May 10, 2022
Sharing Ideas from the AESA Community
Take A Look at Great Resources
Shared by our Colleagues
Helpful Example from the
Equity Inclusion and Social Justice Community:
Discussing Critical and Politically-Fueled Topics

This link captures the approach that a school district is taking in discussing critical and potentially politically-fueled topics. 

Because so much related to equity, inclusion, and social justice has been weaponized, this article helps provide a strategy to "cut through the noise" and focus on the bottom line. In education, we have requirements and a public trust to ensure our systems work for ALL students. Too often we find the conversations set up to "call people out" where we focus on what is said or done wrong, and seldom on "calling in" finding a common base of agreement and learning and growing from there.

Submitted by:
Kent Smith
Education Consultant for Systems Equity
Cooperative Educational Service Agency (CESA) 10
The Program Evaluation Community meets this Thursday:
End-of-the-Year Reporting on Impact

May 12 2022
12 Noon ET, 11 CT, 10 MT, 9 PT

The topic for the Program Evaluation Community quarterly meeting is ESA End-of-Year Reporting on Impact. Additionally, if we have time we can discuss ESA/District Partnerships for Evaluation (how ESAs support district program evaluation or research projects). I hope you can join us!

Questions: Email Chris.Thompson@k12.nd.us with any questions.
This was posted in the AESA All Member Community by Laurel Peltier & Albert Johnson-Mussad of Collaborative for Educational Services (MA):
Just Released from Corwin!
Responsive Collaboration for IEP and 504 Teams

We are delighted to announce the publication of our first book, Responsive Collaboration for IEP and 504 Teams (Corwin Press). The book is now available for pre-order and is expected to be in the warehouse on or about April 26, 2022. 

Our book offers practical tools for improving the fit between the learning profile of individual students and schooling. Responsive Collaboration for IEP and 504 Teams provides a framework that identifies opportunities to build connections between educators, establish relationships with service providers, strengthen school-family partnerships, address inequities, and develop student self-determination. Readers will find practices and tools to support:

  • Referral and eligibility determination
  • Individualized plan development
  • Building positive and lasting family-school-community relationships
  • Links to online tools to help you implement the recommended practices

Laurel describes the purpose of the book this way: "We created the book to support educators, including administrators, teachers, and related service providers, to understand how to transform the work that they do into an opportunity for equitable student growth and family-educator-community engagement."

Albert describes the essence of the book in these words: "We wrote this book to support everyone at the table – educators, parents and caregivers, and young people – toward equitable participation in an educational program that optimizes the learner's opportunity for excellence. We offer tools and resources to lift up young persons' strengths and meet their current challenges.

Here is a flyer with more information about the book and how to order it from Corwin. Our book is also available on Amazon. 

We hope you find this book helpful to your practice. We also know that your feedback will help us to improve our work. If you have any questions, suggestions, or thoughts after reading the book, please email us:
Summer Leadership Conference
Calling all Leadership Teams! Join us this summer in Nashville.

Check out the website as program details evolve!

Come for the Learning! Enjoy the Location!

AESA Awards Program:
Nominations Now Open
Annually, the AESA Executive Council invites its members to recognize their colleagues and peers for their contributions to educational service agencies. Nominations are now open for the 2022 awards program. 

Visit our website to learn more about each of AESA's national awards. The criteria and nomination process for each award is fully described in the nomination forms.

All nominations must be postmarked by June 15, 2022.
From AESA Business Partners
Security Immersion Workshop
Shifts to the cloud alter security challenges. It is more important than ever to detect and defend with tools designed to support flexible, dynamic cloud environments. Now you can!
Through the Make It Real: Security Immersion Workshop, you will step into the role of a Cyber Defense Analyst and use Microsoft XDR + SIEM security tools to investigate indicators of an advanced threat that is conducting an attack on your network across multiple phases of the kill chain.

 
See what works in the cloud — join us remotely! This training is for US Education customers only.
Microsoft 365 Defender
In this instructor-led demonstration session, we will show you how to investigate, respond to, and hunt for threats using Azure Defender, and Microsoft 365 Defender. In this course, you will learn how to mitigate cyber threats using these technologies.

Microsoft KQL and Sentinel 
Azure Sentinel is Microsoft's Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tool developed to integrate cloud security and artificial intelligence (AI). Azure Sentinel will help customers to identify security issues in their environment, and then use automation to help resolve these issues.
Virtual Workshops from Corwin
Tuesday, May 10, 2022, 3:30 PT

Monday, May 16, 2022 - 3:30 pm PT

Corwin is pleased to offer AESA members 30% off Corwin book titles using promo code AESA2022 (case sensitive). 

You might want to consider:
Next in this series:
TOP Cyber-Defense Measures
for Improving Your Cyber-Risk Profile ASAP:
Document
Best Practices Policies
Last week we discussed “Internal/External Vulnerability scans and Continuous Improvement.” This week we discuss “Document Best Practices” policies to support your "Security Strengths” for improving your cyber-risk profile the BEST you can as FAST as you can.

“Best Practices” policies describe specific cybersecurity expectations, roles, and
responsibilities to align executive governance with technical and administrative
activities across your organization. K-12 districts, ESAs and insurance companies share with ResoluteGuard their concern about the lack of cybersecurity policies in place and the need to document these important guidelines. Documenting “Best Practices” policies should follow the National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework. NIST-CSF is considered the “Gold Standard” of cybersecurity controls and will keep you in alignment with regulatory initiatives. Read more . . .
ResoluteGuard uses the industry's best internal and external scanning tools to identify your cyber-risk strengths and weaknesses and populate easy-to-use, easy-to-understand smart workflow reports that align the governance, administration, and technical activities to the common objective: avoiding disruption of critical services.

Click here to learn how we partner with ESAs to support your members or email David Ludwig at dludwig@resoluteguard.com