Principal Monthly Message

As we enter the new year, Focus Beyond has many achievements to be thankful for.

1st School Continuous Improvement Plan Updates:

• Student Annual Individual Education Program meetings are compliant at 90%

• The student climate survey will be implemented in the spring

• 11 students have successfully completed Focus Beyond Programming

• 54% of students completed programming identified as White

• 36% of students completed programing as Black/African American

• 9% of students completed programing as Hispanic

• Student accessing community vocational services and independent employment are on track to reaching our goals

• Student portfolio work is embedded in the work of Pathway 3 and is on track to meet our goal

2nd Our Sensory Regulation Space:

A team of our amazing educators received a $40,000 grant to create a sensory regulation learning space where students have the opportunity to develop skills that support meeting their unique learning needs. Our sensory regulation space is designed for students to learn to identify how their body is feeling, activities that support regulation, and transition back into other learning environments ready to engage in learning. Please watch the following video for more information.

Below are a few photos of our Celebration of Learning for December. The next Celebration of Learning will be held in February.

At Focus Beyond, we strive to help all students gain a deeper understanding of and passion for life-long learning. To accomplish that goal, we rely on community partnerships and the expertise and experience of our staff. Our students quickly learn that there are many training and career preparation opportunities in addition to college.

Today, the focus is: Minneapolis Community & Technical College (MCTC).

On the MCTC website, the college is described as follows: WHERE YOU WANT TO GO IN LIFE

Minneapolis College is where you can map out your future. We provide an education designed to take you to the places you want to go in life. We offer affordable pathways to high-quality degrees, diplomas, certificates and more. You’ll engage with the world through a diverse lens, while drawing on our supportive learning environment.

In the past, we have had several students from Focus Beyond take classes at MCTC. Many of our students selected MCTC because they have many programs in DESIGN AND THE ARTS. For example, MCTC offers Apparel Technologies, Cinema, Graphic Design, Digital and Print Media, Music, Photography and Motion, Sound Arts and Theatre Arts.

We’ve had Focus Beyond students attend MCTC as PSEO students, but that requires a high school GPA of 2.5 or higher. Others have attended MCTC after leaving Focus Beyond.

Recently, a small group of Focus Beyond students visited MCTC using the city bus. Although it is a three-bus trip from Focus Beyond, the travel time was less than an hour.

If you have further questions, please contact Craig Olsen at craig.olsen@spps.org

Here is the January Virtual Room: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1VKelYAggplQqRurA_Oj4rmN6I8CgE7EqmkpV_XGrIO4/edit?usp=sharing

Goku

Goku has grown his ability to use his voice to set his own goals and make decisions about his choices in pursuit of those goals. He has asked for support when he needs it and ensures his voice is heard. He has become an active participant in his transition planning and learning. He is finding activities that align with his interests and aspirations. Goku takes responsibility for his choices and is gaining confidence and skills every day. Goku is a great example of a person that is shaping his own path toward independence and fulfillment.

Emma has truly demonstrated initiative and determination in her journey toward independence and success. She has taken charge of her own IEP goals with confidence, showing exceptional self-advocacy to gain the support she needed to secure a competitive, independent, paid job at a neighborhood coffeeshop. Remarkably, she navigated her very first job interview in English, which is not her native language, and impressed everyone with her resilience and potential in the role.

When the coffee shop business unfortunately closed, Emma didn’t let this setback hold her back. Instead, she embraced her next opportunity with courage, taking on a new job site while continuing her classes. Now, she is once again applying for another paid, independent job, exemplifying her unwavering commitment and resilience.

Emma’s ability to adapt, persevere, and strive for her goals is truly inspiring. Congratulations, Emma, on your remarkable achievements and ongoing success!

If you are receiving Social Security Income and earning wages by working, you need to report your income to the Social Security Administration there are helpful websites for SSI and other resources:

• SSA- SSI Wage Reporting | SSA
• Work incentives connection- Work Incentives Connection Disability Services Support From Goodwill MN (goodwilleasterseals.org)
• Benefits Report from DB 101-DB101 Minnesota - Home

Please let your VRS counselor, your case manager, or one of the work coordinators know if you any questions.

Our students have access to a communications class that embeds skills related to employment, independent living, and post secondary education with podcasting as the mode to share their voices.

Focus Beyond Transition Program is an amazing program that prepares students with special education needs for adulthood. This presentation shares greater information about how our program model supports the individualized needs of students who have continued transition needs.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Bfa8c2yhn3vzBreZNDrRhM3-fvTZ_YrKfLDUj0DsOuE/edit?usp=sharing

We are proud of our program! Please review and share the Focus Beyond Video with your family and friends. Students who have continued special education transition needs are eligible to choose Focus Beyond as their next educational step.

https://youtu.be/NdTYc64oBpg?si=eJ6Nw-g4iLt_EIJo

We have been making meaningful progress during the development phase of our new site council. The purpose of the new site council is to grow family voice and strengthen our school, community and family relationships to foster a more collaborative educational environment for our students.

To start the process we have implemented a new student leadership group to ensure a student voice in our site council. We have attended all SPFE site council information sessions. We have followed up with a SPFE representative coming to Focus, touring our school and sitting down to share thoughts on our continued development. There is plan for the SPFE member to come back after break and help with more development strategies. We have sent out multiple surveys to staff, students and families asking for their voices in our site council development. We have also attended all family engagement Title 1 meeting for SPPS to share and gather more information on how to best serve our Focus Beyond community.

We are now in a processing phase with the information gained and establishing best practices for development. In the coming months we plan to have more to share as we continue to be mindful of our Focus Beyond community and its needs to welcome and grow family engagement. We are very excited for the future of our site council at Focus Beyond.

For more information about our site council please reach out to Jerrod Amadick our Family Liaison. email: jerrod.amadick@spps.org

phone: 651-293-5997

What is most important in your child’s education right now?

Family Engagement Plan

Families Right to Know

Focus Beyond School Report Card

All school documents can be translated or interpreters made available upon request. Please contact Micaela.Smith@spps.org

SPANISH

Todos los documentos pueden ser traducidos o interpretados oralmente si usted lo solicita

HMONG

Tej ntaub ntawv tom tsev kawm ntawv uas xa los rau nej, peb yuav pab txhais thiab nrhiav neeg txhais lus rau nej yog nej hais qhia peb

SOMALI

"Dhammaan dukumiintiyada iskuulka waa la turjumi karaa ama waxaa la heli karaa turjumaan haddii la codsado"

KAREN

Newsletter Translation

Prefer a language other than English? You can open the newsletter link and click a button on the right (on a computer) or at the bottom (on a mobile device) to have it translated into many different languages. Please know that the translation function may be inaccurate or incomplete. If you have any questions, please call us at 651-293-5997.

SPANISH

¿Prefiere un idioma que no sea inglés? Puede abrir el enlace del boletín y hacer clic en el botón a la derecha (en una computadora) o en la parte inferior (en un dispositivo móvil) para traducirlo a muchos idiomas diferentes. Tenga en cuenta que la función de traducción puede ser inexacta o incompleta. Si tiene alguna pregunta, llámenos al 651-293-5997.

SOMALI

Ma waxaad doorbideysaa luuqad aan aheyn af-Ingiriis? Waxaad furi kartaa lifaaqa wargeysyada oo guji batoonka midigta (ee kumbiyuutarkaaga) ama xagga hoose (ee taleefankaaga gacanta) si aad wargeyska ugu tarjuntid luuqado badan oo kala duwan. Fadlan ogow in natiijada turjumaaddu ay noqon karto mid aan sax ahayn ama aan dhammaystirnayn. Haddii aad wax su'aalo ah qabtid, fadlan naga soo wac 651-293-5997.

HMONG

Puas xav tau ua lwm hom lus? Nej qhib txoj kab mus rau hauv daim ntawv xov xwm thiab nias lub pob ntawm sab xis hauv lub koos pis tawj, los sis yog lwm hom twj no ces nyob hauv qab, ces yuav muaj txhais ua ntau hom lus. Nco ntsoov tias cov lus txhais no yuav tsis raug txhua lo los sis txhais tiav tiav. Yog nej muaj lus nug, thov hu rau peb ntawm 651-293-5997.

KAREN

ကျိာ်ဂုၤဂၤတခါလၢနအဲၣ်ဒိးအီၤ လၢအတမ့ၢ် အဲကလံးကျိာ်န့ၣ်အိၣ်ဧါ. နအိးထီၣ်ကွၢ်လံာ်တၢ်ကစီၣ်ပှာ်ဘျးစဲ ဒီးစံၢ်လီၤဖဲ ပှာ်ဘျးစဲအဖီခိၣ်ဖဲစုထွဲတကပၤ(လၢခီၣ်ဖၠူထၢၣ်ဖီခိၣ်) မ့တမ့ၢ် စံၢ်လီၤဖဲတၢ်ဖီလာ် (လၢနလီတဲစိ ဖီခိၣ်) ဒ်သိး တၢ်ကကွဲးကျိာ်ထံအီၤလၢကျိာ်အဂုၤအဂၤအဂီၢ်သ့ဝဲဒၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ဝံသးစူၤသ့ၣ်ညါလၢ လံာ်လၢ တၢ်ကွဲးကျိာ်ထံအီၤန့ၣ် ကအိၣ်ဝဲဒီး တၢ်အကမၣ် မ့တမ့ၢ် တၢ်တလၢတပှဲၤသ့ဝဲဒၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. နမ့ၢ်အိၣ်ဒီး တၢ်သံကွၢ်တဖၣ်န့ၣ်, ဝံသးစူၤကိးပှၤဖဲ 651-293-5997 န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်.