Special Education Advisory Committee (SEAC)

I’m writing to you on behalf of the Special Education Advisory Committee (SEAC) of the Halton District School Board to announce our series of informal parent information and advice sessions for the 2012-13 school year. In collaboration with the Halton District School Board, SEAC is organizing a series of “coffee chat” sessions for parents of students with special education needs. The first session is on Thursday November 15, and is open to everyone, is free to attend and does not require registration. Just drop-in, learn, ask questions and meet other parents. We ran a series of four sessions last school year and had a good turn-out from parents. This year we are planning four to six sessions on topics such as, financial and estate planning, advocating for your child, information on assistive devices and other topics of general interest to parents of special needs children. We are working on the topics for the rest of the sessions and they will be announced in the newsletter. SEAC applied for and received a "Parents Reaching Out" grant from the Ministry of Education for the 2012-13 school year. Here is link for information on the program. This grant enables us to reimburse parents for respite care when attending our sessions. If you need respite care for your child, language translator or sign language interpreter please contact either Amy or myself to get more information. Our email addresses are at the bottom of the message. Agenda for Session 1 In keeping with our theme of open discussion and information sharing the first session will begin with a casual question and answer period with David Boag and Jane of Halton District School Board. David Boag is the Superintendent of Education-Student Services and Jane Lewis is the System Principal of Special Education. If you have any questions about the special education programs and services in Halton District School Board they have the answers. Immediately following "Coffee and Tea with Dave and Jane" there will be on open topic parent-to-parent discussion period. There was great positive response from parents on the discussion periods at the previous sessions. If you know of any parents that would be interested please forward this message to them. Schedule: Session 1 - Coffee and Tea with Dave and Jane November 15th, 2012 - 9:45am to 11:15 at MM Robinson High School in Burlington. 2425 Upper Middle Road, Burlington, ON L7P 3N9. Click here for map. Additional sessions will be announced as soon as we have confirmed dates and speakers. If you have any questions please contact myself, Amy or David. Contact emails are at the bottom of this message. We hope to see you there, Jason Bartlett - Vice-Chair, Halton District School Board SEAC (bartlett.jason@gmail.com) Amy McKenzie - Chair, Halton District School Board SEAC (amy@mkz.com) David Boag - Superintendent of Education-Student Services. Halton District School Board (boagd@hdsb.ca) Other items that may be of interest... Learning Disabilities Association of Halton (LDAH) has announced multiple events and programs for 2012/3. The next session is Saturday November 3rd and the topic is "Living with Non-Verbal Learning Disabilities". Detailsare available in the "Upcoming Events" section of their web site. more...

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