Caller: Our family recently moved to Tennessee, and my son just got an Autism diagnosis. He’s 3. We have been given a referral for ABA, but what do I need to do about school? We are in Waynesboro.
Pathfinder: Welcome to Tennessee! Your question is not uncommon because special education services can be difficult to navigate sometimes.
A good next step for parents of a newly diagnosed child would be to contact the Special Education Department of their local school system. For your family, that would be the Wayne County School System.
Pathfinder’s website includes the Special Education offices for every school system in Tennessee. Here is the information for Wayne County School System.
Parents, like you, need to inform the local school system about their child attending school, who may need special education services. You can simply call them with this information. A parent may also need to ask for a team meeting to discuss the child’s needs and evaluations, and to decide what supports will be included. Some children will be able to attend Pre-K free. When the school system finds out about a new child who may need special education services, they start the process by sending parents a packet of paperwork that needs to be completed and returned.
For children who have been served by Tennessee Early Intervention Services (TEIS), typically a meeting is held with the parent/s, TEIS, and the school system, so that a child who is turning 3 and still needs services, is transitioned from TEIS to the school system.
It was the Individuals with Disability Education Act (IDEA) — a renaming and a reauthorization of the Education for all Handicapped Children Act (EHA), passed in 1990 – that established the basic rules for children with disabilities. An “IEP,” Individual Education Plan, is a document developed by the educators and student’s parent(s) that includes educational goals and services the school will provide to support the student. To learn about the process of developing an IEP, the STEP (Support and Training for Exceptional Parents) YouTube Channel is a good place to start – The IEP Team Process: Chapter 1 — IDEA and IEPs.
You can already see that there are a lot of acronyms used in the disability field. It could help to follow up that initial training with the other IEP Team Process videos. STEP has been training Tennessee parents of children with disabilities about special education for a long time.
Another step is to connect with the Family Engagement in Special Education program, a collaboration of the state Department of Education and The Arc of Tennessee.
There you can request the help of a trained advocate who can attend an IEP meeting with you. You will find many other resources and a calendar for other upcoming trainings and events. To request help, a parent starts by filling out an intake form.
I hope this information is helpful in answering your initial questions about your child’s education. Please don’t hesitate to email Pathfinder again or call our office, 1-800-640-4636, for any additional resources you may need now or in the future.
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