I am confident that the Virginia Department of Education will consider the heavy opposition to the deletion of the Developmental Delay NAME option for the 5-8s and extend this age range to age 9 as permitted by feds. It will not cost any LEA in the Commonwealth one dime to use this NAME option at eligibility for the 5-8 year olds. It was wrong for Fairfax and Loudoun to eliminate this option for their young children because it is 'unsound practice' for this vulnerable age group plus it modeled to the 'wanna-be' LEAs that they could also do this without realizing they did not have the infrastructure in place to support children's access to the gen ed curriculum through a system of supports and services, like these wealthy counties have, such as "inclusion Specialists' as well as their knowing to  train teams/staff in understanding that a 'label does not define placement'.  Fairfax and Loudoun can have their 'bragging rights' to the level of sped supports they have in their counties but they also don't realize that children move and end up in 'wanna-be' school systems that have very little vision of what special ed should look like as well as the financial resources to support children with staff, such as 'Inclusion Specialists'. These wanna-bes are the types that have had only 1 Assistive Tech staff for the entire system for years. They just aren't there yet with money or knowledge to backup the massive destruction they've created for their young children ages 5-8 when they removed the DD NAME option because they wanted to eliminate the DD teachers and classrooms adn thought that 'a label defines placement' so eliminate the DD NAME option and we won't have to fund those DD classrooms or teachers..

These 'wanna-bes' are still so downright confused by these proposed changes; some still don't get it that they haven't passed. They think NOIRA was the  end of the process. Wanna-bes still don't get it that 'a label does not drive placement' even though their sped central office admin staff are just barely able to get those words out among themselves. Mainly because these sped admins are so downright  confused themselves by this paradigm shift that happened years ago but which they are just starting to realize.

So at the implementation level, we are starting to see these vulnerable 5-8s get yanked out of a self-contained.resource DD room and either placed full-time in the gen ed classroom, which is a good thing, but without transition supports, like sped personnel, in place, which is a bad thing. OR these little ones are now locked down into very restrictive self contained MR/ID or ED rooms.

I am very concerned that these children will become what they are labeled: MR/ID and/or ED because teachers/staff still don't get what is going on. These people really believe there is a MR curriculum; they don't see their classrooms as 'watered down versions of the gen ed one; they don't see the 'tracking' that they're doing.  they have no concept about using gen ed peers as peer models and vice versa. They voice that they want to fight the system doing this to young children; that it is wrong to have such mildly-impaired children (as compared to the previous mix of 50-70 IQs) mixed in their rooms now. But they're afraid for their jobs. Some children have even been bumped out of their neighborhood school because their IQ score is used to define their placement and now they're in MR/ID and/or ED rooms and the school clear across the county has one of those rooms. I know-that's not allowed but the reality of the monster that has been created in these wannabes is that it is happening and no one is saying anything bc they are afraid of losing their jobs or they're so confused by what they're being told-which is 'the fed government is making us do this'. So they've just thrown in the towel with a 'I give up. it's no use'.

We now have scores of children in more restrictive settings which will begin on the first day of school 2008 because these wanna-be LEAs thought that VDOE NOIRA meant 'done deal' so get rid of DD classrooms, teachers and that NAME option. I know waht you're thinking-why aren't the parents speaking up??? Many of them don't even know that this happened simply by some case manager or central office sped admin  taking away initials DD and putting in MR on page 17 of a 40 page 9-point font IEP as the service location.

We are growing a whole new generation of MR/ID students at age 5-8 now. We didn't have to do this. But it's happening bc the wanna-bes don't understand what they've created in this mess. The bottom line is that they cut DD teacher positions and rooms so that will cut down on their sped numbers. NO IT WON'T! Wanna-bes made it worse for those 25% delay DD children who could have gotten out by age 8 if they had the access to the more heterogenous grouping of the DD resource room. Some did get out of sped completely, maybe too cold turkey but they may do OK. But there were just as many who are Now  stuck in sped for the rest of their lives because they'll become what they're labeled whether it be MR/ID, Emotionally Disturbed.

I've had teachers, psychologists, come up to me saying they can't sleep at night for what their testing showed in low IQ, an eligibility team not knowing where to place them in a room (which they shouldn't have been thinking about at elig but my gosh, we have 'warm bodies' in these schools these days making key decisions on a child, noncertified, not endorsed, not licensed speds who are in the process of getting certified/licensed/endorsed but don't know a darn thing about sped yet). So then the room-to-be defines what label they get at elig. and now children are ending up in more restrictive placements bc these teams still think that NAME defines room.

VDOE needs to address this whole CLASS of children who have lost out on that DD NAME option for ages 5-8 years old. ACTION needs to be taken to convert those children's records back to DD and remove the MR/ID and/or ED references in their files. Teachers will be reading those records for years and those children will become what they are labeled. So when you agree to keep DD as a NAME option for the 5-8s and extend to age 9, you need to address how you are going to help this CLASS of children that lost out on this NAME option and years from now have become what they were named. I know-it's up to the parents to file a due process. Most of them won't because they won't realize the effects until middle school. They don't know how a bureaucracy works, that they could make change for their child and they don't know that their child is now in a low expectations environment due to less flexibility in getting out of that MR/ID and/or ED room except for cafeteria, field trips and assemblies as well as the homogenous skills in that type of class vs. the more heterogeneous groupings of DD. And by middle school, their child has become the label because of the most restrictive setting they've been placed in from age 5 instead of age 9.

Please make amends to this CLASS of children who are now in more restrictive settings because wanna-bes misinterpreted NOIRA as a 'done deal' with proposed sped regs and so eliminated millions of dollars of supports in their line item sped budget for these vulnerable 5-8s when they took away the DD NAME option.  Realize the reality of what happens at the LEA level and in a school building with these vulnerable 5-8s being placed in with 5th graders labeled MR/ID and/or ED (breeding ground for becoming MR/ID and/or ED) or out of their neighborhood school who do not have the ops/flexibility placement options/support services that the DD teachers afforded. It is a matter of justice for these children's educational futures.