PALS Meeting Minutes
May 24, 2023 9:30 a.m.
Virtual Meeting using Zoom
Open Forum
Open Forum is an opportunity for participants to come together and discuss a variety of topics, offer resources, and ask questions related to special education.
FCASD Looking for Recommendations
Fox Chapel Area School District (FCASD) Director of Special Education and Pupil Services Tim Mahoney reached out to PALS looking for recommendations from families. As FCASD continues to work on the comprehensive planning phase of their district strategic plan. The main areas they are lookin at beyond the Special Education Plan are:
What sets FCASD apart from our peer districts?
What is it that you see other districts doing that could benefit our student experience at FCASD?
How can we promote growth of our program and support growth in our region?
We recommended that the district should send these questions to all special education families. If you and your family have recommendations for these questions, please email Tim Mahoney.
PTSD and C-PTSD
We discussed PTSD as it relates to autism. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that can happen after experiencing a traumatic life event. Symptoms of PTSD include re-experiencing the traumatic event, avoiding triggers related to the event, negative changes in mood and thinking, and hyperarousal and reactivity.
Research indicates that autistic people are more likely to report symptoms of PTSD. Although research has yet to establish clear prevalence rates, the rates of probable PTSD in autistic people (32-45%) are higher than those in the general population (4-4.5%) (Rumball et al. 2020; Rumball et al. 2021; Haruvi-Lamdan et al. 2020).
Read more about PTSD in autistic people:
We also discussed Complex Post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) and how it can result from longer-term trauma rather than the traditional "singe violent episode" type of trauma in classic PTSD.
Read more about C-PTSD here:
Keystone Graduation Requirement ReCap
We recapped our resent conversations about Graduation requirements in FCASD. You can find meeting minutes from our previous conversations here. There is nothing new to report on this subject.
Next Meeting: June 28, 2023 9:30 a.m. Virtual Meeting using Zoom.
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SPECIAL NOTE
All meetings will be held virtually until further notice.
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