By Ms. Balser of Newton, petition (accompanied by bill, House, No. 391) of Ruth B. Balser and others to ensure that parents can particpate fully and effectively with school personnel in the development of educational programs for their child.  Education.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts

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PETITION OF:

Ruth B. Balser

Alice K. Wolf

William N. Brownsberger

Cory Atkins

Barbara A. L'Italien

Tom Sannicandro

Geraldine Creedon

Frank I. Smizik

Steven A. Tolman

Patricia D. Jehlen

Kay Khan

Richard J. Ross

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In the Year Two Thousand and Seven.

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An Act to provide access to information for parents' evaluators.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:

SECTION 1.   Section 3 of chapter 71B of the General Laws, as appearing in the 2004 Official Edition, is hereby amended by inserting at the end of paragraph four the following paragraph: -

To insure that parents can participate fully and effectively with school personnel in the consideration and development of appropriate educational programs for their child, a school committee shall, upon request by parents, provide timely access to parents and/or parent-designated independent evaluators and educational consultants for observations of a child’s current program and/or of any program proposed for the child, including both academic and non-academic aspects of any such program. Parents and/or their designees shall be afforded access of sufficient duration and extent to enable them to evaluate the child’s performance in a current program and/or the ability of a proposed program to enable the child to make effective progress. School committees shall impose no conditions or restrictions on such observations that are not necessary to ensure the safety of children in a program or the integrity of the program while under observation.