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December 13, 2004 Meeting |
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The Sevier County Special Education Parent Advisory Committee (SC SpEd PAC) held its fourteenth meeting on December 13, 2004. Seven members attended. New Topics In November, the Special Education Department reworked the times the department's buses could leave their schools. Sandy Enloe talked about the requirement to have the SpEd students' school day length more closely match the general education students' hours of instruction. This has resulted in some longer bus travel times and other scheduling traumas that we are still adjusting. Jeff Romanczuk attended the Tennessee Association for Supervisors of Special Education (TASSE) annual conference from December 6-8. The Wrights (of Wrightslaw fame) were there and it was interesting to have parent advocates among all the schools' lawyers. Pam Wright's talk was on the last day and except for the following links that she shared, the rest of her content was disappointing in many ways.
All Jeff got out of Joe Fisher's (State Assistant Commissioner for Ed, and chief of SpEd) intro to the conference was the following link, which covers recommendations for Closing the Achievement Gap between general education and special education students. (It's a Word document.) Melinda Baird talked about the changes from IDEA 97 to IDEA 04. Among these she noted that "school health services" is now "school nurse services." Melinda also mentioned the wording that basically states school systems can use up to 15% of their early intervention SpEd funds (Part B) for early intervention having to do with trying to stop GenEd students from needing SpEd services. She also pointed out that although the timeline for initial evaluation will change to 60 days in July 2005, it will be 60 calendar days, which is about the same as the 40 school days it is under the current reauthorization. This should matter only when the 60 days are spread over spans when school is not in session. Chuck Cagle is a lawyer who represents many school systems, including Sevier County. Chuck also talked about what will change with the most recent IDEA reauthorizaton:
Jeff added the Pennsylvania Parent Education Network site to the advocacy set of sites on our parents' page. PEN has a lot of good information and offers pamphlets free of charge. Kathy Dufau mentioned the Autism Coach site. It sells training software, especially for students with communication disorders. "Socialize with Me" was the specific program she is considering. Jeff mentioned that the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program's (TCAP) Academic Skills Assessment (ASA) alternative is offering an alternative writing assessment this year for the first time. (Last year, even those doing the TCAP Alt ASA during TCAP week had to do the regular Writing Assessment if they were in 5th, 8th, or 11th grade.) As a result, the TCAP Alt addendum used at IEP meetings has changed a little (on page 2). Ongoing Items Jeff gave Samantha Ensley another transition resource for review, one from the Pennsylvania Parent Education Network site mentioned above. Linda Ogle and Samantha will check at the four high schools to see both what good programs are in place already and what programs could be better. They will make recommendations to Dr. Sandy Enloe about what to keep, add, or change and later get into middle to high school transition issues. Samantha has the lead on this transition subcommittee and will decide the pace and direction of its activities. John suggested we start an after-school childcare specifically for the special education students. We have some information on how a few counties close by are doing it, but we need to work out the level of need/interest county wide to figure out at what schools to locate this childcare and what needs might be unique to Sevier County. We intend to offer tutoring and enrichment activities during these hours and there will be a charge for this service. Jeff and Allen Lee will meet soon to plan how to make it happen. Anyone else interested contact Jeff by e-mail or phone (748-7711). Jeff asked for volunteers to serve as individual education planning meeting parent advocates. We're thinking that, especially for the parents of newly diagnosed students, it might be good if they had an experienced parent to talk to ahead of time about what will happen at the IEP meeting. This advocate could also attend the IEP meeting and provide whatever assistance the parent might need (from finding the meeting location to translating SpEd jargon). Kathy Dufau is the only volunteer right now. Anyone else interested should contact Jeff by e-mail or phone (748-7711). These parent advocates don't have to be SpEd PAC members, but they do have to be (or have been) parents of Sevier County Special Education students. Jeff will pass along to the SpEd Consulting and Lead Teachers the names of those parents interested in helping. The East Tennessee Regional Division of Mental Retardation Services had an evening meeting on November 3 in Knoxville, covering short- and long-term care issues for those of us with children who aren't likely to be able to live on their own. Jeff will post the date/time/place of their next meeting, or you can call 865-544-3825 for information. Jeff started an online Yahoo! Group for the SpEd PAC. If you aren't already signed up for it, when you go to the link, the first button you'll have to click on is the "Join this group!" one. If you are already a Yahoo! member, your current log on will work. If not, you'll need to sign up for your own ID and password, which isn't too tedious. We have only five signed up so far. Once we get a few more members, we can use this online group for messages to all, file and picture sharing, polls, meeting notifications, and live chat. Next Meeting January 25, 11 am at the Trula Lawson Center. |
