Tennessee Disability Coalition News Blog

Breaking Ground magazine’s annual arts issue will be coming out in late August or early September. The magazine is looking for poems and prose, up to 1,000 words, artwork of all kinds, including photographs. The submitted work must be by persons with disabilities or disability-themed and the writer or artist must reside in Tennessee.

Color pages are limited, so submitted artwork must also reproduce well in black & white and Breaking Ground will not be able to publish all submitted artwork or writings. The deadline for submissions is July 15, 2007.

Please send all submissions, along with complete contact information and a 2 to 3 sentence biography for the artist or writer to Ned.Solomon@state.tn.us or

Ned Andrew Solomon

Managing Editor, Breaking Ground

TN Council on Developmental Disabilities Parkway Towers

404 James Robertson Parkway, Suite 130

Nashville, TN 37243-0228

Phone: (615) 532-6556

Due to the efforts of many families that repeatedly contacted legislators and attended legislative hearings in support of this bill, and the assistance of the Disability Coalition, The Special Education Due Process and Child Abuse Prevention Bill passed both houses and is awaiting the Governor’s signature.Rep. Rob Briley and Sen. Bill Ketron, the main sponsors, each see this bill as simply a first step to improving the way special education disputes are resolved and in leveling the relative resources of the parties to these disputes. They each spoke passionately to wanting to help families in their efforts to advocate for the needs of their children. Specifically, this bill does several important things:

• It prohibits the Department of Education, the State Board of Education, local boards of education and local education agencies (school districts) from hiring any individual who has committed abuse against a child or an adult or any individual who is listed on the sex offender’s registry. This provision will require each agency to submit the names of all potential employees to determine whether they have been identified as an abuser.

In regard to administrative complaints it:

• requires the Department of Education to set up a way for administrative complaints to be filed using the internet;
• allows the Department of Education to require the provision of compensatory education for substantive violations of IDEA, as well as procedural violations that result in a substantive denial of FAPE;
• requires that all violations and corrective measures taken will be published on the Department website

In regard to mediation and due process:

• all mediators will either be contracted by or employed by the Secretary of State’s office; all administrative law judges (ALJ) will be employees of the Secretary of State’s office;
• all training in special education law provided to mediators and ALJs will be conducted by the Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts;
• final orders in due process cases must make a finding of who the prevailing party is on each issue in the case;
• all due process final decisions will be posted on the Department website
• attorneys representing either a school district or a child are not considered members of the IEP team.

The changes required by this bill are important for several reasons. Now that the Department can require a remedy of compensatory education in certain situations, families may be able to resolve their dispute through the administrative complaint process if they are unable to do so using a more informal process with their school district. Prior to this bill, the only way to accomplish this was through a due process litigation.  Moreover, prior to this bill, all mediators and administrative law judges were selected, trained and paid directly by the Department of Education. The timing of this legislation is equally important since the

Tennessee special education rules are currently being rewritten and subsequently adopted by the State Board of Education. This bill will require changes to the rules that were not initially addressed by the Department of Education which drafted the proposed rules.

– From contributor Joanne Bregman who you can contact with additional questions about the legislation