't mean that it's instantly better. We still, even in Texas, though we have laws, we still have to advocate and educate with administrators who are resistant, even though we have had laws in place for years. People still -- we're just not really on most people's radar. We function off the grid because we are so small. Let's see. The next one from Dawn. I was told there is no funding for trips. Okay. If there's no funding for trips, there are different ways of addressing that. Sometimes we are working with the parents. Sometimes we're working with a local group, like the Lion's Club. Sometimes administrators will say, no, I don't want outside funding, and that's enough to motivate them to find funding for you. But there are philanthropic organizations, like the Lion's Club, that will help you do things. In Texas we have Education Service Centers and places like, there's an educator bank called A plus federal credit union that will offer grants for teachers so you can do an ECC grant to get money to go to lunch in the community with your student. Ricky Lynne can share that in Michigan they were able to find enough money to have students to get to one airport to fly to another airport in the state so that they had the ability to teach students what it was like to be in an airport but also fly in a plane. That became an activity for them and that's through a community of orientation and mobility specialists. Those learning communities are just awesome. Marissa says I'm having a hard time getting permission to use Uber and Lyft due to it not being considered public transportation according to my district. What I would encourage you to do is use something like finding wheels, where it talks about the use of transportation network companies, which is the generic for Uber and Lyft. What we have been able to do in some cases at TSBVI is to use different types of funding. We're going to be doing a program called city travel where students will receive a gift card. The gift card is something that they can then put on their personal smartphone to pay for Uber and Lyft. Sometimes parents will say I'll take care of the funding, you just go on the lessons. So, there's lots of different ways to do this. And if anybody needs specific advice on one particular question, please feel free to reach out and I can share other places that things have happened. Marissa, I don't know what the grant is called but perhaps Ricki Lynne would. The one from A plus federal credit union is just an educator grant. Leticia says love the advice of having an administrator communicate with another administrator of how things are working out for them. It just works. They speak each other's language and sometimes there's competition. If you figured out how to do that, maybe I can do that too. They work very well together. Other questions or ideas? Challenges? Okay. Well, the resources are there. Feel free to use them. If you're still looking for something, e-mail me at any point. I'm going to put my e-mail in the chat and you can reach out any time. That's what they pay me for. Thank you, Kaycee for putting the links in for the LiveBinders, and feel free to share the LiveBinders with anybody, whether they're administrators, parents, or other O&Ms. [end of transcript]