Jennifer Graff is Leaving SpEd Placements

Jennifer Graff, the office specialist assigned to work with Ann Rodel and Judy Brown on placements of setting III and IV students coming into Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) from other districts as well as day treatment transportation, is leaving special education to take on a new opportunity at Stadium View. Her last day with special ed. will be March 16. We will miss her impressive skills at getting special education documents from other districts and charter schools and her ability to track student placements and citywide program counts. We will also miss her unique sense of humor. We wish her well in her new assignment!

Due to the hiring freeze, we will not be able to fill Jennifer’s position upon her departure. Consequently, we will have a new system in place to track citywide program counts. Starting the week of March 19, we will be relying solely on EdPlan reports for updated citywide program counts for purposes of K-12 placements. This means that to recognize a student as being served in a K-12 setting III or IV citywide program, the student’s case manager will have to indicate the student’s special program placement on EdPlan. Instructions for doing this are set out below. For the sake of accurate K-12 citywide program placements, we request that case managers be sure to accurately indicate which students are on their caseloads and receiving services in their respective special programs.

Instructions:

To indicate a student is placed in a special program you go to the IEP link in EdPlan. From there you go to the Federal Settings and LRE Statement link. You then address the first request posed “If the student has been placed in a special placement choose one of the following.” There is a drop down list of special programs available. The relevant screen shot is set out below.

Day Treatment Transportation

  1. If the Student is a Minneapolis resident and currently attends a MPS school. The School Social Worker from that school should complete and submit the special transportation form to the MPS Transportation Dept. to set up transportation to and from the day treatment program. Once the route is assigned, the School Social Worker would also contact the parent with the pick up and drop off information for that transportation.
  2. If the Student is a Minneapolis resident and currently attends a non-MPS school (i.e. charter school, out of district school, or non-public school). Amanda Andrews in special ed will be handling transportation requests for these students through the end of the 2017-18 school year. We have not yet determined who will handle these non-MPS student day treatment transportation requests in 2018-19. If a parent calls requesting day treatment transportation, he/she will be instructed to have the day treatment facility contact Amanda. Amanda will get the needed information from the day treatment facility contact to complete and submit a special transportation request in the computer system. Once a route has been established by transportation, the pick up and drop off times will be provided to the parent by transportation staff. Amanda’s phone no. is 612/668-0114.