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

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. 

1. 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. 

 

2. 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:

1. Hiring of Licensed teaching staff to bring staffing levels to an appropriate level for the caseload in special education services. 

2. Ensure all students with disabilities have equal access to special classes as outlined in 511 IAC 7-42-10

3. Development of a parent advisory council, committee, task force, or group. As outlined in 511 IAC 7-36-1 Parent and community participation.  

4. 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