A SchoolhouseOn November 16th, 2006, a Tennessee Legislative study group met to review and discuss legislation sponsored last spring by Senator Ketron and Representative Tom DuBois. That legislation failed to become law, but if it had parents might have found navigating Tennessee’s special education programming less challenging and children might have been better protected. The results of this study group will eventually be forwarded to a Senate Education Committee in the Spring of 2007.
Bill Summary for SB0268/HB0243

Text of Bill in PDF

In testimony a number of issues arose. First and foremost was the need to protect children from abuse inside the schools. If I understood correctly the state Department of Education has no jurisdiction to intervene if there is a reported case of abuse at a school and may only be able to refer parents to the Department of Children’s Services or some other body. In fact, there doesn’t even appear to be a requirement that schools report abuse to the state Department of Education.

There may however be a requirement to report abuse by school staff to the Board of Education which could then revoke a teacher’s license — that issue was somewhat unclear. Of course, if the abuse is by someone other than a teacher, then revocation of a license may not be an option. Furthermore, if a school learns that a staff member has a history of abuse there is apparently no state rule against retaining that staff member and it is up to local districts to decide what to do.

This suggests that Tennessee needs to shore up its reporting and handling of suspected abuse in the schools. It would seem that a good first step would be to require all schools to forward reports of suspected abuse to the state Department of Education. It would also seem wise to clarify the lines of authority between the local school districts, state Board of Education and state Department of Education as well as evaluate what body is best suited to tackle the issue of abuse in the schools.

Another issues of dispute that arose in the study group was the training of Administrative Law Judges who preside over many special education disputes. There was a clear difference of opinion among those attending regarding the content of that training. Some felt strongly that parts of the training taught ALJ’s how to protect local districts from unfavorable rulings while others pointed to the variety of training sources - including training from advocates and parents - as evidence of a more balanced approach to training ALJs. Clearly, this is an area that needs further investigation and reasonable minds might come to difference conclusions regarding the appropriateness of the available trainings.

If you’d like to hear more about this legislation, then stay tuned.