Seattle Special Education Newsletter
April 2009 - Volume III, Issue 8
In this Issue
2008-2009 Executive Board:
- President - Janet Anderson
- President Emeritus - Nancy Speer
- Co-Vice President - Joyce Israel
- Co-Vice President - Heidi Bond
- Treasurer - Marti Bosma
- Secretary - Linda Scott
Members are Seattle area parents, educators, friends of and students with disabilities. We strive to be a racially and socioeconomically inclusive group that is representative of the students we serve. Like any typical PTA/PTSA, we are a self- governing membership association whose purpose is to serve the needs of its members. We are affiliated with both the National and Washington State PTA/PTSAs.
The Seattle Special Ed PTSA is a non-profit organization.
The IRS has granted us 501(c)3, non-profit status. This means we qualify for matching funds from many employers (such as Boeing and Microsoft). If you are a member, please check to see if your employer will match your donation to the Special Ed PTSA.
Please encourage your friends, family, and teachers to join!
The Seattle Special Ed PTSA has a lively Yahoo Group where participants can find announcements of PTSA meetings and other school-related events. Members also can post comments, queries, or articles. To join, please contact Nancy Speer at nancyspeer@comcast.net.
Please, Pass It On!
Please send a copy of this newsletter to a friend, your child's teacher, and your school-based PTA. Just click on the "Forward email" button below to pass it on. Many thanks.
Let Us Hear From You!
The Seattle Special Ed PTSA is here to serve and advocate on your behalf. Please let us know which issues are of most concern to you. To do so, please contact us at seattlespedptsa@gmail.com.
A Year-End Message to Our Members
When I ran for PTSA President last year, I said I would only serve one year because I had many other things on my plate, including two children and a husband who travels abroad for long periods of time. Nonetheless, here I am -- re-elected for a second year and wishing to extend my thanks to all of you for this opportunity.
Serving as President of this PTSA has been one of the more challenging, time-consuming, and rewarding experiences of my life. I have been challenged by the complexity of the many issues confronting both parents and educators of children with disabilities, by the competition between the very compelling interests of different constituencies, and by the need to push for change but also the need to figure out what the RIGHT change looks like. I have participated in lots of meetings, traveled to places in this city that were unknown to me previously, and written/received countless emails.
However, the aspect of this position that I value by far the most is the opportunity it has given me to meet and work with some wonderful people. I am blessed to work with a board of dedicated volunteers who serve despite dealing with some incredible challenges at home and at school. I am moved by the members who attend our meetings and tenaciously seek ways to improve their children's situation. I am awed by the extraordinary work being done by parents, teachers, community members, and administrators to provide better services to children with disabilities.
I feel privileged to be in this position and look forward to another rewarding year. I thank all the volunteers who have stepped forward this year to lend a hand, and I encourage all of our members to get involved during this next year by contributing whatever your situation allows - time, energy, ideas, etc. No matter how big or small, your work on behalf of our children does make a difference. I wish you all a restful summer and hope to see you in September as we take up the challenge of making the current changes in special education services work for our kids. - Janet Anderson
May General Meeting Wrap-up
Many thanks to all who attended our last general meeting of the year and helped us celebrate our wonderful, award-winning teachers and volunteers. Thanks also to Superintendent Maria Goodloe- Johnson, Chief Academic Officer Carla Santorno, Interim Director of Special Education Fred Row, and Advanced Learning Manager Bob Vaughan for addressing our members.
Dr. Goodloe-Johnson emphasized her commitment to staying the course with the direction of change in Special Education services and outlined the district's efforts to hire a new Executive Director of Special Education and a new Chief Academic Officer, and said special education representatives would be involved in the process. Indeed, PTSA President Janet Anderson and SEAAC Chairman Rick Minutoli participated in interviews for both positions on June 1 and June 11, respectively. The Superintendent also pointed out that the new Executive Director of Special Education would have direct access to her as a member of her executive team. She also noted that Seattle's special education services are not where they should be in comparison with national trends. The new measures amount to a cultural change and, when an organization makes such changes, it gets push-back. Professional training is the critical piece, and teachers will have the opportunity to get training this summer. The district is able to provide pay to some teachers who participate.
Bob Vaughan graciously agreed to speak to our members about "twice exceptional" students, those who qualify both for special ed services and as gifted. Currently the district has about 150 applications for advanced learning programs from students who also receive special ed services. About 4% of the students enrolled in advanced learning also get 504 or special ed services. Advanced Learning is looking at how students are being evaluated and welcomes comments on how to modify the application process.
The highlight of the meeting was the awarding of our Outstanding Educator and Golden Acorn (Volunteer) Awards. As reported in our May newsletter, our Outstanding Educators are Rebecca Crissell and Joseph Kunkel. Our Golden Acorn recipients are our founding PTSA co-Presidents Nancy Speer and Rose Yu. We thank you all for your service to our children.
The business portion of our meeting consisted of electing new officers, a slight revision to our standing rules, and approving the planning of a fall conference. The membership re-elected Janet Anderson as President, Joyce Israel and Heidi Bond as co-Vice Presidents, and Marti Bosma as Treasurer. Our newly-elected Secretary is Peg Peterson. Congratulations to all!
We would like to thank Linda Scott, our out-going Secretary, for the time and dedication she has given to the board in the past two years.
Revising the District's School Performance Reports
Our PTSA Board and several SEACC members met on June 3 with members of Seattle Public Schools' Strategic Planning and Partnerships team -- Carolyn Davis (a SPS consultant), Jessica DeBarros (works for the CAO), and Bernardo Ruiz (SPS Family Engagement) -- to discuss the district's School Performance Reports which are in the process of being revised. The team shared with us a draft prototype of a new version of the annual school report. The common format would be used in every school; there are distinct versions for elementary, middle school, K-8, and high school. The primary audience for the reports would be families. The reports will feed into a district scorecard on each school; each school will be held accountable -- there will be actions/responses to the data. Schools will also receive supports to improve.
The team sought our input as parents of students served by SPS special education services. Of course, they heard an earful from all of us around the table. We told them how many of the indicators on their draft prototype did not capture the kinds of concerns we had as parents with children served by special ed. One problem was that we almost always represent a minority in the sample surveyed, so our concerns get lost. Another issue is the type of questions or measures; they don't address issues we are concerned with such as the attitude of the school community toward special ed, the level of training the general ed teachers have for dealing with our kids, the caliber of the special ed services in a particular school, are there opportunities for after-school activities for our kids, are social skills services integrated into classroom and recess time, etc.
Realizing that we had more to discuss than could be accomplished in the time we had, we suggested that we have a separate meeting with the SPS team to work on this project. They agreed and a subsequent meeting is to be scheduled. Bernardo Ruiz also invited us to have input into the updating of the SPS Family Survey. The updating process will occur from September to January, and the survey will go out next spring.
In preparation for the follow-on meeting, we invite parents to think about how they would assess their school and how it could be measured. Please send your input and/or concerns to us at seattlespedptsa@gmail.com.
Mark Your Calendars for our September General Meeting and Fall Conference
Our first PTSA General Meeting of the 2009-2010 school year will be on Tuesday evening, September 22. Our tentative speakers will be Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson and the newly-hired Chief Academic Officer and Executive Director of Special Education. The meeting will be held at the district headquarters in the John Stanford Center auditorium. We hope you will plan now to join us!
In addition, our PTSA is planning a conference this fall entitled "Best Practices for Inclusive Schools." The conference seeks to shed more light on the Integrated Comprehensive Service (ICS) delivery model that Seattle is moving to and help parents and teachers understand the benefits and challenges inherent in this new model. Our goal is to empower both parents and teachers to work with the district to make this new model succeed. To do so, we have engaged Dr. Elise Fraturra, the Associate Dean of Education Outreach at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, as our keynote speaker. Dr. Fraturra has written extensively on the ICS model and was a member of the external consulting team that audited Seattle Schools' special education department in 2007 and made recommendations for the change to the ICS model. This conference is still in the planning stages but tentatively scheduled for either October 10 or 17, 2009. Stay tuned for more details. If you are interested in volunteering to help organize the conference, please contact us at seattlespedptsa@gmail.com.
New Working Group on Students with Disabilities Accessing Advanced Learning
Across the country, parents, educators and school districts are challenged to address the needs of very bright students who also have disabilities and learning difficulties. The National Education Association (NEA) identifies this student group as not understood and not served by our public education system. Seattle is no exception to this trend.
Receiving the label "Twice Exceptional" or "gifted and disabled," these students are found in special education classes, highly capable/gifted programs or go unrecognized in general education settings. Their unique learning profile and individual needs make their disabilities difficult to identify under current special education parameters and their high abilities are virtually impossible to recognize in ways Seattle Public Schools identifies students to participate in advanced learning programs. It takes special expertise to identify and serve them.
An enigma to teachers, each Twice Exceptional learner has unique needs, many times not fitting neatly into existing school programs and services for either their gifts or disabilities. Many Twice Exceptional students have processing deficits, organizational challenges, and poor motor coordination, making it difficult to show how much they really know. Some may have identified learning disabilities in reading but nearly perfect scores in math.
Twice Exceptional students can languish in our schools, neither recognized for their amazing abilities nor identified with disabilities because they are considered too bright. Some Twice Exceptional students in special education would thrive if given opportunities to access high level curriculum, and those in highly capable programs would benefit from services via special education or a 504 plan. Recent outside analyses of SPS Advanced Learning Programs, APP, Spectrum and ALO programs have identified areas in need of improvement for inclusion of students with disabilities.
The Twice Exceptional are truly a group of students who are not well understood by parents, educators or SPS Special Education and Advanced Learning Departments. Our PTSA is forming a new working group this fall 2009 to discuss ways that we can support Twice Exceptional learners and highly capable students with disabilities in school and at home. For more information or to volunteer for our working group, please e-mail: lynnetucker@mac.com
The following links can provide information about the characteristics of Twice Exceptional students:
www.nea.org
www.cec.sped.org
www.hoagiesgifted.org
Forming a Severely-Disabled/Medically-Fragile Working Group
Our PTSA is lucky to have dedicated volunteers who have come together to form two working groups - one on Inclusion Practices and one on "Twice Exceptional" learners. These working groups are doing research into their respective areas and helping to educate our PTSA Board on how we can work with the district to make improvements in these areas for our children. Another area where we would like to focus some research and make recommendations to the district would be the services received by our Severely-Disabled and/or Medically-Fragile children. We are seeking volunteers to form a working group on this subject. If you are interested in doing so or have ideas to share, please contact us at seattlespedptsa@gmail.com. Many thanks.
Seeking Legislative Committee Members
Many thanks to David Garrick for stepping forward to take on the Chairmanship of our Legislative Committee. The goal of this committee is to inform our PTSA Board of legislative initiatives that affect the services and status of our children and to interact with the Washington State PTA on legislative issues. Depending on its members' availability and energy, the committee can also interact with other Special Ed PTSAs in the state on legislative matters, engage with our elected state and local representatives, and identify issues where our PTSA could lobby for legislative action. If you are interested in working on this committee, please contact us at seattlespedptsa@gmail.com.
Honoring Judi Moore's Passing
The disabilities community lost a heroine recently. Judith A. Moore, who served as the Executive Director of the Boyer Children's Clinic for 32 year, passed away on May 26, 2009. Judi was a strong champion and mentor for early intervention services. She was a dedicated professional and tireless advocate. We mourn her passing. Our PTSA is donating $100 in her memory to the Boyer Children's Clinic.