PASSE: First Meeting of the School Year--Monday, Oct 1 at 7pm at Redwood Elementary School

PASSE (Parents Advocating for Special Services in Education) is a group of parents and guardians of children with special needs (all sorts of special needs, from physical or learning disabilities to allergies to medical issues) in the West Orange school district. Our primary mission is to help parents advocate for their children's educational needs. 

    We hold several meetings a year about various topics based on the interests and needs of our members and parents in the district. This year we will have meetings about DDD, nutrition, a Resource Expo, and more.

    Our first meeting of this school year will be held this Monday, Oct 1 at 7pm at Redwood Elementary School.  We will go over some quick introductory information--an explanation of what PASSE does, pointers for the start of the school year, and a few neat apps for special needs kids (or their parents) to use--and then we’ll move on to our featured speakers. (I truly promise it will be quick, but returning members who want to skip the intro can come around 7:15 and we won’t hold it against you!)

    Speech therapist Maddie Werner and occupational therapist Lois Menkin from the West Orange school district will talk to us about red flags to look out for in your child's development, and ideas and tips for home to help complement the therapy your child may receive in school.  We extend this invitation to everyone, but especially all parents of young children whether your child is known to need intervention or not--it will be very informative on the development of children in areas such as speech and language, social skills, fine motor, gross motor, handwriting, and sensory integration. While all our parents can use this information, parents of young children may find it especially interesting.

    Parents should keep in mind school districts provide support services to children who are found eligible starting at age 3.  How do you know if your child is eligible?  If you have concerns about your child’s development, obviously you should speak to your pediatrician. Should there be cause for concern, you can approach the school district to see if your child warrants an evaluation to determine eligibility for special educational services such as (but not limited to) speech or OT.  How do you do that?  Helping you navigate that is a large part of what PASSE does, whether it’s putting helpful information on our website, talking to parents by phone or email, or providing informative meetings.

    For example: If your child is around the age of three or older, and you wonder about your child’s speech or language development or topics of development that would fall under OT (like fine or gross motor skills, sensory issues, etc) then coming to the meeting Monday night might give you an idea of whether you should be concerned and what steps to take if you are concerned.  If you have questions that don't get answered during the talk, you can ask them at the Q&A portion.  If you still have questions after the meeting, we’ll help get your questions answered.

    We hope to see many of you on Monday at Redwood at 7pm to kick off the year!