Covid-19 Compensatory Services Presentation

Boston Public Schools

Ethan d’Ablemont Burnes &

Cyntoria Grant

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Office of Special Education &

Office of Advancement

What are COVID-19 Compensatory Services (CCS)?

Boston Public Schools

• CCS are services that your special education student may be entitled to if they experienced learning loss or lack of progress towards their IEP goals due to the COVID school closure from March 17 - June 22, 2021. CCS can also include learning loss from this school year due to remote learning.
• These services could be any special education service that would remediate learning loss relative to the students’ IEP goals, whether speech therapy services, rules-based reading, math support, occupational therapy services, etc.

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How do I know if my child is eligible for CCS?

Boston Public Schools

• Eligibility and level of service determinations will be made based on the data you gather as the parent and the data collected at the school.
• If you believe that your child did not make progress towards their IEP goals because they could not access remote learning fully or access it at all, you are entitled to a conversation with school staff about what services would remediate that learning loss.
• Parent/guardian input is an essential component in determining students' need for CCS.

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How does the process work?

Boston Public Schools

Every student with an IEP in BPS is entitled to a meeting with school personnel about CCS.

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1. If your school has not already contacted you to have this meeting, you will be. You may also contact the school yourself to find out when this meeting will be

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2. The Coordinator of Special Education (COSE) at the school will run these meetings. In some cases, these could be brief meetings that are part of another meeting or longer meetings on their own.

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How does the process work?

Boston Public Schools

3. At this meeting, you, COSE, and other providers will discuss the amount of learning loss or lack of progress relative to IEP goals and what services would remediate that learning loss.

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4. If you agree about what those services are, the COSE will fill out a form to generate a paper agreement to document the agreement. You should know that these are individualized decisions, and you should make sure you feel like the agreement reflects what your child needs.

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What if we disagree?

Boston Public Schools

• As the parent/guardian, you retain all your special education rights of appeal.
• Parents or guardians may pursue dispute resolution options through:
• the Bureau of Special Education Appeals(BSEA), including mediation and/or a due process hearing.
• A parent or guardian may also file a complaint with the Department’s Problem Resolution System.

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Will these services replace all the time my child missed?

Boston Public Schools

• The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education did not design CCS to be a 1:1 replacement of services and time missed.
• For example, suppose a student missed a certain number of related services sessions. In that case the CCS would not be the number of missed sessions but rather how many sessions are needed to address regression or learning loss.
• The question is not, ‘How many sessions did my student miss?’, but rather, ‘What are the services needed to get my student back to where they would have been relative to their IEP goals if not for the pandemic?’

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When will CCS be offered? �Generally, CCS services will be available during the following times:

When will CCS be offered?

Boston Public Schools

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• For students who already have the Extended School Year (ESY) service in their IEPs, there may be an option to extend ESY by one week.
• Some schools may be offering some additional CCS programming based upon their staffing and COVID safety capacity.

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These are individualized decisions!

Boston Public Schools

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• As in IEP meetings, these CCS decisions are individualized decisions and therefore teams may explore other ways to deliver CCS outside these times

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What if I want in-person CCS?

• Due to the pandemic, BPS can not guarantee when in-person CCS will be offered.
• it is likely that in-person services will be possible during the summer months, assuming the virus numbers do not escalate.
• The afterschool time and the February and April vacation times will be delivered using a remote platform.

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What if I want in-person CCS?

• Can opt-out of remote CCS and wait until the summer for in-person services
• Let your school-based COSE know during your child’s CCS meeting.
• The CCS Agreement you may have already received after your child’s CCS meeting might not have specific dates, as we cannot guarantee that the Boston Public Health Commission will allow us to open schools for these services.
• Agreement is binding, and we will provide the in-person services resumed as soon as we can.

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Where can I get more information?

• Your child’s teachers, COSE, and school leaders will remain important partners for you as you go through this process. You may always reach out to your school
• Office of Special Education at specialeducation@bostonpublicschools.org.
• Special Education Parent Advisory Council (SpedPAC) at bostonspedpac411@gmail.com.
• for support and collaboration with other special education students’ families.
• The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) published the COVID-19 Compensatory Services Fact Sheet for parents.
• This Fact Sheet is designed to help school teams decide any services or support that children with IEPs may need because of the emergency disruption of in-person instruction due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Covid-19 Compensatory Services Presentation

Boston Public Schools

By Author Name

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Office of Special Education