OntheWilderSide

My trip to Albany

The NY State Board of Regents recently took a vote that approved a lot of bad things for the disability community. What bothers me the most is that they took away a safeguard mandate that guaranteed students with autism a certain amount of speech and language classes.

I wanted to go to the Regents meeting and tell them my feelings in person. Though, it was too difficult for me to do a Monday in Albany during the holidays. So, instead, today (Sunday), I went to a statewide meeting of autism advocacy groups who are planning how to respond to what happened. And, some of those folks will go to the meeting tomorrow. (And, there are also plans to attend Regents meetings in the future as well, especially after the holiday bustle has faded.)

If you would like to watch a group of bureaucrats in action, making decisions that will affect all of our children, you can watch the webcast of the 12/13 and 12/14 meetings at the BOE website: here.

I hope to have more updates here on what is going on in Albany. It seems like the current Board of Regents and the future Governor’s administration want to force a lot of cutbacks to education programs for students with disabilities. So, the disability community, and people who care about young people with disabilities will have to take action to keep important policies in place.

The NY State Autism meeting was a good start to organizing grassroots, statewide energy for people with autism. There was a good turnout, and representation from many kinds of autism groups and organizations, from all parts of the state.

Filed under: activism, children, Education, News Tagged: | autism, Board of Education, NY autism, NY Regents meeting, NY State BOE, NY State Education, Special Education, students with autism