1. Director/Principal: Nancy Neugebauer, EdD
Next Stop Life:
North East Transition Services (NETS)
North East Independent School District, San Antonio, Texas
3736 Perrin-Central, Bldg. 1
San Antonio, TX
Director/Principal: Nancy Neugebauer, EdD

2. North East Transition Services
Age-Appropriate Learning
Environments for Adults
18 Through 21

3. Leaving High School All students have questions What will I do?
What kind of job would be a good one for me?
Is college in my future?
Where will I live?
How will I get to work or school?
These are questions all students have, but the challenges are greater for students with cognitive disabilities. (Cognitive disabilities is the term many states use and not MR, etc.)

4. NETS: North East Transition Services
It is a Service and Not a School

5. North East Transition Services (NETS): Mission
Work with students and parents to develop and support
Employment
Postsecondary Education
Independent Living
Transportation
Socialization
Accessing Community Services
Handouts: do you have any NETS brochures you can bring?

6. Adult Life Connections
Vocational
Volunteer Work
Work-based Learning
Paid Employment
Community
Adult Services
Community Facilities and Resources
Transportation
Postsecondary Education
Continuing Ed/Certificates
Training
Independent Living Skills

7. What NETS can do: Train on using public transportation
Assist in scheduling student activities
Assist in accessing adult services
Monitor job sites and job coach
Collaborate with employers
Assist with career development
Teach skills for community inclusion
Facilitate access to colleges
Assist with job training opportunities

8. Developing Community-Based Services
Age-appropriate Learning Environments for Students 18 Through 21

9. NETS: The Idea Concerns Solutions
20 year olds on high school campus with 14 year olds
Sudden change from bell schedule to non-structured adult life
Transition services looked too traditional
Solutions
Find age appropriate environments
Design the school day to look like a day in the life of an adult
Design a non-traditional instructional day which meant non-traditional services
In this slide describe how NETS came about. What were the concerns or reasons that NETS was created.

10. NETS Location of instruction
Age-appropriate instructional environments
Work environments
Learning environments
Public transportation
Community sites: restaurants, stores, etc.
Describe how ya’ll decided not to locate the NETS program on the high school campus but to select a non-traditional location. Explain that it is not a location with classrooms that student’s go to. They may not go at all or only for a short time for a meeting. If you were there today, you might not see any students as they left their homes on public transportation or with parents to go to jobs or college or to other activites. OR their might be one student meeting with their teacher almost like an adult who goes to the Department of Labor Employment center. Or there might be several students meeting there as a central location to go to lunch.

11. LOOKS MORE LIKE AN EMPLOYMENT OFFICE THAN A SCHOOL LOCATION!
NETS
The NETS Building (school)
Houses staff and records
Students go only for:
Assessment
Planning meeting with staff
Central meeting location to meet with case managers
LOOKS MORE LIKE AN EMPLOYMENT OFFICE THAN A SCHOOL LOCATION!
Here describe more of what the NETS looks like
(Might add a slide after this one with a picture of the office space with computers etc. that big open room that looks more like an employment center that a classroom would be good)

12. NETS Staffing and Scheduling Teachers and job coaches
The role of employers/co-workers
What about nights and weekends?
Flex time
Rotating weekends
The schedule board
Explain how ya’ll evolved to the flexible hours and what the schedule board looks like with the graphic that rotates for job coaches as they share nights and weekends. One of the job coaches told me that she always volunteered because her kids were grown and that gives some of the others time with family who still need it.
Handout: do you have a copy of the staffing schedule?

13. Training Must be: On-going Broad and specific
Related to facilitating postsecondary goals
Involve community services and networking
Collaborative
Talk about the district training. Broad training is more the general and traditional training on disabilities, services, and transition. Specific is more related to the non-traditional function of the school. Knowing the agencies, what they do,and how to have personal working relationships with the agencies and their staff is key to your success. Problem-solving such as the transition folder reviews, transition matrix, and person-centered planning.
Also key: the student population changed, higher expectations evolved, and the first structure of staffing no longer worked. Brought in consultant to look at systems change (Karen).

14. Making it Work Tools and Strategies for
Non-Traditional Learning Environments for Students 18 Through 21

15. Transition Assessment
Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
Data from the high school years
ESTR (Enderle-Sevenson Transition Rating)
Student/parent surveys
Interest inventories
Data collection in the community
Employment
Transportation
Tell them to be sure to get the info from high schools. Don’t re-do all of the testing. Provide enhanced services and continue services. Don’t retread old ground.
Collect data: ecological inventories, task analysis, etc.
Make data-driven decisions

17. Outcomes for Graduating Class of 2007
Employment Home Living Rec/Leisure Community Post-Sec Ed Total

18. The Transportation Connection
Enrolling in public transportation
Who pays for the bus?
Transportation training
The parent/family role
Increasing independence
Ensuring safety
Do you have anything on transportation training? If not, don’t create it.

19. Employment Work-based learning in high school Vocational assessment
Making a good job match
Job training
Supported employment
The role of the parent/family
Try with each of these to explain the parent role and how you try to build capacity in parents otherwise the day after graduation is a big shock.

20. Volunteer Work
The role of volunteer work in adult life and transition services
Opportunity to help the community
Caution: this does not replace employment training or paid employment
The role of volunteer work and that it is supplemental to work and plays a small role and not a big role-- just like for any other adult

21. Agency Partnerships Alamo Area Council of Government (AACOG)
Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services (DARS)
Department of Labor/Texas Workforce
Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
Other – including private organizations
Please print the name of AACOG on the first line
Here talk briefly about how ya’ll connect parents. You don’t just give names and telephone numbers but actually go with students/parents and or take them to the meeting. The follow-up to be sure they get connected.
We won’t put DARS because other states simply call it Rehabilitation Services
Under Other: write anything else, for instance the ARC, etc.

22. Family Issues The obvious: SSI and employment
When the family wants day habilitation services and not employment
Information and training for parents
Family to family networking
The final decision for life after public school belongs to the family.
Talk about the day habiliation dilemma. We would all like for day hab not to be where students go. Try to help parents understand and feel comfortable with other options. Connect families to other families who have walked in their shoes so the risks don’t seem so large or so abstract. If the parent still wants day hab, then what can be done to make it a successful placement. NETS works with day hab and trains staff on student and strategies learned. Joint funds and gradually turns over funding to parents prior to graduation. Helps to look at transportation and financial assistance related to day hab and parent need.

23. Person-Centered Planning
Why
Teach parents a problem-solving process
Provide solutions to unanswered questions
Develop a system of support for the family
When
There are concerns that need a non-traditional strategy
The family has few supports or needs input from someone other than the school staff
How
Personalized location: home, church, etc.
Planning membership
Only 1 or 2 school staff present
** Personalizing the PCP Process
2 or 3 pages with the tools developed last year when the staff took Debbie’s process and personalized it to their own.
Let me know if you want me to bring this one. I have the drafts I sent back to Jennifer and group

24. Ensuring Effectiveness
Transition Planning Matrix
Is the student ready?
Have we addressed all of the areas of transition?
Do we have paid and natural supports in place?
Will the day after graduation bring life to a halt...OR...have we provided effective transition services?
Vickie-- I will include the transition planning matrix we developed last year. I have a one page matrix that shows an example and non-example

25. Transition Planning Matrix
Stetson and Associates, Inc.; Houston, Texas

26. Monitoring Progress Transition Planning Matrix
Used to identify services completed and service gaps
Can evaluate gaps for each student
Can identify systems problems
Transition Monitoring Chart
Identify the status within each transition service
Develop steps needed to improve the transition service to ensure meaningful connections to postsecondary goals

27. Transition Services Monitoring Chart
I will bring this form also
Transition Services Monitoring Chart
Stetson and Associates, Inc.; Houston, Texas

28. Lessons Learned

29. The Things We Would Keep:
Flexible staffing, hours
Consultative services from transition specialists
Off school campus
Age appropriate environment
Community based environment

30. Flexibility is Key! Every year is different.
Every student is different.
Federal and state laws change.
Funding and resources change.
Technology and research improves services.
Stay informed and be flexible.
Help participants to understand this is a fluid process. Assessment tools are improved or become more available in a technology format, families have increasingly higher expectations, sometimes their goals do not match our goals (ie Day Hab) . Because it works this year does not mean it will work next year. We must change with students, families, and the communities in which we live if we want to prepare student’s for meaningful adult lives.

31. Contact Information
North East Transition Services
3736 Perrin-Central, Bldg. 1
San Antonio, TX
Director/Principal: Nancy Neugebauer, EdD