FCCPTA Special Education Committee

Minutes of the February 28, 2006 Meeting

 In Attendance:

Margaret Fisher, Beth Jarvis, Cindy Daniel, Lani Adamich, Marlene Burke, Debbie Deegan, Jill Berman, Tia Marsili, Diane Lemberg, Shannon McGrail, Kim Cecelski, Jennifer Heinz, Sheree Brown-Kaplan, Suzanne McIntosh, Skye Marsili, Sheridan Marsili, Rachna Sizemore, Scott Campbell, Mary Beth Burger.

 

Special Education Representatives Guide:

Sheree and Tia led a discussion of revisions to the guide. Suggestions included:

• Letter from the principal introducing the special ed rep

• More details on IDEA or links to other resources

• Add a section on why schools need special ed PTA reps

• More ideas for projects, including disability awareness, trifold displays for Back to School nights, new parent packet of special education resources, survey for parents to see what interests them

Safety Consideration for Parents of Children with Autism:

Scott Campbell presented a short overview of autism and safety considerations that apply to them as well as to children with other disabilities. 

Future meetings:

For our April meeting, we will invite the ACSD members who represent geographical areas (either directly or via school board representatives) and the parent ombudsmen to join us. We will divide up by clusters to brainstorm on ways to create an effective communication network.

In June we will meet solely to share ideas on how to fill our roles as special education PTA representatives. We will divide up for part of the meeting by elementary and secondary school.

In the fall, we will invite the staff of the Office of Special Education.

 Future discussions:

We will try to conduct at least some of the business of our committee on our specialedfairfax Yahoo group. Rachna will lead us by picking the topic for any given week, starting with more ideas for revising the special ed rep guide.

 

Respectfully submitted,

Margaret Fisher

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