HCPS to host 46th Festival of Arts and Sciences

from Mechanicsville-Ashland Local – 04/19/2023

Special education practices under federal review

Contributed Report

Hanover County Public Schools’ 46th Festival of the Arts and Sciences will be held on Saturday, April 15, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Patrick Henry High School, located at 12449 West Patrick Henry Road in Ashland. Admission is free.

More than 1,500 students will participate in this community event that highlights their accomplishments during the school year and approximately 1,300 pieces of art will be on display. It will feature exhibits and live performances in the areas of music, theater, fine arts and physical education. Individual schools will also showcase exhibits and digital projects will be on display in the library. Additionally, a makerspace – a collaborative space for making, learning, exploring and sharing in which visitors will have the opportunity to work with snap circuits, build a miniwindmill, and build small robots – will be available in the commons.

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VDOE for not adequately addressing complaints made against school districts by parents and others advocating for special needs students. It also indicated a deficient system of dealing with and responding to those complaints.

The latest correspondence summarizes OSEP’s position and outlines how the process will move forward.

“Finally, through review of the submitted documentation, continued contacts from Virginia parents and advocates, and other sources of information that have come to the attention of our office, we have significant new or continued areas of concerns with the State’s implementation of general supervision, dispute resolution, and confidentiality requirements of Part B of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).”

The letter emphasizes the need for compliance with IDEA requirements.

“Appropriate policies and procedures for both oversight and compliance, and their implementation, are crucial to ensuring that children with disabilities and their families are afforded their rights under IDEA and that a free appropriate public education (FAPE) is provided,” the letter continued.

The result is a further investigation by the Feds that will monitor progress and ensure VDOE is in compliance. What could be at stake is more than $300 million in funding from federal allocations for special education services if the problems are not addressed.

“For this reason, as is discussed below, we are notifying you of OSEP’s plan to initiate additional monitoring activities focused on both the new and continued areas of concern and on the effective implementation IDEA requirements in these areas.”

For parents of special needs or disabled children, the complaints and issues listed in the latest OSEP review are old news, and some have taken action. In Fairfax County, a group of parents filed a class action suit against the district regarding the lack of instruction and special services available for students with IEPs during the pandemic.

As a parent of a disabled child who graduated from public schools, I’m aware and have encountered some of the issues raised in various complaints. When we encountered problems with Jack’s education, our issues were promptly discussed at the local level, and school officials were consistent in their attempts to hear our concerns. And sometimes, their best intentions were not enough to overcome confusion and lack of consistent policy at the state level.

It seemed that the issue with resolving special needs problems was a topdown situation where local school officers were more attentive to our problems than administrators from the Central Office. In our experience, it was difficult to obtain responses from policy level officials, and we found that we were sometimes expecting local school professionals to solve our problems in spite of administrative red tape.

Getting these processes right in a timely and responsible fashion is vital for the success of special education or disabled students, and ensuring a fair and responsive process to resolve issues is something that apparently, the VDOE has failed to do.

With renewed scrutiny and the real threat of lost funding, outstanding issues can be resolved.

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