Tim Sennott

Special Education encompasses a number of students facing a vast spectrum of disabilities and challenges that many may not consider from an outside perspective. This population of students has spent decades embroiled in the pursuit of inclusion in the classroom, and HB 1221 threatens to roll back that progress. When students receiving special education are integrated, they are afforded invaluable opportunities to be better understood, and to develop important, strong social connections that help to bolster the educational opportunities granted by inclusion within the classroom. Students outside the scope of special education, in turn, are afforded opportunities to understand the differences their peers may share, and to look past those differences in their own pursuit of social connections. Centralizing special education and removing it from the students' assigned schools creates an environment of "othering", and should have no place in the state of New Hampshire.