Capitol Hill Day

Today Valerie Williams, our Director of Government Relations, and I am met with a few of our national partners and a Senator from the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions.

Our first meeting with was the executive team at the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP). We discussed a variety ways our two membership organizations could work together to build a stronger relationship between state directors of special education and school psychologists. We discussed options for offering joint professional development on a variety of topics such as trauma informed care, supporting students with behavior disabilities, child find, results driven accountability, and strategies for dealing with the growing shortages of student service professionals. We pledge to work together on these topics in the future and to expand our already strong partnership.

Our second meeting was with the executive leadership team of the National Disability Rights Network (NDRN). We had a fruitful conversation about ways our two organizations could partner and share information related to critical topics such as child find for undocumented children separated from their parents who have placed in public schools, positive behavior intervention and supports, restraint and seclusion, and competitive integrated employment. NDRN is going to partner with NASDSE to deliver a biannual call with our membership to highlight some of the major legal issues their state chapters are getting. This can help state directors be more proactive. We also discussed doing a recorded and archived webinar on "What State Directors need to know about their state's Office of Protection and Advocacy and how to develop collaborative partnerships".

Our final meeting with was Senator Tim Kaine (D) of Virginia who is on the Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions. We introduced our organization and explained our role across the country. We offered to provide information and feedback on major national issues related to special education and disability policy. We highlighted a few of the hot national topics in special education including: disproportionality, crisis of shortages of teachers and related service personnel, restraint and seclusion, IDEA reauthorization, full funding of IDEA, and the increase costs of supporting students with significant support needs.