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Transcript of 12/8/16 AEDY Webinar:Formal Periodic Reviews

Ryan Korn: [inaudible 00:00:04] to start our webinar on periodic review forms and periodic reviews. Today we're going to go over that entire process of formal periodic reviews as well as give you guys some insight into what we've been finding in the field as far as any difficulties anyone is having. To start off the webinar, we want to let you know that we do have the review form that was created by the team that's in draft format for you to be able to use to create your own or pull from it some things that you might like. We did try to upload this to the webinar, however, we were having some difficulties, so John Esposito has put it on the screen to share with you guys and if you would like to have a copy of it following this webinar, please just shoot me an email. Now, just to make sure we're hearing everyone, can we get a show of hands that everyone is hearing me right now? All right, it looks like the majority of people are hearing me. Okay.

So, to start things off, I wanted to let you guys know and many of you are already aware that according to the Pennsylvania School Code, formal periodic reviews are to occur at minimum once every semester. And with that understanding, this is one of the areas that we've seen some slight issues when we've gone to do site visits. So the law is not written really well. To understand it, you need to realize that the issue that we're having is that with it being every semester, if you have a student enrolled in the program on January 12th and the semester ends on the 18th, you have to do a formal periodic review, even though the student's only been in the program for five days. Now, with the understanding that ... And we understand that when you do a review for a student that's only been in the program for five days, that review very well might say that you could not determine the student's progress towards their behavioral goals because the student has only been in the program for five days.

So, we understand that it's a glitch in the way the law's written, however, when we do our site visits, we need to make sure that there is a review that is documented on a formal periodic review form in every student file at least once every semester.

Now there are many programs that go above and beyond and have reviews on a more frequent basis, which is perfectly fine. We've also seen some programs where they do reviews every 45 days. And I agree that, if I could change the law, I would probably have it determined on a length of stay piece, like every 45 days, however, if you're doing that, you also need to take into consideration that piece that says once every semester. Because if the semester is ending before that 45 day period would come up for you guys as a trigger for a review, you need to make sure that you conduct a formal periodic review before the semester ends and have it documented on the form.

Now, with that being said, I wanted to kind of roll through and explain the process and what the point of the formal periodic review is. Now, again many of you know and have heard or have heard from us throughout our trainings, a formal periodic review is the point in time in which you're going to review a student's progress towards their behavioral goals. Now during this review, we also want you reviewing academic

progress. We also want you reviewing student attendance because these things are important. And students need to maintain progress towards graduation. But the basic aspect of the review is that you're going to see has the student met their behavioral goals. Those behavioral goals are based on the student's reason for placement. So if the student meets their goals, the end of that review should have a summary that the student has met their behavioral goals and has been determined to transition back to regular education setting.

Now, in that ... At that point of the review is where you want to start to identify that transition plan. Additionally, you could also have that review where the student has not met their behavioral goals and you would indicate that. The issue we many times see is that we'll go through, looking at a student's formal periodic review form and throughout it, we see zero behavioral incidents. The student's making progress towards goals. Then at the time review, in that conclusion or summary section or the recommendation section, it states that the student will remain in placement. If you look at just that document in itself, it would be violating the AEDY statute because when a student meets their goals, they're ready to return. Now, we understand that there's sometimes circumstances. For instance, if a student meets their goals, they might still be in the program because you're doing a transition plan that's only a couple days a week or every other week. You need to articulate that in there so that when we come to do a site visit or somebody else reviews this, it makes sense why the student might be in the program at that moment because your transition plan might be scheduled out for four weeks. It's really important that this form has a conclusion that the end that justifies what's in the review. Whether the student's meeting goals or not meeting goals.

Essentially, it needs to tell the story of what occurred in that meeting. Now, we also get questions on who should attend the reviews. Now, obviously the student should be there. And if the student's absent that day, best practice would be to reschedule that. You should have it when the student's in the program and you can have the review with them. Parent and guardians should be invited. Again, we understand you cannot force a parent or a guardian to show up to any meetings at all, but you should invite them and have that due diligence of trying to provide that to them. The other people that should be involved is AEDY staff, obviously, because you guys have the insight as to the student's progress towards their goals. And the last bit being a school representative. Because if a student has met their goals and you guys are going to discuss transition planning at that meeting, the school should be there to be able to inform the team as to what is attainable in the school, what transition plan is actually viable option. Every school district has different limitations with regards to transportation and other issues. So you want that school rep to be there to be able to say, "Okay. That's a realistic transition plan", or it's not. And having that person there can really help make that meeting a lot of more functional in that sense.

Now, once we've gone into the review, what I wanted to show you guys in our review form ... And again, this is not something you have to have. But, looking at the top of it, it has your basic demographic information. But one of the things that we say you have to have is the reason for placement. And the reason that you want that is you want to continue to reframe every meeting with the team that you're meeting with to remind them of what we're discussing and why we're here, and the reason we're here is

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because John Esposito brought drugs to school. And then you're going to look at their behavioral goals to see if he's made progress and is ready to return.

Now, we also have other sections in here that are not required. For instance, the last review. We always thought it would be a good friendly reminder of "Okay, what was the result of our last review, if we had any?" What current interventions ... again, this is not a mandatory section but is helpful.

Now, there's the academic review. And again, like we said earlier, we want you to review students' grades, we want you to review their attendance. And for now, unless they're place for truancy, they can't be held in a program for lack of attendance and we know that we can't hold kids because they haven't been meeting certain grades in their coursework, or completing certain coursework. But we want you to review that in the meeting because it is important. The code states that you need to make sure that kids are making progress towards graduation, so we want to make sure that we're reviewing this.

The big part comes here, in the behavioral goal review. Again, it doesn't need to look like this as long as you have some section that's documenting that you reviewed the goals and then whether or not the student's meeting the goals. But this section has to be in the review because this is the core of what you're reviewing in these periodic reviews.

Now, we've added sections to have behavioral reports so that you can discuss other incidents or behavioral issues that are going on in the program. We also have an entire section which I have always found very helpful, even in my days working in case management and social work, to have input sections from everyone so that you actually at least offer the opportunity for everyone on the team, including the student, the parent, guardian, school district, AEDY program to lay it out there as to what your input is with regards to the student's progress.

This is the big section that we're talking about with that recommendation or explanation. The format doesn't have to be the same, but at the end of a formal periodic review, we need to know if ... Is the student remaining in the program? Is the student transitioning back? And then what that looks like and what the reason for it is, and that's why it says "explanation." So, if the students are remaining in the program, we need to know why. Is it because they haven't met goals one, four and five, which state this, this and this, and here's the behaviors that we've seen and that's why they haven't met their goal. Or, the student has met their goals and they're going to transition and here's what the transition's going to look like.

Now, like we said earlier, a formal periodic review can occur at any point but it needs to be at least once a semester. So, if you have a kid that, two months in, is doing really well but you don't have the review scheduled for another month, you can certainly have that review at any point and determine that the student's met their goals and is ready to transition back and that's really what we want to get at when we're looking at these.


Like I said earlier, when we're doing site visits, what we're looking for is we look at the student's date of placement. And then, when we're looking at the review section, the formal periodic reviews, we're seeing, has the student received a review every semester? And then what we look at is, in those reviews, has the student met their goals? And if they have, what's the transition plan?

And like I said, the issues that we've been finding is that we don't see reviews every semester in the file. We also have issues that we run into that the student is doing well, behaviorally, however they're going to remain in the program. We also have situations where there's not a lot of documentation and even reading it, we couldn't determine if the student was or was not meeting goals, or we couldn't determine what the outcome of the meeting was. And so we run into a lot of issues that end up being improvements that we need to work on with the school districts, so that's why we wanted to talk to them about it today.

I've got a couple questions that popped up. "Does expulsion from school trump a student meeting their goals?" And that's a great question. I know during one of our last webinars where we discussed behavioral goal planning, and we also talk about it during our trainings. When you have a student that is expelled, what we've been instructing programs to do in order to avoid a rock and a hard place is to create an expulsion goal in the student's behavioral goals.

So, if a student is expelled on January 3rd and they cannot return until January 3rd, 2017, they're going to have a goal that the student must meet the requirements of their expulsion that will end on January 3rd, 2017. The reason being is if we don't have that and the student meets their goals, Pennsylvania law says that the student must return to the school setting. However, the school board's expelled the student, so it's again, like I said, a rock and a hard place. Adding that expulsion goal helps to take care of those issues.

With that being said, please make sure that when you're reviewing your expulsions, the expulsion itself can't hold the kid in AEDY programming if there's parts of the expulsion that require academic performance or attendance and they're not placed for truancy, or there's community service or other pieces, which I know are involved in expulsion hearings. They can't violate the law, which states that the student needs to work towards behavioral goals. So, we need to make sure that we're looking at that when we're saying it. Or the goal could be the part that takes care of it in saying that the student must meet the requirements of their ... The behavioral aspects within their expulsion that end in January 3rd, 2017.

Now, the other thing that we do encourage and it is best practice is that many schools have the ability to, if a student's doing well four or five months into that one year expulsion, that the student could appeal to the school board and have them look at their progress and determine that they could return early and that would be best practice. But we want to make sure that we add that expulsion goal to help take care of that issue.


As far as a printout of what's available on the screen, said in the beginning, just letting you guys know, we tried to upload it. Please shoot us an email, we will give you a copy of it. When we tried to attach it to this webinar, it would not let us attach it for whatever reason. So, we have the screenshot up here, please shoot us an email, I'll gladly send it to you without issue.

Alright, and what I'm going to do is send everyone my email right now, so that everyone has it.

John Esposito: Mine too.

Ryan Korn: And then John Esposito's going to send his as well. You can email either of us and we can help take care of that for you.

"Does the AEDY program set up the review meetings or does the review need to be set up by the school?" I would ... There's no rule that says who needs to set up the meeting. Typically it's the AEDY program that sets it up because they're the ones working with the student day in and day out. However, it really doesn't matter on our end as far as who sets up the review, but we should have representatives from both the LEA and the AEDY program there, because, again, the AEDY program's going to help to determine the student's progress, but the school's going to be there with regards to determine the student's readiness and also setting up a transition plan, if that's applicable.

Okay, so the only other questions we have is with regards to getting the form, but like I said, please shoot us an email. We're not putting the form on the PDE website, because it's a draft and we're leaving it in draft format so that you guys can alter the form and pull from it what you need.

So, the next question, "What if a student, parent, district and AEDY placement agree that staying in the placement will be in the better option for the student because there's a reason to believe they won't be successful to return?" So, unfortunately, the way the law is written is that when a student meets the behavioral goals, they must begin their transition. They must return to the regular education setting. AEDY programming is different than any other alternative education programming in Pennsylvania, in that AEDY is a disciplinary-based placement that is involuntary. So, you cannot voluntarily choose to go to it or stay in the program.

Now, without going truly deep into it, if a student is doing well in the program and everyone's apprehensive about how it's going to go when they return, that's why we want to do that transition plan. And for that student, it might be a slower transition where it might take three or four weeks or even two months to do a transition, where you start with a period a day or one day a week or you start with extracurriculars. You want to kind of dip their toes in and see what potential issues you might be running into.

The other thing to consider is that AEDY is an extremely supportive setting and, essentially, the students ... We're creating a bubble for these students and we don't


want to ... What we want to do is prepare them for the real world, whether it's to be career ready or higher education ready. And if we don't push them outside that comfort zone and try to encourage them to reintegrate back into that regular education setting, they're not going to develop the skills that they need to do in order to be successful in those settings.

Now, what you need to recognize is that, again, like I said, they have to begin that transition, but that transition plan should be individualized to meet that student's needs and we want to make sure it can be as fast or as slow as possible, but it still needs to happen and it still needs to have progress. Now, if you try a transition plan and it doesn't go well, we can certainly take a step back and try to bring the student back into the program full time, have a meeting, discuss what went well, what didn't go well and devise a new transition plan.

We have some other questions popping up.

John Esposito: Ignore it. Email address.

Ryan Korn: The email address didn't show up? Alright, well, what we can do before we end the session is pull that up in a Word document and put it on the screen for everyone to copy. Alright.

Are we able to update or change goals during the periodic review meeting? So, yes, we can certainly look at changing or updating goals. We don't want to have an endless carrot for the student to keep chasing, however, if new behaviors pop up or the team feels that there's additional things the student needs to work on, we can change those goals. However, like I said, we don't want to just keep moving the carrot to keep a kid in a program. The goal would be for the student to have that reformation or the restoration where they've actually met their goals and are ready to go back.

Now, when I worked in social work, what we used to do is have larger, overarching goals that we wanted our kids to meet and then when we would set smaller milestones or sub goals below those, where the student would ... So, for instance, when we were working even on medication and we had someone that was refusing us all the time, we would have an ultimate goal that the youth would take their medication 100% of the time or take their medication all the time, but the sub goals were that for two weeks, the student, the child would take their medication 50% of the time. And then when they met that goal, we'd bump it to 75. And then when they met that, we'd bump it to 100.

So, there's a lot of different ways you can set it up and if you'd like to discuss goal planning, I've done this for years working with DHS and OMSHAS and creating good measurable goals. So, please just give me a call and I'll certainly help you out with it, but the bottom line is yes, goals can change. They can move. We just want to make sure that they're still based on the student's reason for placement and if new behaviors come up and we need to add a reason for placement, we need to document the interventions, document an informal hearing and add that to their referral as a reason for placement, and then we can add those additional goals. Okay.


"Can you adjust students' goals during their time in the program and is legitimate to consider what their goals may be on day one in the AEDY program might change as it progresses." And yes, the other understanding that we have with goals changing is that if a program, or even a school district, if you'd just met a kid and they've only been in your school for two weeks before they commit an offense that ends up in placement, it might take a couple weeks to get to know them and find out what the true reason why the student committed a behavior ... So, yes, we can certainly see goals change. Again, we want to make sure that they are based on the student's reason for placement, that they're measurable and individualized and attainable. And then that pretty much leaves a lot open as far as what you want to have the kid work on.

Okay. To clarify, an IEP team cannot make the decision to keep a child in AEDY after successful completion of the goals. So, essentially, like I said, it falls back on the way the law's written and the law states that the student needs to return when they've met their goals, when they've reformed. And an IEP team can't violate law and state that the student needs to stay because it's in their best interests.

So, I know that the ... Not even something that necessarily our team agrees with, with how the law's written, that if a student's doing well, okay, now we have to take them out of that setting they're doing well in and put them back in a setting that they didn't do well in. If you're in an AEDY setting, especially in an IEP session where you found that that small classroom setting, the supports that were in place in that AEDY program and everything that goes along with it is why the student's being successful, then I would consider looking at a private academic school that can mirror that ability. Many of our AEDY programs actually have dual licensing in different parts of their building or even different parts of their campus and have the ability to mimic their AEDY program without it being in that forced, restrictive setting, and that would be something I'd consider if an IEP team is discussing this and talking about the aspects of the AEDY program and how it's benefiting the child.

So, success of the proclamation goals are okay, but the transition would occur when the goal is 100% met. Hopefully I answered your question with this because it's kind of vague, but just to answer from my perspective, when you set a goal for the student that they are going to meet, yes, the student needs to meet their goal, whatever that goal might be, whatever the ... And it needs to be a behavioral goal based on the student's reason for placement. When they've met that goal, then the student is ready to transition back to the regular education setting.

Like I said, the success of approximation goals. I always like to do sub-goals where they would lead up to that larger, over-arching goal that they're going to meet, so that the student or child that you're working with doesn't feel like you keep moving the carrot away from them. Every time they meet a goal, you move it further. Every time you meet a goal, you move it further. What I would do is saying, "Hey, these are our sub-goals and they're going to move and progress to help you get to that 100% or that full achievement of your main goal that you're working on."


Another question. "What are some recommended behavioral assessments to set goals for students who enter AEDY programs through an expulsion?" So, behavioral assessments and behavioral goal planning are two different things. The behavioral assessments are things such as the BASC, the BASC 2 to 3, the FACTS, FBA and different behavioral assessments, those help you to determine student triggers, why they're committing behaviors and give you a better insight into what's going on. You use that to help set the goals because obviously, if you can find out where the students' triggers are which led to a behavior, you can work on those sub-goals, those individual triggers to address the overall behavior, which is, you want the student to be able to maintain themselves in a school setting.

With regards to an expulsion and setting goals, like I said, it's kind of difficult in the area because you have AEDY statute, which is basically saying that you can only ... It states that you can only have students held for behavioral needs or the reasons for placement, and then you have expulsions, many of which have other aspects such as academics, academic performance, academic compliance, so we need to make sure that we're ... Our expulsion is not violating it, or the goal itself that we're writing is not violating it.

"Does the LEA initially write the goal or is the student placed and then the LEA and the AEDY develop the goal?" When a student ... There's no rule that says how it needs to happen. My recommendation would be that when a student's placed, the LEA and AEDY help to develop the goal together, because you want the AEDY program involved because they're going to be the ones implementing the interventions and everything to help support the student, but you want the LEA's input, because typically they understand more about the student. You typically know more about what's going on at home. You know more about how your student behaves, why they're behaving the way they are and can provide more insight. Additionally, the LEA should always be involved because we certainly don't want them not involved when goals are being written to determine when a student's going to come back to that LEA.

John Esposito: Yep.

Ryan Korn: Yep. So, "Is it okay if the IEP decision to maintain the placement even after the board exclusion time is complete?" So, okay, and this is ... I'm going to answer this question regardless of IEP or regular education student. When a student is expelled for a year and they're in AEDY and say they go an entire year and make no progress, can the team at the review meeting determine that the student's going to remain in placement? Well, if the student hasn't met their goals, AEDY statue says they're going to remain in placement regardless. So, the expulsion is not going to change that. The expulsion's just going to be the track that puts the student into placement.

Now, again, like I said, there's going to be students that meet their goals beforehand, there's going to be students that, even after that year, they still haven't met their goals. That formal periodic review is going to be a review of, "Has the student met their goals?" And if you're having it at 14 months in the program, you're having that review and they haven't met their goals, you can determine that they're going to remain in the program.


"If a student is already in an AEDY program and engages in a behavior that meets a reason for referral, IE, student placed due to illegal substance possession and then engages in a physical altercation while on the AEDY, do we just add that as a behavioral goal or do we also add it to the original referral reason?" So, if you're going to add a reason for placement, which you certainly can do, because the student is still technically enrolled in your school, you have the legal authority to enforce discipline on that student that committed behavior such as the example that you gave, where they were placed for drugs but they also have a violent incident in the program after you've already placed them.

You're going to need to document that on the referral form, you're also going to need to document the interventions for that behavior. Now, the one that you picked is one of the big three, violent or threatening behavior, so you might only see administrative and SAP, but what if it's behaviors that you're starting to see that are disregard for school authority, not just the drug possession, and you want to add the reason? You need to make sure that we're providing the interventions, and then you would have an informal hearing and discuss that you're adding a reason for placement because the student got into a physical altercation or because they're disregarding school authority and add an additional informal hearing page to that referral and document that.

And what you'll do is make sure that you add that on to there and then, at that point, add the behavioral goal to correspond with the new reason for placement.

Ryan Korn: I had someone saying that my mic is not working. Is everyone hearing me? Can I get a show of hands?

Alright, it looks like everyone's hearing me. I'm sorry if that is just on your end, I apologize. Alright, let me ... Had a bunch of questions just come up, so I just want to make sure I get them all.

"Is there a recommended time frame that the goals should be met to consider it completed?" So, when you're looking at goal planning, I always encourage it to be measurable. Measurable in percentages, measurable in time, because the more measurable it is, the easier it is to hold a student accountable to those goals. So, you need to say that the student ... Whatever behavior it is that you're trying to have the student do, and say that the student was constantly making derogatory comments and cursing at teachers and that was one of the reasons they were placed and that was one of their goals, now. Well, you're going to want to have measurable goals that are going to outline that the student is going to have appropriate language and demeanor in the classroom 90% of the day, four to five days a week. And then that's the sub-goal, but the main goal is that the student is going to not have verbal aggression or inappropriate language in the classroom and that's your overall goal. And that the student will meet this goal for three weeks or four weeks. You can set goals to be measurable however you need to be.

I encourage them to be measurable because, like I said, it always helps to hold students accountable because our kids are very palpable and tangible and show if you can show


them on paper that they only met their goal two out of four weeks or they only met that goal for four days and it didn't constitute transitioning back because you want them to be able to maintain that same level for three weeks or four weeks, or whatever it might be. You need to set those goals so that we can have them being measurable and have them set for a period of time.

Now, you don't have to do that, but the more vague a goal is, the less measurable it is, the more open you are to a student arguing with you as to whether or not they've met that goal or a parent arguing with you or even a program or LEA having a disagreement about the ambiguity of whether or not a student has met their goal.

John Esposito: Alright.

Ryan Korn: "With regard to the identified student who is in an AEDY one year and he does not meet his goals, does the absence of the progress cause a different IEP safeguard that could lead to working for alternative placements, which may cause a student who has not met an AEDY transition goal to co-mingle with non-AEDY students?"

So, this is the gray area of AEDY meeting the gray area of special education and yes, AEDY statue does state that students who are in AEDY programming cannot co-mingle with students not in AED programming, but if we remove the special education piece and any student in the AEDY program, and we've said this, if a school district decides, at their discretion with local rules, that they're going to remove a student from AEDY programming and put them back in the regular education setting, they are allowed to do that. So, if an IEP team decides that AEDY placement is not appropriate and that the student will be removed and sent to the high school or sent to a private academic school, that is perfectly fine.

The problem that we run into with co-mingling is when kids have their feet in both programs and as a part of being in AEDY, you also co-mingle with other parts of the school and you still play on the football team or you still go to this event or you still go on the bus together or go in the hallways together and so, the problem becomes when a school wants to do this but they have the kid's foot in both doors, in AEDY and in the non-AEDY setting. It is a lot of case by case situations, so if you do run into this, please reach out to us. We have a special ed advisor for the specific IEP situations, but reach out to us for any of these kids' cases where you're not sure if it's co-mingling or not or if it's the student meeting goals and transitioning. We handle case by case phones and emails on a regular basis, please just reach out to us.

Okay, let's see some other questions. Had another ... It's more of a statement that popped up and I'm not sure what it's referring to, so if you could repeat the question, it says, "So, that same rule. Could it be applied to a student currently referred for habitual truancy?" Not sure what you're referring to, so if you could please rephrase it, that would be great.

"If a student is in AEDY and moves to another district, what options does that new district have in continuing AEDY placement?" So, the way Pennsylvania school code is


written, LEAs are allowed to honor the discipline of another LEA. So, we know that students, on a regular basis, move to avoid discipline and we could even see them move to avoid an AEDY placement, or they just happen to move. An LEA is allowed to honor the AEDY placement and the discipline of another district. What we tell LEAs to do, is when you find this out, you want to make sure that you review the AEDY referral from the previous district.

For a couple reasons. One being that the policies of that district might not be the same of yours. We've seen policies at different districts, where at District A they'd be expelled for a year for drug possession and at District B they might be only expelled for 30 days. The other reason that you want to look at it is, if there's any missing documentation in that referral, you inherit any of that missing information when we do a site visit because you're also, now, agreeing to that placement. So, we want to make sure that you're reviewing and to make sure the documentation is present.

The other thing that you need to do is you still need to do an informal hearing, because you are the new school entity and you need to provide due process that you're going to continue the placement. And you could certainly just have that hearing and say, "Based on our review of your behavior at the other school district and the fact that you have not met your behavioral goals in the program, we are going to make the decision that you are going to remain in the AEDY program."

Now, you need to make sure that if the kid's currently in programming that you are reviewing to see if the student has met their goals. That's a big piece of this. You want to make sure that you're reviewing to make sure that they have or have not met their goals, because if they met their goals, you should begin a transition. So, looking at the previous referral and looking at the student's current progress is what you should take into consideration.

Now, it is your decision, either way to let the student in your school district. And if you want to continue them in placement, you just need to make sure that it was a legitimate placement and that they have not met their goals. Now, please also taken into consideration that if that provider is not one that you used, you can transfer students from one provider to another AEDY provider or you can add a provider to your application at any point to then continue to use that same provider so that the student doesn't have to move from one program to another.

One question was about, all the questions and responses will be transcribed into a document. Actually, as per ADA, we do get them transcribed. It does take some time, though, to have them sent out to a program and have it transcribed but it will be transcribed and available on the links that you see on our website.

John Esposito: You can always email us in the meantime if you have questions, though.

Ryan Korn: Absolutely. Any questions that you're not aware of or questions that you have, please do not hesitate to reach out to us directly.


"Do you have a document that spells out the guidelines for appropriate co-mingling of students outside of a transition plan?" Co-mingling between AEDY and non-AEDY students cannot happen unless a student has met their goals and is beginning to transition. If a school is deciding to remove a student from an AEDY program and pull them back to the regular education setting, that is certainly their decision, but you cannot co-mingle AEDY and non-AEDY the way the statue is written.

Alright, "Since habitual truancy will no longer be accepted at the conclusion of this year, the AEDY team could add a reason for referral like a violation of school rules and maintain AEDY placement with an informal hearing to communicate, essentially, a new reason for a referral." When adding any new reason, if you're seeing a behavior that meets one or more of the seven criteria, or six for the future in going in to the 17-18 school year, what you would do is document that on the referral form but you also have to document all the mandatory interventions to address that behavior, and that's kind of the issue that we've run into sometimes is, if a student's placed for drugs and then while they're in the program they've been disregarding school authority, the interventions listed were only provided from that incident related to the drug possession. You have to have interventions that are designed to address the behavior that you want to refer them for, so if it's disregard for school authority, talking back in class, walking out of class, we should see interventions documented to address that.

Now, many of the interventions are going to occur in the AEDY program, but you also want to be able to offer SAP and have administrative meetings. Then you'll have the informal hearing, make your decision and then add that information.

"Is the fee for using another provider still in place for a new sending school district?" The way that the fees are written into Pennsylvania fiscal code is that it's per site. And so, if you've chosen to send to three sites, you'll pay for three sites. If you get rid of one and add another, you don't need to pay for that new program because you've paid for three slots. But, if you're going to add a slot or a site, then you need to pay that fee. It's just what's written in fiscal code and nothing that we can really do to change that.

"Can probation officers extend or recommend the AEDY programming?" Probation officers can not violate law and the law says, when a student meets their goals, that they have to return. So, a probation officer does not have the authority to violate the law and say that the student needs to stay in there longer. Probation officer can certainly recommend AEDY placement, but the eligibility requirements do not change if an officer recommends it. They still need to meet one or more of the seven criteria, receive all the mandatory interventions and an informal hearing.

What you need to note is that when you're looking at the reasons for placement, you'll notice that one of the common themes is that every behavior occurs on school property during a school activity, during a school event on school property, it continues throughout that theme. So, if the probation officer wants to recommend the student because they robbed a convenience store in the community, that wouldn't be appropriate. But if they robbed the booster club during the football game, that would be appropriate.


Again, you have to look and make sure that the student still meets the eligibility requirements. Now, if the reason a probation officer wants to recommend AEDY as a small setting, enhanced supports, counseling component but the student doesn't meet eligibility, that's maybe when you would start to consider a private academic school. That would meet those needs and mimic some of those aspects that the probation officer likes about the AEDY program. I hope that answers your question. If you have any other further questions about that, please just reach out to me directly.

In the meantime, what I can do is I'm going to pull down the formal periodic review form. Well, not pull it down, but right on it, I'm going to put mine and John Esposito's emails. I have two emails, unfortunately for myself, but I will give you both of them. I don't care which one you email. And then John Esposito. Am I correct, John Esposito? Yes.

John Esposito: You got it.

Ryan Korn: I got it. John Esposito's is difficult. Those are our emails, they're sitting on the screen right now. Please do not hesitate ... If you didn't hear our answers or I didn't quite answer your question or I'm missing anything, please don't hesitate to just email us directly, we have no problem helping you out.

"Are the AADY site fees due every year? Three years? What is the length of time this $400 covers?" So, the way fiscal code is written, LEAs have to provide the $400 fee per site every two years. Private providers have to provide $1000 per site they operate every three years.

Okay, I'm just trying to see if there's any other questions and give a few minutes for anybody that would like to ask a question. I'm also going to scan back to make sure I didn't miss any.

And I apologize about AEDY in general. I know a lot of my answers are "if" and "maybe." A lot of them are circumstantial and case by case, that is why we really do make ourselves available to any questions or situations that you might need any answers to. We'll do the case by case scenario stuff with you and what I've always said is that if you reach out to us with a situation with a specific student and we give you directly based on the information you give, we can't come back and say that you did it wrong later and ding you for it, so it's always going to give you that also added layer of having the state team tell you, "Yep, you're good to go."

So, it doesn't look like we're having any additional questions at this time. I'll give it another minute to see if anyone wants to pose any. Getting some emails of people popping through, please shoot us an email if you want us to send you this document. Shoot us an email if you have any questions. We're going to continue to do these webinars. If you guys have topics that you want us to cover, we will certainly do that. Right now, what we're doing is picking them based on what we're seeing in the field with difficulties, but we want to make sure that we're providing what you guys want to hear about. And so, if there's something that you want us to talk about, please, just do


not hesitate to give us your two cents and let us know that you want a certain topic covered. Even if it's not a large topic, we can also make sure that we add it in to one of ours.

Had another question pop up. "Can a student be in both AEDY and Vo Tech if that is written in the transition plan?" So, yes. Kids can ... We've seen kids attend half day Vo Tech, I know some Vo Techs are set up where academics are one week and the next week is the Vo Tech aspect of it and the kids' transition plan was that they were to be in the AEDY during the academic week and attend to the Vo Tech during that week. The big piece is, though, is that a transition plan needs to be fluid, so it needs to move. And so, if you're going to do, say, a half day Vo Tech, half day AEDY or one week on, one week off, what you need to do is outline that, "We're going to try this for four weeks or five weeks, and then if that goes well, then we're going to move forward."

It can't be a permanent transition plan, that the student's going to do half and half. Eventually, they need to return to that regular education setting or at least make progress towards it.

"When we have to complete the annual form, will we do a refresher on how to complete it appropriately?" I think you're ... I'm going to answer this, because I think it could be one of two things. The annual form as far as the end of year reporting, we would like to do a webinar on that, yes, to help you guys out with that and have Gene Breault from K-Sys there available there to answer any questions for you guys, because he really is the guru on that.

If you're referring to the application, we are also going to have our new system Leader Services we've been meeting with. We're going to have multiple webinars when we get that rolled out. We've been working with them on cleaning it up and getting everything that we can in there. If you guys have any ideas, please certainly shoot us an email. When we do roll it out, please give us constructive feedback because we're also going to get that rolled out here, hopefully in the next couple months and get moving for the next application phase for LEAs.

Alright, it doesn't look like we're running into any other questions. Has everyone been able to see and get our email addresses? Can we just get a couple people, let me know if you can see it and able to grab our emails? Alright, cool. Alright, well, at this time, we're going to end the webinar. Like I said, you guys can certainly reach out to us if we need to and just let us know if you need anything.

Alright, thank you everyone.

John Esposito: Thank you.


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