NH’s Dept. of Education Receives Grant for Special Ed Summit
WASHINGTON, April 02–New Hampshire’s Bureau of Special Education has received a grant for $20,000 to hold a special education summit in Bedford next October.
The two-day summit will bring together special education policymakers, administrators, service providers, families and advocates from New Hampshire for the purpose of turning research on improving school climate into reality.
“I’m thrilled,” said Mary Ford, the director of the Bureau of Special Education in the New Hampshire Department of Education in Concord, who learned the Granite State was selected for one of eight competitive grants on March 20. The grant was awarded by the IDEA Partnerships program, which is administered by U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services. These grants fund meetings that bring disparate people together to talk about the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the law that mandates how schools educate special needs students. This year the U.S. DOE also granted IDEA Partnership grants to Colorado, Louisiana, West Virginia, Connecticut, Indiana, New Mexico and South Carolina. Applicants for the grants were charged, according to Alice Porembski, a special education policy analyst at the New Hampshire Development and Disabilities Council in Concord, with replicating a successful national IDEA summit that was held last June. That meeting was credited with strategically bringing different organizations concerned about IDEA together and forging a commitment from them to work together, according to Porembski.
Porembski helped the Bureau of Special Education prepare the grant application by interviewing state special education representatives about what special education issues matter most to them. After interviewing over a dozen people from seven groups including The New Hampshire Department of Education, The New Hampshire Developmental Disabilities Council and the New Hampshire Alliance for the Mentally Ill, Porembski decided upon school climate.
“There was very little discussion about any other topic than school climate,” Porembski said. “This is the hottest topic. It’s everything from bullying and teasing to violence. Schools need a better atmosphere that fosters the emotional health of special education students and all students.”
Porembski said that IDEA, which will likely be reauthorized this year, can not work in schools and communities for kids unless many stakeholders are involved on the local and state level. “The national summit taught us that is has to be local,” she said.
The October summit’s workshops will focus on topics such as school-side approaches to miscommunication, family involvement, positive behavior support, behavior assessment and behavior intervention plans, according to Porembski.
The summit will admit 300 to 400 people. Porembski said the Bureau of Special Education has not decided if it will charge admission, but if it does, scholarships will be available for parents.
Titled “School Climate and Discipline; How Can We Create a School Climate that Creates Emotional Well Being for all Students and Meets the Unique Needs of Students with Disability,” New Hampshire’s summit will be held on October 18 and 19 at the Wayfarer Inn in Bedford.
Published in The Union Leader, in Manchester, New Hampshire
