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Next Meeting Previous Meetings
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May 2, 2005 Meeting |
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The Sevier County Special Education Parent Advisory Committee (SC SpEd PAC) held its Sixteenth meeting on May 2, 2005. Two members attended. New Topics · Extended School Year vs. Summer School (Jeff) Jeff pointed out a few website links, specifically "Extended School Year Services," "What Extended School Year Is and Is Not," and the "Sevier County Extended School Year Service Plan ." These make clear that ESY is not summer school. The main difference is that regular education students can attend summer school. · What to think about at IEP meetings Regression and recoupment are the main two considerations for ESY attendance. If the skills lost over the summer cannot be regained within a few weeks, then the IEP Team should recommend ESY. Most ESY students attend 3 hours a day for about 4 weeks. However, the number of days can be as few or as many as the IEP team agrees to for each student. · After-school training sessions for 05-06 (Jeff) · One from Jane Winstead, new Transition Coordinator from State Jane Winstead, the State's Transition Coordinator, will come to do a session on transition October 27, 3:45 pm at the TLC. (Of course, SpEd teachers, GenEd teachers, paraprofessionals, and parents are welcome!) · One on inclusion geared to general education teachers John will host a panel of general education teachers on December 13 at 3:45 pm (Trula Lawson Center). This one is on inclusion from the general education teachers' perspective. (Of course, SpEd teachers and parents will be welcome!) Following this session, from 6 to 9 pm, SpEd staff will be available to watch SpEd PAC members' children at the TLC, so the parents can help St Nick with the gift orders. · Meetings, other activities to be scheduled for next school year (all) Two other inservice sessions will be held in March and May. The March 9 one is on IEP documentation and the May 1 session is special education from the parents' perspective. These four inservices are based on the needs identified in the previous training needs assessment. The next needs survey, to assessment training we will deliver during SY06-07 and SY07-08 will be sent out in October and due back by December. · What’s happening around the county We will have a Halloween Party for the middle and high school SpEd students, to be held at the Pigeon Forge Community Center Halloween week. Details later. · Changes to IDEA 2004 starting on July 1 (Jeff) Jeff mentioned that most of the provisions of the recently reauthorized Individuals with Disabilities Education Act are to become law July 1, 2005. Several timing changes are included in the law, including a provision for IEP updates every three years instead of at least once a year (if the parents agree to this) and the requirement that the evaluation process from parent permission to evaluation summary meeting occur within a 60 calendar day span. (The previous requirement was 40 school days.) Another provision is that a general education teacher may be excused from the IEP meeting participation (if the parents agree to this ahead of time and in writing). Public school systems also have greater requirements to include private school and home-schooled special education students in special education services. There are many sites that cover the IDEA 2004 changes. For starters look at the Library of Congress summary or the Council for Exceptional Children's table. The National Association of Protection and Advocacy Systems has a concise section by section summary too. · Paraeducator Cohort graduating, teaching next school year in and around the county (Jeff) Seventeen former teaching assistants became special education teachers in May. Ten of these will be working in Sevier County this coming school year. · TLC website (for the 3-5 year-old SpEd set) (Jeff) · http://www.slc.sevier.org/tlc/ Check out the site Dr. Fran Harmon and Jeff started this spring for the Trula Lawson Center. · Annual SpEd Parent Survey and Teacher Survey results (Jeff) We had 500 parents return surveys this year, more than any year since we started surveying the parents annually in 2002. As you can see from the responses, for five of the seven questions the parents' replies were overwhelmingly positive. The only two questions that received many negative replies were numbers 3 and 4. Question 3 concerns parent participation in school system or individual school improvement panels and question 4 has to do with parent participation in training. Even for these two questions, though, several parents indicated they were informed of these opportunities and wished they had more time to pursue them. · SpEd PAC study (Jeff) Jeff Romanczuk is doing his doctoral dissertation on what the original members of the SpEd Parent Advisory Committee think about its progress up to now. (It will be an Educational Administration degree through the University of Tennessee.) In addition to voluntary interviews with the charter members, Jeff will use the parent survey results for the past four years. Anyone interested in hearing more contact Jeff by e-mail or phone (748-7711).
One of Jeff's colleagues at UT, Dr. Susan Speraw, would like to interview people with disabilities who are between 8 and 21 years old. Dr. Speraw is a registered nurse and licensed psychologist who has been working with special needs families since 1990. She wants to hear about their experience of going through the early and teen years with a disability so that she can share the common findings with health providers and teachers, to help these two groups improve services for young people with disabilities. If you would like to know more or volunteer, contact Dr. Speraw by e-mail or phone (865-974-7586). Ongoing Topics
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 have been checking with similar programs to figure our staffing and financing issues. Pat Gwathney is working on SpEd student access to a placement in Seymour. Jeff has spoken with Pam Walker of Kid's Place a few times, with nothing settled yet. 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.
Jeff gave Samantha Ensley a few more transition items and information on Breakthrough, a Knoxville-based non-profit organization that provides social and exercise activities for adults with autism.
Only a few members have signed up for our 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. 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. Since we'll be meeting less and working by subcommittee more, the Yahoo Group will become a useful way of communicating SpEd PAC business. Next Meeting October 27, 6 pm at the Trula Lawson Center. Please contact Jeff by e-mail or phone (748-7711) the week prior to arrange for free childcare during the meeting. |
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