I would assume that that's the benefit of your regard.
Yes, exactly.
Do you want your name, Wayne, you're not?
Oh.
I have a difference, but I'll take you off.
And is it okay if we pose this to him?
Absolutely.
Does it kind of cut off?
Yeah, go ahead.
That was loud, kids.
Yes, it's about to say,
they make no promises with...
Well, he was getting set up.
There was one little kid who must have done something wrong.
He got his butt sent back to the table.
He had exhausted the patience of the group.
It does happen.
Sometimes he's really jaded.
He's going to hold us up.
I like it.
Remember, just the whole...
You had your chance.
Now you get to go sit at the table.
Why?
I wonder.
Yeah, it probably won't be the last.
I'm sure it was well earned.
Yeah.
You try to keep them in the classrooms.
Yeah.
Sometimes things happen.
So did you start out in the classroom before moving to this position?
Yes, in another district.
I was a special education teacher in Sheboygan Falls.
Prior to that, I was an autism specialist,
a special education teacher in Manitowoc.
Prior to that, I was a behavioral therapist.
Prior to that, I worked in a group home network for children with autism.
This is an outside service provider.
How did you end up on this side of the state, then?
A couple reasons.
One, the camping out here, Governor's Dodge,
grew up coming out here for it and just kind of took a chance
by seeking an area that was further away from where I was before.
And I knew about the area just from growing up in camping around here.
And this wound up becoming home.
And the district itself is a very good district to work in.
Great colleagues, good discussions with folks when it comes down to how do we best support our kids.
And I think that's a district that I want to be a part of.
How long have you been here?
This is my sixth year.
Oh, okay.
All right.
So a while now.
Would you go camping?
Do you go back across to Coler Andrey or something?
No.
You know, that area, it's not very interesting comparatively.
This area, we get all the rolling hills.
It just doesn't hold the candle.
The point beach is nice, but not as nice as Governor's Dodge,
not as nice as Devil's Lake.
And just so you know, Zach, if you lean forward too far,
we'll kind of catch up with your clients with you.
Switch back a little bit.
All right.
So for this, just talk to me.
Don't worry about all the...
Sure.
The rasmataz around here.
Let's start kind of broadly speaking.
You have seen an increase in the number of kids coming in with speech delays
or speech disorders, right, over the last few years.
Yes.
I've definitely seen an increase in the number of referrals.
I would say it's not abnormal for me to get at least one speech referral per day,
which historically that's not been the trend at all.
We'll look at our overall spec ed statistic in terms of like our five-year trend.
Taking a consideration, all disability labels,
you see an increase from about 12.6% to 13.7, which isn't that bad.
The speech increase still is more substantial than that.
I believe last time I was looking at it, it was up like beyond 14% in comparison to where it was before.
So I would say we've noticed definitely a co-measured increase in speech referrals
probably over the past three years, and I would say that it's definitely accelerated
because when I'm getting referrals on almost a daily basis for speech
and not all of those pan out as being, all right, we ran through our assessments
and we determine eligibility.
But the fact that we get that many is something of note.
And is the severity of some of those delays also increasing?
That's hard to speak to because, you know, when I look at it from that lens,
you also deal with student movement between districts,
which, you know, I could think of various reasons why that stat may,
they're locally or on a state level, be increasing.
When I see student movement, I have, I could speak to this year, we have seen an increase in more
what would be considered to be low incidence disabilities, like, you know, students with autism,
but the autism is severe and profound, which will have a speech component to it
is a deficit area.
Or I might see kids coming in who have intellectual disabilities,
which, you know, that is a fairly profound disability that we might serve as,
which also may have, may have some speech and language features that are more severe.
So an increase in severity just locally within, like, the population who has always been here,
I can't say yes or no to that, but I can say that just overall through student movement,
I think we're having a lot more students move in with severe disabilities in general,
but very often is either a related service, so they're part of the team,
or just, you know, generally speaking, they are the predominant service provider.
Speech is often accompanying that on some level.
As is OT, occupational therapy, physical therapy, all of that stuff, for sure.
And, yeah, some of that can also be the number of, like, parents know where their kids will get the best service,
they talk to each other, they hear one district provides a little bit better or more,
and then they'll try and send the kids here.
I can't necessarily, like, say for sure, I would love to say yes.
That is the exact reason why it is right, that's great.
We want parents to feel that when their kids come here, that they're going to get, you know, the best service is possible.
Now, along those lines, I will speak to this, we are the largest district in this region.
By virtue of being the largest CSA, it's going to have a ripple effect.
You know, I would say when you look outside of the Flat Bill School District 2,
you're going to see a lot more service providers in the form of counseling, things like that,
just regionally within this vicinity, which is advantageous to families,
simultaneously due to the student population being larger.
You know, we are going to get more funding, just categorically per the number of students we have,
because we receive funding in part on the basis of how many students we have within our program,
which does allow us to be a little bit more nimble when it comes down to, okay, we've had an increase,
we're at a point of we're looking at case loads, we need to go ahead and hire another speech therapist,
versus, you know, if we were in a smaller district, we would be in a position to perhaps contract out
through, like, CSA or a local service sort of hub versus being able to hire our own.
As far as the general speech delays and the increase there that's been seen,
I mean, it's from what I've heard is pretty much nationwide, it's everyone's been seeing that,
particularly coming out of COVID, do you have any theories as to whether it was masking
or, you know, mental health issues with parents or the virus itself or phones and screens,
or what may have contributed to this?
All of the above.
I think when you look at the masking thing, the fascinating piece about that is when you're,
for example, let's say you have a student who is already qualified for speech and language services, right,
and let's say that we were at the beginning of the, you know, safer at home,
things were either shut down or very controlled.
And let's say you're in a speech and language session, it's hard when you're working on articulation
to be able to adhere to a model when they have a mask covering their mouth.
That would be like a subfactor.
I don't think that that's the end all be all.
I think that there's probably factors that you mentioned in your question that are more substantial.
I think for the most part, our families did the best that they could just as we did during that time,
so I don't necessarily think it's something like, you know, I can uniformly say that all families
were struggling with X, Y, and Z, which perpetuated this.
But I think in some instances that's true.
I think that there were some kids who, because they weren't at school where to them,
this could be the most stable environment where they have the most exposure to positive language models,
and since they're not here, they're at home or something of that nature,
they're not getting at the same level of access that they once had,
or the younger kids didn't get access to what they had in daycare,
or just generally speaking in society, that likely, theoretically, would have an impact.
And we heard one of the experts we spoke to on this was saying that the phrase she used was,
it was the same storm but different ships.
The resources available to different families were, and I'm sure in this part of the state,
were dramatically different as far as who could stay home with their kids,
who had the availability, who could still interact with their kids in that time.
And especially little kids that you're now seeing as three, four, and five-year-olds
that were born in that time here.
Yeah, and I mean, I have four kids of my own, but at the same time, you know,
I come from a household of where you have both working parents,
however, you know, the financial situation is at a point of where we're okay.
That's not every household though.
There's households in which you might have a single parent, you know, work in two jobs,
and how they pull that off is just beyond me.
And they may have one, two, three, four kids.
I mean, that would be a very difficult task at hand to be able to provide that modeling
and that emotional support during that time when you're also trying to put food on the table
by working all those jobs.
I just, how people got through that in those conditions is astonishing to me sometimes.
As far as the kids that are experiencing some of these delays,
are they able to come out of it faster?
Like, if the theory is that some of the delays were created
or because they weren't getting some of that interaction,
they weren't exposed to a school environment or parents weren't around or screens or whatever,
now that that has changed in theory, can they catch up faster than historically someone
that had a speech delay and was receiving services?
Are you talking about comparing the environment given that they went through COVID
compared to if they hadn't?
Yes, if a kid coming in 10 years ago with a speech delay,
would they be at around the same ability to catch up and maybe graduate out of speech
services compared to a kid today?
Or is there any difference?
I think that there would be a difference just given the nature of COVID in general
because if you look at opportunity for instruction,
I think we did.
We made a decision as a district where if we had kids who were severe,
we utilized the IEP process to bring them in when we could.
And I like to think that that helped mitigate some of the challenges that we ran into locally.
Generally speaking, I do feel that inevitably time lost during a period
in which they could have been receiving services that looked a little bit different
than via Zoom or virtual or things like that or what all of us were trying to figure out particularly
that march when it was just boom, everything shut down.
I think that that is going to create a delay.
Now I'm not going to say that it's going to prevent them because we always have to try.
We always have to keep applying strategies and techniques and try to ensure that our kids
are meeting their goals, are receiving access to free and appropriate public education
and are making gains.
But given that there was a period of time which instruction didn't look like it always did,
I would say that yes, there is going to be a difference between those groups in many conditions.
Now there could always be a kid who once they get that modeling,
they're going to click along and just catch on.
That could happen.
But generally speaking, I think that that's a fair assumption to make.
As far as the budget situation, we know that the state doesn't fund their full share.
We know that the federal government doesn't fund their full promised share of special education.
I appreciate you saying that.
I'll relieve you with a burden. I've done the stories on it.
I know that that's a fact.
The state upped it ever so slightly in the last five.
Ever so slightly is most correct.
But I would challenge the upped it perspective given that they did not adjust for inflation,
which when you look at those numbers, it's not necessarily that we're getting slightly more.
We may be getting slightly less because all of the tools that we purchased to help support some of those gaps
and help kids get back to where they were before, those went up in cost.
So inevitably, it might be, well, they increased your funding by about x amount,
but then you're losing it by more.
And then you have your staff members too, who their salaries and wages, it's not a priority.
It is a priority of the district and we have made good on that priority
because it got pushed down to districts to make good on that priority or not.
We've made good on adjusting salaries and wages along with cost of inflation,
but it used to be that those two things were married for everybody and they're not now.
So that's another factor when you look at, okay, you can have an increase,
but if there's all this stuff suddenly getting paid out that historically wasn't,
it can't really be viewed as an increase.
It's not you are spending more money than you have.
Given those circumstances, how, because every new kid comes in,
they may bring some funding with them as a new person, but not enough funding,
not full funding.
So what does that mean when you are seeing this uptick when you're trying to figure out
can we afford another full-time speech without us?
It is difficult.
We wind up being in situations where we have to make difficult calls.
Very often with our people and we're fortunate to have very good people working for us
in our district who are committed to servicing our kids.
And they are very good.
I would say the speech team is particularly very good at coming together
and looking at their caseloads and trying to figure out, okay, we have these minutes
because with IEPs you have minutes that you need to cover that are defined in there.
It's like a legal contract.
You have to fulfill it.
It's not an individual's choice to be like, yeah, let's skip that and save a dollar.
Can't do it.
So we often go back to the drawing board quite a bit with our schedules
when we get new students in our caseloads to try to move things around and make it work.
And we're able to, and we did increase.
We did increase by a new speech pathologist.
I think it's back in 2122.
And then we had someone who was at like a 60%.
We increased them up to 100%.
They've been with us at 100% formerly.
And we're willing to come back to a full 100% which has been advantageous to us
because otherwise it would be very challenging to meet our obligations
per all the student IEPs, particularly like you have the students in their IEPs
who are here in their programs that are here now.
But we don't want to stop kids from coming to our district.
We want kids to come to our district and get the best services they can get.
But that being said, it's not necessarily something that's within one's control
nor something that you always get tons of notice about when you have kids coming.
And their program could be something that's very easy to meet.
Their program, and I have had this before, could be something of where it might have,
okay, you get what is it like anywhere between 9 and 12 grand of cost
depending upon categorical funding in general aid per student.
But then what if they come in with about 12 grand worth of OT costs?
What if they come in with nursing services like an individual nurse which is a position?
That's 1FT of a professional level position where when you factor in benefits,
now you're talking about 80 grand.
What if that happens?
And you're obligated to do it and we pride ourselves in being honest
and living up to our service obligation.
So I'm not going to lie, it can be quite challenging for us.
But I have the good fortune of having good staff members.
And I mean that sincerely, not just because I'm being interviewed.
Have you seen a shift to maybe trying to do more group models like the kids that can work together?
Oh yes, that's the creativity you're trying to do.
Yeah, when we're talking about the schedules and coming together and talking about
how do we provide our specially designed instruction minutes in an effective matter,
you will look at students of like abilities and try to, at times, ability group.
I would say as a district we place a priority on inclusion.
That's good because federal law does too.
But with that, a lot of our services will be pushed in.
The speech person going into the Gen Ed classrooms and providing some support too
because it's good since they have access to positive behavior models in there
who it might provide good examples for kids to work with
in which they might further develop their skills.
That's a good opportunity for us as well.
In a blended fashion, it may also be advantageous for us to take kids in ability group
who may have like needs and like abilities for the purpose of servicing,
not just for servicing efficiency.
But from an instructional stance, there's just a lot more that you can do
if you have more than one kid in the room, even with an educator effectiveness
and you look at how you evaluate instruction, collaborative learning, all that stuff.
So there's kind of hidden opportunities in that, not just silver linings.
But it is a factor that causes us to consider such methods.
And they're not bad methods to do.
And they can improve instruction from time to time.
But yeah, it does present challenges when you get lots of new students.
How do you handle the threat of burnout?
Because we've seen that everywhere from teachers everywhere.
Especially those that have seen individual caseload rise, perhaps exponentially.
How do you handle their mental health and their needs of like,
from every speech pathologist I've ever talked to, like they love working with the kids.
It's always the paperwork and all the other factors that add the stress to them.
But sometimes adding all that on top of it can make it so it's like a burnout level.
Yeah, for sure.
We see that too.
A couple, about two years ago, we adopted a trauma informed care model.
It was called seven essential ingredients of trauma informed care.
Now it's through well point.
But part of that model is self care and reason to be.
Why do we get into this profession and also not forgetting ourselves?
What do we need to do to help us self regulate?
What do we need to do to ensure that we're in a good headspace when we come into work?
That's important to prioritize.
In top of that, many districts do it.
Nonviolent crisis intervention training or CPI training.
I'm one of the trainers for that.
Over the years, they've adopted a lot more content into their curriculum than one of the areas that they talk about.
In the past, I feel like they'd go heavy on how do you support students well being.
With the precipitating factors, they may bring the school that we have no control over.
Well, they're starting to talk a lot more about what about your own precipitating factors.
What are you bringing and how do you have awareness of that?
What are things that you can do to help self manage?
And beyond that, what do you need to tap out?
We directly encourage, because all of us have been there.
Including me of where you might be in a situation of where you might need a colleague to step in that provides some support too.
That's just part of being on a team and supporting one another.
We encourage that being said.
I think that that is something that we will constantly be working on,
different ways in which we might help avoid that.
I know for spec ed teachers this year, CSA 3 got a grant and our new teachers that we hired are part of it.
Of where it is like a coaching grant, of where they can go to CSA 3, have different coaching sessions,
have different private coaching sessions through someone there.
We've done local support between myself and last year we hired a new program support
who's focused on new teachers and supporting them and being there.
I, as a director, am not a believer in sitting in my office before you folks showed up.
It wasn't just to make sure we had space.
I was here working directly with kids and also staff and just being a part of the culture to try to get our kids to where they're successful and help maintain that.
Have you heard of Lina?
It's a system where kids can wear a little vest with a little recording device that actually doesn't capture,
doesn't record conversations, but it records interactions between teachers and students.
We were just at a Head Start program in Milwaukee.
They're one of the sites using that.
I wasn't sure if that kind of technology, how widespread the knowledge of that was.
They've said that they use it for a lot of little kids as well,
but they found and caught more issues where some kids just weren't as verbal,
and so it's like, okay, make a focus on interacting more with that kid to try and get some more words out of him and that kind of thing.
Well, the interesting thing about technology and language instruction that I will say,
I've never heard of that. It sounds fascinating.
I will look into it, so thank you for sharing Lina.
Something that I have noticed, particularly as you're learning kids,
back when I first started in the profession, a lot of the time we would use choice books and a lot of printed materials,
or we'd use sign language.
Issue with sign language is not everybody knows sign language,
so it's hard to kind of generalize that communication,
and I'm talking more about severe and profound cases and these circumstances.
We also had different choice books and models for teaching those of where we had these universal symbols,
that people could construct, set and strips and stuff.
PEX, the pictorial exchange communication system, was one variation of doing that,
that was more systematic in teaching it.
Nowadays, fortunately, a lot of the handheld technology, like GoTalk, pro localo to go,
which are different programs in which in the past, you'd have a choice book in which you can construct,
set and strips and use pictures to communicate your needs.
Nowadays, a lot of these devices that back when I was teaching and using them,
they were around towards the tail end of my career.
I can't say that we loved using them, because they were very difficult to navigate,
not very user friendly, or huge, like carrying around a giant lunch box often.
Just not very user friendly, not very ergonomic.
Now, I do feel like that technology's gotten a lot better,
and our speech people do utilize those programs a lot to help kids develop speech.
And that is good to see.
That being said, we still will use the old school stuff as well.
I think it's always good to employ a blended approach, particularly with new kids,
because they may be setting up their device, they may be learning what words they know,
what words they don't know, learning at what level they have,
receptive language to where they can understand what's being communicated with them.
So sometimes we'll do simple things like you get out a whiteboard
and start just drawing and illustrating things you might want kids to attend to receptively.
That doesn't really always help as much with the expressive thing,
but sometimes you can draw choices too.
So I would say between, you know, when we look at technology,
we use a myriad of methods as a district to get in there.
But yeah, and each kid is different.
So what works for one?
It may not work for another.
It's fascinating now.
Yeah, it keeps us busy.
Anything else you want to add?
No, I think that I appreciate your question regarding the funding scenario.
I think that as a district right now, we have lots of good people working with kids.
We have lots of great kids.
That being said, I do think my perspective would be many districts beyond just what we're talking about today
are going to struggle in meeting the needs of their children
if that is not eventually addressed, particularly with inflation,
because of that when we talk about increases.
I mean, I'm definitely not into economics by trade,
but it seems to be that that's something that has increased substantially
when I look at the costs of our programs now
and comparatively to what we're reimbursed on through categorical fund.
I grow concerned about what the future brings in terms of districts' ability to,
districts, not just us, ability to meet some of the growing challenges.
We will always be there.
We will always try and we're always going to work hard with our kids in mind
and every kid every day, every kid belongs here.
We believe that, that being said, it would be incredibly helpful to be able to ensure
that everybody has the exact resources they need in the future
and to be able to put our heads down at night and rest knowing that that will be the case.
Can I get you to say and spell your name?
Sure.
Yes.
My name is Dr. Max Slong.
It may be X, L-O-N-G, and I am the Director of Student Services.
All right.
That's what we need from you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
It wasn't too bad, right?
Fine.
Good.
It was fine.
I tried to memorize all these statistics, but DPI changed like some of their statistics stuff
on WiseDash this morning.
I couldn't see it by label.
I was like, oh, I'm thankful you didn't ask me.
No, I'm trying to decrease people directly on statistics.
If I could have gotten in there, I could have gotten for you.
That's okay.
You're still tethered right here if you want to take the bat off.
Is our...