Happy Holidays from the MPACT Family!

MPACT Offices will be closed

December 24th - January 3rd, 2023

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MPACT Featured Trainings

For the Holiday Season Ahead

Holiday Travel Tips for People with Disabilities

Do you or does your child have a disability that affects mobility? The Transportation Security Administration shares some important tips to help families better prepare for security screening at airport screening checkpoints for the 2018 holiday traveling season.

13 Holiday Survival Tips For Your Child With Special Needs

The holiday season can be an extremely stressful time of year for children with autism and other forms of learning disability. The disruption to their routine, unfamiliar sights and smells, the house full of noise and people – it can all prove too much. These tips for surviving the holiday season come from parents of children and adults with special needs.

Does Your Child Have Food Sensitivities?

Holidays are a time for family, friends, and endless eating. That can be tough for kids with sensory processing issues who are sensitive to the tastes, smells, and textures of foods. Here are 8 tips to help reduce food battles—and let you and your child enjoy the holidays. (Also available in Spanish).

15 Tips for Surviving—and Enjoying—the Holidays with a Brain Injury

Flashing lights. Crowded stores. Loud family gatherings. The holiday season should be joyful, but it can often be overwhelming to someone who is living with a brain injury. Here are tips to help you make the holiday season happier and more relaxed for all of your friends and family.

Playtime’s Guide to Activities Families Can Do Together

(Available in English and Spanish) | The Homeless Children’s Playtime Project offers creative tip sheets for parents looking for fun activities to do with their children during the pandemic. Tip Sheets 1-4 are available in English. Tip Sheets 5 and 6 are available in both English and Spanish. There are also fun videos for children on the project’s YouTube channel.

December is Universal Rights Month

The holiday season is fast upon us. December is typically a month you celebrate your families, express your gratitude, and give to others in association with cultural and religious beliefs. However, regardless of what religion you practice or belief you hold, December is also recognized as the Universal Month for Human Rights. Click HERE for more information about Universal Human Rights Month.

Holiday Cultural Competence

"The holiday season is a great time for educators and students to explore how different cultures express their values, beliefs, and customs. Celebrating classroom diversity, especially around the holidays, helps students to build an understanding and awareness of other cultural practices and to reflect on their own." Click HERE for a list of 10 ways to embrace this time of the year in a culturally responsive manner.

Stinchcomb, Samantha. “Ten Ways to Celebrate Diversity During the Holidays.” International Literacy Association, 14 Dec. 2017, https://www.literacyworldwide.org/blog/literacy-now/2017/12/14/ten-ways-to-celebrate-diversity-during-the-holidays.

Request for Stakeholder Engagement

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) established the State Performance Plan/Annual Performance Report (SPP/APR), which is a series of “indicators” designed to measure results for children and families served in Missouri’s Part C early intervention program known as First Steps. The Office of Childhood is engaging with Missouri stakeholders to review targets or goals for these indicators to analyze data, develop improvement strategies, and evaluate progress. A webinar will be held on December 8 from noon to 1:00 to share information with stakeholders and gather feedback. Click HERE to register and join the meeting.

Missouri Special Education Advisory Panel - SEAP

The purpose of the Missouri Special Education Advisory Panel is to provide policy guidance on special education and related services. The panel shall:

1. Advise the State Education Agency (SEA) of unmet needs within the State in the education of children with disabilities.
2. Comment publicly on any rules or regulations proposed by the state regarding the education of children with disabilities.
3. Advise the SEA in developing evaluations and reporting on data to the US Office of Education under Section 618 of the Act.
4. Advise the SEA in developing corrective action plans to address findings identified in Federal monitoring reports under Part B of the Act; and
5. Advise the SEA in developing and implementing policies relating to the coordination of services for children with disabilities.
6. Advise on the education of eligible students with disabilities who have been convicted as adults and incarcerated in adult prisons. 

If you are interested in becoming a member of the SEAP or want more information click HERE to be directed to the website

Summary of Performance

According to IDEA, graduates with an IEP should be provided a Summary of Performance (SOP) prior to graduation. If you have a December graduate ask your LEA (school district) about your child's SOP. The SOP will help the graduate in their next steps in making the transition to adulthood.

It’s Never too Early to Think about

Extended School Year (ESY)

You might be telling yourself it’s way too early to think about summer, but not in the case of ESY. Your school district is required to have a district policy regarding ESY and a decision about ESY must be made for each child who receives services under an Individual Education Program (IEP). On Section 2 of the IEP, Special Considerations, the IEP team must select one of the following options:

Extended School Year:

 No. The student is not eligible for ESY services.

 Yes. The student is eligible for ESY services. Complete Form B of the IEP.

 The need for ESY services will be addressed later. Will be addressed by month/year. Attach the IEP Amendment page and Form B of the IEP.

The IEP team uses information based on losing skills (regression) and the time needed to relearn skills (recoupment). Teams look at whether the student would lose skills without support or teaching; would it take an excessive amount of time to regain the skill or more time than a child without a disability? A student’s past experiences are considered. If no information is available, the team may have to predict and use the student’s history over other breaks, difficulty with working memory, and progress on IEP goals.

Keep informed about Extended School Year and find out more from MPACT HERE and the Missouri Department of Elementary & Secondary Education HERE.

Tools That Challenge the School-to-Prison Pipeline

An Empty Seat at the Holiday Table

Military families deal with several bouts of separation from their service members—anything from deployments, ships out to sea, training operations, or career schools may be experienced in one year. Sometimes year after year. Milestone birthdays, anniversaries, and school events get missed. But the holidays, the gathering at the table for togetherness and hearty meals, may sting just a tad more. Learn how military families can fill the empty seat at the holiday table HERE.

Looking for Parents of High School Students with IEPs

Are you a parent or legal guardian of a high school student who has an IEP and is about two years away from finishing high school? We are looking for a few such parents/guardians to read and answer some simple questions about a short description of a research project and a participation consent form. The purpose is to help us ensure that the project description and consent form are clear and easy to read. This is part of a study sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education and conducted by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) with the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC Charlotte) as a partner. We will arrange a day and time to meet virtually with each selected parent sometime in December. During this virtual session, we will share and discuss the document, which is about 3 pages long. The session will take approximately one hour.

If you are interested, please click here to complete this short form. Parents who are selected and who complete the activity will be given a $50 gift card. We may only be able to select some interested parents.

Questions may be directed to [email protected]

Thank you!

Communicating About Accessibility and Accomodations

Did you know that it is not just employees with disabilities who have a responsibility to communicate? Employers have to communicate about accessibility and accommodations too! The Partnership on Employment & Accessible Technology (PEAT) recently published a new guide. It was written to help companies highlight their efforts to increase information and technology accessibility. Click HERE to read PEAT’s guide called “Communicating Your Commitment to Accessibility: Tips for Employers.”

Governors Council on Disability Inclusion Award

The deadline for nominations is January 31, 2023.

The nomination form and criteria are available HERE.

Youth Leadership Award

Youths with disabilities can be nominated HERE.

FAFSA Now Open

The 2022-23 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) launched at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time. New and returning students who plan to attend college between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023, should complete the FAFSA as soon as possible. To assist students and parents in the process, the Department’s Federal Student Aid (FSA) office has been sharing tips @FAFSA, including “7 Things You Need Before Filling Out the FAFSA Form”.

FSA continues to take steps to make it easier to complete and submit the FAFSA form. For example:

• students’ prior drug convictions, as well as registration status with Selective Service, no longer affect their federal student aid eligibility;
• gov is even easier to navigate to get help and information, with an entirely new look and feel; and
• in most states, applicants only see the questions on the FAFSA form that pertain to them.



Students and parents may complete the FAFSA form online at FAFSA.gov and through the myStudentAid mobile application.

In related news, the Department released the latest federal student loan cohort default rate, which decreased (from 9.7% to 7.3%) for students who entered repayment between fiscal years 2017 and 2018 and subsequently defaulted before September 30, 2020. This new cohort default rate represents the lowest national rate since the three-year rate was first released in 2012. Schools with high default rates may lose their eligibility to participate in federal student aid programs.

Understanding the Evaluation Process

Dec 5 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm

Learning to Negotiate through Assertive Communication

Dec 8 @ 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm

Special Education Law

Dec 12 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm

Understanding ADHD

Dec 14 @ 10:00 am – 11:00 am

Disagreement Resolution

Dec 15 @ 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm

McKinney Vento

Dec 19 @ 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm

Art of Effective Advocacy

Dec 19 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm

View all upcoming MPACT trainings HERE.

All MPACT trainings are free of charge! If you would like to schedule any MPACT training in your area or for your organization

please click on the link HERE.

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