Tim, Hey, friends, it's Tim Villegas with the Maryland Coalition for inclusive education. And this episode is a quick bonus episode of an interview I had with a parent who lives in Georgia. I met up with Chelsea Hutchins at the Georgia State Capitol late February, she had invited me down to observe some of the advocacy that she was doing with her local state representatives, and it honestly was amazing to watch. I was able to spend some time with her and one of her representatives, state senator Clint Dixon, wrote a little bit about that encounter for the weekly ish, but then I was able to listen to Chelsea tell her story of what got her into advocating for Inclusive Education, specifically with her local state representatives. Here's the interview. It's only about eight minutes long, and I hope that it inspires you to figure out how you can advocate for inclusive education policy where you live. All right, here we go. You
Hi. My name is Chelsea Hutchings. I live in Gwinnett County, and I have five kids in the Gwinnett County Public School System. They're in seventh grade, sixth grade, fourth grade, second grade and first grade, and my youngest son has Down syndrome, and I am advocating for the special education system reform because it is very broken. Halfway through kindergarten, he was kicked out of his neighborhood school without our consent and put in a segregated classroom, which is not best for him because of the way the system is set up with all the different programs, often, almost always, the kids with special needs are put second and the district's needs are put first. And it's just one example of how we are not considering our kids with special needs well enough. We are limiting them pre determining their potential. We have a lot of work to do to make it better for them, but there is a way, and we can be doing it better, because the information and the research and the examples are out there. When my son was born and we found out he had Down syndrome, my husband and I started learning all we could to set him up for success. And so we got into early intervention. We became members of the dads to join community, you know, going to events, joining Facebook pages. And very quickly, I learned that inclusion was an issue all around, right? So I knew that. And as my son was transitioning to kindergarten, I started pushing for that without even necessarily knowing all the things. I just knew the essence of what he needed, what was best for everybody. Unfortunately, he got kicked out, and at that point, I kind of turned my focus more towards the whole system being the problem, I was ready to fight for him all the way. I've been doing everything I could to work with the school, but there's a lot of parents that can't do that, and then there's a lot of kids suffering from the system as it is. So while I have my battle for my son to get the best within the broken system, I'm also trying to fix the bigger system. And so within that journey, I have read books on everything you know, all the things I'm constantly learning and studying. And then one day, on one of my Facebook groups I'm in, someone said something about an inclusion specialist. And I was like, what that exists. It felt like I came across this magic occupation. I started asking around to talk to inclusion specialists, and so I set up some phone calls. I started asking questions. I started I learned officially what inclusive education means. And then I learned about the conferences on inclusive education. About a week and a half before the TASH conference, I happened to ask this one woman who I had talked to previously. She's an inclusion specialist for her district. I asked her a random question, and she was like, That's a good question. I'll ask it at this conference. And I was like, I'd love to go to that conference. She was like, You should come. Four days later, I'm driving to New Orleans to attend this conference, and it's just been wonderful, just trying to learn more and meeting people and seeing how it's done. And. Many are trying to expand it across so that all kids are getting this benefit. When Theo got kicked out, I felt like I was talking at brick walls. I was desperate to be heard, and so the people who I was talking to within the school, it wasn't working. So I started to think, Well, why is this issue important? Why do I care so much for my son to get an inclusive education? It's part of the big picture. It's part of what I want for him all around for out of school and after school, right? And so when I started thinking that way, I was like, Oh my gosh, this is a community problem, and our community is really, really special and really great and really close knit, and we have all the schools in our cluster within our city limits. Nobody knows how many kids are bust out of their community every day to go to a different school. I mean, I was mentoring a girl who was in fifth grade and she had a twin who had special needs and was in another school. She had never been to school with him, and I was like, Oh, will you be together in middle school? Right? They all feed into the same middle school. And she's like, No, I don't think so, because his program was in another Middle School. And so I started to think of, who else can I talk to? The first person I reached out to, actually was our city mayor, so that I could tell him, we have an inclusion problem. A lot of people don't understand inclusion. I was ready to explain my concern, but he already had the mindset and heart for inclusion. We had a wonderful conversation for about an hour, and he wanted to keep in touch. About a month later, he emailed me a document for an inclusion task force in our city, and he wanted my input. I was extremely touched and excited. We went back and forth on that document, and then about a month or two after that, he sent me the final draft, and he named it the Theo Hutchings Task Force for inclusion. And so now I get to be a part of that in our community. We need everybody to understand and care about inclusion. It has to be intentional, because it's not always natural in our systems and our daily lives. Then my friend was like, Oh, my neighbor is running for school board. You should go talk to him. And so then I went and talked to him, and then my family and I started going to the board meetings. Me, my husband and our three older sons speak at board meetings almost every single month, I start talking to the board members. And then I came across Georgia can actually while Thea was still in kindergarten, I was trying to learn about advocacy reading books and stuff, and they had, like, an advocacy class. So I took that class. And then after the task force was created, the timing was that to where Georgian was starting another parent fellowship group. And so I was asked to apply for that, and was able to be a part of that parent fellowship and learn so much from everybody there, and they're the experts on the Capitol. So everything I've learned, like capital wise, I've learned from them. The first person I was introduced to was a house representative. He was a guest speaker at one of the Georgia can meetings, and has a personal connection to the special education system through a family member. He was also on the House Education Committee, and I learned there were committees. I was like, I need to talk to him, right? So I started to talk to him, and that helped me feel probably helped break down a barrier quicker than if I was just in here, not knowing anybody or anything. It was great talk to him about education issues. I started to learn the website a little bit how to find my representatives. Started to reach out to them. I started to, you know, I have lists of who's on the education committees in the House and in the Senate, because they're the ones that are talking about these issues and coming up with the bills themselves. And so I just put myself out there for anyone who wants to talk. And I've had some people respond, and met some great mom advocates. And so I've been able to kind of shadow what they do on some of these capital days, and just in advocacy. And so it's a lot of just word of mouth networking, like, oh, you should talk to this person. You should talk to and then, and then do it right? Like, I don't, I don't know there's no I know it can be intimidating sounding, but I feel like I'm at the point with this issue that it's that personal and it's that important, and I understand it that well that I'll just talk to anybody and everybody. I.
