Approve Agreement for Technical Services with Sherrill O'Brien for FCAT Administration Services, Visually Impaired Grant, $7,500 (Curriculum and Instruction Division)

The Florida Instructional Materials Center for the Visually Impaired (FIMC-VI) is funded by the Florida Department of Education, and the School District of Hillsborough County serves as the fiscal agent. The Center is responsible for providing materials' services to Florida's school districts statewide.

Sherrill O’Brien will transcribe the 2006 Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) answer sheets for blind and visually impaired students from Braille onto the regular print answer sheets for Grades 3-10 in Writing and Grades 3-9 in Reading, Mathematics, and Science. The answer sheets will be provided to the FCAT contractors (CTB McGraw-Hill and Harcourt Assessment, Inc.) for scanning and scoring according to the set deadlines.

Sherrill O’Brien has successfully performed this function to the satisfaction of DOE and its contractors for the past four years. Ms. O’Brien has the necessary knowledge and experience with the Literary Braille Code, Braille Formats: Principles of Print to Braille Transcription (Textbook Code), Nemeth Braille Code for Mathematics, and Science Notation and the Computer Braille Code.

Goal 1 - The percentage of students scoring at Level 3 or higher on FCAT reading will increase a minimum of 5 percentage points.

Funds of $7,500 are included in the district special revenue/federal programs budget, Project 1017 (Florida Instructional Materials Center - Visually Impaired.)