What were your thoughts about the Special Ed Town Hall Meeting earlier this week?
I attend a lot of Special Education Advisory Committee meetings, and had been looking forward to the Special Ed Town Hall Meeting. Although I was there to greet everyone, I had a family commitment and was not able to stay after the first speaker. SCM blogged about the meeting herself:
The purpose of the meeting was to address systemic issues using personal experiences, without violating privacy. Only a group of special ed parents would agree to or understand these limitations!
I cited this line because I see the difficulty in asking parents of individual children to speak to systemic issues every month at the SEAC meetings. Special Ed is wrapped in privacy laws, so parents have a difficult time finding out about others' experiences (systemic issues) short of joining an advocacy group that shares experiences. The individual experiences need to be referred to the professional staff, and are, but in doing that they cannot contribute to the SEAC or School Board's understanding of what systemic issues are. It's all quite frustrating.
Now read the lines that made me smile:
Before I left, I volunteered to be a Special Ed Advisory Committee PTA Representative, a job that I think will be a good fit for me. I left, once again, relieved to have such wonderful dedicated people working with my son.
The SEAC is recruiting PTSO representatives, trying to have a Special Education parent active in every PTSO. I wholeheartedly support this effort. It will help the parents of neurotypical kids to understand the needs of their kids' classmates and how each school can be more welcoming in its PTSO-sponsored events. It will make the PTSOs more welcoming to the parents of kids receiving Special Education services. It will increase communication between the parents of those kids and help them identify which of their experiences are systemic, which are unique to their school and which are unique to their child. It will provide future leadership to the SEAC.
Finally SCM can see, as I do that despite the challenges of Special Education, the people involved really care and are trying their very best to give each child the best education that child can have.
I look forward to hearing other perspectives about the May 19th Special Education Town Hall meeting.
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