Call for Inclusive, Collaborative and Democratic Board of Education Special Education Code Hearing Process

Below is a sample letter to the NJ Board of Education regarding its obstacles to allowing parental input into the NJ Special Education Code revision process.  We urge you to write a letter of your own.  You can borrow this one and change anything to your own liking.  The letters should be sent to:

Members of the State Board of Education, New Jersey Department of Education
State Board Office Riverview Executive Plaza, Building 100, P.O. Box 500
Trenton, NJ 08625-0500
Faxed to: (609) 633-0267
E-mailed to: Diane Shoener, Director, State Board Office diane.shoener@doe.state.nj.us , statebd@doe.state.nj.us
cc. Commissioner Lucille Davy Lucille.davy@doe.state.nj.us , comments6A14@doe.state.nj.us
You can call in your concerns to: (609) 292-0739

NJ Student Advocacy Union
PO Box 1214, Belle Mead, NJ 08502 * 908-881-5275 * http://StudentAdvocate-NJ.org

February 4, 2006

Dear Members of NJ Board of Education,

I am writing on behalf of the families of 225,000 special education students in the state of New Jersey. I am one of 2000 who have signed on to the petition at The NJ Student Advocate Website calling upon you and the NJ Department of Education to maintain strong student protections in your implementation of IDEIA 2004 changes to special education code.

There has been universal disapproval among parents of special education students as to how your board has conducted the hearings on revisions to NJ special education code due to IDEIA 2004 implementation.

First, the hearing on December 21 was most inappropriately scheduled to conflict with holiday, vacation and school schedules.

The sign up for the hearing on January 18 ended 5 days before the hearing. 

Parents calling during office hours from Wednesday, January 11 through Friday January 13 were confronted with a phone message that stated that the message queue was full.  The message registration was effectively shut down preventing probably hundreds of parents from registering.

During my testimony, I was interrupted by Board member Ronald Butcher who tried to prevent me from reading my testimony.

The meetings are scheduled in tiny rooms where there is no ability for parents to hear each other's testimony and only a partial board assembled. 

At the December 21 hearing, some of the board members were absent from the hearing rooms.

For a full report on how the board tried to befuddle parent input, visit:
http://studentadvocate-nj.org/HearingReporton12212005.htm
http://studentadvocate-nj.org/Jan18Report.htm

The NJ Student Advocacy Union calls for a more inclusive, collaborative and democratic process that genuinely seeks to involve the parents, guardians, advocates and supporters of children with disabilities.  To those ends, we call upon the NJ Board of Education to take the following steps:

1.        Schedule regional hearings on the changes to special education code, one in Southern New Jersey and one in Northern New Jersey.

2.        All meetings should be held in rooms large enough for the full board to sit and for all parents to assemble together.  The Board can use local community colleges or public school auditoriums for such purposes.

3.        Registration phone lines need to be fully staffed and remain open.  During office hours, all parents should be able to reserve.  The queue needs to be cleared at end of day to allow maximal overnight registrations.

4.        An investigation is needed into the issue of shutting down the registration queue during the last three days of registration for the last hearing, from Wednesday, January 11 through Friday, January 13.

5.        Registration needs to be open up until the date and time of the actual hearing.

6.     Move the scheduling of the May 17 hearing to the evening or the following Saturday.

 

Sincerely,

Bob Witanek
On Behalf of The NJ Student Advocacy Union
http://StudentAdvocate-NJ.org

Cc.                  Commissioner Lucille Davy
                        Governor Jon Corzine