Specifications include, but are not limited to: The Hawaii State Department of Education (Department), Office of Student Support Services, Exceptional Service Branch, Special Needs Section, requests community input to facilitate planning activities and development of a Request for Proposals (RFP) for the provision of Educational Communication Access Services for students who are primarily Deaf and Hard-ofHearing, or any other disability meeting eligibility under IDEA or Section 504 needing educational communication access services. These on-site and/or remote services provide students with educational communication access including Educational Interpreting, Computer Assisted Notetaking (CAN), and Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) that are in accordance with the student’s IEP/504 Plan. For the purposes of this RFI “Educational Interpreting” is defined as a person who uses sign language in the PreK through 12 school setting to facilitate communication between users and non-users of sign language. An Educational Interpreter is fluent in the languages used by both deaf and non-deaf persons. The information received will assist the Department in preparing the release of one or more RFP in the immediate future. Because of the foregoing, the Department welcomes feedback to formulate the criteria to compose a competitive solicitation for these services.
