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Sunday, February 20, 2022
Tuesday, February 1, 2022
Indiana Education Impact Alerts 2/01/2022
Indiana Education Impact Alerts
(This is a short summary focused on impacts to students with disabilities please read the full bill for more information. This is the views of one Special education advocate and not that of Community Inclusion Ambassadors Inc. )
House Bill 1107 - http://iga.in.gov/legislative/2022/bills/house/1107#digest-heading
Special Education Impact Areas for House Bill 1107:
Turning the burden of proof from the parents to the schools. Currently parents have to prove that the school didn’t provide FAPE. If this passes the school will now have to prove how they provide FAPE to the student.
Requiring schools to have training on Bullying for all staff and volunteers.
Provides that a public agency shall not require, as part of a resolution of a due process hearing or a dispute relating to the provision of special education services to a particular student, that a parent of a student or an emancipated student enter into a nondisclosure, nondisparagement, or confidentiality agreement or clause. ( This means no more forcing families to be quiet about the injustice and mistreatment of special education students in schools. Currently many times a special education dispute is resolved before a hearing and the local school district will require a non disclosure before they will provide the needed services for a student. If the family does not sign then the process could drag out years without the student receiving critical educational services. )
House Bill 1134 and Senate Bill 167
HB1134- http://iga.in.gov/legislative/2022/bills/house/1134#document-7671e6e6
SB167- http://iga.in.gov/legislative/2022/bills/senate/167#document-859f4618
Special Education Impact Areas for 1134 and 167:
There is a section about psychological services to a student. This is concerning as Psychological services are a related service under IDEA ( Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) If a student is in need of this type of services the school would need to start child find and develop an IEP to full meet the students needs with Supports, IEP related Services( psychological services) and Developing IEP goals to help the student.
This is being marketed to families as a “share your lesson plans with parents” Bills. ( We currently have laws that require children to get daily physical activity in school yet we have schools refusing to follow this law. It's hard to believe these bills will help families and teachers. We need the state to develop resources on making programs and systems to streamline communication for educators and parents ie: parent portals that truly allow families to see the homework assignments and access online textbooks and communicate with teachers so that families can help our students with an easy user interface. We need the burdens of administration work back onto the school administration not on the frontline classroom educators. )
These bills cover a large area of issues and it's concerning that some of the issues are not addressed as free standing bills to better serve the children of Indiana.
Wednesday, January 12, 2022
Tuesday, November 2, 2021
Sensory Santa 2021
Sensory Santa has now opened sign up.
Paoli Friends Food Pantry Project
Paoli Friends Food Pantry Project
The Paoli Friends Food Pantry Project is complete. At 8 in the morning on Thursday Oct 14th volunteers started out to pick up the new shelving carts and other started to prepare the food pantry room. By 6:30 that evening the last cans were placed in their spots. Volunteers from Community Inclusion Ambassadors, Paoli Friends Meeting, and Girl Scouts of Kentuckiana troop 6175 pulled together for this project that was made possible by the Amazon Gives program.
The Paoli Friends Food Pantry serves the community as an emergency food resource by helping to bridge times of food insecurity for families. The PFFP is operated by the Paoli Friends Meeting A Quaker Church with pastor Mark Tope coordinating the food pantry.
Girl Scouts of Kentuckiana Troop #6175 is planning a service project collecting items for the food pantry and we will share more information once the girl scouts have the service project ready.
Community Inclusion Ambassadors Inc. is a 501c3 non-profit organization that operates to help families raising children with disabilities and to develop resources for families. If you would like to help support our work for local families please visit our website www.ourcia.org or https://www.paypal.com/us/fundraiser/charity/3998069
Sunday, September 19, 2021
Do you know our SEMP?
SEMP
Special Education Monitoring Program
- Bullying of students with disabilities ( By students and staff members)
- Refusing to Evaluate a student for Special education services.
- Requiring a parent to get a note for family doctor for ADD or ADHD before the school will evaluate a student for special education services.
- Telling families a child is required to be on medication for ADD or ADHD to attend pubic school
- Schools putting students on reduced days due to behaviors with no IEP goals of returning to full days.
- Schools refusing to allow parents to have a meaningful role as a IEP team member.
- Schools refusing to give families Prior Written Notice (PWN)
- Schools Refusing to set IEP Meetings at a time and location that is mutually agreed upon.
- Schools failing to do reevaluations when its needed ( Reevaluation is to be considered every 3 years or when a parent or teacher feels its needed to help develop the IEP)
- Special education students left on school buses alone.
- Schools Predetermining students placement or IEP supports with out parents involvement.
- Schools not meeting the requirements of child find. (1)
Tuesday, August 31, 2021
August Report
As August comes to an end and we can see that this school year is busy already.
Special Education Advocacy Program ( SEAP )
Our Special Education Advocacy Program is fully volunteer just like all of the Community Inclusion Ambassadors.
The 2021-2022 School year starts our new Special Education Monitoring Program (SEMP). This system has been in the planning for the last year to help us timely find concerns in area special education programs along with supporting if the concerns are systemic issues or isolated individual events. Any parent, community member or teacher can submit a concern into the system for our advocates to start monitoring. This can be done anonymously or a person can add their contact information to allow our advocates to follow up on concerns.
Submit concerns to: https://forms.gle/bSe6YSBizxbRHYa4A
Report of concerns about North Lawrence Community Schools special education programs were received. The SEAP Team issued a letter of concern ( https://www.ourcia.org/2021/08/letter-of-concern-to-nlcs-board-about.html ) to the board of NLCS. Due to not receiving a timely response from NLCS that fully addressed the concerns our lead advocate presented the concerns and available supporting data to the rest of the board of directors. On 8/18/2021 our Lead Special Education Advocate filed a formal complaint with the state of Indiana bringing the concerns to the state and requesting they look into the matter on behalf of students with disabilities in the North Lawrence Community Schools system. At this time the matter is now in the hands of the start department of education and we entrust that they are investigating the matter fully. We will update families once we know the outcome of the state's investigation.
Our Advocates have already been working with families in Orange, Lawrence, and Washington counties this school year. If you would like to talk with a Special Education Advocate please reach out to us at: (812) 329-0216 or email: PatrickU@ourcia.org
Family Activities / Sensory Friendly Programs
August brought a covid spike to our area resulting in families having children put in close contact quarantine. Due to this our board felt that we could not safely host an event for families. We start to look at activities that we could do for the time being that allow social spacing. We are working with a movie licensing company to start our sensory friendly movies. We are currently trying to get the approval with a community partner to be the host site for monthly movies for the next year ( Our licenses will only cover one location for 1 year). As soon as we have the location approved we will set the first Sensory Friendly Movie Night date.
We are working on planning our Halloween activity To Cute to Spook for October. Move information to come late September to early October.
Sensory Santa will be coming back for the first two weeks of December. We are working to set our Dates and times for Santa visit sites, we will also have home visits available for families that feel it's not safe for a child to come to one of the events. Keep an eye out for more information late October.
Donations
This is one of the harder areas for me to talk about. We are blessed to have the support of community partners to help make programs available in our community. We are a fully volunteer organization and with the help of our community we are able to develop our programs for families. Donations very greatly but they all have an impact on helping families.
The donation of time helps us as our volunteers lead planning of activities, the set up and running of events and advocate for studetns with disabilities.
The donation of goods and services allow us to have resources at events for families. Families see the in-kind donations of goods and services as the food at events, prizes during events, the use of buildings or locations for the events.
The donation of funds helps us to purchase supplies. Online donations can be made at our online charity portal: paypal.com/us/fundraiser/charity/3998069
Wednesday, August 11, 2021
Letter of Concern to NLCS Board about Parkview Elementary
This has been Emailed to the North Lawrance Community Schools Board and the State of Indiana Deparment of Special Education as a Letter of concern for the students at Parkview Elementary.
Dear: North Lawrence Community School Board
The responsibility to ensure students are receiving a Free and Appropriate Public Education is entrusted to you by the families in your school district. Concerns are being voiced by families and community members for the educational needs of students with disabilities in your district.
Reports of Parkview Elementary being short staff in the special education classrooms. Resulting in One Special education teacher covering two self contained classrooms.
This is concerning as it impacts the students ability to access meaningful learning from a qualified teacher ( 511 IAC 7-36-2 Special education program personnel and 511 IAC 7-36-11 Caseload ) . Without a qualified teacher and a reasonable caseload our concern would be that the students' education would not be appropriate.
We have received reports of students in the self contained special education classrooms at Parkview Elementary not receiving specials such as art and music class like their peers in general education classes are receiving. This is concerning to us as the Students in self contained classrooms still have their rights under Least Restrictive Environment as outlined in 511 IAC 7-42-10 Least restrictive environment and delivery of special education and related services
(b) The public agency must do the following: (1) Take steps to make available to students with disabilities the variety of educational programs and services that are made available to nondisabled students served by the public agency, including the following: (A) Vocational education. (B) Art. (C) Music. (D) Industrial arts. (E) Consumer and homemaking education. (F) Field trips. (G) Convocations.
In Conclusion community members within your district have concerns and there is a need to work on building trust and communication with the special education families. We request that North Lawrence Community Schools take Immediate corrective actions and our recommendations are:
Hiring of Licensed teaching staff to bring staffing levels to an appropriate level for the caseload in special education services.
Ensure all students with disabilities have equal access to special classes as outlined in 511 IAC 7-42-10
Development of a parent advisory council, committee, task force, or group. As outlined in 511 IAC 7-36-1 Parent and community participation.
The creation of a Parent Liaison position within the NLCS special education department to work on strengthening Parent / School relationships.
Sincerely
Patrick Underwood
Board President / Lead Special Education Advocate
Community Inclusion Ambassadors Inc.
Phone: 812-329-0216 Email: PatrickU@ourcia.org-
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