Tell us more about how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected you or your family. I am a school psychologist with Multiple Sclerosis, Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), and Raynaud’s Disease. I have worked full-time for 26 years except for being on Retirement Disability for 18 months during that time. My husband was furloughed during the pandemic while I worked from home for a portion of this crisis. Because I take a chemotherapy to manage my MS, I am put in particular risk because I work with vulnerable school-age populations within the school environment. My employer is allowing me to work from home 4 days a week and one day in the office, because there are pieces of my profession that can only be successfully, and I believe ethically, accomplished in person (e.g., psychological evaluations and threat assessments). I also have a school-aged daughter in High School. We are trying to manage me working from home part of the time and part of the time in person. Our country’s public health system capacity was not ‘shored-up” enough prior to this pandemic experience. For years and years, our government has not done enough to ensure our vulnerable populations, including children and the sick, would have adequate resources should something like a shut-down be put in place. I am generally a conservative voter and registered as one; however, I always vote for the best person for the job. I am proud of Andy Beshear, and I think KY’s Congressmen and Senators both in KY and Federal Government need to get behind our governor as well as start to work in a Bipartisan effort to make our country united again. Only Bipartisan Efforts will bring change and unity back. Please reach across the aisles to embrace unity and solve public pension, public health care, mental and behavioral health issues to better our country.

What do you need to stay healthy and take care of yourself or your family during this pandemic? Discounteed PPE for educators as we are mainly buying this ourselves; Ask Federal IDEA DOE to give extensions on IDEA evaluations timelines as we are killing ourselves and putting ourselves at risk to get evaluations completed in a timely manner. Most of my students needing evaluations are quarantined right now and I cannot get to them to evaluate. Pushing Directors of Special Education to require School Psychologists to use telehealth for intelligence testing is unethical because these evaluations were NOT normed for online administration. Please speak to Federal and State DOEs about IDEA evalution timeline relief.