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ACTON-BOXBOROUGH SPECIAL EDUCATION PARENT ADVISORY COUNCIL EXECUTIVE BOARD MEETING Wednesday, June 4, 2008 Meeting Minutes I. Call to Order. The meeting was called to order by Nancy Sherburne. The meetingattendees were: Terry Lindgren, Nancy Sherburne, Bill Guthlein, Steve Lowe, Mike Coppolino, Matthew Kidder, and and Xuan Kong. II. Approval of Minutes. The minutes from the April 2, 2008 Executive Board Meeting werepresented and unanimously approved with the correction that Mike Coppolino’s name only needed to be listed once as a meeting attendee. III. Approval of Bylaws. We didn’t have the required quorum of parents present to vote on theBylaws, so that vote was tabled until our next meeting. IV. Organization/Business Issues A. Introduction of New Officers. Nancy introduced and welcomed new PACofficers, Terry Lindgren, Bill Guthlein and Laurel Collins to the Executive Board. B. Summary of Monthly Meeting with Liza Huber. Nancy shared the informationthat she and Liza had discussed at their recent monthly meeting. • Liza said she planned to host a bullying forum in the fall with all schoolprincipals perhaps in a panel discussion format. Liza has been spearheading a bullying initiative in the district and the PAC is concerned about the prevalence of bullying in our schools and the lack of consistency in antibullying programs currently implemented across the district. • Pupil Services and the AB SpEd PAC agreed to co-host a picnic for specialeducation families in September to facilitate connections between families. • Liza said she would cut a PO in July for the funds needed to reproduce anddistribute the Special Education Parent Handbook so funds would be available for that project in the early fall. • Liza generously agreed to donate one copy of each book in the PupilServices’ parent lending library to the Acton Memorial library as part of the PAC’s fundraising initiative to expand the public library’s special education resources for all families in our community. This undertaking is a memorial project in honor of past PAC Chair, Lynne Deutch. The PAC will make a financial and book donation in memory of Lynne’s unflagging service to the special education community in the Acton-Boxborough school district. • At the PAC’s request for a Pupil Services’ org. chart, Liza requested a copyof the master org. chart Marie Altieri had created earlier in the year so that Pupil Services and the PAC could both have official copies. • As a result of the Transition Task Force’s recommendation, Liza agreed tosend out a Pupil Services’ directory of staff broken out by individual schools as part of Pupil Services’ Sept. OnTeam newsletter. Page 2 of 3 • Liza shared that Pupil Services planned a probable expansion of theAutism/Asperger’s program to Gates Elementary school for grades K-3 beginning in the fall of 2008 under the leadership of Johanna Pyle. However, she stated that before a final decision was made and the program designed, parents would be included in that process. • Liza also expressed an interest in meeting with Bruce Sabian, Director ofAcademy MetroWest, to discuss his consulting to the district re: expanding in-house social skills programs to incorporate some of the techniques used in his cooperative, group play, social skills classes. C. Discuss New PAC Policy, Procedure & Fall Presentation . The Boarddiscussed the School Committees’ new PAC policy and procedure and its implications for the PAC’s goals next year. Possible goals discussed for next year included: publishing the Special Education Parent Handbook, making a donation to the Acton Memorial Library in Lynne Deutsch’s memory, further defining the relationship with Pupil Services documented in the new policy and procedure, supporting the Connections Program at the Junior High, the Hayward Center at the High School and research trials in APS schools like ILD’s executive functioning trials at Douglas, focusing on bullying, looking at successful mainstreaming – how to make it work, mandatory vs. elective special education training/professional development for regular and special education staff, and after school/extracurricular programming/support. Additional ideas for next year included sponsoring a high school scholarship, hosting a special education staff appreciation luncheon, and raising funds for the organization through grant writing, school PTOs and other means. D. Pupil Services Feedback re: Transition Task Force Recommendations. PupilServices just provided feedback on the task force recommendations today, so Board members didn’t have a chance to review that feedback prior to the meeting. The Board postponed discussion on this topic until our next meeting so people could have a chance to review and consider Liza’s comments. E. Agenda for Next Meeting • Discuss Pupil Services’ feedback on Transition recommendations• Develop PAC presentation for SC in the fall• Establish meeting schedule for the yearV. Open Issues. 1) Completion of IEE forms – now that procedure has been established fortopic resolution when PAC and Pupil Services reach an impasse, we can move this discussion forward. 2) Lack of full-time ABA Director – Parents continue to contact the PAC with concerns about the lack of a full-time ABA program director at the Integrated Preschool. Parents have expressed concerns that the new service delivery model (program director who teaches half time) is not working well for preschool students or families. VI. New Issues. The Board briefly discussed reports from multiple parents that IndependentEducation Evaluation reports and recommendations from outside specialists were not being Page 3 of 3 given equal weight to school evaluations, nor were key recommendations from these specialists being incorporated into children’s IEPs as appropriate. Nancy expressed the concern that she seemed to be hearing these concerns from an increasing number of families this past year relative to previous years. The trend was disturbing. Mike asked how many families we were talking about. Nancy suggested she’d heard from about twice as many families this year, though couldn’t provide a specific number of families without gathering data through a survey. Since the PAC has created a parent survey and asked Liza to distribute it before the end of the school year, we can discuss this issue further after those survey results come in. VII. Adjournment. A motion was made to adjourn the meeting. That motion was seconded andunanimously approved.
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