The first full week of May is designated as Licensed Employee Appreciation Week. At Clackamas ESD alone, we have at least 20 types of licensed jobs, with many variations in those positions. These are people who have completed higher education and earned licenses to be certified to teach students, lead continuing education training for staff, serve as social skills specialists, and provide speech, physical and occupational therapy within Clackamas ESD programs and the school districts we serve.
This Licensed Employee Appreciation Week, we’re highlighting a few of our approximately 185 licensed staff members and contractors to provide a peek into the diverse ways this large group of employees lives our mission of service. We appreciate our entire licensed team and the meaningful work they do.
Isabel Ramirez is a family resource specialist in Clackamas Education Service District’s early intervention/early childhood special education program. Our EI/ECSE program supports young children who exhibit delays or disabilities that affect learning. Isabel’s role is to improve the awareness of and accessibility to early intervention support for all families in our community.
“Our agency is really focused on meeting families where they’re at,” Isabel says. “Many families aren’t aware of early intervention programs in the county and how to access them. So we’re the first people that they meet in the community, and we’re building rapport with families. It’s important they know we’re here to support them.”
Isabel has helped build partnerships with local libraries, doctors’ offices and community organizations that serve culturally diverse families to bring our free hearing and developmental screenings to all corners of the county to better reach BIPOC families, rural communities and migrant workers. Recently, Isabel has coordinated screenings in public libraries from Sandy to Wilsonville, and at Todos Juntos’ bilingual Brainbox Club events, Bridging Cultures’ Free Food Market in Canby, and Future Generations Collaborative’s Play Circles for a healthy, healing and growing Indigenous community.
Isabel is also expanding the culturally responsive services available at our screenings, such as translated materials and access to interpreters. She even serves as a translator for Spanish-speaking families herself.
“Having language support there on site is so important to building trust. As a provider, I can make that connection immediately with the families and not need an interpreter,” Isabel explains.
In addition to her work making hearing and developmental screenings available to all Clackamas County families, Isabel is helping build community among the families we serve with EI/ECSE services. She helps organize a parent group that meets weekly to share the joy and challenges of parenting with other families and explore techniques from the Positive Solutions method of addressing challenging behavior in young children. She acts as a bridge to services outside our agency, connecting families to resources and events available in the community, even working to make community events like library storytimes more inclusive by connecting librarians with word boards, wobble chairs and fidget spinners to make it easier for children experiencing delays or disabilities to participate with their peers.
Isabel was inspired to work in EI/ECSE by her experiences raising her daughter with autism.
“My daughter was eligible for early intervention services at the early age of two, and I learned so much about how to support her as a parent from the providers we worked with,” Isabel shares. “If it had not been for them, I don’t think I would have learned the skills I needed to support and advocate for her.”
Isabel first worked at a nonprofit organization that advocates for children experiencing disabilities before serving as a family liaison and early childhood evaluation intake specialist at a Portland-area school district. Her love of the work motivated her to return to school to earn her degree in early intervention and early childhood special education. Isabel joined Clackamas ESD in 2002 as an intake specialist and early childhood special education teacher; she transitioned into the new family resource specialist role in fall 2023.
The opportunity to make a life-long positive impact on a family’s life is powerful for Isabel.
“A Spanish-speaking family had a little one with language delays, and they heard about our intervention services through a social media post about free screenings we offered at their local library. They called me and asked if they needed an appointment and if there was a cost. And I told them they could come whenever they had time, and it was free. So, we were able to screen them and then refer them right away. Their little one is not even two, so to be able to catch this at such a critical stage of development and be a resource for a family is just so important,” Isabel says.
