My husband and I both share and support the concerns raised by Governor Kaine, in his March 21, 2008 statement, and the Comments submitted by the Coalition for Students with Disabilities in Virginia.

 We strongly disagree with the proposed Regulations that restrict parental and child rights; and especially where the Regulations completely remove rights. We strongly urge that VDOE review these comments and revise their Regulations to encourage and retain the rights of children and parents  that are given in federal law and the current state regulations.

 Specifically I would like to address two areas of concern that we can speak to today from personal experience(even though we could address almost all areas) 

1. Functional Behavioral Assessments are essential in helping the school and those that work with the child. The FBA, like other evaluation tools used in the school environment lead the team to a plan that helps the child achieve success. If the plan is followed it allows success which has been proven with all available data and with our son as our best example.When we disagreed with the schools findings recently we received  an independent FBA and plan. The plan was able to shed valuable light on how information was relayed and our sons learning behaviors that restricted his educational growth. We as his parents encouraged the use of this plan that was suggested after this evaluation and information to make changes to our sons IEP in learning. This was to help everyone(teachers, therapists and parents) find ways to include in his IEP Present Level, Goals and Accomondations those things that will help him, as well as the teachers, find success. Is this not what our education system is supposed to aim for for all children?  When the plan and information from the FBA were used, he succeeded  but when it was not used we saw him fall behind. As we have been reassured by school personnel who did our sons evaluations recently in his triennial evals, the evaluations  would help teachers teach and our son learn. The FBA and its plan are very strongly linked with these evaluations and should be encouraged even more in children with disabilities to help others learn better how  these children learn in the educational environment and can achieve success.

The proposed Regulations do not identify a ‘Functional Behavioral Assessment’ as a type of educational evaluation. As a result, parents may be denied the right to receive independent Functional Behavioral Assessments if they disagree with the school’s findings.  It would be a shame to limit the use of such a valuable evaluation tool and a loss to many children and their success.

2. Interpreter Services: Recently our son, who has Down Syndrome, was provided a tutor who is an interpreter in his elementary school. With his current language and speech disabilities, including motor apraxia, he was able to learn signing for words that made little to no sense to him such as the words "and" and "the".  She instructed our son and us as his parents in many signs. He could accurately read  many of the words and say them once he learned many of the signs which we could not illustrate by picitures for him appropriately.  If we limit the services of the interpreter then children like our son will lose out in this service that has proven very successful in children like him  and many others. Signing has long been used by parents and educators with children like ours with great success. We should not  take away somthing so valuable in the learning environment by limiting the service as the proposed regulation states now

The proposed Regulation only requires that schools provide interpreting services to children who are deaf or hard of hearing. The current Virginia regulations does not limit and as such can and does allow success when used with children such as our son and many others, as many parents and teachers attest to.

Thank you for this time and space to express our concerns and hope that Virginia and the VDOE will contiue to do what is best for our kids and their parents.

Theresa and James Fisher