Steady Pay Open House

Welcome everybody. Thank you so much for joining us on this evening or this afternoon. We're so glad to have you here. I'm Taylor Beely. I am our Vice President of Clinical Services here at Parallel. I'm a school psychologist, a mom of 3, and a former special education teacher. And I'm just so proud to support all of our speech-language pathologists, our school social workers, our teachers, our school psychologists, as we serve all of the different learners and thinkers across the country with Parallel. Today I wanna share a little bit more about the story behind Parallel and the mission that drives us forward. At Parallel, we offer a number of different aspects of clinical services that make it easier for our students that need support to access what they need, whatever that looks like, wherever they are, what other staff they have on hand. And one thing that we have is integrated assessments. So all of our assessments are integrated within the Parallel platform. Pathway, which makes it seamless for you as a clinician, as an educator, to administer assessments virtually in a way that is valid, that gives you reliable results, and that helps to guide teams toward next steps with, with and for students. We also have developed a product we call the Report Writer, which allows us to be sure that all of our evaluation results are accurate and are uploaded into a template that is both parent-friendly And friendly for our educators on the ground to know how to move a student forward, whether it's for an IEP or to just inform next steps with an intervention. This tool actually saves our providers about 30% of the time that it normally takes to construct a report and get all of your scores in there. You don't have to create any of those score tables from hand. You don't have to go back and triple-check all of your scores before you submit that report. We've really done that legwork for you so you can focus on what's most important to you, which is serving your students. We've also integrated our IEP goals and objectives directly into our parallel pathway. What that allows us to do is to collect data while we're meeting with students about their progress toward their individual goals, and then we can use that information to really inform what we're doing with students and feel really good that we're differentiating the intervention for them. And that we're ensuring to make all of the progress that we can with our students and really push them forward, whatever skill they're working on. We really take student outcomes here at Parallel very seriously, and using data is one part of that. We also want to really hear from our students, so we collect specific surveys that allow students to give their input about how they feel sessions are going, how they feel about their providers, And that help to guide our providers in knowing what they can do more of in their sessions with students. At Parallel, we're also a community of educators. We have a lot of opportunities for mentoring, for professional development, for collaborating with other like-minded professionals. You're never alone, even from the comfort of your couch or from the comfort of your home office. We're always here to help and to provide support, whether it's with a tricky situation at a school, a student with some kind of need that you've tried everything and you just need some good ideas, or whether it's just kind of talking through some activities that you're planning for your students. We're here to help. We're also certified to deliver ASHA and NASP CEUs. at no cost to our parallel providers, and we offer these opportunities for professional development throughout the fall and the spring. Our first one here is kicking off the second week of August, so we hope to see you there. You are welcome to tune in, and all of our professional development focuses on things that are really relevant and meaningful in your work with students. Lots to say about Parallel by the Numbers. We have been able to serve so many different school districts in just the short time that we've been serving students. So we're working in over 80 different school districts. We've served more than 5,000 students, and we know that our students are feeling really good about the sessions they're having with our providers because they've told us so. Our average ROM, or routine outcome measure response, when students are asked how they're feeling about their session, how they feel, how they're doing at school, and how they feel about their provider is 9.3 out of 10, which is far above the industry standard. We're currently serving 8 or 12 different states, and we've been able to grow our provider network by 95% compared to this time last year. We're so excited to welcome new providers into our network and to have you join our community, and we're just so excited about the, the work that we're doing with students and the impact that you could have. We're currently serving students in all of these different regions. You see them listed here by the West, Southwest Central, Midwest, Northeast, and Mid-Atlantic, and then the Southeast. And we're looking to expand all the time based on the needs that we're hearing about from our school districts across these states. We are currently offering the study pay model for speech-language pathologists in the states where you see the big green dot. So California, Kentucky, North Carolina, Texas, and Washington. The study pay model is different than some of our other models, and we'll talk a little bit more about that in the coming slides. But first, I want to introduce you to our clinical team. Clinical excellence is our top priority here at Parallel, and we really take that seriously, not only in the way that we value our providers, but the way that we evaluate our internal expertise and really taking a close look at the services that we provide to our school districts and our students to make sure that we're doing everything that's evidence-based. That we're giving our providers all of the support that they need, and that we're always thinking about how to do better things for our students. And this team here is just like all-star team, so much knowledge on this team, over 100 years of experience, over 7 different kinds of graduate degrees. And personally, just among this team, we've served over 70 different schools, and we bring our wealth of experience In a way that really makes us better able to support you. We're able to use the expertise of our team to be by your side no matter what you're encountering. And tonight we have one of our team members here, Dr. Tiffany Williams. I'm just so honored to introduce Dr. Williams. She's a speech-language pathologist, and she has been for over 18 years. She's one of our speech-language pathology clinical managers. She's been a clinical manager for 5 years. She's a fierce advocate for early intervention, early childhood education, and family engagement. In fact, Dr. Williams often has a variety of different resources, and she even has a podcast specifically geared toward talking about the different concerns that parents might experience during the lifespan of their young child as they move into adulthood. She's also a graduate-level course instructor at Emerson College, and she's teaching speech sound disorders classes. And we're just so happy that she chose Parallel to share her expertise with. I'm gonna go ahead and turn it over to Tiffany now, who can talk a little bit about her story and how she came into this work and how she came to be here at Parallel. Thank you for joining us, Tiffany.

Yeah, thanks so much for that introduction, Taylor. Thanks for everybody that's joining us tonight for the webinar. Just a little bit about my story. So this is a picture of me, and then you'll see a couple pictures of my son. So after having my son in 2015, I stayed at home with him for a year, and then I got the itch to go back to work into doing speech therapy. I knew that I wanted a part-time job because I didn't want the stress of what comes with the full-time in-person speech therapy job, the car rider duty, the staff meetings, you know, all the things that SLPs deal with in the school system since my life had just shifted shifted some with having my son. I also knew that I didn't want to work in the medical setting. I had done that in the past but knew that that wasn't what I wanted at the time. So in 2017, I just got online and searched online speech therapy, and I found a company and took a contract position as an SLP doing virtual services from Texas servicing students in California. So I went out, I bought this patterned piece of fabric you see behind me in my selfie that I was taking on My first day, I nailed it up in front of a closet door in my guest bedroom, and I did the job, the same job that I did in person as an SLP. I did it virtually with those students. In that situation, it was really sink or swim. There weren't a lot of digital materials back in 2017 to use in therapy. I didn't have a platform through the company that I was working for. I didn't have any clinical support. It was just me. Mm-hmm. My laptop, some PDF worksheets I would share on screen, and my Zoom account, and my own personal Gmail account as well. It was tough, but I made it work, and I was determined to make it work because I really enjoyed that flexibility that came from working from home. Aside from that sink or swim situation, the only other drawback for me was the hourly pay. So with the particular company that I was with in 2017, if kids missed the session, I didn't get paid. If the facilitator that was on the ground in the school wasn't there, I missed sessions, and so I didn't get paid. So I remember one time a student missed both of his sessions for the week, and on the next time he attended his session, I just casually asked, you know, hey, where have you been? I missed you. And he said, oh, we went to Knott's Berry Farms, which I didn't know what that was at the time, but it's a theme park in California. And I thought he was so casual in just sharing his excitement about the trip, which I'm sure he had a great time, but on the other And I didn't get paid for those sessions, and that really was impacting my financial stability and the steadiness of how I could anticipate income coming each pay period. So that's when I started searching for other teletherapy companies that first paid for missed sessions and then also offered guaranteed weekly pay. And I found one, and I was all in. So that next school year, I increased my work hours. I put my son into half-day preschool. And it was awesome. I was working, doing what I love as an SLP. I knew how much I was going to make each week in my paycheck, and I still had time to take him for playdates at the park, make his first Halloween costume. That's the picture there of him with his dinosaur tail. That's my first time ever using a sewing machine, and I think it turned out pretty all right. Volunteering at his preschool and then taking family trips. We went to Disney World during the offseason, not during peak season, so ticket prices were lower. Parks weren't as crowded. So having that guaranteed pay that I knew I could count on was really a game changer for me. So after my time doing teletherapy, I never went back to in-person therapy. I still haven't gone back to in-person, on-the-ground therapy. And over time, I saw the efficacy of my online therapy sessions being the same as when I thought back to what I would see when I worked with my students in person. So I decided to stick with teletherapy, and I really enjoyed the flexibility of it. Even as my son has gotten older, He just turned 9 last week. And so I appreciate the time that I can have with him and balancing that with the workload and the caseload that guaranteed pay and hours gave me with the assignment that I took at that time. So just to give you a little bit of information about Parallel's steady pay model, which I'm super excited for us to implement this because, like I just mentioned, it really was a game changer for me. Our steady pay model comes with 3, what I can The difference between our steady pay model and our regular hourly service model is that providers will be paid based on their availability rather than the time they worked for us. So providers will still need to track their services that they provide through our tracking system for direct therapy, indirect time, and assessments. But it's important— that piece is very important so that we can provide records of services that have been provided as those districts report their hours. request those. So really important to note that you let us know what your availability is. We find— our staffing team finds you an assignment that matches that availability. And if that matches up with what the district needs, then that would be your set number of hours that you'll be compensated for for the week, and that will give you that consistent income that you need over the months. The next important point for me was— or next important point for our steady pay model is the availability. So our 1099 contractors must be available for 20 hours, 30 hours, or 37.5 hours a week for the duration of the contract. So your hours of availability need to fall within one of those 3 buckets so that you could qualify to receive a steady pay assignment. Our W-2 contractors must be available for 37.5 hours per week for the duration of their contract. So very important to note as you think about how you can fit in the steady pay model with balancing life personally, other positions that you might have as well. And the third important point is caseload. I know for me that workload caseload balance is super important. So your caseloads will be reviewed by your clinical manager and also by yourself, and then also the district appointed contact. For our customer. And then we also have our customer success managers as well that will be reviewing your caseloads as well. And so our caseloads are estimated based on an average of frequency being 2 times a week, 30 minutes each session. Typically, that's what kids get for speech therapy. So that's what we use to kind of gauge our average. And there's a minimum of 50% of the caseload that'll be grouped. And so At Parallel, one thing that I really like is that we have a max of 3 students per group for all of our providers. So you wouldn't get yourself into a situation where you have 5, 6 kids in a group virtually all sharing devices. We just know that that doesn't create a positive therapy experience for you as a provider and typically for the kids either. So we do have a max of 3 students per group. And then younger students and students with more significant communication needs may require individual sessions per their IEP. And those students, as you know, can often require more service time, which can influence the caseload totals. So there's not this kind of just one-size-fits-all for everyone. We really do look at your caseload, specifically the frequency of service, the types of students that you're servicing, and all of those will be reviewed prior to finalizing your caseload underneath this steady pay model. Next slide. And here next, we're gonna have Brittany talk to us a little bit. I'm sorry, Daniel and Brittany talk to us a little bit. They are from our recruiting department, and they're gonna share some specifics just so you get an understanding of what to expect once you apply and start to go through the steps to come on with us and hopefully take on one of these steady pay assignments. Daniel, Brittany.

Yeah, thank you, Dr. Williams. Appreciate your overview, and thank you everyone for taking some time to join the webinar today. And I'm a clinical recruiter with Parallel. I'm still fairly new with the company, but I can definitely confirm that I've noted a lot of interest from providers in regards to the steady pay model. It's a fairly new initiative and just had a lot of, you know, interest generated, you know, when talking with candidates. And as you can see via the slide, you know, obviously if you want to get into contention, the best way to do that is to go ahead and submit an application. You can do that via the QR code below with the unique little double L in the center there. You can also, you know, reach out to hiring@parallel.com. ParallelLearning.com, excuse me. And then from there, myself or Brittany or one of the other clinical recruiters we have on our team will review your application, reach out to you, and go over the next steps during the interview. Typically that takes about 20, 30 minutes or so for a video interview. And from there, you know, we'll confirm what you're looking for in your next position. We can go over the pay, the hours. So, you know, if you're only able to do the 20 hours, you know, for certain states, Awesome. We can definitely get you into contention. If you want to do the full-time, 37.5, awesome as well. We can definitely, you know, move you into contention and get you considered for the position. And yeah, we can also answer, you know, any questions that you have specifically when it comes to, you know, day-to-day, and also in terms of the recruiting processes from there. And then after the interview is completed, Myself or Brittany or one of the other recruiters will send an email to you with the next steps in the process, which is called the case study. And usually it's, we like to estimate about 20, 25 minutes for candidates, providers to complete. It's about a half dozen open-ended questions. And then once that's completed on your end, one of the clinical managers will review, make sure everything looks good. And then from there, we move forward with the offer. Um, so, yep. Brittany, anything, uh, you wanted to add?

Yeah, I am super excited about this. I have been in the teletherapy world for about 8 years now as a provider and then moved on to recruitment, and I have not seen anything like this before, and it's so exciting, and it makes my heart happy for all the providers who have wanted to jump in and were hesitant for You know, reasons. So this is great. Thank you so much, team. We're gonna have a time now for some questions and answers, and I should have said this at the beginning, but if you do have a question, if you would like to go ahead and drop it into the chat, I do have a question or 2 lined up here. But we'll be happy to answer in real time for you if we're able to. We've got all of the right people here on the call, so we're able to do that. One of the first questions that we received was with regard to pay, how does tax work? How do your taxes work? Are you taxed where you sit or are you taxed where you serve? And that's a really great question. I'll have the team keep me honest, but if you are a 1099 contractor, You will be— you won't be taxed essentially. So you'll need to set aside part of your paycheck to cover your taxes when that time rolls around. If you are a W-2 employee, if that's the contract type that you have with Parallel, we will take the taxes out for you and it goes by the state where you reside. So wherever your residence is, that is kind of how it works. And You know, we're probably— I'm definitely not the best person to answer tax-related questions, but if you have a more specific question, we're happy to find the answer for you. Taylor, I'm sorry, I'll just jump in and add, always consult your tax professional. They are— go to them first before you ask a recruiter or anybody on the clinical team. They are trained. They know the ins and outs, the little, you know, Everything can change, you know, from year to year. So I would definitely recommend talking to a tax professional. 100%. And when you do onboard with Parallel, there are a series of steps that will walk you through the documentation associated with the kind of tax you'll have, the kind of contract you have. So it will be clear to you when you start with us kind of where you fall in terms of what the needs are with that. The next question I have is the idea of if you are working with Parallel as a W-2 employee, are you able to work for anyone else as a W-2 employee? So I'm not sure, Brittany or Daniel, if you know about that. I do know for full-time W-2 employees who are Utilizing all of our benefits, which include health, medical, dental, responsible time off accrual, things like that, that if you have that status with us, you can't also draw benefits with another company as a W-2. But anything else the team would add?

I believe that is the case. However, that would just be something that You know, if you were— if the provider were to move forward and interview, we can, you know, review the contract, the offer letter, kind of go over it just to make sure that, you know, that is something that is still in there. I believe it is, but, you know, I don't want to give any incorrect info. But, you know, I believe that it is— that is the case currently. Yeah.

Y'all are asking some really good questions. I like how informed and ready you are to consider the ins and outs of this. This is awesome. Very important to advocate for yourself and what you need for you and your family. Here's a little bit of a tricky question. I'm not sure if I can answer this. We'll see if anybody else can, and if they can't, we'll get back to this individual. But do we have a non-compete clause within our provider contracts? I'm thinking the context here is for individuals who might want to work potentially. Maybe they're going to take an assignment with Parallel. Maybe they have some other things going on in their local district, things like that. I'm— I will be honest, I'm fairly new and I have not combed through the contract that well yet. But we can, if somebody wants to email me directly or the hiring, it's hiring, right? At Parallel.

Yeah.

Email that question directly and let's get that answered for you. Yeah, that's a really good question. I actually have not seen a clause in our contract to that, to that point, but I don't want to speak falsely. So definitely reach out by email and we can kind of take a look at that together with our recruiting team. All right. So another really good question. If you live outside the United States, as long as you are licensed in the state in which services are provided, have all of the certification boxes checked, are you able to work with Parallel? I do think that is true. Yes, I think we do have some providers working in other states or other countries. The one thing I do know is there may be a requirement around maintaining some kind of US address or having proof of that. The other requirement that I'm aware of is some countries will require a VPN to access our Parallel Pathway, which is our proprietary platform that has a number of security features built into that. So that would be something I definitely would want for our team to explore with you a little bit further to make sure that there was nothing that was going to get in your way.

Also, too, just to add, the time zone differences. Obviously, if you were, for example, to work full-time, the 37.5 hours, that would need to be, like, for example, for California, 8:00 AM to 3:30 PM Pacific time. So just something to keep in mind if you're living in Poland or Germany, being 12 hours ahead of— well, I guess 6 hours ahead of Eastern time. So if you're working 8:00 AM to 3:30 PM Eastern time, Just, yeah, something to keep in mind as well.

Yeah, I mean, you know, if you're a night owl or something, it could work.

I don't know.

So definitely worth thinking about. We have here a list of common questions. Another question that I do see is, do we service only schools? And yes, that is correct. We are working directly with school partners. So students who are pre-K through 12th grade or sometimes post-high school transition. So that is kind of the population of students that we serve and we're really delivering school-based services. We also have a list here of some common questions and answers that we've received so far. A lot of individuals are kind of wondering about the match between the work that their school needs and their weekly committed hours. Tiffany, do you want to talk a little bit Sure, sure.

So one of the questions we have is, what happens if I do not have enough work to fulfill my weekly committed hours? So if you signed on with us for a 37.5-hour steady pay assignment and you create your therapy schedule and you don't have 37.5 hours of direct and indirect work to fill up your week, you will still receive your full steady pay for that week. Steady pay for the weeks where the caseload workload is lower than your committed hours. And that's the, I think, the really great part of this, because I'm sure everybody here on the call and those joining with me here from Parallel, my bills come every month. It doesn't matter if the kid went on vacation or what. It doesn't matter. So I like that our steady pay model offers you that. Even if your caseload isn't matching up with your weekly committed hours, we would work with the district and with you to build up to your weekly committed hours to ensure that, you know, the school is receiving the services that they're being billed for. But if there are times where there are— that matchup isn't exact one-to-one, you'll still receive your full steady pay for those for that week. And then our next question. Will I get paid for school breaks like winter break, spring break? So the steady pay model does not apply in the case where there are school holidays. So December is that month where students might be out for 2 weeks. So you wouldn't be compensated for the weeks where school is not in session. So you will— it does call for you to do a little budgeting and math on the back end to make sure that, you know, you're making the amount that you need to make despite the breaks. But it is nice to know that upfront so that you can understand that maybe that week of Thanksgiving, maybe the 2 weeks for winter break, that week of spring break, then you would not receive the pay since the school is closed. Let's see here. Our next one, can I work more than my weekly committed hours? So you cannot go over your weekly steady pay hours. If you sign up to work 20 hours, The district is expecting us to provide 20 hours of service and be billed for 20 hours of service. So you wouldn't be able to bill over that 20 hours per week. If it came to a point where your caseload was well over what you can get done in 20 hours a week, you are encouraged and, you know, almost required to come and talk with your clinical manager like myself. Taylor, our other clinical managers to discuss what the caseload is, what the hours would call for, so that we on the back end here can do some problem solving. And maybe there is a case where the district says, yes, we need more time. And if you have more availability, then we could expand your weekly committed hours. But that has to come after conversations with your clinical manager in the district as well. Our next one, what if my caseload workload goes above my weekly committed hours? So in this scenario, 20 hours is all you have. And there are times during the school year where you feel like you're going above that. So we ask you to reach out to your clinical manager as your caseload and workload get close to exceeding your weekly committed hours so that we can work with you to adjust your schedule or your caseload, talk to you about ways to be more efficient with indirect work. But if you're getting close to that, that point of maxing out your weekly hours, then we do ask for you to reach out to us and we're here to support you and have that conversation. with you and the district as well. And then taking time off, because sometimes we need to do that. So as a 1099, you must take— you must make up the time in another week. So if you took off a day, you had doctor's appointments for you or your kids, we would ask that you reschedule those sessions that you missed in another week within that same month. Otherwise, your full retainer for that week won't be paid. But it will be prorated based on the number of hours that you did work. So we'd ask for you to make up those times for, for 1099. For W-2s, it works a little bit different. You can take paid time off consistent with our PTO and our sick leave policy. But in both cases, we still ask that those sessions that you miss be made up because we want to continue that consistency for our students, and we want to make sure they get the services that their IEPs require on that weekly or monthly basis, depending on how the frequency of service is written out for the IEP. So some really good questions. I saw some more popping up in the chat. Let me see.

Do you want to talk, Tiffany or Dr. Williams, a little bit about summer school? I know that's a question a lot of educators have is, you know, what does work opportunity look like over the summer?

Yeah, so I'll be totally honest, the opportunities for ESY or summer services are Few and far between, as you— I'm sure you remember from your in-person therapy days, the ESY caseloads weren't really that large. If your district does have students that need to receive services over the summer, then we look at what that caseload looks like, and it may or may not match up with what your committed hours were for the week. So if you were a 20-hour steady pay provider during the school year, over the summer, if there's not that same workload and caseload at the school, then we would adjust for that sum for those summer services to be hourly. So you would be paid for the indirect and direct work that you provide on an hourly basis. And I see one of the questions come in about—

oh, sorry, I did not mean to do that. That's okay.

ESY being very huge on the East Coast and one of Our attendee says she sees 60 students Monday through Friday from 9 to 3.

That's awesome.

That is amazing.

Yeah, that's really great. I will add that you will know even as early as the fall when your last week of services at your assigned school district will be, so it won't be a surprise to you in terms of if there is the opportunity to continue into the summer. Or, you know, if the last day of services is, you know, mid-June, you'll have a good idea of that way in advance. So you'll be able to kind of plan and be thinking about that.

Yeah. Let's see. I saw another question. Do you offer spread pay over the course of the full year? So we don't take your full-year pay and then break it up like they would do in in-person in the school districts, that would be up to you to take your weekly pay and divide it up as you need to to cover your personal expenses. That would be on you as the provider.

Yeah, and I'll add that our pay cycle is every 2 weeks, essentially, not monthly, which I know is the case in some other organizations. So you can expect to be paid I saw one more question.

Let me scroll back up. This is probably for Brittany or Daniel. What is the pay range for the steady pay model? I know it does fluctuate depending on the state where the services are being provided.

Yep. That's exactly what I was going to say. It depends on which state and then Yeah, that's definitely something that would be addressed during the interview. So we can definitely take some time to go over that after, you know, you apply.

Yeah, I know a lot of times that question comes up and different states are reimbursing for services that are provided at different rates, and that's what causes your pay rate to fluctuate as well, depending on what state you take work in. So there's a little bit of Math to be done on the back end. So our recruiters are happy to talk with you about what your desired pay is and see if we can match you up with an assignment to get you either that or at least close to it. But I will say that guaranteed weekly pay does help a lot with just planning, just to be honest. It helps a lot versus the hourly. So definitely have that conversation. You can scan that QR code on the slide right now or go to hiring@parallellearning.com to Speak directly with our recruiters, and we are hiring for the fall. SLPs are the only ones that are eligible for the steady pay model. So if you know someone that would be interested in a steady pay assignment, please feel free to share the link that comes up once you scan the QR code or send them the email address. HR— I'm sorry, recruiting— hiring. I got all the emails in my mind.

Hiring@parallellearning.com.

for questions so that they can get questions answered as well. So just know that we are here to support you, providing that clinical support that Taylor mentioned at the top of our webinar, and just wanting to really make sure that you have a positive experience with Parallel and also with the school districts as well.

That is so well said. We are also hiring for special educators, school psychologists, and school social workers. So if you do have any colleagues or friends or family members that you think might be interested in providing virtual services with us, please feel free to pass the information along, even if they're just interested and like to know more. We are tele-services evangelists here, so we really, really feel passionately about providing more access to students in need. We're so grateful that you all could join us this evening. We're thankful for all the great questions, and we look forward to talking with you soon. Thank you.