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acting director, for DRS and
we’re at the OSB where we
actually had our Commission Meeting.
I am going to try to give you an update
about what’s occurred in the last month.
It’s been a very busy month.
We had graduation ceremonies
both at OSB and OSD and
we had Commissioner Sanders that attended
the OSB ceremony.
We had 7 graduates at OSB and
22 graduates at OSD.
We got some good news just Friday
that out of all our 22 students
that graduated from OSD
we had 100% graduation again.
What’s kind of remarkable
about all of that is
that many of those students
were not long time students at OSD.
They came during the course
of their high school years and
yet they were able to pass
the graduation requirements
for their degree.
I also want to mention that
we had a nice crowd at
the Library of the Blind
for Senator David Holt’s book signing
which he spoke about
his experience as
Chief of Staff for
Mayor Cornett and specifically
he mentioned the history of Oklahoma City.
We had a nice little lunch.
We also had a question and answer period
where many questions were posed
to him by the blind community
specifically with regards to transportation.
We submitted our corrective action plan to RSA.
We haven’t heard yet
whether they’ve accepted that
but we know they have received it
because we received the reply
but whether they’ve accepted or not
we’ll know hopefully in a couple of weeks.
I gave the opening remarks recently
at an AgrAbility
Assistive Technology Conference
in Tulsa.
As many of you probably know,
we work with disabled farmers so
that they can continue to farm and
stay on the farm and
we heard from some experts
from Wisconsin about that and
we hope to put into practice
some of the things that
we learned at that conference.
I also spoke at a recent Project Search summit,
where our transition counselors
recently met with our partners.
It was a very good time,
there were awards exchanged and given
and they talked about
how we’re going to continue
to work together in the future
to best serve our transition students.
We had a one-day
E-Team retreat in
Oklahoma City last Monday.
Essentially, we had three things
kind of on the agenda.
We heard from Steve Wooderson,
who is the CEO of CSAVR.
He talked about national legislation and
specifically the rehab authorization
legislation and appropriations and
he talked about recent trends in other states.
We also discussed the completed
Employment Engagement Survey and
how we can better meet
those needs that were identified
in that survey.
Specifically, with regards to our employees
so that we can create even
a better atmosphere than
we have today.
Most of the numbers were up
except for a couple of divisions and
we have some strategies of
how we are going to work
on improving those things.
We also got an update on
10 major projects that I have asked the E-Team to do.
They range everything from employee compensation
to how we train our core managers
to what we are doing in our business
practices to even looking at a disability hall of fame.
We’ll continue to work on those.
Each of the E-Team members
have kind of taken on
at least one of those projects
on their own as a division director.
They are making fine progress on that and
our hope is that
we will have white papers
that are developed and
be able to submit
to the new director
so that when they come in
they can make some decisions
about whether they want
to go forth with those ideas.
Last Tuesday,
we had our Budget and Performance
meeting and essentially
we looked at where
we are with regards to an agency.
What we discovered was that
we have about 6.8 million dollars
in the bank at this particular time and
that if we spend that
at the rate we have been
through the rest of
the fiscal year
which is the end of the month
we’ll have about $5 million
that’s in the bank
that we can carry over to next year.
Our daily authorizations rate is running
at about $14,000.00 under budget,
which is a good thing and based on that
we decided that we could take
about half of the folks that
are on the Priority II waiting list,
which is about 1,200,
and we could serve 600 of those clients.
So, we made that call,
did that on Wednesday,
and we’ve begun serving those.
So that’s a good thing.
The other thing that we know
is that out of that 600 folks
that are still remaining
on the Priority Group waiting list
the furthest back is only
two and a half months which is good.
That means we’re doing
what we need to do and
we want to continue
to make progress to serve them.
In the coming months,
we’re going to try to continue to and
look at the waiting list and
what’s the difference in the
cost of expenditures
between Priority I and Priority II.
We know Priority II usually costs a little more.
We haven’t had a whole lot
of recent experience with Priority II
since we did most of the release
in the last two months
so we’ll get a better idea at
what those are really running
as those plans get developed and
that’ll tell us better how we can plan
our money as we go through
the next current year.
The other thing that we are doing is,
we are continuing to get ready
for the new fiscal year.
What’s involved in that is essentially looking
at our annual contracts,
setting the division budgets and
renewing our MOU’s or
Memorandums of Understanding and
so we are doing that.
Those will be in place by the end of June and
we’ll be able to turn in our
Budget Work Program by July 1st
which is mandated by state law.
We’ve got a couple of upcoming events.
One in particular that I would hope
that I could encourage a lot of you
to be a part of and that is the
Virgil Taylor Memorial Golf Tournament.
That’s going to be held at Beaver’s Bend this year.
If you haven’t got a team,
get a team,
let’s go down there and support that.
As you know,
those are scholarship funds
that we raise from the tournament and
we now have the one
that’s been established at East Central University and
we’re in the process of trying
to do a similar kind of scholarship
at Langston University and
so the more people
we have that participate
in that the better
it’s going to be with regards to that.
I also want to give a shout out
to all the folks that are in VR and VS and DDD
that have specifically been a part of
what we’ve done with the recent
disasters that have happened,
the tornadoes in Moore and Oklahoma City
and the surrounding areas.
Our staff has gone above and beyond
and I specifically want to give
a shout out to Jan Hatch,
who’s kind of organized that
on behalf of VR and VS and
Mark Kinnison and Susan Hawkins and
Paul Adams have all gone out of their way
to be very supportive of not only
what people with disabilities have
but also to working with FEMA.
We also helped the governor with
the memorial services,
Tonya helped us as a
sign language interpreter
with regards to that service and so
you know it’s just good to know that
we’ve got so many people
in our department that
care about others and
particularly persons with disabilities
and are doing the right thing.
So, Thank You Again for all of that.
On kind of disturbing note,
I do want to let you know
there was some vandalism
that was at the Oklahoma School for the Deaf
in the last week or so.
There was $35,000.00 worth of damage on the site,
some roofs were taken off of the village,
some buses were disturbed,
we had some food that was taken out of there.
So there was significant damage.
We did catch some of it on tape.
We hope that we can pursue
that with the Sheriff’s Department and
our intention is that hopefully some people
will be arrested in the next week or so.
That’s pretty much it at this particular time.
You know we’re in the process,
we’re still in the transition process
where we’re going to get a new director,
but I want to say how thankful I am
of all the support that I’ve received
as acting director and
what you’ve done and
let’s continue to do the right thing
for people with disabilities.
THANKS until next time.