The Tennessee Early Intervention System (TEIS) is in trouble financially.
- Tennessee Infant Parent Services School (TIPS) is a part of the Tennessee’s Early Intervention System.
- TIPS School’s budget needs have grown because TIPS School serves a large, growing number of families whose children have disabilities.
- Last year, TIPS School served more than 3,750 families in our state who have children under three with disabilities. The "per child cost" that TIPS spent serving these children was under $2,500 each.
Commissioner Seivers, Department of Education, asked the Governor’s Office of Children’s Care Coordination to study all state agencies serving these children and develop a consolidation plan.
A draft plan was released on Wednesday, March 7. The troubling parts of this plan are:
- Abolish Tennessee Infant Parent Services as a State Special School. TIPS School has 35 highly qualified full-time teachers who are early childhood special education experts. Within this group of teachers are experts in deaf education, autism, vision, mobility, speech pathology, early childhood special ed., and audiology. These teachers serve families and they recruit, train, assign and supervise 600 part-time TIPS teachers who make weekly home visits to these families.
- Assign program quality assurance in each district to only one person. This means that no supervision will occur; no lesson plan review will occur; no ongoing coaching and supporting will occur and questions about how to handle difficult situations will be ignored or put on hold—QUALITY SERVICE TO FAMILIES WILL DECLINE.
- Use the money saved from cutting the positions of early childhood special educators and serve 1200 children who are between the age of 3-4 who no longer are considered disabled. What this means is that quality services for children with severe disabilities are being cut so the State can serve children without disabilities.
Persons who are evaluating this draft plan are:
- Commissioner Lana Seivers ( Lana.Seivers@state.tn.us)
- Deputy Commissioner Timothy Webb (Tim.Webb@state.tn.us)
- Assistant Commissioner Joseph Fisher (Joe.Fisher@state.tn.us)
- Office of Early Childhood Services Director Jamie Kilpatrick (Jamie.Kilpatrick@state.tn.us)
- Mary Rolando (Mary.Rolando@state.tn.us).
Phone numbers for some of these people are:
- Commissioner Seviers – (615) 741-2731
- Deputy Commissioner Webb – (615) 532-4983
- Assistant Commissioner Fisher– (615) 741-3340
- OECS Director Jamie Kilpatrick – (615) 741-3537
If this concerns you, please let your legislators know.
6 comments:
The services to our children are at risk in this new proposal. Eliminating the Regional Lead Teacher (RLT) positions will dilute the services that children receive for a number of reasons:
- Parent Advisors (PAs) won't get the one-on-one individualized, timely mentorship that is key to quality service
- The assignment of Parent Advisors to Families will not be as individualized & specialized. Currently, the RLT's assign PAs according to PA's skills, knowledge, etc. and specific child & family needs. Without RLT's this assignment process will be diluted.
- Parent Advisors won't have the close relationship with an RLT to draw upon the RLT's expertise (36 out of 38 have MAsters degrees or higher and the current RLT's have an average of 22 years of experience). The RLT team has been assembled purposefully to include experts in hearing loss, vision loss, autism, speech delays, prematurity issues, early childhood development, etc. This is a HUGE resource for PA questions, concerns, etc. Without access to these experts the end result will be less information, and reduced services to families.
- Hiring and retention of highly qualified PA's is likely to reduce without the strong mentorship, leadership, & services of the RLTs. In fact, I believe , we've already lost several PAs in the last few weeks due to the concern with this new proposal.
-Families may not be as interested in services if the quality declines---- meaning families go without needed services for their children
- Child Find Activities will decrease. Our RLT's do a great deal of the Child Find for our state- identifying children with special needs so they can get the services they need.
- RLTs are key to developing, nurturing, and fostering collaborative relationships in the field of early intervention. They have developed great working relationships with other early intervention service providers, therapists, physicians, etc. They also have collaborative relationships with other early intervention professionals in other states. These relationships foster a program that keeps up with best practices.
-Approx 15 of the RLT's are state early intervention trainers. 5 are national early intervention trainers (having trained in 21 other states). Without these RLT's we'll lose one of the states best early intervention training resource. These RLT's are trained in best practices programming- programs that are research based. Their knowledge of these programs is key to quality service delivery.
These are just a few of the reasons that we MUST keep our RLTs to keep the high quality services for our young children with special needs.
The Governor if focused on Education and hiring and retaining qualified teachers. It's hard for me to imagine that he would approve of the state letting go of 37/38 highly trained, special education teachers. Especially when they have an average of 22 years of experience, 36 of 38 have Masters Degrees or HIGER, 5 have trained (21 other states) on early intervention programming, and approx. 15 (not sure the exact #) have trained other early interventionists in the state.
Why in the world would our state and our Dept. of Education want to lose this calibur of teachers , especially when TN is 48 or 49th in the state in Education. Don't we need to applaud a program that is so highly recognized and had such expertise?
Here are a few analogies to better explain the proposed change to TIPS. The proposed change would be equivelant to the following.....
1.) We are reorganizing basketball at UT. We are planning on keeping all of the players (surely they will decide to stay, won't they???), but the Bruce Pearls and Pat Summits don't really add to the programs. We decided to do this because we hired some outside consultant gurus who never played basketball and we are turning the reorganization of the program over to them. Again, they come to the program with fresh ideas because they've never worked in early interven - I mean basketball, and we can trust that they will know how to lead our teams to new heights. Could we get the Vol Army behind this one?
2.) St. Jude's Hospital is being closed, but we will still serve all of the children -- we're keeping the hospital rank and file staff (we hope!!! who will train new ones when they leave? who will match the staff with the children??? who will answer difficult questions???), but the specialists who see children themselves and who train the others are too expensive, so we are letting them go. Don't worry, the new leadership (none of whom have worked directly with young children with developmental disabilties themselves on a long term basis) comes to us with fresh ideas because they are specialists in their own field -- just not in the field of working with very young children with developmental disabilities. And remember -- we're going to save $ and we can use that money to help children who can really benefit from it -- those who are at risk of having problems.
3.) All of the churches in the state will stay open, but the Pastors who train, motivate, encourage and lead -- we're letting them go. But don't worry, we are going to advertise and pull in some new people who should help us serve more people.
MEMORANDUM of PROPOSED CHANGES
This is a copy of the MEMORANDUM with the proposed changes to early intervention. There is some added commentary in parenthesis with ** that was not an original part of the memo. The commentary is to help explain how the proposed change would affect TIPS Directly
MEMORANDUM
March 7 2007
TO: Colleagues
FR: Mary Rolando
Policy Analyst
RE: Principal Recommendations to Reform Tennessee’s Early Intervention System
The year-long analysis of Tennessee’s Early Intervention System (TEIS) is nearing completion. The purpose of the on-site Financial Consultation conducted this week was to assure that the data gathered during the Cost, Estimated Prevalence and Utilization studies accurately reflect the characteristics of the State and the Service system and to discern how the information can be used effectively at the State level and in the field. Finalizing the Financial component of the analysis will permit resolution of remaining issues of the Analysis.
The purpose of the Analysis has been to guide TEIS toward an efficient, effective service and administrative system, and to provide as many Tennessee families as possible with quality Early Intervention Services. The dedicated work of Key Informants, Stakeholders and State Administrators have resulted in these principal recommendations to reform TEIS:
1.) Streamline Eligibility Determination and strengthen Service Coordination in a new service model. Fully fund both services. Develop functional Individualized Family Service Plans build on routines based family assessments.
Estimated Cost: $2.4M
2.)Unify TEIS, Tennessee Infant Parent Services (TIPS) and Early Intervention resources of the Division of Mental Retardation Services (DMRS) through reorganization of State and District level administration, aligned with the new service model. Reduce the number of administrative positions in the programs collectively statewide from 110 to 54. ******(This is added Commentary, explanation of memo ......Call TIPS School’s full-time teachers administrators and cut their positions)
Estimated Cost Savings: $5.7M
3.)Extend newly defined state Early Intervention services to families whose children are not eligible for Part B services at age 3 years when TEIS services are no longer available to them under the existing model and who await entry into Pre-K programs with resources from administrative cost savings from the reorganization. (1200 children @ $2000 ea.) ******(This is an explanation/ Commentary of memo...Reduce the State’s expenditures on direct services to children who have disabilities who are under three years of age and spend the money on children who do not qualify for special education)
Estimated Cost: $2.4M
4.) Leverage federal Medicaid dollars for Developmental Therapy with a portion of current state appropriations; implement other fund expansion opportunities.
Estimated Revenue: $10M
TIPS Fact Sheet
In 2006 the TIPS programs statewide served 3,786 children and their families through home visits. This is roughly 45% of the birth-3 children who are “at risk” for developmental delays. The cost per family is $2,478 per year.
There are 36 Regional Lead Teachers covering 9 districts and mentoring 600 part-time Parent Advisors across the state.
TIPS is the only program within the state that we know about which meets the criteria outlined within the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 2004.
If decisions are made which reduce or eliminate Regional Lead Teacher positions within TIPS, our State will lose its ability to meet the requirements of IDEA 2004.
Removing these positions will take away the assurance that quality services can be delivered to the youngest children of our State who have disabilities and will negatively impact the lives of these children and their families.
A memo to families regarding the Reform of Tennessee’s Early Intervention System, dated March 9, 2007 on the Department of Education website, TEIS link, from Jamie Kilpatrick states, “the study has involved input from the state and local levels including parents, teachers, therapists, parent advisors, service coordinators, LICC members and others.” As a member of the LICC and serving 15 families as a Parent Advisor no input was requested from me or my families. Many in the TIPS school merely participated in a simple time study. This time study was problematic and did not reflect all of the activities of Parent Advisors and Regional Lead Teachers
Regional Lead Teachers carry a case load directly serving families as well as supervise, train, recruit and mentor Parent Advisors.
Here's another interesting point regarding TIPS and the proposal. This might be a good thing to mention in a letter to a legislator:
In 2002, when the State shut down most services on July 1 because of budget problems, two programs were left running because they were considered essential -- the TN Highway Patrol and TIPS School. Isn't that ironic that in 2002, our school was considered an essential service, but today, the GOCCC calls our full-time teachers "administrators." And,they want to drastically change the structure of TIPS School & services so they will not be providing the quality services that they have for so many years.
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