2. FOCUS GROUPS *12 Groups for each area *4-7 staff per group

3. Themes evolved from all 4 groups. This report is a summation of themes from all 4 groups. While some themes emerged, many different topics emerged and ideas surfaced unique to individual views.

4.  Variety  Collaboration among internal staff members  Working with teachers and being in classrooms  Remote Work Site  Building relationships with families  Continuous learning

5.  Balancing between your professional and personal life; Caseloads, Time  Child Find; identification process  Changes do not always get communicated to the teachers from the LEA administrators  Dynamics of families have changed-diverse cultural population, language barriers, poverty

6.  Professional Development; Need more job specific choices  Too much redundancy in staff/service and we don’t think like a system (3 distinct personalities between CF, CL, MT)  Increase in paperwork; re-evaluations

7.  Funds to support trainings for LEAs; Not able to send our own people to things  Professional growth-conferences  Colleagues are spread more thin  I serve preschool through high school in one district-having to have expertise in so many areas

8.  Doing less with less; I used to see babies once a week and now it’s once a month. We don’t have extra time; you have to rely on parents to implement strategies with children; some can do and some don’t do as well  Our collaboration with other agencies has gone way down-DHS-miss or duplicate services; causes inefficiencies

9.  We need to be able to see the data when we collect it (all agency indicator training data; internal survey; external needs assessment)  If you are an association member you get more information-unequal  A large amount of dollars for EQ and accessibility is an issue  RWS has increased the time I work and my efficiency

10.  Why do people have to do the same amount of PD despite different levels of experience (brand new vs. having 20+ years of service)  Early childhood doesn’t seem to “fit” in many places  We got into this to work with kids and now it’s legislatively and lawsuit driven  Expressed appreciation for conducting focus groups.

11.  Presentations made at Dec. 2011 Administrative Retreat; AEA 267 Board of Directors Meeting, Feb. 2012  Will guide administrative discussions and decision-making  Intersections; All Staff Feb. 2012  Future focus groups with various topics