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Thank all of you who contacted PGCEA concerning related issues on the required Individual Learning Plan (ILP) evaluation for all students.

Mr. Lewis Robinson, PGCEA Executive Director, and I met with Dr. John Deasy, Superintendent of Prince George’s County Public Schools, on three (3) separate occasions in September, October and November 2007. We also met with Dr. Betty Despenza-Green in September 2007 to express your concerns and recommendations regarding the ILP requirement.

The focus of these meetings was to help resolve your concerns and to offer recommendations to support the plan and our members in its implementation. PGCEA actively pursued resolutions for your ILP concerns.

We are extremely proud of all of our counselors. All have embraced these changes, as usual. Not one counselor expressed complete rejection of the ILP requirement.

Most counselors, if not all, believe this to be a good idea offering many benefits for students and their parents. However, time, block scheduling, training obligations and other workload duties have only overwhelmed many of our counselors.

We have reached a tentative compromise with Dr. Deasy. The terms of which are enclosed.

• Development of a new form for Pre-K – Grade 3 (requiring less paper work than the one used for all grades). A shorter form to be completed.
• Dr. Deasy will speak directly to all professional school counselors concerning his vision and goals for the ILP program.
• Drs. Deasy and Despenza-Green will develop a new form for use that will document the Professional School Counselors’ attempts to contract parents (but were unable to do so). With this form, Professional School Counselors will be allowed to complete ILP’s without a face-to-face contact, if they have the documentation with this form.
• Establish appropriate training for ILP.
• The administration is doing an analysis of the block scheduling problems at this time. Block scheduling is a complicated issue that Dr. Deasy could not respond to immediately. PGCEA is waiting for a response to this issue.

PGCEA will continue to work with all Professional School Counselors and the appropriate administrative officials to ultimately resolve any problems arising from the full implementation of the ILP program.