The following email was sent the week of May 18 to members of the following chapters: School Counselors, Social Worker and Psychologists, Hearing Education Services and Vision Education Services.

The DOE has issued guidance on how to document communication with families about initiation of vision education and orientation and mobility services and other issues related to service delivery. You can find the guidance on the SESIS training page.

Read the guidance

The new procedures are in effect for entries made in SESIS on or after Monday, May 18, 2020. Under the new procedures, VES and orientation and mobility teachers can use a dropdown menu in the events section of the IEP to record whether parents agreed to services, declined services, withdrew a prior agreement for services or failed to respond to outreach. Additionally, VES and orientation and mobility teachers can use the dropdown menu to flag issues related to devices, including the need for fully functioning hearing assistive technology as well as missing or incorrect contact information.

Note that it is not necessary to use this process to document parent agreement for services if a first remote-service encounter has been entered and certified.

This guidance is in addition to recently issued guidance regarding encounter attendance entry for vision education and orientation and mobility services.