ASEC Alert! 2009

December 8, 2009

At the Fall Teacher training we talked about the importance of two Reports found on SpEd Web. We need you to access them now for MARSS and EDRS reporting.

December 1^st Child Count

Your district MARSS person has received the preliminary December 1^st Child Count Report. The deadline is December 17^th for final corrections or additions. Your responsibility for MARSS reporting is the following:

1.    Go to “Reports” on SpEd Web and click “Combined Report”. Select “Show Students Case Managed by me” and “Order by student” then click the “Update” button.

2.    Review the list to make sure:

a.    All students on your case load are listed

b.    Make sure the Federal Setting is correct for each student (very important for open enrolled students!)

c.    Make sure the resident district information is correct

d.    If any columns are blank go to the student record and complete the required information

3.    Print the report and give to your MARSS person by no later than December 12^th. This will give them time to make any corrections prior to submission of the final report.

Workload Breakdown by Disability

Your district bookkeeper is required to breakdown each special education position by percentage of time serving each disability. This information in the past has often been a guess on their part or has required significant time either by them or by you to calculate this breakdown. You can provide this information from “Reports” on SpEd Web. Your responsibility for the EDRS report submitted by the bookkeeper is the following:

1.    Go to “Reports” on SpEd Web and click “Teacher Workload Analysis”.

2.    Go to the bottom of the report. It should look similar to this:

3.    If it doesn’t show percentages and disabilities, you have bad data. Look at the data in the report and check the following for each student:

a.    Make sure there are numbers in the “Total Minutes” column

b.    Make sure the  “Start Date” is current

c.    Make sure there is a “Disability” code listed

4.    If there is an error, go into the student’s “Set Up” or “Service Grid” and make corrections.

5.    If you continue to have problems, contact Julie or Colleen

6.    When the report is correct, give a copy of the report to your bookkeeper no later than December 12^th.

January 5, 2009

There have been a number of changes made to SpEd Web over the Christmas Holidays. The following are the major changes that you might be affected by. Please take a moment to read about the changes:

IEP

1.       For those using the combined IEP/IIIP, finalization of the IIIP is now available.

2.       The new IEP revision from the State is now on SpEd Web, with the following changes:

a.       Under Student Information: the “Indicate Attendance” check box has been removed

b.      Under Student Performance: Removed “How will progress toward meeting this annual goal be measured>”

c.       Transition Services (significant changes): Renamed from “Transition Planning” to “Transition Services”

                                                               i.      Removed credits earned

                                                             ii.      Removed total number of credits required

                                                            iii.      “Measurable post secondary goals” categories have been reduced from 5 to 3. For convenience of teachers post secondary goals     previously entered under the eliminated categories are auto-filled into “Independent Living”.

d.      Transition Needs: (significant changes): The old areas were replaced with five new areas.

                                                               i.      Since the new transition services needs areas do not match the old areas information could not be automatically transferred from the 07/08 IEP

e.      Service Grid: Child specific paraprofessional support was moved directly below Special education and Related Services

                                                               i.      The language under Least Restrictive Environment was changed.

f.        State Assessments: Under Diploma Requirements “Pass State” was changed to “Pass State for BST; Pass for Grad”

                                                               i.      Drop down menus have been added for assessment accommodations.

g.       Progress Report: To report progress, teachers must select a finalized IEP. Progress reports now include cumulative progress.

                                                               i.      Information from old progress reports does not automatically transfer.

Prior Written Notice

1.       Predefined drop down menus have been added to all text areas.

Parental Consent/Objection

1.       The form now prints automatically with the “Notice of Educational Evaluation/Reevaluation”

 Notice of Education Evaluation/Reevaluation

1.       Added “Description of each evaluation procedure…”

2.       The form will now print on 1 page instead of 2

 ER Forms         

1.    An additional popup warning will now be displayed when users click on the “Choose a New Evaluation Template” button and already have template installed. This is to warn the user that their current ER Template will be overwritten.

2.   The “Additional Requirements for SLD” section has been removed from the “Student Information” print page and now appears as an optional page on the ER Forms “Print Review” menu 

Additional Forms

1.       The “excused team member” and the “team meeting date” will now be printed when the “agreement regarding IEP team member attendance” form is printed.

2.       The Child Outcomes summary forms can now be finalized.

January 24, 2009

Recent changes in SPED have been made to the choices in the Services Drop Down List.

During the conversion it is important that you check that the correct service is selected before printing- most of the mix-up appears to be in the Related Services choices such as Physical Therapy, School Social Work Services etc.

Speech Services

Also note that now Speech/Language services should be designated as Sp.Ed. Speech/Language (when the child meets sp/lang criteria) or Related Speech/Language (when sp/lang is added as a support to another disability category).

February 12, 2009

SpEd Web and Firefox

We have discovered Firefox does not always fully load web pages, causing issues with saving in SpEd Forms.

This issue tends to occur with longer forms on machines with less computing power. In SpEd Forms, as with any other web form, if a page does not fully load before it is saved then blank values will be saved to the database. In other words information will be lost.

In our testing we found this to be a serious issue when half-loaded pages are automatically saved as the user navigates from one page to another. For this reason we have turned off automatic saving in Firefox and changed the save warning to:

 "Did you save your changes? Click 'OK' to continue without saving or 'Cancel' to return to the page and save your changes."

The elimination of automatic saving in Firefox and the new message will help alleviate the issue for Firefox users. However, to ensure information is not lost, FIREFOX USERS MUST ENSURE THE FORM IS LOADED BEFORE EDITING AND/OR SAVING CHANGES.

April 1, 2009

Cutting and Pasting

We appreciate that you have stopped cutting and pasting from Word into SpEd Web reports however we have discovered one more “glitch”.

 We recommended that when you have standard text you wish to use in reports, to cut and paste from another SpEd Web file. We have discovered that you cannot use or should very carefully use the “Select All” function when copying and pasting as you may inadvertently also select images and coding from the buttons and tool bars which then get pasted into the report. These images will show up on the evaluation report. If you find a report with images in the report: first try to delete them by highlighting the image and clicking “delete”. If that doesn’t remove the image, please contact Dave Campbel at dcampbel@asec.net