Good Evening. My name is Sue Sargeant. I speak tonight on behalf of The Arc of Rappahannock which supports persons with developmental and intellectual disabilities in Fredericksburg, and the counties of Caroline, King George, Spotsylvania and Stafford. I am also a public school speech therapist who began teaching in Virginia in 1976 when PL94-142, now IDEA, began implementation across this great nation which values fairness and justice for our most vulnerable residents and citizens and their families. This Arc supports the platforms and comments AGAINST these proposed sped regs made by the attached parent advocacy and education assns. (by the Arc of Virginia, the Virginia Office for the Protection and Advocacy, Governor Kaine, JustChildren, the Coalition for Students with

Disabilities, the Virginia Education Association,  and the Fairfax County Advisory Committee for Students with Disabilities). Due to time constraints of this public comment, I will highlight just a few issues.

Virginia is a good supporter of young children. Look at how we go above federal requirement and are the only state to begin public education for our 2 yr olds with developmental delays. Let’s continue to do the right thing for our young children and do it the Virginia way. The Virginia way is to go above and beyond and Governor Kaine is right there with us with “Virginia

Leading the Way”.  Keep the DD option and make it align with IDEA with the age range of 5-9 yrs old.

It does not matter that Fairfax or Loudoun, have already been limiting their age range to the 2-5s so those of us in other LEAs should just go along with them. This is wrong for these LEAs to do despite their (mis)perception that young  children at age 5 can be appropriately identified into those disability category ‘sorts’ of e.g., ‘Mental Retardation/Intellectual Disability vs Learning Disability. They haven’t even had exposure to the 3-R’s curriculum yet for pete’s sake! These LEAs have no longitudinal data to support any of their harming practice. The National Assn for the Ed of Young Children and the Division for Early Childhood of the CEC both have platforms on maintaining DD for the 5-8s.  It will not help any young child to come up with say a ‘VDOE compromise’ such as allowing the continued use of DD for those 5s with previous experience under this label as a 2-4 yr old preschooler but not allow the DD use for ‘newly eligible’ 5-8s. 

VDOE has  no data, longitudinal included, for a hypothesis that cutting out the DD option for the 5-8s cuts down on dispropor rep of African American boys in sped. Why not look at more in-class non-sped supports for  teachers  so we can keep our children in the general ed classroom where they can access the content and where they BELONG’. Why not just tell teachers that they aren’t going to take a hit if students in their class don’t pass the SOLs and their school misses AYP?

Paperwork. We’re always going to have paperwork in sped. Cutting out parent consent provisions is not going to make that paperwork go away. New stuff will just pop up, like the paperwork associated with ‘double dipping’ into Medicaid monies to pay for the under-funded IDEA mandate.

So yes, we in VA go above and beyond on parent consent and involvement provisions because it is the RIGHT THING TO DO. It is THE RIGHT THING TO DO , to maintain those  provisions as well as current sped regs because we, service providers and parents, want to walk hand in hand as partners in educational planning decisions for OUR children and OUR students with disabilities. 

Thank you for listening to the hundreds of parents and advocates throughout the Commonwealth who support the platforms of The Arc of Virginia, VOPA and Virginia Education Association.