ACTION ALERT
from the National Down Syndrome Society
June 2, 2004
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NATIONAL CAMPAIGN TO PROTECT IDEA BEGINS THURSDAY JUNE 3, 2004
On June 3rd parents and advocates from all over the country will be starting
a campaign to prevent the harmful provisions of the House and Senate
reauthorization bills from becoming law. The next step in the legislative
process is for the bills to go to a conference committee where they will be
negotiated into single piece of legislation. This is an election year, which
means Congress will adjourn earlier than usual. As a result of time
constraints, the conference committee is likely to compromise between these
two damaging bills as opposed to negotiating provisions that would protect
the rights of students with disabilities.
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ACTION STEPS STARTING ON JUNE 3, 2004:
1.) Contact the White House, your member of Congress and your Senators. You
can find their contact information under "elected officials" in the advocacy
section of the website:
http://capwiz.com/ndss/dbq/officials/. If you wish
to email a sample parent letter prepared by NDSS, or draft and email your
own letter, you can use the "Take Action Now!" feature that appears in this
alert on the NDSS website at
http://capwiz.com/ndss/issues/alert/?alertid=5951206. If possible, take your
child to meet with your member of Congress and your Senators, or their
staff.
2.) Reach out to your family members, your friends, your neighbors and your
state and local elected officials and urge them to assist us in protecting
IDEA. Show them how easy it is to send an email from the NDSS website or add
their names to your letter.
Starting on June 3rd we need to keep a loud, clear, continuous message going
out to the White House and Capitol Hill! We need to keep up the campaign
until this Congressional session ends. If IDEA is not reauthorized in 2004,
the process starts over in 2005. We will keep current law until a
reauthorization is accomplished.
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THE MESSAGE:
The House and Senate bills are harmful to students with disabilities and
will leave our children behind. There is not time in this session to
negotiate legislation that protects the rights of these students.
The House and Senate bills should not go to conference if the following
problems cannot be fixed:
1.) Both bills eliminate the student's right to "stay put" in the current
placement pending a disciplinary appeal. This makes it easier for schools to
exclude children with disabilities by sending them to alternative placements
for behavior that may be caused by their disability. Under the House and
Senate bills, this can happen even if the behavior is unrelated to drugs,
weapons or violence.
2.) Both bills amend the current provisions for the reimbursement of
attorney's fees and add procedures that make it more cumbersome for parents
to file due process complaints.
3.) Both bills undermine accountability and parent involvement (important
tenets of the No Child Left Behind Act and IDEA) by weakening rights in the
IEP process, including the right to have short-term objectives in the IEP.
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FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Both the House and Senate bill fail to protect many critical rights in IDEA.
The list above reflects the problems that the two bills have in common.
However, the House bill goes even further than the Senate bill in
diminishing the rights of students with disabilities, especially under the
discipline and due process provisions of IDEA. For more details, see the
NDSS document "Summary of Key Provisions In the House and Senate IDEA
Bills." It can be found at
http://capwiz.com/ndss/issues/alert/?alertid=5951281.
If you have questions or comments about this alert, contact Ricki Sabia at
rsabia@ndss.org.
If you or others you know would like to be added to or removed from the NDSS
mailing list, send name(s) and email address to webmaster@ndss.org with the
subject "Subscribe to Advocacy Alerts" or "Unsubscribe from Advocacy
Alerts".
____________________________________________________________________________
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National Down Syndrome Society, 666 Broadway, New York, NY 10012,
Phone: 800-221-4602; Fax: 212-979-2873; e-mail: info@ndss.org; Web site:
http://www.ndss.org
HUGS Chris & Abby (3 1/2)
