Actualizaciones Sobre Educación Especial con Kristin McGuire: 2025-2026 Seminario Web

Very good afternoon. Before we begin, I would like to tell you that today's webinar is being presented in English by Kristen McGuire. Kristen is the acting deputy commissioner of the Texas education agency's office of special populations and student supports. The Spanish version of this presentation will be by Sveltex consultants. If you prefer to join the webinar in English, we will place a link to that session in the chat. To attend the webinar in English, use the link provided in the chat and then complete the registration questions so that you can join. And again, welcome and good afternoon to today's state webinar, special education updates organized by SPECtX and Resource Network partners. Its presenters in Spanish are Joanne de la Garza Randall and her server Ginette Aguirre, from the SPECtX team, and we also have Margeana Antunez, from Partners Resource Network. Before we begin, a few reminders. This webinar is being recorded and the recording will be posted on our Fedxx sites. The chat function is only available if you need technical support. However, however, you can ask questions in the question and answer section. The presenters will review their submissions, which will help us with clarifications and frequently asked questions in the future. Today there will be no questions and no live answers. A little bit about Spectex. Spectex is Texas's special education information center. We are a collaborative project between the educational services center of region ten and the Texas education agency. We help parents understand their rights and responsibilities under IDEA, and we facilitate collaboration when there are concerns between parents and the school district. We also serve as a resource for educators. We offer phone, email or live chat support for families and professionals, webinars like today's, in addition to resources. Now we'll hear from Maria Ana Antunez, for more information about partner resource networks. Go ahead Maria Ana. Thank you very much, Gine. Good afternoon everyone. Very good afternoon, Johan, for joining us. Again, one more day, one more session. I'm Marjyana Andunes and I represent the partners resource network. Partners Resource Network is a nonprofit organization that operates the Texas network of information and training centers for parents. These centers or PTIs are funded by the Texas Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs. These four PTIs projects are known as PACT, PATH, PIN and TEAM. Our mission is to empower and support Texas families and people who are disabled by disabilities and special health care needs. We do this through a network of highly qualified regional coordinators, who know local policies, services and resources, as well as state and national guidelines. PRN provides training, information and personalized assistance at no cost to Texas families and youth. We serve parents of children and youth with disabilities from birth to twenty-six years of age, as well as young people between fourteen and twenty-six years of age who exercise self-defense. Thank you, Ginette. Thank you, Marjyana. Now for today's presentation. As I said before, the presentation is given in English by Kristen McGuire, Acting Deputy Commissioner of the Office of Special Populations and Student Support of the Texas Education Agency. This presentation was originally created for educators and provides a summary of some of the most important changes that emerged during the eighty-ninth session of the legislation. The presentation has been adapted to make it more accessible to parents and families. However, I wanted to tell you that some of the resources mentioned above are not available in Spanish. For this reason, certain contents may not have a complete or direct translation in all cases. Now, one of the, one of the resources that we have and that I want to point out is, and that you can also access, is our back-to-school special education update document. You can find this newsletter on the site indicated on the screen. This bulletin is in English only, but today's presentation relates to the topics in this document. I will first mention some funding changes made by House Bill Two that affect special education. First, each district and charter school, called local education agencies, or LEAs for short, will now receive a thousand dollars for each initial special education evaluation they perform. This new funding source is intended to help supplement the costs incurred by LEAs in these evaluations. On the other hand, the existing performance bonus for graduates who demonstrate college, professional and military readiness will now generate four thousand dollars for the LEA instead of two thousand dollars, if the graduate received special education services. Additionally, the reimbursement rate for special education transportation miles has increased from one dollar and eight cents to one dollar and thirteen cents per mile. Regional deaf school programs, which are options available to students receiving special education services and who are deaf or hard of hearing, will now have a different allocation to help fund these programs. They will receive at least six thousand nine hundred twenty-five dollars per student. In addition, the dyslexia allowance, which has existed for several years, has a change in the sense that, starting in September 2012, LEAs will not be limited to the amount of those funds they can use to hire private providers, if they choose to do so. The most substantial thing will be that HB2 will completely transform the way in which it will be calculated and the state allocation of special education to move to a service intensity model. More information will be shared as the agency continues to shape this change. HB2 also added a permanent extension to the cost of certification exams and application fees if the person is taking a bilingual teaching or special education certification. Another HB2 change is that an LEA board must specifically discuss the performance of students receiving special education services during at least one board meeting each year. The TEA must adopt the performance indicators that need to be discussed. Non-educational community support services have been in the statute for many years. HB two made some changes, allowing them to now be parent-oriented grants for students who qualify for these grants. You can see some of the main pieces of eligibility on the screen here. TEA must adopt rules surrounding this program, so more information will be published after the adoption of these rules. We will now talk about a couple of new responsibilities for the admission, review and retirement committee, or known as the ARD, that also emerged from legislation in the last session. The first is a notice to parents of students who are initially determined to be eligible under intellectual disability or delayed development of their intellectual and developmental disability legal authority, known as LIDA, LIDDA, and what types of programs can be accessed through their LIDA. In this notice, it has already been published and can be accessed through the link on the slide. The second requirement is that the ARD must provide the student's parents with information developed by the Health and Human Services Commission, HHSC, about educational residential placement options for children who may qualify for placement in their state-supported living center. The HHSC is expected to finalize that information early this fall, according to HD dos. HD two also clarified when a student receiving special education services could receive the distinguished level of achievement with or without a modified curriculum. Several bills also affect student discipline in schools. The House Bill is one of the major bills that made changes to the way schools approach student discipline. The agency's letter to the addressed administrator, or TAA, released on August 14, has more information on the matter. Another change is HD Fourteen Eighty-One, which is a bill that now prohibits the use of personal communication devices during the school day while on school property. While these devices may vary, we generally see them as personal cell phones, personal headphones, those that can communicate a message, laptops or tablets owned by personal property. The TEA was required to develop a model policy language around this bill that was published on July 31. There are three separate exceptions to this prohibition, which are, they are necessary to implement the individualized student education program, or the IEP, or a section five zero four plan, whether the student has a documented need based on a doctor's directive or to meet health or safety requirements imposed by law, or by district safety protocols. It has come to the agency's attention that some schools have begun to require a medical directive to consider this adaptation in an IEP or section five zero four plan, which is not what the law states. Each section five zero four committee and the ARD committee must determine the appropriate ones necessary for the student to receive a free and appropriate public education, known as FAPE, FAPE, and these decisions are not dependent on doctors' directives. TEA will work to revise its guidelines to ensure the safety of students and staff with disabilities during emergencies or disasters by implementing Senate Bill Fifty-seven. Senate Bill Fifty-seven requires guidelines on documenting necessary accommodations for students with disabilities. TEA will begin working with stakeholders soon to review the guidance. Legislation now also requires that someone with knowledge of the student's disability and how the disability is manifested to the student be part of the team when a threat assessment is performed on that student. In addition, Senate Bill 57 now requires a district special education administrator to serve on the District's security committee. A couple of bills clarified absences that must be justified by LEAs and refer to absences for health care appointments and absences incurred due to serious or potentially fatal illnesses or injuries. Senate bill two zero seven clarified that health care appointments include mental health appointments, and the House bill three six seven clarified what information a doctor requires to excuse absences for this purpose. Later this year, you'll hear a lot more about the changes made by House Bill Two around first-grade literacy and numeracy assessments that will look at fundamental literacy and numeracy skills. The dyslexia evaluations required in kindergarten and grade one will be included in these evaluations, which are also required for those in second and third grades. A couple of changes were made to the dispute resolution and numbered processes in the education code. House Bill Two now requires representatives other than attorneys at due process hearings to demonstrate knowledge of all the dispute resolution options available to parents, not just due process. IEP facilitation at the state level can now be used before a dispute arises, rather than waiting until it has occurred. Another change is that TEA will participate in a specific effort to create a new state plan for students who are deaf or hard of hearing, for those who are visually impaired and for those who are deafblind. In addition, the language acquisition process for deaf or hard of hearing students aged eight years or younger has been changed by HB2, to impose more requirements on the commissioner of education and TEA. More information about that process will be released soon. Starting with school year two thousand twenty-six two thousand twenty-seven, the education savings accounts added by Senate Bill Two will begin to be offered to Texas families. Now, there are a few other bills that haven't been, aren't directly mentioned in our back-to-school update, the document that was sent to you in the beginning. And these bills include Senate Bill Five Six Nine, which authorizes districts to establish virtual or hybrid learning programs in accordance with TEA rules. In addition, there is Senate Bill Eleven Ninety-One, which requires the commissioner to develop a standard method that high schools must use to calculate grade point averages. The twenty-three-tenth bill of the House of Representatives concerns the development of a strategic plan for the improvement and expansion of early learning and educational opportunities for young children with disabilities. TEA must collaborate with the HHSC and the Texas Workforce Commission to develop and update this. And finally, Senate bill nine nine one requires TEA to track chronic student absenteeism, and generally defines it as a student who loses more than ten percent of the days offered by a class. On the screen, we have a graph showing current data on identified students in Texas who receive special education services, compared to all students in the state. As you can see, since the two thousand seventeen, eighteen school year, there has been a seventy-two percent increase in the number of students served through special education. We know that this was a brief description of the main laws that are being implemented now or will be implemented soon of the legislation in session eighty-nine, affecting students receiving special education services. As we move through the school year, more information will be published and shared. We want to thank everyone for their time today. We know that this is a lot of information about the laws that have occurred through the legislation of eighty-nine, and we are going back to Marjana Antunez right now to share more information about the partners resource network. Go ahead, Marjana. Timely and necessary information for Texas families, especially those with children and youth with disabilities. I'm going to take this moment to remind everyone, especially our families, that, as Jeanette rightly said, there's a lot of information, it's complex, but our information is on the screen, on the phone, on our email and on our website, if you want to communicate. Partners Resort Network thanks once again to the region ten for collaborating with us to make this seminar possible, to inform families in this state. Thank you very much, very good afternoon. Thank you, Maryana. And if you have questions about special education, connect us, SpedEx, we're your informational resource for special education. We are happy to help. Our contact information is on the screen.