This blog was created by parents of a child in TIPS so that other interested TIPS parents can communicate about the proposed changes to TIPS. Hopefully this blog will allow parents to better understand how the proposed changes would negatively impact TIPS. It was also started to serve as a resource for parents to work together to educate and lobby to legislators and other "powers that be" about the critical role the Regional Lead Teacher's play in providing quality direct services to birth -3 children with special needs through the TIPS School.
Feel free to post your own thoughts, concerns, questions. More information about the proposed changes to TIPS will be added soon. Also, we hope to add legislative contact information and "Save TIPS fact sheets"- to help guide interested parents in composing their own letters to legislators, etc. Thanks for your support of TIPS and the Regional Lead Teachers and Parent Advisors that directly serve our children.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
It has proven difficult to copy all our legislators to this blog.
(If you know how, Please help and do it!)What we can do now:
Google: "tn state legislators" click first option to their home page. From column on left, scroll down to District Maps. Find your district number. Go to home page and click "House" Click "members"
Scroll down to the bottom and put in your district number or just find your rep. listed. Click and you will find all you need to know.
Addresses, telephone, e-mail. It's quite easy. Why not e-mail a note right then and ask them to contact the Special Schools Committee. Ask that they Please, leave the TIPS program in the budget, and up and running. Tell them why. I personally believe a follow up hand written note is crucial. One letter, an e-mail, a phone call, they all will help... HUNDREDS can save this program for all the kids in TN. Let's do it!
There are plans to cut early intervention services for infants and toddlers
with disabilities by a critical 38 teachers across the state by the end of
June. This is very unfortunate.
Marsha Uselton
----
> lburch@drctn.org writes:
>
> Currently, the Tennessee Infant Parent Services (TIPS) provides early
> intervention services for infants and toddlers with disabilities and
> their parents and is considered one of the better programs in our
> nation. TIPS is a nationally recognized, high quality program. The 38
> fulltime special education teachers are highly qualified in areas such
> as deaf education, vision, speech pathology, autism, orientation and
> mobility, audiology, deaf blindness, reading and early literacy, school
> social work, early childhood special education. Some of these teachers
> are viewed as national experts.
>
>
> My first experience included contacting TIPS to interact with a poor
> rural family near Newport. I saw how their system worked and how the
> parent interactions helped a child overcome significant delays. Since I
> have been at the disABILITY Resource Center, we have collaborated with
> TIPS and other service providers to share our resources, knowledge and
> experience to provide services to children and adults with disabilities.
> We work together to sponsor Walk Rock N Roll with A Twist at the
> inclusive playground that we created in Knoxville. Our event was a
> disability educational awareness event in order to eliminate attitudinal
> barriers so that infants, toddlers, children and adults can be included
> in our community.
>
> Effective July 1, the Tennessee Department of Education plans to cut
> these services by terminating 38 fulltime teachers in the TIPS program
> who provide services for our entire state. The State justifies firing
> them by misclassifying them as administrators, however they are not
> administrators. They are more directly involved with parents:
> recruiting, training, assigning, supporting, mentoring, supervising
> direct services for the children that are provided by the part time
> Parent Advisors. The Dept. of Education will reassign duties to part
> time Parent Advisors who have less qualifications, need the support and
> input from the experienced teachers, and less time to serve the children
> and families thus creating significant damage to this program. In
> addition, it is an extremely critical time to support the families
> thereby decreasing significant risk to the whole family.
>
> With the funding taken from TIPS, the Tennessee Department of Education
> plans to provide services for three year old children who are not
> eligible for Part B services for children with disabilities. They are
> at risk for disabilities however do not meet the disability guidelines.
> While it is a great idea to provide services to children at risk, it is
> not a great idea to decrease funding for children who all ready have
> disabilities and who qualify for the services. If we cut their
> services, we place them at greater risk for more significant
> disabilities.
>
> Please retain TIPS, one of the best programs our Department of Education
> has for infants and toddlers with disabilities and their parents.
>
>
> Lillian Burch, MA
> Executive Director
> disABILITY Resource Center
Post a Comment