Executive Director’s Report

From the Office of the Executive Director

This report will be brief due to our recent BOD meeting on February 15th and the occurrence of school vacation week.

GBSD/MECDHH’s Academic Bowl Team was well represented by Captain’s Emma Foster and Taylor Gagnon along with teammates Cole Crossman and Marina Thompson. This team was led by our two coaches: Jonathan Connick and Emily Brachly. The event occurred on February 17th 18th and took place at the Iowa School for the Deaf in Council Bluffs. They competed against 20 other teams and advanced to the quarter finals. Emma and Taylor were honored with medals for being participants for the past 4 Academic Bowls. Congratulations to all of our students and coaches for representing GBSD/MECDHH so well.

The former library is now cleared out to utilize as a conference center. This will soon become a source of rental space in the near future once we have worked out a few details such as security.

LD 1756 recently passed the Senate and was scheduled for the House to vote on theBill February 16th. The Bill been tabled at this time. LD1756 would allow Disability Rights Maine to occupy the first floor of Building C. It is hoped that I will be able to provide you an update at the March 1st meeting.

Congratulations to Karen Hopkins for being named to the National Headquarters Board of Directors for Hands and Voices. As mentioned previously, she will be presenting in Austria later this summer. Maine has gained a national and international reputation for the work done by such talented staff members!

Karen Hopkins and myself have been having meaningful conversations with the Portland Schools, Morrison Center and the Department of Education around how we can best meet the educational needs of children whom we are referring to as the “middle student”. These are the students who present educational challenges greater than that of Deafness. We are hoping this might result in a pilot project with funding to hire an individual staff with background in Deafness and special education.

HRSA Grant Update

The Deaf/Hard of Hearing Guide Program is up and running! Deaf Guides have been out meeting families and all is going well! Families are engaged, interested and asking a lot of wonderful questions. The children are excited to see others with hearing aids or use ASL just like them! We have travelled all the way to Aroostook County, Old Town, Bar Harbor, Machias, Brooklyn, Bucksport and towns in Southern Maine. The Guides are also interacting with families at Hands & Voices events. In the past few weeks they have taken part in a skating event and two craft events. These natural interactions give families the opportunity to see Deaf adults interacting with children and the opportunity to ask questions in a natural setting. Feedback from all has been fabulous! This program is being looked at by many around the nation and will be presented at the National Hands & Voices conference in March!

The HRSA Grant is also funding the printing of a new family resource binder that has been written by a committee of professionals and Deaf adults from the Maine Newborn Hearing Program Board. This resource will be given to all new families by our ECFS team. We are excited to have this ready to share with families.

This coming weekend a "Weekend Getaway on the Island" will take place here on Mackworth Island! This is sponsored by Hands & Voices and funded by the HRSA Grant. We will have families come spend the weekend together and stay in our dorms! It is wonderful to be able to have families and children filling the dorms again! We will also be using the new conference center in the library! We are planning many fun and educational activities for all!

Early Childhood and Family Services Team

The ECFS team is working closely with the new Deaf Guides and Parent Guides to implement the new programs in support of families. They are also working to collect feedback from families to collect data for our grant as part of our quality improvement process we are doing.

The team will be meeting with Kris Michaud, the Part B Technical Advisor from CDS, in early March to look at aspects of program delivery for children age 3-5. We will look at the law together and create a service delivery model that meets that law and also provides evidenced based services for children who are deaf and hard of hearing. We are focusing especially on eligibility observations, consultations, assessments, and communication plans. We are constantly improving our programs.

Karen Hopkins, Kristen Shorey and Donna Casavant will be attending the New England Consortium for Deaf Blind children this Thursday and Friday to look at improving services for these children and their families. This program is funded by a federal grant that gives MECDHH funds to pay for two consultants to provide services. Kristen Shorey supports the 0-5 children as well as Morrison Development Center and Donna Casavant supports K-12. They have been doing great work in this area and building new supports throughout Maine.

Karen will begin meeting with the PSO consultants to gather feedback from them on their experiences in PSO, what they feel has worked well and what they recommend for changes. We will be working closely with Jan Breton from the Dept. of Education as we look at expanding our regional programs throughout Maine to serve more children directly.

Interviews for the PSO coordinator position will happen this coming week. We are excited to get this position filled and add more focus and new ideas for this program!

Mackworth Island Preschool

The preschool students just finished their healthy living theme! They learned about germs, eating healthy, making fruit salads, going to the doctors, and exercising!See some of the pictures below from their fun week!

East End Community School

This week our staff will be providing a professional development opportunity for the staff of EECS. They will be explaining some critical elements of Deaf Education and Deaf Culture and share tips for including our deaf students into EECS community.

We have had several IEP meetings at EECS in the past few weeks. Our team has been working extremely hard to offer assessment data to each IEP team to ensure our students are being offered the most appropriate education possible. Each meeting involves hours of assessments, report writing and planning as a team. Thank you to our teachers and therapists for all the commitment you offer our students!

We are all gearing up for Spring with warmer weather and beginning to plan for next year's programming. We are already beginning to look at students that will be transitioning from one program to another and looking at how our teams can best support their needs.

03/01/2018