##VIDEO ID:H8MZzmgeJ-A## good evening everyone Welcome to our September 10th Commission on disabilities meeting if we can do the Pledge of Allegiance is greatly appreciated I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to The Republic stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all Vice chno if you could do a roll call of the members certainly so Ralph too paulen perno is here Mario gz present Jason Baron present Ellie Vargas no and Ann Marie present okay everyone is present if Ellie comes in I will let you know if I see her trying to get in okay um item number one is a uh someone makes a motion to approve the meeting minutes from the August 13th meeting I sent the meeting minutes out to everyone ahead of time let me know who had I guess there was no ER errors with that um good Mario did you U make the motion and Jason use that second yes thank you um um on here I um I'm gonna take something out of order because um when I when I put it up it was incorrectly done I'm going to go to item number three which should have been item number two uh we uh we have Karen uh is it cage is that how it's pronounced uh I don't want to Gage Gage uh who is the CEO and founder ocate uh is graciously joining us she's going to give us a little presentation um so uh an Marie had reached out to her um to to see if she would join us for our commission of disabilities meeting so I believe you should have uh the ability to share your screen and I'll let you introduce yourself and take it from there joining us okay great well great to see everybody thanks for inviting me to come talk with you I'm going to take a second make sure I'm sharing my screen properly I'm gonna do let's see chrome whole window whole desktop I will share and then I will pop over here open up my slideshow so instead of seeing my messy desktop are you seeing a slide now coming through great okay so um thanks Amry for reaching out um I uh am a parent of a child with um learning disabilities an ADHD and um I'm also somebody who's had a career in education technology and um I was thinking about these two tracks very separately until one day day I saw all of these interesting new announcements um from companies creating like AI tutors and AI teaching assistants and I thought why couldn't we use that type of technology to help parents navigate special education um and that was kind of like the start of my thinking about kvit and um it kind of came from the place of uh it's a very like you go in as not an expert about education about special education about how any of this works you just know like you're trying to help your kid um and be successful in school um and it seems like from the parents I talk to like a pretty Universal you know feeling of like I don't really know how this works I don't really know um procedures and you know five six years later maybe I've figured a lot of it out but um I still don't feel that confident about it um and that really you know no one has five or six years to wait to kind of feel like they've got a handle on um how to work effectively with the school to advocate for their kids and the reality is like schools they don't don't really have time to educate parents about how it all works they barely have time to actually do the work with the kids um and these are very you know private concerns and people don't um usually ever see like an individual education plan from like another child right they're private they're not able to be shared by schools parents don't do that so no one really knows like how it works very well or what other people have on their IEPs or what they could ask for um and so you either just like spend a lot of time researching and talking to other parents or joining CPAC which is helpful um or you hire people to advise you try professional um Advocates um but there's not you know there's not a lot of a lot of options so my thought and I've already we've already built some of this out was that um technology could help parents as they're going through this process right this idea of like a virtual or digital IEP assistant um and you know this uh like the numbers and the cycle that's on the outside of this is really the process that everybody goes through with special education like at least once a year um and there's a lot of knowledge that's involved in um being able to navigate all of those effectively and be able to really like Advocate effectively so there's the issue of like procedurally how does it work how do you claim your rights um as a a parent there's the reality that it is a legal process and there is a documentation and paper trail component to it there is like the monitoring of the progress and how is it going there's the reviewing of the actual IEP and the content of the IEP and then assessing like okay now where is my kid and do we need to you know go through the cycle again and again um so you know in my mind there was an advocacy toolkit that was digital because that could be really personalized um you know I think that there's a lot of great content that's out online if you know what you're looking for um but it's very general usually um some of it's not even specific to the state of that you're in right um and uh the idea of doing this using your own documents and uh the ability to use technology to personalize it would really make it much more like efficient like much quicker to get the idea that you answer that you need or to keep track of the things that you need for the moment that you need them it's usually pretty acute and it can be difficult to like go find someone that can help you at the exact moment that you need to to do something um so this was kind of the inspiration for um for the product and if I have time I'll leave the slides and do a little demo um but I'll just start by saying like that advocacy toolkit has like four items in it we have two of those that are now um a version of it's available we just started building it um last November so um we have the first pieces of that available now um and one is a a chatbot that answers questions about uh parental rights Massachusetts special education procedures um and it's geared towards uh kinds of questions that parents might have there's a lot of terminology that's hard to understand um and I'll show you a little bit more about it the other piece is um like an automated uh uh IEP binder I don't know if anyone's familiar with the idea of an IEP binder but like sometimes you see parents have these huge physical binders that they've like been keeping track of all the reports that come in from school and you know it takes a lot of work to actually create that and maintain it um and now that many schools have switched over to like delivering the documents all digitally um there's a way that we can use technology to kind of organ automatically maintain that and organize it um so just to kind of say a little bit more about the question like the chat this is really based on documents from desie part in part um about like what are the Massachusetts procedural um elements like the procedural safeguards and other comp components that are um as well as some of the other statements that they make like policy statements around dyslexia guidelines or what's the policies around um uh bullying or around um restraint and then as well as more general questions um that have to do with like services and accommodations and the differences between IEPs and 504s and um but also bringing forward like the specifics of you know you have this many days before the school needs to do this if you do that or can give you suggestions about how to do all of that work so I will I will show that to you if we have time and then um just to clarify like these are topics we have prompts or we have different like sugested questions underneath these topics that you might want to ask and then you can also just put in your own question and ask so even if it's not something that's already um been anticipated and then um with this is the automated IEP binder so like a very large percentage of um of people I'll just say specifically parents use Gmail and get a lot of their information from school and so the idea of like being able to hook it up to your Gmail pull out all the things from the people who communicate with you about your kids Special Needs supporting them both like in school or therapists out of school or neuropsychologist or whoever you work with or tutor um and then being able to automatically take any reports or documents that they're emailing you and keep track of it and put it all on a timeline um automatically categorize it and then it's there to be shared with you're using an advisor or you just need to keep track of all your records and be able to see what's happened when um not like hope it's still sitting in your email account like nine months later and that you're going to be able to pull up the relevant piece of information so um this is also designed so that if you are special ed like a professional advocate for special education that you can have parents work with you share their documents with you through this platform um rather than needing to do it manually um because usually the first thing an advocate does is a records review um in order to start working with clients and then you know clients are paying for those hours of manual organization before they can even get into it so this can be used independently by parents or it can be used um in collaboration with a professional Advocate um so I am going to show you this briefly um and then I'm G to come back and and hit this last slide but I'll just pause for a second in case there questions but while I'm flipping over to get to the um demo okay let me switch over and go here okay so this is my personal account on kvit I'm not um showing signing in because that's not very interesting you just sign in with your Gmail um but uh uh I'm going to show you kind of how this was created I mentioned that you kind of when you set it up you tell the system who are the people so we go to my profile um you can have different Paper Trails for different children if you've got more than one child on an IEP you can set up separate components for them and then um so in this case I only have one child but I put my dog in there too just so you could see the two different um and uh you can add a co-parent so that you're kind of sharing the information often there's like one parent who has 95% of the stuff and the other parent has just like a little bit of things that the other parent doesn't have and kind of keeping it all together automatically is nice uh way to do it and then in this case you know these are the people who have sent me most of the information so when I created my account I said oh these are the people that I want to keep track of their Communications with me and you're going to automatically pull like the history of my communication with those people from my Gmail and then on an ongoing basis it'll check like every night is there something new um so we go back to my paper trail um you see that there are these categories here and so what's happened is the application has pulled in these items you can see a bunch of these are email and then here's a document so this was an attachment and the system uh took this off of uh the email that it came in from it created a new label this was originally called the three column report which doesn't really mean anything anything to me I don't know what that is exactly but that's what the school called it um and it probably had a file name like my kid's name anyhow um and it l it goes into the document and pulls out the dates as well so it uses that information that sees in the document to automatically categorize it so it's identified that this is a progress report if I wanted to change that if I didn't like it I could change it um but it kind of does that work for you so that you're not going in and manually needing to put everything where it belongs and here I can just say oh I only want to see my IEP documents um that have come from the school and they're all listed here and I can go back into my history and see oh I had an amendment and I rejected a placement and I got a meeting invitation so you can kind of see the history of the official IEP process um one question yeah does it does it f that information from the subject line and know what what where to put it or how does it differentiate what folder to to yeah it's actually looking at the document itself so it's looking uh it's actually reading the PDF and determining what it is oh okay is it is there a is there a um is there a a percentage of of of error or accuracy on you know how correct it is or is there is it ever incorrect or is it is there like a plus minus that it always finds the correct uh folder to put it into she may have froze yeah oh we lost it for a second one's on momentarily should probably sign back in there you are I'm sorry about that I think that's okay A little internet blip there I just wondering how accurate it is to to determine when it reads a document is it pretty pretty accur try to shut your camera off for a minute it's breaking up behind you yeah Karen you're breaking in and out wasn't just on my end right I see you do hear me yes I really apologize um so let's hope for the best with the internet um so if I had wanted to change that I could change it um but generally I don't find I have to reshare your screen H okay let me go back here we are share there we go okay all [Music] right okay move the heads so I can can see you guys better great um so if there's something that comes to me and it's not um uh something that's put in as an attachment I can always just upload those items because sometimes they are other things or someone that I don't want to sync because they send me a lot of other things but occasionally there's something I could just forward it here um so there are other ways to get in items that don't happen to come as um uh part of your Gmail sync um and then there's ways you can also share so if you decide to work with um an advisor or an attorney um there are some specific ways that you if they were also using kvit that you could link your accounts but in this case let's say there's somebody else you can um share it via URL if you wanted someone to see the whole paper trail or if you just want them to see one particular item you can do that as well um I'll just quickly flip over since I think we're about to run out of time and say that this is the chat bot that I was talking showing on the slide and you can see here that I click on a topic it gives me a few suggestions of questions that I could ask the chatbot but I can Al just write my own in here so if for example I wasn't really sure about what progress data might be possible to get from schools and I wanted some more information about that I can just click that question um and it's going to give me an answer related to that and then if I have follow-up questions it already knows it remembers that I've asked this question and then it will often like prompt me like do you have a more specific question about this or do you have concerns about something you've seen like now you can ask um about how I might interpret them um so you can then just type in you know uh yes more about how to interpret and you don't have to have perfect English or um you can also actually ask it to respond to you in Spanish or another language um uh so that folks who are not native English speakers have other options you just have to ask it in Spanish please and then it will respond to you in decent Spanish probably not in perfect Spanish but um and this is leveraging some of the um the core capabilities of these um AI platforms that's driving this we kind of built the layer on top of it so that gives you a little bit of a flavor about this it also will you know keep history about when you've done your um chats and um so if you want to refer back to something later you can okay so I'll just um try to switch back over to my to my slides for a second cuz I know that we are about time for your next item on your agenda um and just say that um I think you know everybody uh involved in advocacy related to special education is aware that there's a new IEP form that's rolling out in schools this year here and um uh a lot most districts are doing trainings and their other like advocacy groups that are giving trainings about the new IEP um and we just created this little tool that sits separately from the main application anyone can use it for free that will take like a current IEP and essentially transform it into the new form so that parents don't have to waste their IEP meeting time like learning about um about it or how does this compare to my old one um and so it's just a way to kind of see it in a more personalized way it actually takes the information from your current IEP and like relays it out for you so that you can see it um and use that as the the basis for kind of when you go into your next IEP meeting um and that could be used by you know by anyone that wants to access it um so that's just like a nice um just a nice way to kind of speed up the learning which is kind of the goal right like we want to empower parents to feel like they understand it and they are empowered to be their advocating and just to make that process of learning that stuff like much easier and less work so that's um yeah that's Kate uh thank you thank you for for sharing that I'm going to open it up to the members that may have some questions yeah I'd like to see um what I'd like to see I don't know if they thought about tying in some of the federal things because for example the transportation side that's included that's not State based that's Federal based so they wonder if some of the I AP things might want to be because you might be traveling to another state and some people don't realize that things are state-based but some things are federally based as well for IEPs because they're not all one rule most people don't realize that so that's that's why you want to download things from the federal side and the state side uh for each state but it's also a matter of educating sometimes I know one student at the school that I attended the family actually had to sue the school district in Virginia at one point uh they were paying for the school out of pocket uh person was attending Perkins and that's very expensive yeah and that person needed a lot of care so it wasn't like cheap and uh a lot of staff had to travel to defend that so I'm just suggesting that they might want to pull some of that in to help so that people aren't just looking everywhere because some things are not based on the state some of the things are federally based and they tie into each other and one may be stronger than the other so just another tip that might it looks good it just would be helpful I think um yeah there is some information that comes from idea that's also in there but but I think it's um it's a very good point that you're making about that it is really the combination of the two together and like making sure that people understand that it's a good point oh especially in the present climate I mean we don't know where things are headed and last time that that particular section got removed from the website you couldn't find it that's why I'm making that statement also so we don't know and I'm I'm you know it's a this is a difficult sector for most folks to be looking at uh Because unless you've been through that in some form or fashion um you know my mom was lucky because the school district had already anticipated she was going to bring up transportation for example so but that's because my mom asked a lot of questions in reads so they probably already were thinking and probably but it's also a matter whether a district was smart enough to figure that out and some of them are not it's just unfor forunate but it is the truth it's you have to be your own looking for it so just something yeah absolutely thanks Jason anyone else thank you Karen for joining us it's nice to meet you finally um and thank you for the work that you're doing um I I think my I just had a couple of questions regarding I from what I understand it was kind of in a a trial phase um is that correct so a certain number parents were in a trial phase with it is that trial ended or is it still in Phase so yeah we had some parents who were um trying it out in the spring with us and we're still um we still have open we still have free access available it's probably going to keep going for like a couple months um and then uh once we've kind of gotten a little further down the pike then we'll be you know there will be a fee for the application um but you know our plan is for that to be less than $10 a month so kind of like a like an app kind of fee and and so far have they been finding it user friendly yeah people have said it's really easy and I think you know they're kind of surprised by how effective it is it's definitely like something you don't use every day right because it's like you kind of use it for when you have an upcoming something like I have an IEP meeting in a few weeks and I have to figure out this issue before I go and so a lot of people use it like I'm preparing for my IEP meeting I'm setting this all up and then once whatever your kind of more intensive interactions with the school district are like die down a little bit you might it'll still keep track of like all your documents and the comings and goings but you might not need to like uh go back and use it for like a few months if things are going smoothly if things are not going smoothly you're going to be using it more often of course but um but anyway it's uh it gets people the answers very quickly but there's a little moment of like this isn't a person so like can I trust this answer right I think is like the biggest hurdle that people are it's a new kind of technology and um so I think people just have more of a learning curve just about like uh how like what it's good to use it for um like for a really complex thing where you need an expert advice like you still want to go see somebody who you know can strategize with you but it's great for like the easy to medium stuff um sorry it seems so yeah and is there tech support um if if parents needed it yeah we have uh email tech support so people can email in if they're having problems and there's also a little like widget kind of thing in the app where if you want to give feedback you know you can let us know about something that's broken God forbid or something that you really love you know whatever um we're definitely very actively seeking feedback from parents right now and we just made this new um like dashboard for professional Advocates available as well oh very nice I did reach out to rier CPAC um I don't know if anybody was available but Le hope to put it on their radar um so hopefully it will at least be on their radar and they'll be aware of of of it yeah I sent it to CPAC and I also sent it to the director of special education um that she was going to be there um so I did let them know and I sent them the link to the website same okay great well I think I sent you the a PDF of the slides and of a kind of like how it works document so you can also feel free to share those with okay your members or with those folks as well sure thank you anyone other members have any questions I just have a quick thought or question Karen it's it's wonderful work that you're doing um having been a nurse that attended a lot of IEP meetings in the past um you really put a lot of heart and soul into this and that's wonderful um how do people find you how do people tap into this particular um this particular venue so that they can start utilizing the Kate for themsel you know for their children or for their child or whomever how do they find you how do you do you advertise or do is it through special EDS sites or how do you get that word starting to do those things we haven't done a lot of it yet um we have a Facebook page we have a LinkedIn page and you can sign up directly from the website and we're starting to like reach out to cpacs to kind of let them know that we exist um but we're kind of just in the very very early days so if you have suggestions about how to let people know like I'm all the yours if I think of anything I'll let you know okay great well I would suggest maybe you know reaching out to um you know the mass commission for the blind for example mass rehab uh those folks would typically you know be part of that process as well so just something that might be a good sector to put that in and then Mass office on disability as well because they all tie in in some form or fashion uh so just something that might help and maybe particular word somehow on the news just a bit maybe I mean I don't I don't know if they're willing to do a human interest story but I think it's worth a shot um yeah I was talking to a reporter at the Boston Globe and um that's a good start that's that's a good start I mean but I meant TV part just so that yeah because it can reach so many people um and maybe WBZ might want to do a spot on it you know on the radio or something like that too you just some little things that I was thinking of that might get the word out a bit better Jason the only thing with the mass office disabilities they're more towards uh on the college end um not the high school end and the elementary end um so they'll they'll basically refer as you said to the Blind and things like that no I got you but it's I'm figuring every resource there is for Access including at the college level there are still rights that people in college lels are entitled to yeah and they are not aware of what they're entitled to so it would help right so that there's any little piece that this can still be used to kind of make your arguments to a school because colleges don't think that students have rights that are disabled but they do right yeah just thinking on all lens yeah for sure and the whole transition Services thing is a is getting a lot more um and the independent living centers is another place you may want to reach out to yep great any other questions well I wanted to thank you again Karen this this is this is a great Endeavor that you Tak it on one last question how long have you been working on this uh we well I was was doing research this time last year but we didn't start like actually building the tools until November like this time last year we were you know trying to think about what features would we want to build and how would it work and that kind of stuff yeah so yeah this is the first school year that we're really like starting the school year with something to tell people about well I thank you I thank you for for joining us and I have the like you said you had sent me the the slid in the p in the PDF um so if anyone you know they can reach out to the commission and disabilities um and I would be able to uh forward that information to them if any members want that I can forward that to you also okay great well thank you so much I really appreciate the invitation and the kind words and um suggestions I appreciate it thank you again you're you're more than welcome to stay or leave for the rest of of our meeting um but we appreciate you're joining us thank you so much I gotta go thank you bye bye okay I'm going to go back to item number two was updates and next steps from the August uh 13th meeting um the first part for that was any updates from Paul and Marie regarding calendar the calendar for future monthly guest speakers not sure if we have um any body on Horizon um I didn't know if you had anybody planned but if not um calling get on the next event um I know you were at the event that we held on the Saturday if you had gotten the contact information from the universal access group I did okay they're more than willing to join one of our meetings if somebody wants to reach out to them um I was just I was reading that because I was interested to see that they haven't yet listed the Eastern stuff but I was going to reach back out because I do have a business card um from one of the women I was standing in the water with which was great by the way um so I was gonna reach out to yeah that's that's Rachel that was Rachel Lee yeah um see if they would be interested in doing a little segment I am waiting on two emails back um from Pace okay over here Y and um it's an organization that just does kind of it's not really out there it's more or less a person who's kind of weeding their way through like the helping and the assisting and that sort of thing it's not an agency so I'm waiting to hear back from them only because I have a friend who does it's not home care it's more like a companion buudy slel when needed but it's not on a nursing level it's on a personal level personal assistant level or yeah but it's not through an agency and I'm interested because I'm finding more and more of these people are cropping up and so I sent one of them a message just out of more out of curiosity but the more information I'm getting the more I'm looking at you know there's so many agencies out there and now there are individuals who you know their reimbursement is done very very differently from from home care agencies and home care agencies require a lot different documentation so I was just kind of thinking that maybe in the future it'll take some work maybe getting an agency to come in one month and then an individual in their take on the things and possibly just kind of compare and contrast um and see if see if there's other stuff out there I mean I know CPAC takes care of a lot of the stuff for the kids that are in school but that age out population once they reach that 18 into 22 and then past that I know that there's a lot of um things that kind of Fall by the wayside so that's where I'm hoping to go with that okay all right and Amry and I know you had a few people you reached out to before but uh one of them something happens and I didn't know if there was anybody else that you were waiting to hear back from yeah so potentially there was someone for October um it's a music therapy program that's based out of Boston but they actually have a location in Riv I think it's maybe their only other location so they did offer this was back in August that I spoke with them so I just recently followed up to see if they're still available so I'll keep you posted okay yep thank you yeah just just um just send an email to me and Bine and uh and then we'll go from there if if if you want following to if you want to reach out to Rachel or Terry from Universal um and then I'll have some updates about that after with them too because I just received some uh information from them for their fall programs yep do that I just just received it about two hours ago um also uh on item part of item two is the recap and discussions regarding the all abilities day out at Riv Beach event that took place on August 17th uh we got some great it was great to see Marie Pauline and Ellie was down there um just uh I was I was happy that we could good weather we did get some um some people there we had uh a people as far away from as far where probably went Montreal yeah there was um a family from Montreal and then a family from was it North or South Dakota um that they they kind of happened into the into the whole aspect but um the boys the two young men that I spoke with one was high school one was a college student um was kind of interested to see that the city was actually putting on a program where it's a you know the a a state state Beach but it's the city that was putting it on and they were kind of interested to just see that whole working so um I had a lot of interesting interactions and come to find out the young man that I was talking with in the water was one of my students from Paul Rivier oh really yep wow he's a wonderful young man he's at the high school he's doing well and it just was was really really nice to reconnect with him and see him yeah no it was it was it was a great time um we did uh we didn't get as many people as I thought but it was okay for the first year and we'll build on this for next year and uh a lot of people are going to work with us to try and get hopefully get the location that we really wanted because I think the location closer to the train station better uh for for for people to access it um but we may do what we had and thank we want to put a shout out to the r Parx and Recreation Department that were tremendous and helping helping us with that event uh with setting up and uh having some there some of their workers come down and assist with that day um which was which was a great help um but it was it was a great day and fun for all that came uh we had a couple of um a couple of women that came down and they haven't been able to get in the water uh one said for over 30 35 years and she was basically in tears that she got to go in on one of the accessible Wheelchairs and uh was able to go into the water and sit in the water so just being able to see that and experience that uh myself that was that was that was well worth it just just to see that so I was happy and that we'll we'll work on that and hopefully it'll be bigger and better next year so um thank you for for the for the two of you that came and Alie that came down and uh any suggestions for next year we be uh greatly appreciated and uh if you have any feedback you know welcome to uh to to take it the people I spoke to were just thrilled to be able to get into the water um a woman that I spoke with hasn't been in for several years a young woman and she was just pleased to think that she could go spend time with her kids and her husband in the water and be safe and feel safe and feel like there were enough people around who if there was a problem there wouldn't be it wouldn't Mushroom in and M you know Snowball into anything else so I think that that was really important to make people feel safe yeah I also I also want to take thank Chief brgh uh he also had uh two fire Personnel down the emergency response people for us for the whole day which I was greatly appreciated for and he made sure that the ambulances near was nearby in case we needed to to to have them called to the scene so that was also great appreciate it I almost forgot to thank them for that it was it was a nice event a very very pleasurable day um it just to see so many people happy in one location is really kind of a nice change of pace yeah the universal access group um they do tremendous work they were out west they brought the they brought the accessible wheelchairs down and just to see some of the city employees and the city uh city councilman when they saw those they were impressed with just seeing them there there there're such a nice uh piece of uh Mobil mobile Mobility accessible equipment that can go into the water I think that helps all the way around too Ralph is that you know you can talk about equipment you can talk about you know things that make accessibility so much easier for folks but to actually see it and then see it in use and see the outcome from that think that that does help complete that Circle so you know maybe in the future we'll be fortunate enough to be able to purchase our own so that we have those things well DCR has two of them there now the stations there stations down by um the shirle have bath house but I know that they they will be looking to try and get more and that's one thing that I was talking to um Rachel from the universal access group is what what they what they are going to be working on is they need to be able way to publicize that those are available and how um how people will be able to get them to use them while they're there um and they're also looking at getting more of those Beach mats down on told that yeah so that that would be great it' be great if you know if you get at least four or five of those Beach stand beach beach uh chairs uh that can go into the water for people with disabilities uh more of those down to the beach you know we have a large Beach and having two of them down there you know you do need more and you just you just need to make people be aware that they are there and how to be able to get them so that that would be tremendous so yeah she you know I said whatever we can do to publicize it you know please reach out to us and we'll do whatever we can to help get the word out that they're available and how to get them so maybe they need to put more sign up for it with like a phone number to call because a lot of people don't use the internet a lot of people still don't use the internet or don't have capability but they will have a phone number to call or have a have a location there where they can call or or an office there or several offices or or somebody that they can reach out to that's at the DCR um reservation that they can go up to and say you know can I get a beach chair uh this day or whatever in this way it's there ready for them maybe they should look into putting a billboard on on the uh MBTA yeah stations and on the buses and such you know it's they say you know everything's accessible by the Blue Line well that's fine but you say things are accessible what are those things so you know maybe be a communication between DCR and the MBTA right right definitely all right and if anybody else has any other comments before I move on to the next item yeah just thank you for initiating it it was really a nice day and you know it wasn't the crowd you were expecting but for the few people that were there they were so very happy and having the best time and like you said if it just made one person happy for that day it was all worth it and I'm sure next year it will just be expanded upon and um I think it was a great start and a really really nice day yep yeah definitely definitely yeah right now I'm just doing um some final um end work for the uh the bay save the hob um for the grant that I had they I'm just doing some final paperwork for them they want some feedback and then I have a um I have a zoom meeting that uh anybody that was awarded the grants um those two dates and I just signed up for one of it so I can give some feedback and uh then hopefully uh next year I'll apply for the grant again and be able to get it again if not I'll find another way to pay for it okay um item number four on the agenda is the Kota Commission on disabilities Alliance monthly Zoom meeting which happened on Wednesday September 4th unfortunately the time that at the time this me the the meeting had to be posted I didn't have the notes but I do have uh I will I will read them off to you and Pauline you don't have to worry about writing this down um because I will just add it um the uh coder announced it was one announcement that the formal legislative session ended in July but lawmakers are still meeting on a few pieces of legislation uh the long-term K bill which was approved by both Chambers was still was just waiting on the government signing uh and this included the provision for state recovery and they're hopeful that this will pass uh also um uh uh DPC who runs qua which is the Disability Policy Consortium is in the process of hiring a new um director and a new uh DHS of budsman a couple of uh topics that were raised uh before the discussion is the a member from the suable uh Commission of disability just brought up some questions and concerns about uh parking enforcement on private properties uh which basically uh dealt with um people parking in handicapped spots that did not have placards and permits uh and what the jurisdiction is for that and that is private property is all dependent upon if the um property allows the police to go on it such as um our police department and R is allowed to go down North Gate which is private property PJs uh stop and shop and things like that so it all depends on what the local La enforcement uh has agreements with with uh different private properties in different cities and towns um another uh topic that came up is a member from the Boston Commission on disabilities brought up that they are going to be having uh a spe ific engagement day on Tuesday September 4th they're going to have two different time slots if anybody's interested you could just uh reach out to the commission the Boston commission and disabilities page uh to see the time to sign up for that U unfortunately um reason why I didn't have the notes ahead of time is because of a scheduling conflict I could not make that meeting myself um I was actually um at a at a meeting in Chelsea so I could not meet make that meeting in uh the the Cod of monthly meeting in person so I was just waiting for the um director of uh of um DPC to get the notes to me and I I just relied on them for their notes but hopefully that won't happen again uh because I don't like missing the meetings because there's a lot that's discussed at those meetings um item number five is CPAC um but I I did not receive any new uh updates um but they're always looking for any and all interested parties to join them either as a board member or volunteers or overall support anyone interested in getting more involved in CPAC R you can send an email to cacr gmail.com I'll call Julie Brown at 617 87 2653 um item number six is if any commission members have any late information uh or items I'll open it up to any other member before I uh bring one up that I have well first question Ralph to to your thing I wanted to ask uh on the long-term care bill what was the U that coming through what are they hoping to cover under that is it is that going to extend to Mass health as well I I believe so I believe that was part of the long care bill all I got for notes is the long the long-term care bill um that was in that was the bill that was up for proposal uh was approved by both Chambers and was waiting for the governor to so we don't know what they cover what the purpose of it is or what Chang yeah whatever yeah whatever whatever was originally proposed it was approved as as um as submitted there was no amendments to it um I believe we discussed this at a few Coda meetings before and it brought it as notes I would have to look back because I may have detailed exactly was in it okay that would you know that impacts folks you know in certain care and certain facilities and and other things more that is you know my care obviously yeah I believe the Reas what they were trying to do is making sure that they because there was talk that things were going to get limited and what they were going to pay for so that's why the bill was um was originally created and submitted so none of nothing would be getting cut um but don't quote me on that I would have to uh try and do some research on that and look into it okay well the other piece on this um fol okay yeah well well there is it uh it includes a provision for estate recovery and hopefully that will pass I have that note also oh yeah so that I have a note to that I was gonna get to next okay perfect and then yeah so that's a big part of it that I remember we talked about before because a lot of people were worried about when they went into a long uh care facility that they would be able to go back so many years or whatever or be able to attach their Estates so includes Provisions for estate recovery okay that's well that's a good thing and then there's the also the fact is um the other thing I was going to mention um and this is just to everybody you know and this is to people especially with disabilities but anybody you know we're lucky to be citizens in this country and so we should make sure we vote that's coming up I don't want anyone to miss that there are accesses for that I want to make sure we put that out there because you know we it's the one few things that we get and not everybody gets that chance we want to make sure we take it and uh you know the big thing too I saw in the news I was kind of disgusted but I saw it happen at the high school to the assistant principal uh in Riv so that was pretty sad um and I hope the kids hear me that they need to knock it off we've had enough of seeing kids fight so figure might as well throw it out there we're on TV so okay um anyone else have anything that they want to discuss before I move to what I'm going to share um let me share my screen second share screen okay can you see um is my screen coming through let me open it up to the front page lot of information we get to the beginning of it uh can you see the page it says DC's universal access program yes okay so this this is the universal access program by DCR they are the entity that brought down the accessible uh wheelchairs to our program um they had just emailed me um their fall program scheduled um so I'm just going to quickly scroll through a few pages um they also can I believe they also have um their website on here that you can get which is mass.gov dc. access uh to find out about all their activities and you can also sign up for their um for their for their newsletter and for their um for their fall calendar spring calendar summer calendar and winter calendar they do a lot of um a lot of programs so I'm briefly going to go scroll through this um so you can just not have to read it just basically see the different programs that they have uh a lot of these are some of these are out west um they have the dates and whatnot um some of them are free some of them have a cost Associated to them um so I will just scroll through them quick um as you can see four 16 so there's 16 Pages um trying to see what's close this one I think is pretty interesting it's an Adaptive cycle cycling one which is in Hadley Mass um and I believe when I looked at this earlier I think this one was yeah this was on a sliding scale from five to $20 that's you know that's what the trike and the wheelchair tandems um which is which is pretty pretty reasonable um for a price if you if you think about it uh there's another view of those that's a nice way to have a day out um as a family uh then they have adaptive rowing in Holio and this one was the free event and this was a program fre Char open to people with disabilities and their families and friends of course there pre-registration required um as by appointments only trying to see what else is closer golfing with par golfers association this was in a couple of different locations Weston and Canton there's a couple of other golf yeah golf programs this one's community community boating on the Charles River uh May 1st September 27 y adaptive cycling golfing with SP Spalding adaptive Sports Center uh which is in Brewster and then there is another golf um program out in western Mass but please go to their website uh which has a lot of great information they have a lot of great programs I know they do when the when the uh winter one comes out they have a lot of programs at the skating rinks um I know they do run a program at the skating rink in East Boston which is at um it used to be called they they they called it they call it Constitution Beach but I I it used to be another name um I forget the name that used to be when I was a kid but it's the one directly in front of the airport um so that's a great location but please uh feel free to take a look at their website for a lot of these programs a lot of people don't know that they run a lot of programs uh adaptive programs which is which is great so there is something for people to do um I'm going to stop sharing with screen now what is the website let me grab it for you [Music] again give you the right one because I have there it's it's mass.gov back DCR access I'll share that again quick there it is right there just the website mass.gov DCA so they have four different season [Music] programs okay stop sharing that um so that was item number six item number seven residents concerns and issues I have not received any um item number eight is next steps um so our next steps is just we'll keep our usual updates from Paulie and Marie regarding calendar for future monthly guest speakers is there anything else I don't think there was anything else I just have to do some close outs for Save the base save the haror um which is just something on my end and um anything else I'm forgetting Paulie no I don't believe so yeah Maria I forget anything nope I think you've covered it all okay and then we will have um item number nine if Vice chair perno if you would be so kind as to read that I would love to the commission on disabilities office number is 78128 8267 residents can call also call R 311 direct and speak to the staff members Monday through Friday they will answer most questions but if they are unable to or if you wish to speak to one of the department directly as to be transferred to the disability office please leave a detailed message and someone will get back to you as soon as possible as always please tell us if you want something discussed or added to our monthly meeting agenda you can let us know if you would like to speak on any issue or concern the commission is here to help and assist all of the disabled residents and families of R okay our our next meeting via Zoom will be Tuesday October 8th at 6 PM um if I could have a motion to adjourn motion motion by Pauline and second by Mario okay well I wanted to thank you I know it was a little bit longer of a meeting tonight but we had some good information that was brought to us by uh Karen um so like I said if anybody wants the flyer or the uh slides just please send me an email uh and I will be more than happy to um send that to you but thank you have a great night and a great rest of your