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Next Meeting Previous Meetings
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May 1, 2006 Meeting |
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The Sevier County Special Education Parent Advisory Committee (SC SpEd PAC) held its nineteenth meeting on May 1, 2006. Two members attended. New Topics · Meetings for 2006-2007 A couple members mentioned that meetings during the school day are better for them, so I want to bring back a morning
and/or early afternoon session for next year. I think we should keep at least one evening meeting each semester, though,
for those who can't do the during the day meetings and also because this gives the members a chance to attend the after-school
training sessions. Sandy and I will decide the training schedule in July. Watch the website for it.
Attracting New Members
We all need to be on the look out for members who would be good. Here's a direct link to the application. I'm sending one home with the last IEP update of the year, too. Cyclical Performance Review Here are the results of the parent survey for school year 2005-2006 . We got back only 178 after sending out more than we ever have. That's the bad news. The good is that once again, the responses are overwhelmingly positive. Kathy Dufau helped with the tallying. Jeff shared the parents comments (not included on the linked file). SpEd Newsletter The March newsletter is on the website: http://www.slc.sevier.org/nltr0306.pdf . Topics include helping children avoid boredom, transitions, the SpEd parent's perspective, and a lot of suggested web links. The parent perspective article is intended as the first in a series. If you are interested in contributing a story for the parents and staff to read, send or e-mail it to Jeff. Carol White is going to do one on the process of having a child enrolled in special education and what happens when the child no longer qualifies for special education services. A new issue will be out in June. Ongoing Topics
We have some information on how a few counties close by are doing before school/after school childcare, but we need to work out the level of need/interest county wide to having a service that is special education specific and 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. 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, Megan Duhon, and Brian Sims are the only volunteers 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.
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 doesn't take long. 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. Please join it! Next Meeting Thursday, July 27, 11:30 am at the Special Education Department, 320 Cedar St., Sevierville. |
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